Galatians 2:20 (NLT): My old self has been crucified with Christ.It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The House of God is a place to come to be refreshed. It is a place where the Holy Spirit moves; to convict where conviction is needed; to bring change where needed; and to refresh the believers. When we make room for the Spirit, He moves on our behalf.

There are four aspects of the House where one can encounter God and His Spirit:
–Fellowship: God moves in friendship; no one can truly survive the trials of life alone, we need friends to walk beside us and hold us up.
–Worship: We encounter God in worship. The worship leaders worship; they lead us into worship, and it is there that we encounter God.
–The Word: the Word is preached in this church. No matter who is speaking, they are speaking from the Word. The seed is scattered, and when it hits your heart and takes root, your world will change.
–The Alter: The supernatural happens on the alter. Healing, repentance, freed–it all happens here.

Now, the Spirit of God empowered Jesus. Wherever Jesus went, the Spirit went with Him. W have a spirit in us–upon conception, something eternal was created in the physical. It is part of being made in the image of God. That spirit part is the part that will never die. The human body will die, but the spirit will live on. When we are born in the physical, we are born into a fallen world; God waits for us to come to Him for a rebirth into the supernatural. This happens upon accepting Jesus’ sacrifice. When we come to that point, we encounter the Holy Spirit and are filled with Him!

Jesus was reunited with the Holy Spirit upon His baptism. From then on, Jesus and the Holy Spirit worked hand in hand to reach the World. Jesus would withdraw to pray. He, The Holy Spirit, and God would be one for a little while, then Jesus would return to perform the miracles growing inside of Him. The Holy Spirit would work through Him to change people’s lives. And when Jesus died the physical death on the cross, it was the Spirit that brought Him back three days later.

Then, in John 20:22, Jesus imparted the Spirit to His disciples. It was like receiving a new toy; they weren’t certain what to do with it, but they went for it anyway! They followed Jesus example: they went to pray. And when they prayed, the Spirit showed up! (The Spirit is in us; the Spirit fills the room around us.) Then, Peter–the disciple known for sticking his foot in his mouth–stood and preached! He was a fisherman! yet, when the Spirit came upon him, he did something he had never done before–he spoke with power, eloquence, authority, and theological accuracy! When the Spirit comes upon you, you do things you never would have done before! And what’s more, Peter already had boldness; the Spirit used his boldness to bring honor and glory to God! The Spirit takes what you already have and magnifies it for use in the Kingdom! He takes you into things you’ve never done and uses the gifts you already have! It is all for the benefit of the Kingdom!

The Holy Spirit is powerful! And He empowers us to perform miracles! He is in us! In every aspect of who we are. Paul said it in Galatians. It is no longer we who live, but Christ’s SPIRIT lives in us. He is in our hands, our minds, our hearts, and our feet. Where we go, He goes. And where the Spirit goes, there is also freedom! The Spirit brings freedom.

There is a big difference between being a believer and a disciple. Most people probably don’t stop and really think about this. Most people probably picture a bearded man in sandals when the hear the word disciple. What’s more, most people probably tend to think that the end of their faith journey culminates in their belief, in their salvation moment. A lifetime spent away from God pivots upon the events of one morning, wherein a person’s heart becomes inexplicably soft—by a pointed sermon or a moment of worship or even the power withheld in the very name of Jesus himself—they respond to that altar call, confess their sins, give their life to Christ, and then for many, they’re done. Not so for the disciple.

Getting saved by Jesus is the easiest task one could ever hope to perform. One doesn’t have to accomplish anything by their own cleverness or effort. One doesn’t need to do anything period. Except surrender their pride and accept the gift. It is, after all, the Holy Spirit who is doing the saving anyway. It’s his work to his glory; not yours. Consider it this way: if salvation were the goal for humanity, if it alone was the charge of the Great Commission, then Scripture would read, “Go into all the world and save people.” Instead it reads, “make disciples of all nations.” Disciples, unlike Christians, are not born. They are made.

Concerning the passage from Matthew above, before the charge to his disciples to go make more disciples, Jesus commands the remaining eleven to go to “the mountain” in Galilee. Scholars have debated to which Galilean mountain he directed them. Some have argued that it was perhaps Mt. Carmel, where Elijah slew the false prophets of Baal. Others have suggested Mt. Table. I personally believe that it was Mt. Hermon, a coastal mountain overlooking Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus had once taken his disciples and proclaimed “I will build my church” (Matthew 16: 13-20). It is this same mountain that Peter, James, John, and Jesus ascend in Matthew 17, where the Lord appears transfigured and meets with Moses and Elijah. Mt. Hermon is, in short, a significant site to the disciples, and thus likely the one mentioned in this week’s passage.

