Mark 4:26-29, what does it all mean??

hey guys, so here's your chance to speak your mind about what God's saying to you about this little story. discuss!

summer... where is everybody??

hey guys, now that summer has hit, the blog is back in session! be checking back for updates ever couple weeks or so. for now, i've been reading through Colossians 1:15-23:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,
16 for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him.
17 He existed before anything else,
and he holds all creation together.
18 Christ is also the head of the church,
which is his body.
He is the beginning,
supreme over all who rise from the dead.[b]
So he is first in everything.
19 For God in all his fullness
was pleased to live in Christ,
20 and through him God reconciled
everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God’s servant to proclaim it.


sweetness.

Witnessing is scary and awkward, right?

Let's take a look at John 4:39-42 today:

Many Samaritans from the village believed in Jesus because the woman had said, "He told me everything I ever did!" When they came out to see him, they begged him to stay at their village. So he stayed for two days, long enough for many of them to hear his message and believe. Then they said to the woman, "Now we believe because we have heard him ourselves, not just because of what you told us. He is indeed the Savior of the world."

Most of the time I get shaky even thinking about 'witnessing' to someone out of the blue. It's scary, right? Because I'm basically just baring my soul to this person who knows nothing about me! And believe me, I'm not the 'baring' sort of person. But let's take a look at this passage and see what 'witnessing' looks like in this Samaritan village. This text is the tail end of chapter 4 of John, where Jesus meets the woman at the well and tells her everything about her life (you all know the story). But the ending is the interesting part. So first, we can see that Jesus basically just 'read her mail' (this vineyard-y phrase means God reveals to you things about a person's life that you'd have no way of knowing beforehand. It's crazy when it happens, but awesome) and it made quite an impact on her! So first, Jesus supernaturally touched her life (and we've already seen some of this kind of stuff happening in the church/lifegroup!). So what does the woman do next? She goes back and tells her whole village about him. Now I don't want to assume the size of the village, but I would equate it to one of us telling our whole apartment complex/dorm about something that happened to us; people we know and some we don't.  That's quite a few people! Then the text says that many of them came out to see him and believed. Here's the best part: afterward they go back to her and say, "Now we believe because we have heard him ourselves, not just because of what you told us. He is indeed the Savior of the world." Okay, so sure this makes sense; she tells them about him, so they go check him out to see for themselves. But this is so deep! I mean, isn't this what we're called to do? Is this not witnessing? When God does something crazy/awesome in our lives, isn't that what we want to tell people? And the pressure's off, because Jesus showed himself to the people. Like they said, they believe now because they have seen for themselves who Jesus is. The woman didn't go back and say something like, "There's a guy and he's the Messiah, and he's this and that, so you should believe me and believe in him, so let's all say a little prayer together and then you can go back to whatever you were doing." I know, I know, I'm not trying to bash leading someone to Jesus through prayer, because that's how I became a christian myself. But the woman said something more like this: "I just got my life read back to me by a guy who says he's the Messiah, now go check him out for yourself!" So simple. Here's what I'm saying: Our calling is to point people to Jesus, and remember that he's the one who saves. He's big enough to show himself to people; we don't have to try to paint a pretty picture of him to convince someone how awesome he is! And, we don't have to complicate our talking to people about Jesus. All we have to do is tell them what he's been doing in our lives and tell them to check him out. BUT! We do have to TELL them. If the woman at the well didn't go back to the village, how would they have found out about Jesus?

responses:

1. What are your thoughts about the text? What is God speaking to you about it?

2. What are some of the things that scare/deter you from telling people about Jesus? 

3. Have you ever 'read someone's mail'? What are some other ways the Holy Spirit has spoken to you while you're talking to someone about Jesus?

mission:

1. If this hits home with you/you've been scared about talking to people about Jesus, get someone/some people to pray for you about it, that God would take away the stigmas and fears about it, and give you the confidence to tell people what he's doing in your life.

2. If you've never thought about 'witnessing' in this way, start shifting your thinking by writing out a few things that God has done/has been doing in your life, that would be easy (or at least less daunting than your whole life story all at once) to tell someone.

