Hey all,
This was the Lifegroup message from Saturday. It's of course in a little different format without all the questions etc. I've embellished on it a little and added a number of insights others in the group had. For those of you who were there, I've attached all the verses I used and a couple others in case you wanted to look them all up. So without further ado:
4 Kinds of people approaching Christ:
Mark 9:20-27 – “if you can”
Mark 1:40-42 – “you can – if you are willing” – most Christians
Mark 5:25-29 – “if I can only ____, He will”
Mark 10:46-52 – “I can’t – He can”
Each of them showed completely different levels of faith. Normally, we’d say that the last two got healed because of their faith. What about the first two examples? The first guy didn’t even know if Jesus could heal his son. It was Jesus and His presence that resulted in the healings – that is the only constant in each story. So, what does that mean if you’re getting prayer for healing? Don’t worry about how much faith you have! What about if you’re praying for others? Don’t worry – it’s not about you; it’s about bringing the person you’re praying for into the presence of Jesus.
We’ll come back to that: Jesus healed far more people than actually followed him. In fact, he healed everyone who asked, but tried to drive away people who were trying to follow. Why do you think that is? Today, far more people follow Christ than have actually seen His power - why? Jesus never left a shadow of a doubt to whether or not He was the Messiah to anyone actually looking for Him. The question was always “how important is the kingdom of God to you?” It should be the same now.
What kind of people was/is Jesus looking for? Exodus 20:18-20 – Israel chooses safety instead of intimacy with God. Israel was willing to obey God – they just didn’t want to get close to Him. God wanted them to go up the mountain, but they didn’t want God – they wanted someone who would protect them and guide them without actually getting to know Him. We do this in our own lives – a lot of times we go to God just wanting direction or comfort when He wants to spend time with us and actually have a relationship. God’s looking for people like Moses and Joshua who went up the mountain.
Exodus 32:1 – God is still in a cloud on top of the mountain in view of the Israelites, but the Israelites decide to make another god. What’s the reason they give? They want someone to lead them. That’s the same thing God wanted to do! Before then, He had been leading His people by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He told the Israelites that He was going to lead them into the Promise Land. The only problem is the people didn’t want to wait for God’s timing. We often know what God wants to do and try to do it without Him. God’s looking for people who will wait on His timing. See also Acts 1:12-26 when the apostles tried to choose their own replacement vs Acts 9:1-6 when God chose his own. See also the story of Hagar and Sarah (Genesis 15:4-5, Genesis 16:1-3, Genesis 21:1-7).
Exodus 33:7-11 – Israel worshipped God, but from a distance. God doesn’t desire many many followers, but a few who are like Joshua. What is the difference in our own lives? The Israelites (which almost always represent us – we’re God’s people, grafted in. See Romans 11) worshipped God only when He was doing something and from a distance. We often only worship and praise God when He’s doing something cool in our lives. Do we want a relationship with Him or do we just want occasional direction? A relationship isn’t just 1-sided and isn’t completely focused on doing things. Also, how much are we willing to pay for that relationship? To get any closer to God, the Israelites would have had to sanctify themselves, going through the cleansing rituals and offering sacrifices, etc. To them it wasn’t worth it. It’s the same way now – if we approach God and honestly seek him, He will definitely pull stuff out of our lives and ask us to give other things up. Is it worth it to us?
"Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth.” – John Wesley
God desires several things from us, and none of them involve miracles or bringing people to Christ (Matt 7:22). John 4:23-24 – He desires worshippers in Spirit and in Truth. Worship that’s not in truth is telling God things we don’t mean or promising things we have no intention of keeping, especially in worship songs. Worship not in spirit is doing things grudgingly and without the right heart. The Lifegroup came up with a ton of really awesome things about worshipping in spirit and / or in truth, but I forgot them…
So what’s so important about worship? Psalms 22:3 – God inhabits the praises of His people. If God’s spirit comes, what happens? God’s kingdom comes, His will is done. Anything not from God starts to get pushed out – worship can be a little uncomfortable because of this. But it’s really good and the only thing that really changes you (Isaiah 6:1-7 is one instance of this). But there’s another really cool thing! In Jesus’ time, the view of the world was that humans lived on the ground, the air (Ephesians 2:2) and essentially the kingdoms of this world (Luke 4:6) were ruled by Satan who was more powerful than any human, and God was in heaven and far more powerful than Satan, but pretty inaccessible because of the cushion of Satan’s kingdom. God inhabits the praise of his people – basically we become a point of contact between God and the people around us. Christ in us (Col 1:27, and all over the NT) isn’t just a theological point! The more of God inhabits us, the more love and the more of Christ we can spread to others.
For example – mission trips. In Mexico (two years in a row) and in Brazil, we worshipped God a lot, then we saw a couple healings. Of course, that made us want to worship more, and we saw even more healings! This happened for the entire mission trip, getting even closer to God and getting to see even more stuff happen because of the amount of Christ in us. After Lifegroup when we worshipped for a long time, a couple of us were so pumped that we walked around the UMR campus looking for things to pray for. We actually did get to pray for a guy for quite a long time, but ask me or David or Lance for that story :P.
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