So here Jesus takes all eleven disciples and, overlooking the pagan colony of Caesarea Philippi and all the sinners within, he commands, “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” What, then, is the difference between the saved and the disciples? For one thing, discipleship is necessarily beyond salvation. It’s the next, big step in one’s faith walk. Again, being saved is easy; becoming a disciple, on the other hand, takes work. It takes, according to this passage, first being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, this naturally constitutes an actual physical water baptism by which one publicly and symbolically demonstrates their physical death and rebirth in Christ, but it also suggests that we are to be baptized in the name, or, in other words, immersed in the spirit of God. God has a hand in our salvation, to be sure, but He also guides us toward discipleship after He finally gets His hands on our lives.

We must get out of His way so that He may do so, however. One must never underestimate the power of his own will. As C.S. Lewis once suggested, the spirit of God “cannot ravish. He can only woo.” So if the God of Heaven, who merely spoke the cosmos into existence, can approach the door of your spirit but cannot (or rather, will not) force His way through, then we can conclude that a man’s will is a strangely powerful thing. So to become a disciple, finally, we must allow God to take our hand and lead us deeper into Himself. Once this happens, we’ll begin to feel convicted about our sin. We’ll begin to actually want to spend time in prayer, in worship, and in the Word. Getting saved, you see, cleanses our spirit but doesn’t change our bad habits or attitudes. Going deeper into God’s teachings and truths is what ultimately transforms our lives from believers to disciples. We begin to talk differently, act differently. We begin, in short, to live our faith as well as believe it.

A challenge facing Christianity today is that we have a great many Christians and too few disciples. We need more disciples in the kingdom, more Christians walking out, not just believing in, their faith. If the original eleven disciples multiplied and, in time, transformed the the Roman Empire from a land of unrestrained paganism to the site of the early Church, how much more of an impact will a kingdom of disciples have today? Certainly have we more than eleven disciples at the present moment. Our focus, then, as a Church should be to foster a community of discipleship, and not belief only.

Discipleship is moving people; whether to a new level in God or to move out of your comfort zone into something new. When a person submits to being a disciple, he or she submits to having someone or someones come into their lives and bring correction.

80% of Christians fail because they do not submit to the discipleship process. It is the reason people start strong but finish weak if they finish at all. You see, a Christian is not a disciple. A Christian is born. When a person comes to Christ, asks Him into his or her life, and is transformed into a new creation, that process is called being “born again.” A Christian is born. And most times, a Christian remains in that place. Christians can remain “baby Christian” for years. They never grow beyond the initial salvation experience; they do not get to the meat and solid foods of the faith.

Disciples are made. Verse nineteen clearly states the command “go make disciples.” A Christian cannot survive strong with the idea that “Jesus is discipling me.” That is un-Biblical. Jesus took twelve men and lived life with them, teaching them and helping them to grow. When He left, He instructed His disciples to do the same. Discipleship is allowing yourself to learn the ways of God and to live those ways. We are called to live a higher calling, to live to the upward call of God, as Paul puts it. You see, God wants to make something of you, and He brings people into your life to make that happen. Disciples are made!

Discipleship comes through relationship. God transforms nations through His people, but He can’t do that if we all remain children. God completes His work through others. If we willing submit to the people God puts in our world, we are submitting to God’s correction. Correction is brought through love and an established relationship. Sometimes, it is a graceless smack-down that hurts, but that sort of adjustment is necessary to grow.

Believers are baby-Christians; Disciples are adult-Christians. The difference between babies and adults is that adults can reproduce. Adult Christians are disciples; they are submitted to God and the people He put around them; and they take the correction and grow from it. How do you know you are a disciples? It is when God uses you to reproduce–to make others into disciples.

In reflecting on our ongoing discussion about the power of God, a theme that you hopefully have seen emerging in recent weeks is the fact that nearly every breakthrough and miracle that we will experience in our Christian walk will require a faithful request or else some sort of bold initiation on our part. I have said it before: “God will use you to work your own miracles.” Scripture confirms this. Two weeks ago, we learned about the woman who was healed because she waded through a crowd just to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe (Mark 5:24-34). The two blind men in Matthew’s Gospel similarly had to call out to Jesus before having their sight returned to them (Matthew 20: 29-34).

