Continuing this week with Sunday service at 11 am at church. And then on Wednesday, Bible Study!! 6 pm — in the Bible Study room, or the sanctuary if we need more room to spread out. Masks and hand sanitizer as usual. We’ll be starting with the Exodus. And Pastor is continuing to record the weekly message for those at home.
Mark 9:23-27
23 “If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
26 The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.
Invitation, Offering, and Prayer Concerns; Father in Heaven, thank you for this day and our very being. Lord we know that you are here in this life, we just need reassurance some times. Father please forgive us when we go through times of doubt, arrogance, and carelessness when it comes to living in and through you. Lord we pray that you equip us for a life of service to other through you, for you, and for the greater good of our community.
Amen!
Matthew 12:43-45
43 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
Message; “I Believe, Now What?”
The heart is an opaque reservoir of endless brewing. It’s always in a state of flux, by storing up and releasing the thoughts, ideas, hopes, love and hate, joys, and pain. First receiving and holding onto the many things life sends its way, then releasing back into the arteries of life’s mainstream occurrences and happenstances, through our actions. Our hearts flood the plains of our acquaintances, relationships in family and friendships, with the contents they have held.
It’s for us to decide what to store up within those reservoirs. Love, hate, joy, fear, will it be grace and compassion? A love for God and others. Sound like a tall order? As the Lord said in the “Call to Worship”; “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
Today I am excited to talk with you about the options you have when it comes to the contents stored up within your heart, your mind, the stuff that makes up your very soul. And also, to talk with you about some ideas of positive healthy things that you might want to store up within you. By the time I’m done, I hope to impress upon you that at the end of the day, it’s your decision on what you would like to store up within you.
That very idea, to choose what to keep and what not to in your own mindset, I guess seems a little radicle. Especially in our current society, where everyone is rushing to play the victim card, by blaming everything bad in their lives on the encroachments of another person. You know the old saying “the Devil made me do it”. Now a days, many of us don’t even bother to employ Satan, we look for other people, or policies, or conditions to blame.
Yes, the modern way of passing the buck of responsibility is to employ victimhood. “Grandma was an alcoholic, that’s why I’m a mess”. “Dad was unemployed, that’s why I’m so mad at everyone”. My 9th grade Homeroom Teacher hated me, and I’m still looking to get back at her”. On and on it goes. Oh, and in the victim department, it never ends. Once we go down that path, we begin to feed a beast that has an endless appetite.
Sometimes, bad things happen in life and the person afflicted didn’t do anything (that we can discern or figure out) to have caused it upon themselves. I am reminded of our call to Worship a couple of weeks ago where there is a blind man born that way and the disciple ask Jesus, who sinned? From John 9:1-5;
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
“Neither the person nor his parents sinned” to cause his blindness, but that in life bad things happen to people who God demonstrates His Majesty, when they let Him in. I would say bad things happen to good people, but that confuses the point. It’s too easy to say hay I’m good look at the bad that’s happen to me; this is all someone else’s fault, mom, dad, ancestors, or God’s fault, but it can’t be me.
Case in point, a blind person our church has had contact with is Frances Crosby, who has authored several hymns in our hymnal: Praise Him Praise Him, To God Be the Glory, Blessed Assurance, and 14 other great Hymns. She is known as the mother of American Gospel. Crosby went blind as an infant as a result of influenza and improper treatments to her eyes. She came from Puritan Stock and her family had married into Mayflower offspring.
Instead of immersing herself with self-pity, she learned and then became a teacher until her marriage. Back then married women were prohibited from teaching. Her and her husband who also was blind, composed music barely got by, and only kept enough money to live on, all extra was donated to those more needy. Their one daughter died in infancy probably from either Typhoid or SIDS. And again, she rose above the hurt.
She considered blindness a gift from God to see things differently than many of us who can see, but can’t really see. She was a powerhouse of a human being and shared the Gospel with any willing to listen.
Did she sin to cause her blindness, or to lose her daughter? No. God used Frances Crosby and her blindness and her pain to demonstrate His greatness in sustaining her, enriching her, and walking with her. He shows His majesty every time we sing one of her hymns.
While Fran Crosby was in this world there was Christ’s light in the world even in the midst of her condition. John 1:5; “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (Even for those with no sight!) Her choice was to either marinate in the sludge of despair and pain where there will always be people willing to enable your sickness to grow, or to bask in the radiance of the possible with God. Leading Crosby to write hymns for the ages, and leading me to reflect on today’s “Call to Worship” reading from Mark 9:23-27
23 “If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
26 The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.
Immediately I am drawn to the words of the boy’s father saying to Jesus; “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Wow. I get it. For how many of us does this sentence apply right now, or how about when we were going through a deep sorrow, hurt, anger, disbelief, bouts of ego and grandeur or any other number of venom that drag us down.
There have been times when I thought to myself (because I didn’t want anyone to know of the battle raging within) I want to believe. How? Or I kind of believe, now what? What do I do? And all of the questions that come right after:
How do I forgive that person and God for what has happened? How do I show kindness to a person who belongs to that group after what they have done? After what that person did, how do I trust them down the road?How do I forgive the people that did… whatever, you fill in the blank.How do I believe in a God that allows this kind of nonsense to exist? I want to believe, help me to figure it out.
