Why Leaving Something Behind Could Be the Best Thing You Could Ever Do

I had finished a solid work out.   It was hot tea time.  (What can I say? I like hot tea after I work out.)  So, I went to my car to grab my tea from the cupholder.  But it wasn’t there.  My hot cup had disappeared.  Then I realized. It hadn’t disappeared.  I had never put it there.  Where was my tea?  It was sitting right where I’d left it; on the kitchen counter at home.   I hate when I leave things behind.  

Still as bad as that is, it’s not the worst.  The worst is someone seeing my left behind ways.   Just this week, I waved happily to a neighbor walking his dog as I headed to a meeting.  Then three hundred yards down the road, I realized.  I had left something behind.  That meant.  I had to go back and get it.  I had to go right past that neighbor, who had moments before seen me drive away.    But I did it.  I got out.   I joked about how frustrating it is to forget something. My neighbor smiled back.  Sheesh, how embarrassing.  I yearn for a week, just a week, when each time I walk out the door, I haven’t left anything behind.   Do you know what I’m talking about?  Have you ever had your own left behind challenges?      

Still in life, leaving stuff behind isn’t always so bad.   Leaving stuff behind can be the best thing you could ever do.    In fact, leaving it behind frees you.  It frees you to move forward like nothing else can.   How does that work?  In this story, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

1 Kings 19:19-21

Who doesn’t want a life with some stability?   I like days where everything goes right, where everything stays in its place.  Yet in this story where that doesn’t happen at all, God tells you something crucially important.   Sometimes in life, you need disruption. You need to burn the plow.  And if you don’t, you will miss the very life, God called you to have.

 

After all, that’s what Elisha does here.   The great prophet, Elijah, doesn’t say a word. But when he lays his cloak on Elisha’s shoulders, he makes it clear.  I want you.   And it’s great that Elisha goes.   But why burn the plow?   Why kill the oxen?   Those oxen couldn’t be cheap.   And couldn’t his parents or even a neighbor have used the plow?   Why did Elisha have to do that?

He did it for the same reason, a guy named Hernando Cortez sunk his ships.   Cortez had a somewhat unusual job, not exactly a commendable one.   He was a conquistador, a conqueror.  Ever since joining the Spanish in their conquering ways, he had heard about a treasure, a treasure no one had been able to touch in almost 200 years.  He decided.  He wanted that treasure.  So, he recruited one by one soldiers, sailors who were willing to take on this task, to do what no one had ever been able to do.  But once they sailed from Cuba, a lot of these soldiers and sailors got cold feet.   They got nervous.  They realized they could die.   By the time, they landed on the Yucatan peninsula, the home of the treasure, of the awesome Aztec empire that guarded it, those 600 soldiers and 100 or so sailors had some serious second thoughts.    So, what did Cortez do?   He sunk the ships.   When those ships sunk, those soldiers’ and sailors’ cold feet got a lot hotter.  With those ships gone, they had no way to go but forward.  And so forward they went.  And within two years, they conquered an empire that had not fallen for 600 years.  

For the same reason, Elisha decided.  If he was going to move into this future God had called him to, he had to leave his past behind.  And he knew of those oxen and that plow were still there, he would be tempted to go back, to take up what he’d left behind.   So, he decided he wasn’t simply going to leave that plow, he was going to burn it.

But here’s the key difference between Cortez and Elisha.   Cortez sunk the ships for himself, for money, for treasure.  And while the Aztecs had their own evil ways, Cortez’s boldness didn’t make things any better.  It probably made them worse.  

But Elisha burns his plow for something quite different.  He uses it to create a fire, so he can cook the oxen and feed the people.   He didn’t just burn his past to move into his future.  He used his past as a fuel, so to speak.  He used it as a resource to bless those around him. 

And in your life, God is telling you, you don’t just burn the plow, to burn the plow.   You need to burn it for a larger purpose.   And when you do, you don’t simply leave the plow behind either.  No, you use that plow.  You use your past as a fuel for your future, a fuel that blesses others.