This week’s story is a little different. It’s a little shocking, really. It starts off ordinarily enough—if one could ever really refer to Christ’s miracles as “ordinary”—beginning on the heels of yet another ‘self-initiated’ miracle, where a Roman officer has just offered a bold analysis of authority, thereby impressing Jesus and healing his slave (Luke 7:1-10). After this episode, Jesus travels the ten miles from Capernaum to Nain. It is here where this week’s story begins.

Jesus, as you can probably imagine, has garnered quite the following by this point in his ministry. He’s healed leapers (Luke 17:11-19); he’s cast out demons (Matthew 8:28-34); he’s fed the 5,000 (Matthew 14:13-21) and restored the sight to the blind through some rather unusual means (John 9: 1-34). What’s more, he’s probably earned the reputation as a particularly cheeky prophet at that. By now he’s worked a month’s worth of Sabbath days (thereby incensing the local Pharisaical devotees), and even managed to get kicked out of his hometown of Nazareth. Indeed, controversy tends to spiral in his wake. That is all to say that this young rabbi was likely to have a crowd of disciples, onlookers, enthusiasts and scrutinizers surrounding him wherever he went.

So on the road to Nain this entourage, all abuzz with the witnessing of miracles and ten miles of teaching, meets up with a crowd with an altogether different timbre. The crowd whom Jesus encounters in Nain is a funeral procession accompanying a widow who has just lost her only son. This is a rare and terrible blow for any single mother, but even more so for a woman in this time and culture, who would’ve lost not only her last blood relative but her financial safety net as well. She, in effect, has lost everything. At the front of this procession would likely have been a band of her peers wailing along with her in an act of demonstrative sisterhood.

These two crowds eventually meet—one craving life and the other mourning death. The emotional contrast could not be starker nor Jesus’ reaction more surprising. Upon witnessing this woman and intuiting her sad circumstances, he is moved to intervene. His intervention, however, is surprising in several ways. First, it is interesting to note that this woman, unlike the other stories mentioned above, does not ask for his intercession. Her dire worldview has probably become such that she is tired of the faithful and all their optimism. She’s stopped asking for miracles long ago. Her prayers, she tells herself, have not and will not be answered. She’s done. Jesus, though, spots her and calls to her, “Do not cry!” Authoritative. Curiously, Luke reports that his reaction was one of excessive compassion, though most of us are prone to intuit one’s yelling at a widow as an especially insensitive act. The thing to catch here is that Jesus is refusing to agree with her situation, and is instead provoking her to think otherwise. Tough love, some might call it.

But Jesus isn’t finished. He never is. He goes a step beyond speaking and moves to action. As Luke reports, he walks into this crowd, the death crowd, and tells the boy to “get up.” Equally authoritative. And out of an equal compassion. The boy, as you have read, does exactly that. Another miracle has been worked and witnessed.

As an aside, it is crucial to recognize that becoming a Christian is not a one-way ticket to The Good Life. Even after that altar call your day to day existence will more than likely remain a challenging endeavor and your obstacles will still be there where you left them. So let’s be frank, the Christian walk is not paved in bricks of gold. What Kingdom living does offer you is not only a Savior and Redeemer, but what’s more, a community of people who will speak into your world encouragement and, when necessary, conviction. They will become your brothers, sisters, friends, and mentors. It is the crowd round you, and not a plastic smile, that will help to keep your feet moving when life becomes nearly unlivable, and in this circle you will find hope. And Jesus will of course be there as well, teaching and affirming you every step of the way.

What Jesus has effectively done in this story (and beyond) is shaken death by its collar. Perhaps you require a similar ‘shaking.’ Perhaps you have responded to the wailing of the death crowd and decided long ago to tuck tail and walk in their ways—out of fear, or despondency, or faithlessness. Jesus is perhaps calling to you those same tough, provocative words: Stop crying and get up! And perhaps the local church will be the last thing, maybe the only thing, that can help get you back on your feet.

There are seven miracles recorded in the Book of John set before the Crucifixtion. Each story is written with several layers. This story is no different. It is a story about an encounter with God that leads to a slowly unfolding revelation. The first hint is the word John uses to descibe this man’s blindness. It is not the usual word for “someone who cannot see.” It actually means general blindness.

