S5 E20 - Letting Go of Paper Airplanes

The kids were enjoying making paper airplanes this afternoon, but Finley refused to throw hers. She kept a death grip on it. When I inquired why she wouldn't let it go, she responded that she had worked so hard on it. 

We have a hard time of letting go of things we have poured a lot of ourselves into. Our children, a church, our money, all kinds of things. And yet it is by God's design to remember they are not our own, we shouldn't have a death grip on them, and they are intended to go. 

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Transcript

What if I told you that God could be seen in the most ordinary things every day? 

What if I told you that every day, ordinary events could teach us extraordinary eternal truths? Would you believe me? 

 Welcome back to season 5 of the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! My name is BJ Sipe, and I am a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. And I’m excited to share a few moments together with you learning some important lessons from the simplest things. Let’s grow together! 

Summer is finally here! Well, technically it’s been here for about a month, but you wouldn’t know it by the weather we’ve been having in Kentucky. This has been the wettest summer I can remember in a very long time, as April showers have brought even more May & June showers. The other night I sat out on my back porch after putting the kids to bed, and without exaggeration nearly the entirety of our backyard was underwater.  However, today I sat out on my back porch looking out over freshly cut grass, blue skies, and a handful of kids at play. As I said, summer is finally here! When the weather is nice, we live outside in our household. Whether it’s the trampoline, swinging, or just running around the yard playing in a sprinkler – while the weather is nice, we try to soak up as much vitamin D as possible. Today’s activity? Paper airplanes. It didn’t start that way, actually. I have been working out on the back porch getting ready for the weekend while the kids and their neighbor friends have been coloring at the picnic table. Coloring, cardboard paper, outdoors – you can see the line of reasoning that brought them to paper airplanes. I agreed to help them make them, but that they had to color a flat piece of paper really well first. They obliged and started scribbling away at their pages. Some of them made pictures, some of them just made a collage of colors, and all of them one by one started bringing pieces of paper to me to teach them how to fold it properly. We creased things tight, tried several variations, and before long we had airplanes flying all over the place in our backyard. 

With each of the kids, after helping fold their planes, I would give it a quick “test flight” by throwing it far into the yard and telling them to go get it. Then came Finley’s turn. We finished folding up her beautifully scribbled piece of paper, and I was about to throw it when she exclaimed, “No, Dad! Don’t throw it!” I assumed she merely wanted to be the first one to toss her new paper toy, so I smiled and handed her the plane. But to my surprise, she didn’t throw it. She just wandered around the yard, smiling and laughing at the other kids and her siblings throwing their own all over the place. Finally, after watching Finley walk around with a death grip on her plane, I called over and said, “He Finley, don’t you want to throw yours too?” To which she responded, “But I worked so hard on it!” It was the cutest and sweetest thing you have ever heard. 

To be honest, there is a little Finley in all of us, isn’t there? We have a difficult time letting go of things that we have poured a lot of ourselves into. When you have personally invested a great amount of time, resources, energy, and emotion into someone or something, it is very easy to become possessive of that thing as well. The idea of letting go of that person or thing can cause a great amount of stress in our lives, because we can’t fathom that kind of change. And yet, in our lives, there are a great many things that we do indeed pour ourselves into that God expects us to be willing to let go of. Why? Because they are intended to fly – it’s how God designed it from the beginning. 

Perhaps the most obvious example of this is our own children. As parents, there will be no one else (save our spouse) that we invest more of ourselves into throughout our lives. From infancy to adulthood, you bring up and raise your children and form such a special bond. You were there for their first steps, their first practice, their first day of school, all of the big stages of life. You have spent countless years with them daily, loving them, sacrificing for them, but then what happens? They leave. Genesis 2:24 says from the very beginning, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” God designed children from the very beginning not to stay, but to fly. To leave the nest, go out on their own, and start a family of their own just like we had done. Now, I must say at this point, I still have very young children at home – and Lord willing have still have a good 15-20 years of children being here. I don’t have to think about them leaving anytime soon…but it wasn’t until I had children of my own that I fully appreciated how hard it must have been for my own parents to watch me walk out that door. It is going to be so hard for me to learn to let go as my children age, but I’m going to have to. I can’t keep a death grip on them; they are not mine to keep. God designed them to fly, and it’s my job to prepare them to do so. 

However, there are other things I believe that this can apply to as well that go beyond even our children. It could happen with a church. I have seen people pour decades of diligent work and service into a local church, sometimes having even been a part of starting that work. Yet when it was time for them to step down from a position of leadership due to health or other varied reasons, they had the most difficult time doing so. Why? Because it’s hard to let go of control and walk away from things that we have poured ourselves out for. But we would do well to remember the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church.” No local work belongs to us or revolves around us. If a local church is so dependent upon one person that it cannot function without them, then we have missed the purpose and function of the church. The church does not belong to me; it belongs to Jesus – who invested far more than any of us ever could in our own lives for the kingdom. Jesus died and spilled his very blood to establish it. It is a product of his own mind. Shepherds of a local church are given as stewards according to Titus 1, but it does not belong to them. It is not their church, and those who labor diligently on behalf of Christ for it must remember it was never theirs to begin with. 

Perhaps one of the most difficult lessons for us to learn, especially in our “American Dream” culture is to let go of our money and possessions. Something that Kylie and I frequently try to instill in our children over and over again is that God gives us things not to keep to ourselves, but to share with others. That is a difficult concept for children to grasp, honestly that’s a difficult concept for adults to grasp! We have worked hard for our money! We’ve put in countless years of study, schooling, training, and work in order to earn the wages that we do – why wouldn’t I hold on tightly to it? While we must certainly be good stewards of what we have, God never designed the things he blessed us with to be held onto firmly in our hands. Consider what Paul says in Ephesians 4:28, “Let the thief no longer steal. Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need.” What does Paul say we work for? To hoard up treasures for ourselves and live lavishly? No, we work to care not only for our own needs, but also to share and care for the needs of others. A good friend taught me growing up the following simply message about work and possessions: “you learn, you earn, you give back.” The reason that statement is so profound is because it is the very nature of God’s design. We are called to generosity, and it is by God’s design that we learn to let go of even our blessings in this life. 

My friends, there are certainly many more applications that you and I could make surrounding this topic. I hope that today’s words can challenge us to consider ways in which perhaps we are grasping to keep control over things that God wants us to let go of. I believe in closing that we would do well to remember the words of the prophet Jeremiah in 10:23, “I know, Lord, that a person’s way of life is not his own; no one who walks determines his own steps.” It’s not about us. It’s not about me. May God grant us the wisdom, courage, and strength to let go of the things in life that God fully intends to never remain within our grasp.

This has been the Set Your Mind Above Podcast, season 5 episode 20 – and I’m so thankful that we had this time to grow together! A new episode is dropped every Friday, so be sure to tune in next week.  Also, if you’re able to, go ahead and like and subscribe to the podcast, give us a good rating or most importantly share it with someone else – it would help to reach others that I never could alone.  And more than anything, always remember the following: know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.