Plain Discipleship Wk 2: Mel Winterbine - 4th May 2025

Blessings & Woes – The Great Levelling Continues
📖 Luke 6:20–26

In the kingdom of God, the cosmic lottery runs in reverse.
 Jesus doesn’t just comfort the poor — he centers them.
 He doesn’t just warn the rich — he loves them enough to tell the truth.

This week, we explored:

🔹 Blessed Are You
— Not because suffering is holy, but because God is already with you in the hunger, the grief, the exclusion.
— Because dependence can become the doorway to divine presence.

🔹 Woe to You
— Not condemnation, but compassion: “Oh no, look what you’ve done to yourself.”
— A grief that calls us to reframe what we call success.

🪜 The invitation?
 Check what your life is propped up on.
 Ladders only hold one. Tables hold many.

📊 From Maslow to Gallup, we looked at the needs of human flourishing:
 Purpose. Safety. Growth. Community.
 And how Jesus reshuffles the order — not to shame the wealthy, but to draw us into interdependence.

💬 The blessing isn’t in being needy.
 The blessing is in discovering that, in your need, you can still be met.
 And in your strength, you still have something to give.

The kingdom of God isn’t solo.
 It’s kin-dom.

📖 Homework this week:
 💭 Ask: Where am I resistant to receiving help?
 👐 Who in my life might be transformed by my willingness to need them?
🌱 What would it look like to live more interdependently — not as charity, but as kinship?

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The Steeple Church Podcast is recorded on Wurundjeri land in the east suburbs of Naarm - that you will find on a map as Balwyn in Melbourne, Australia.

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of these lands, the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation and we pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Sovereignty was never ceded.

You can view the full Steeple Church Acknowledgement of Country here.
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