Now, let’s start at the beginning. Jesus is walking along with His disciples when He sees a blind guy. His disciples see Him as well and begin to question the origin of the man’s blindness. It was the belief of the time that sin caused sickness. Jesus immediately refutes that belief with the truth: he is blind so the power of God can been seen through him. Jesus is about to shake up this young man’s life in the most radical way! He proceeds to spit on the ground, make clay from it, and then rubs it all over the man’s eyes. This guy has not met Jesus; Jesus and the disciples were talking about him without talking to him; and then, suddenly, he gets spit on. Then, Jesus tells him to go to the PUBLIC pool of Silom to wash. This guy can’t see. He’s probably never been to the pool of Silom. But, without any help, he does as he is told.

He find the pool, washes, and, BOOM, he can see! He walks out his miracle! Sometimes, we have an encounter with God that shakes up our world but requires us to go a step further. He requires us to walk out the miracle. Jesus has healed several people in several different ways. He is capable of the instant heal (which we all love and want for Him to do for us), but some times, He requires us to walk it out by faith. This is what this man had to do. He had to walk by faith to achieve his miracle. And he did! But the story does not end there.

He goes home. His friends immediately begin to question him about what happened. He says, “The man called Jesus…” Jesus, a man, healed him. That is his first understanding of who it was whom he encountered while begging. His friends don’t believe him. And soon, the Pharisees come in. They are perturbed by the fact that someone worked on the Sabbath. Jesus made clay! He isn’t supposed to do that on the Sabbath! They are so locked in their religious rules that they can’t see the miracle in front of them. Religion is a killer. It stops us from encountering God. The man’s parents could not even rejoice over the fact that their son was healed out of fear of being kicked out of their religious bubble.

The Pharisees interogate the man. They want to know who did this. The man then answers that it was Jesus, a prophet! The revelation is continuing to unfold. First, Jesus is a man. now, he is a prophet. The Pharisees protest that he is a sinner. The man counters with an understanding that he, himself, does not know what all the rules and regulations (religion) dictates concerning this event, but all he knows is that he was blind and now he can see. He had an encounter with God. Jesus came in and shook up his world. And now, he can see. Then, he goes the bold and decalres himself a disciple of this man/prophet Jesus whom he has not ever seen, but he heard the disicples call him Rabbi and decided that he, too, wants to follow him. Jesus, the man, the prophet, and now the rabbi; the revelation continues to unfold.

The Pharisees kick the man out. He is cut off from the social religious norm. He is left alone to wander. That is when Jesus finds him. In life, God intervenes and shakes up our world. He puts his finger on an area of our lives that we are blind to and wants to shake us out of it. He wants us to see it, to heal from it, to overcome the thing holding us back–fear, broken home, addiction, failing marriage, bankrupcy. He shakes up our world, and then He withdraws to watch and wait as we walk it out. he wants us to trust in Him. So, we walk it out. And then, the world turns against us. Our friends and even family want to pull us back into the box that is the safe social norm where no one upsets the status quo. Your stepping out in faith angers them, and they try to pull you back down. But, you push on; you make a stand for God. And then, Jesus finds you.

Jesus heard what had happened. Jesus knows what is going on in your world. When He finds you, He knows what is going on. Jesus heard what had happened to this man. He asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man answers, “Yes, I want to. Tell me where He is!” This man has declared himself a disciple. He wants to follow Jesus. Jesus replies, “How have seen Him. And He is speaking to you.” The man falls to his knees before Jesus, declaring, “Yes, Lord!” Capital “L.” And he worships Jesus publically. From man, to prophet, to rabbi, to Lord, to God. The revelation is complete. This man has had his life transformed by the real the living God.

God wants to do something radical in our worlds. He will come in and intervene; either through church or someone speaking into our worlds; He comes in and shakes us up. He does something radical, frightening, amazing, and completely against the social norm to motivate us out of the place holding us back. He pushes us to walk out the miracle. We take teh steps of faith, trusting in Him to do what it is He promised to do; and as we walk in faith, the revelation unfolds and the miracle happens. No more staying at the same level. Will you let God shake you up so you can experience Him?

John 20:1-18 (NIV): “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead) Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. “Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (Which means Teacher). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ “Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.”

Let’s take a trip into the tomb for a minute. The tomb is place where you die with Christ. When you die with Christ, your eyes are opened to the spiritual atmosphere around you. There are things going on around our lives that we have no idea about. As Mary Magdalene ran into the tomb to make sure that Jesus was gone, her eyes were opened to the things inside of the tomb that the disciples had overlooked.