If any of the above sound familiar, or you know someone who is going through this kind of soul searching, you and they are not alone. If you believe, but are having trouble with your unbelief, consider a couple of things. First that you are actually thinking about God and higher things, the deep things in live, gives me great joy!
You are actually on you journey of discovery. So many people right now are on a pure diet of feed and eat, find and acquire, see and reach (coupled with common baseline activities, stuff that does not edify this message), instead of living deeply, with faith and hope for today, good will, and love for God and other people.
If you are thinking about this, you are like the man of the First Principle of René Descartes a French Philosopher early 1600s would have referred our search as “I think therefore I am”. My thought is that you are sincerely thinking and searching therefore there is a part of you that has inkling of faith. Whatever that is, it’s waiting for the rest of you to be nourished from the assorted gifts, tools, and blessings available in the Body of Christ. Serving and worshiping with other people looking for the same things that you are.
For me this all starts with our loving others. Too often we have aimed the attention towards ourselves and instead of loving ourselves we have become a society of self-loathing. The advice from 1 Peter 4:8-10 is worth reconsidering here:
8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
Learning to care for others is a very important step in our beginning to understand God. When you love another deeply and bad things happen to that person, you begin to get an idea that a lot of what of what is going on in life, is the result of individual choices made. You can’t shelter anyone away from their free will, and God won’t take your free will away.
Loving others is a beginning in our journey into better understanding God’s will, and knowing ourselves a little deeper. Not a cure-all, but a beginning of a life’s journey of self-discovery, and when you don’t like what you find, asking for God’s help in growing. One step at a time, kind of like growing in your faith in God for some of us.
…I know we are a church that is built on God’s grace and not our works, but let me throw an idea out there for your consideration. As you leave behind all that junk of your past, fill the void with something constructive. Maybe, just maybe when I am practicing (hey I’m doing) loving people, serving other people, instead of judging, I am in the mode of caring, and all of a sudden God starts to make more sense because I am now more open to the promptings of His Spirit. Maybe I’m learning by doing, but James 2:24-26 is right;
24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Not that I can make me righteous, my listening and following God grows me toward the Lord. I think it begins when we start to love others and place them before ourselves, and little by little we begin to get more of an understanding from the Lord.
A final word on love, as you remove that junk that you are discovering in yourself, it’s important to replace the bile with something healthy that is going to nourish you. Loving God and others deeply is an excellent replacement. What you don’t want is an empty house after God has helped you with your housecleaning. Referring back to today’s Message reading from Matthew 12:43-45;
43 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
Ever know someone that was an empty shirt. The lights were on but they were not open for business. Their life was like an “Open House”. It wasn’t that they couldn’t do better, they just didn’t want to get into the game of life and they were on cruise control. When I was on Active Duty in the Air force, we called these people ROAD Scholars, “retired on active duty”. These people were waiting for retirement day or a swift kick to the backside to get some inspiration.
Anyone who is just cruising and not applying their efforts to the business of life runs a real risk of filling the void in their lives with poison. I believe this is what the Lord is referring to when He speaks of a demon cast out coming back with buddies to occupy your heart.
In other words, if I have finally come to grips with who the Lord is and what I am not. Invited the Lord in and turned to a new life, I need to be with other people I trust in order to grow in my faith. If I just kick back and cruise, I am an open target for all the stuff I wanted freedom from to begin with. Now instead of battling one bad habit or addiction, I am fighting three, four or more.
In Jesus’ generation, there were people who initially welcomed the Lord into their lives and city. They celebrated His arrival in Jerusalem, laid palm branches down to carpet His way into town. Unfortunately, for many people, this was as far as they wanted to go in their faithwalk; celebration and empty motions. Once the tied began to change in the least, the crowd became a mob looking for violence and that was aimed at our Lord.
One ill trait was removed ignorance, and within the void in just hours entered, mayhem, rivalry, deeper malice, envy, and if possible, more ignorance. There was nothing to check the baseline of human behavior (iniquity), and a legion of bile made its entrance into the crowd.
Not everyone was affected, because there were people there who had a rudimentary faithwalk in the Lord and understood discernment, they were and remained open to His promptings. But a large population did not have anything deeper than the concept of; “hey I’m a good person” with no foundation in anything, with the result being the Crucifixion of our Lord. It’s still a wonder for me how the Lord is able to create salvation out of anarchy of the mob. Kind of like the original creation of everything from the great void of nothing. Genesis 1:2
If you have said to yourself, I believe, Lord help me with my unbelief, or fears, or mistrusts, or anger and hurt. You are not alone. It is right and it is good that we would come to worship here together, to become family, and have an interest in each-others faithwalk. You see once we believe and have invited the bad stuff in our lives to leave, we need to extend an invitation for the Holy things to fill us up, with God’s Holy Spirit. I believe we learn that when we are in community with each other.
My hope and prayer for you this week as you explore your life with your Lord that you invite Him along for the walk and listen to His promptings in your life. That you fill up on the living waters of His grace and love, and that you begin to find that when you dive deep into the pools humble bliss, that your heard reflects the incredible joy found in a relationship in your Lord.
Amen!
Our Benediction, reemphasizes how faith and growth that come through our suffering can lead to a closer relationship in Him!
Benediction is based on; Romans 5:1-4
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.