Do you know the significance of the number 143?   It may not mean anything to you.  But it meant something very important to Fred Rogers, you know Mr. Rogers of Mr. Roger’s neighborhood.     For most of his life, that’s what Fred Rogers’ weighed 143 pounds.  For decades he disciplined himself to never weigh a pound more or a pound less than 143.  For Mr. Rogers that number 143 stood for three simple words, I love you.  Why?  Well the one was the one letter that stood for I.  The 4 was the four letters of love.  And the three was the three letters of you.  I love you.  That’s a clever thing.   But can you imagine working so hard to keep your weight at that number that it literally never changed for decades, decades?    

Why was keeping that number so important?  It likely had to do with the fact that as a child, Mr. Rogers had a different name.  Back then he was Fat Freddy, an overweight child, and not a very healthy one either.   A lot of his childhood he spent sick in bed.   But in that bed, he developed an imagination.  And as a picked-on child, he developed empathy for kids, for their vulnerability and their pain.  And he discovered a powerful will that he used to get his weight under control.    

Fred Rogers thought he would use that empathy and willpower as a pastor in a Presbyterian church somewhere.  But during his final year of seminary, he decided to burn that plow.  He left the seminary to host a children’s show at the public TV station in Pittsburgh.   Go figure.  But that pain of his childhood, that willpower he developed to conquer his weight issues, it all became fuel for the fire.   He didn’t deny the pain of his past.  He used that pain to bless others, in his case, millions of others, children who found a friend in Mr. Rogers.        

When Fred Rogers burned that plow, when he used it as fuel for his future, he opened the very door that God had prepared him for.   But it only happened when he was willing to burn the plow.

Life has many ways to burn plows.  Sometimes, it can be a career change.  Sometimes, it can be simply facing a fear or a truth you don’t want to see, but one that holds you back, that limits you, one that you have to burn to move forward.    

Brandon Marshall played football.  In fact, he still plays football.  In his heyday, he played the position of wide receiver better than almost anyone in the world.  Because of that, the Dolphins gave him the biggest wide receiver contract in history, 50 million dollars for five years.  But Marshall had a problem.  He had a mental illness.  It limited his life in painful ways.  It threatened to destroy his marriage.  

But how could a macho football player be mentally ill, be that mentally weak, at least as he saw it?  But in the end, Brandon Marshall burned his plow.  Here is how he described what happened.  “My emotions had been controlling me, and I was trapped — not by anything external, but by things that were inside me. But I couldn’t be the one to help myself. I needed to seek help.”  So, Brandon Marshall, wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins, went to a mental hospital, and got the help he needed.   And when he left his past behind, God opened a future far bigger than football.  He began to share his story, to give people the courage to seek help, and to break the stigma around mental health.   As Marshall puts it:” … football is my platform, not my purpose. I believe my purpose is to serve as an example for people who are suffering from mental illness — to show them that it’s O.K. to seek help.”   Brandon burned his plow, and used it as fuel for his future, a future where he is blessing others and opening the door of healing for them.

I know that story well, because I heard Brandon tell it with his wife, Michi, at a church service years ago.    And as much as his story moved me, his wife’s words stuck with me more.  Michi talked about how his illness had almost destroyed their marriage.  And one of the interviewers commented.  I guess when he got help, you had to create a new chapter for your marriage.  And Michi said.  No, we created a whole new book.   In other words, she was saying.  We needed to burn the plow.

I remember those words because I was at a point where my resentment and anger were destroying my own marriage.   Her words inspired me that day to burn that plow, to leave my anger behind and write a whole new book. 

In life, everyone has a plow that needs to burn.  It could be a life change like Elisha’s.  It could be a fear or wound that holds you back, a regret that weighs you down, a resentment that binds you.  The list could go on.    Whatever it is, you know, if you’re honest, it needs to burn.  It needs to burn so you move forward into the future God has for you.  

And when you’re scared of what that might mean, remember how God burned the plow for you.  In Jesus, God left it all behind, the power, the security, even life itself.   On that cross, God burned the plow like no has or ever will.  And he did that not for his future, but for yours.  He went there to burn away the burden of your past, to free you for a future that only he could give.   And why did Jesus do that?  Well, you could say it was because of 143. 

And so, when you get scared of burning whatever your plow might be, remember that he loves you so much that he burned the ultimate plow for you.   Remember 143, how that one number defines his relationship to you.  And let that love, his love, lead you into the future that he created you to have, that he died for you to have.  And as you let him love you, he will give you the courage to burn what needs to be burned, and in his love, he will make it a fuel to bless you and others in more wondrous ways than you could ever imagine or dream.