3. If you don't feel like God's doing anything in your life that you can tell people about, A. you're not thinking very hard, and B. ask him to do something! God loves revealing himself to his children, so get some people to pray for you, or just ask God to start doing things in your life, and BE PREPARED to obey him! 

P.S.: I would encourage you guys to go back and read all of chapter 4 of John in one sitting, and look at the overall themes that are evident. One that I saw immediately is that Jesus is with Samaritans, the hated, the marginalized. PLUS he's talking with a woman who has had 5 husbands! The hated of the hated. God loves everybody so much. amazing. Now comment the ideas/themes that you see.

a strong (maybe even annoying) pursuit

Luke 18:35-43:

"As they approached Jericho, a blind beggar was sitting beside the road. When he hear the noise of a crowd going past, he asked what was happening. They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was going by. So he began shouting, 'Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!' The crowds ahead of Jesus tried to hush the man, but he only shouted louder, 'Son of David, have mercy on me!'

When Jesus heard him, he stopped and ordered that the man be brought to him. Then Jesus asked the man, 'What do you want me to do for you?'

'Lord,' he pleaded, 'I want to see!'

And Jesus said, 'All right, you can see! Your faith has healed you.' Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus, praising God. And all who saw it praised God, too."

Do you ever get annoyed if you see someone who is a little overly needy? Like they can't ever do anything on their own, and they've got to have someone holding their hand through the whole process of something which to you seems natural or easy? For that matter, have you ever been annoyed by someone who is just really really loud? Well the people who were with Jesus in this story definitely felt like that. And honestly I've felt like that before. I just wanted to tell that person to get it together, stop mooching of everybody and grow up. I've also just wanted to take the cell phone from that one loud talker (you know the kind of person I'm talking about) and stomp on it, and tell them that everyone in the state can hear their conversation. Probably not the best attitude for me to be having, but luckily I'm learning.

How am I learning? well let's take a look at things from Bartimaeus's perspective (he's the blind guy in the story). 1. He can't see anything! 2. He's begging on the outskirts of the city of Jericho. 3. Everyone around him either treats him with pity or disgust. Ok, so if you're feeling just a little of what he's feeling, and you hear that a guy who is now well known for healing blind people is about to walk right by, what would YOU do? Well, i'd probably yell my head off too. But let's think now. For an adult, in western culture, it's proper to not ever ask for help, but if you absolutely have to, you better be really really apologetic about it. That's just our mindset! BUT. for a kid, especially a baby, they have to get loud and in-your-face, b/c they are DEPENDENT on their parents, as in, they feel their whole world crashing around them, and they need help! I remember once my little brother and I were at our other brother's soccer game when we were little. We were bored (of course) so for some reason we decided to hop in the trunk of our parent's car. well as we did, the trunk closed on us! And let me tell you we were freaking out. All we thought to do was starting yelling "Help!" in unison. Luckily another soccer mom saw us hop in and she promptly told my mom to come let us out. I don't even remember getting in trouble or anything,  but i do remember the relief of the rescue. So what's my point in all this? Well for me, sometimes I think the crowd in the story can be my own pride and independence. I feel like I either don't need anyone's help, or that someone's just gonna tell me to shut up if I start crying out for help. My pride hates it b/c it takes a lot of humility to let people know that you're messed up. But you know what? God wants that! In another story at the beginning of Luke 18, Jesus tells of a widow who keeps bothering a judge for justice, and the judge finally gives in out of annoyance. Jesus then says that if this corrupt judge eventually helped this persistent widow, how much more so will God (who loves us more than anything, ever) help those who cry out to him? Could this be a part of what Jesus meant when he told people to live as children? Complete (annoying) dependence for every little thing?

responses:

1. What are your thoughts on the story? What did YOU see after reading it?

2. has there ever been a time when you could've probably used some help or prayer from someone and you didn't ask b/c you figured you could handle it or you didn't wanna put all your junk out there on someone else?

