His Imprint on Us

We have been going through the book of Mark these past few weeks so I thought it might be beneficial to continue in my blog along the same lines. As we've been talking about how Jesus left imprints on us this is never truer than what we see in Mark chapter 8. This passage Jesus is exposed for who he is, the Christ, the Son of God. There are still those that he has yet to reveal himself to because their hearts would only be to destroy he, but there are others, like his disciples that have begun to figure things out. The challenge we face every day is do we truly believe in who Jesus is or has he become another great character on a long list of people we respect. Jesus is the Son of God, our Messiah, our Savior if we could only grasp a small percentage of what that meant it would completely reformat our lives. This truth is the message that makes all things new. We have nothing to do with the change that has come over a Christ follower. I appreciate John Lanferman's statement last week saying, we can do nothing bad enough to make God love us less and we can do nothing good enough to make God love us more. His love for us is absolute! We are not in control of His love; we can't manipulate it one way or another. His love is His to give and He has given it freely to us.

I enjoy reading the comments that Peter makes, both positive and negative. At one moment Peter is the star pupil and the next he's the class clown. Peter faces those same challenges we face today, discerning when we are to live in the natural or live in the supernatural.  We often think the answer to the question is found in the natural when it is actually found in the spiritual.  As a Christ follower our first response should be turning to the Lord for discernment regarding whatever we are facing.  This seems obvious, but I know personally this isn’t my first response.   

I would encourage you to read through Mark 8 again and feel the magnitude of what Christ is revealing and concealing at the same time.  Jesus was very intentional about making himself known.  This week let’s follow His example and be intentional about revealing or concealing the message of the Gospel.  There are those whose hearts are ready and there are those whose hearts are not.  Let’s be discerning as we love people.

Warren

Reflecting on a week of prayer and fasting

Hello Everyone,

I thought it would be beneficial to share some of the thoughts that surrounded this past week’s prayer and fasting.  For those of you that fasted with us if you haven’t found time yet to reflect on what God spoke to you over our time together it would be extremely healthy to do so.  If you’re at all like me, just letting a few days go by without jotting down a note or two, those thoughts could be lost forever.

Some encouraging thoughts from this past week:

1.      Listen; take time to just stop talking.  Our relationship with Christ is not a monologue, but rather a dialogue.  Have you ever been with someone that it appeared they weren’t at all interested in what you were saying only with what they had to say?  The Lord has too many of these types of relationships.  I had to ask myself, “is that the type of relationship I have with Christ,” me asking all the questions waiting for His divine response (only divine if it’s what I wanted to hear).  Doing better with this is not going to be easy, but the results are going to be a man that has an ear bent in the right direction.

2.      We are different; sometime we don’t like to be different, actually in our culture it’s frowned upon.  Being different is looked at as strange and weird, it’s more important to be popular.  What’s amazing about being a Christian is that our difference doesn’t come from what we do, but rather from what He does.  Exodus 33, Moses is having a real time conversation with the Lord and Moses wasn’t about to take another step without some kind of assurance.  The Lord says this to Moses, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”  And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.  For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people?  Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”  What is different about us from everyone else is that God goes with us.  It’s what He does that makes us distinct.  I’m encouraged to be who I am in Christ, I don’t need to be weird or try to be Joe religious, it’s His presence that distinguishes us from everyone else.

3.      I’m a disciple of Jesus making disciples for Jesus; Jesus at the end of the first gospel says to us, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”  Jesus is telling his disciples to reproduce, make more of who they are; disciples.  If this is our commission from Jesus why do you think it’s one of the most difficult truth claims to live?  We prayed into five areas during our five weeks together, these five things are progressive; each one precedes the other as we are transformed into “Disciples making Disciples”.

·         Truth…what we believe regarding the truth claims in scripture

·         Accept…when we finally stop wrestling with truth and reckon it to be so.

·         Live...this is when what we believe influences and changes how we live.

·         Team…there becomes a desire to walk with someone,  

·         Reproduce…the process of a disciple making a disciple starts all over again.

This is a commission from Jesus that we wrestle with until we find our way forward.  I call wrestling the discovery process, a time of growing, learning and developing. 

 

One thing I've learned this past week, we don't spend enough time praying and fasting. Let me just end this post by saying, "Try it, you just might like it."

Warren