3. when was a time in your life when you remember just crying out, either to a parent or a friend b/c you felt like your whole world was crashing down around you?

mission:

1. if this hits home for you, ask God what it is that's holding you back from asking for help, then (here's the hard part!) GO ASK SOMEONE to pray for you about it. scary...

2. think of the last time you cried out to God for help and how he answered you. then if you don't mind, tell us about it!

P.S. on the plane flying home after christmas, i was sitting by a lady who was extremely agitated. she didn't like flying, and she was weaning herself of tranquilizers, which she had to help with this. i was talking to her to keep her mind off things, but the whole flight was really turbulent, and she really started getting nervous. so i offered to pray for her, but not before she ended up popping half a tranquilzer. anyway, she was really appreciative of the prayer and whether it was God or the drugs, she ended up calming down the rest of the flight. but it was still awesome to get to talk with her and pray with her about her life! 

serving is fun! (but what happens when it isn't??)

here's what God was showing/teaching me this morning:

have you ever been put off by someone while you were helping people/serving someone, like they didn't seem very grateful or they pointed out how you were serving them 'wrong'? i know i have. the first thought that enters my mind is, "hey you know what? i don't HAVE to do this, but i want to, and you are ruining it by not realizing that i'm really working hard here for you. show some gratitude or something!" ahh i can remember the feeling, especially when someone points out that i messed up a worship song, or i could've done this or that better. i just feel like, 'dang i'm doing my best here!' so yeah that feeling; you ever felt that?

Matt, who was the associate (now senior) pastor down in rolla, mo always said to me, 'you know whether or not you're a servant by how you react when you're treated like one' (rough paraphrase). and that always hit me, b/c for some reason our culture has found 'serving one another' to be so rare, that it is expected that praise and thankfulness immediately follow the serving. but oh how Jesus teaches! check out Luke 17:7-10:

"When a servant comes home from plowing or taking care of sheep, he doesn't just sit down and eat. He must first prepare his master's meal and serve him his supper before eating his own. And the servant is not even thanked, because he is merely doing what he is supposed to do. In the same way, when you obey me you should say, 'We are not worthy of praise. We are servants who have simply done our duty.'"

oooh dang that kinda hits home for me. we don't have a good picture of servants in our society right now, but maybe we can compare it to our garbage men, or restaurant dishwashers. when's the last time anyone went back to the kitchen after a meal and thanked the dishwasher for clean plates? i should do that... anyway, i guess my point to all this is, sometimes i know my first reaction when someone actually treats me like a servant is to be offended, when i really should be expecting it. it's part of the job! that way any thanks i do get is just icing on the cake! and i'm not saying you should tell people not to thank you or refuse their thanks, b/c that's kind of a dwight schrute move, and you'll end up making everything awkward. but maybe next time we get treated like servants, we can feel the privilege of obeying God as our first reaction.

responses:

1. what do you guys think about this? have you ever felt this way, either in a church or elsewhere? 

2. what are some ways we can remind ourselves of our 'job descriptions' as servants of God and everybody else?

mission:

1. if this hits home for you, pray that God would truly give you a servant's heart (then watch out, b/c he will!)

2. look for ways you can serve your family over the holidays, b/c there's ALWAYS chances to be a servant when families get together.

3. ask God how he wants to touch your family this break (and get ready to obey by praying for your family! scary!)

P.S. if you've got something that God has been showing you lately and you'd like to share, email it to me and we'll post it. and that would be so awesome!

takin' a break (sort of)

guys, as you know, our group is taking a little break along with your break, so we'll not be meeting 'officially' until everyone gets back at the end of january. so you guys have a blast at home (lucky punks, leaving me here all alone in la crosse...)! the main reason i started this blog was to post random stuff God shows me during the day/stories of people getting touched by God. what i need from you is YOUR stories to put on here. so if you have one, email it to me and i'll post it. here's a little nugget for now:

at yet another christmas party tonight, elise had a headache and sydney and i prayed for her. we asked her how she felt, and she said she felt better, but her head still hurt, so we prayed again, and then she said the pain was gone! sweetness...

you guys be praying over break asking God to use you in every day life! and email me when awesome stuff happens.