There were three things inside of the tomb, in addition to the Angels sitting in reverence and praise at the head and foot of where Jesus had lain. The first of these things were the strips of linen that Jesus’ body had been clothed in. This means that as Jesus rose from the grave, he donned new garments. For those of us dying with Christ, this means that we become new people. We have the same person inside of us, but we are now clothed with the King of all Kings, with the best of the best. Our attitudes in life are radically changed, and people notice that.

The second thing that is found in the tomb is the burial cloth, the face cloth that covered Jesus’ face as his body lay in the tomb. For us, this means that we will be washed clean of our past, not forgotten, but washed clean. It is a brand new day; the freshness of God is on our lives. We have the brightest of futures to look forward to.

The third thing we find in the tomb is Mary’s humanity. She falls down on her knees and weeps, begging for her savior to be given back to her, to know where his body lay. She died to herself, wanting nothing more than her savior. As she realized who was standing before her, she wept with joy, not sorrow. As we ourselves die with Christ in the tomb, our humanities are also stripped away. As we die to ourselves, we turn around and find our lives in the hands of our savior. Joy floods into our lives, replacing the sorrow.

It is hard to believe what Jesus says sometimes, but his promises are true. Visit the tomb- so that you can die with Christ and come alive with a new life. The same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is also alive within us. Take a hold of that, and don’t you ever let go.

Nicodemus came to Jesus soon after Jesus had cleared the Temple. He was a member of the Pharisees–a group who ran the Temple and profited from the not-so-holy business dealing that were going on within until Jesus came and drove everyone out. It seemed to be his hope to win Jesus over before this new stranger could cause any more trouble. He tries to butter him up by calling him “Rabbi” and talking about his miracles. It is then that Jesus hits him with this: “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

Huh? That came from way left field! It is a statement that has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. Now, we modern day Christians understand the importance of this statement. Salvation or “being born again” is a fundamental basis for Christianity. But for Nicodemus, the statement was a bit absurd. He was trying to win Jesus over, and yet Jesus was changing the subject. Why would he do that?

It is because Nicodemus came to him with an agenda, and Jesus was going to have none of it. We often come to God with an agenda–deliberately or not, hoping He will accept it and do things the way we want them done. However, we must be prepared for the consequences. If we come to God with an agenda, He will answer us with something that will blow our minds! This story is a perfect example; it poses the questions, “What will you do when God has another agenda?”

As this new year begins, we all make plans and resolutions. It is common. We also seek vision for what we should do. This time presents a unique opportunity where our agenda and God’s plans meet, and we have a choice to either hold to our plans or submit to His will. It is like walking a dog. A dog gets excited at first over the walk, willingly accepts the leash, and lets the human lead. Then, after some time, the dog tries to take control of the walk by going this way or that, forcing the human to tug on the leash to correct the dog’s path. Then, inevitably, the dog takes a stance of refusal, digging paws into the ground so as not to move any further.

We as humans act in much the same way. We lay aside our agenda to follow God’s vision for the year. At first, we are excited. We follow God’s lead. We let Him take control. Then, after a few months, we begin to try to take back to the control. We want to go another way. God brings someone into our world to speak to us (a “tug on the leash”) and set us back on the right path. Then, more time passes, and we reach a point of stubbornness. We don’t want to go this way any more, so we drag our heals. At this point, God does two things. First, He tugs on the leash once. He gives us a chance to submit. Fiances get tights, so we stop tithing. He sends a “tug.” We get into a relationship that may not be best for the time being. He sends a “tug.” Any number of situations come up where our pride gets mixed in and we stop following God’s lead; He sends one tug. And if we do not submit, He let’s go of the “leash.” He frees us to do what we want–regardless of the consequences He knows will happen as a result– because He cannot and will not control us.

Inevitably, disaster strikes. Can we look at God and ask why He lead us here? Sure, but it was not Him who lead. He let go. We went our own way. But God is merciful. We come back and submit to His lead again, and He will lead us. He promises in His Word to lead us through the good times (“by the still waters”) and the bad (“through the valley of the shadow of death”). He leads us no matter what. He is always there beside us if we lower our agenda and let Him take the lead.

Mark 4:1-20:
Once again Jesus began teaching by the lakeshore. A very large crowd soon gathered around him, so he got into a boat. Then he sat in the boat while all the people remained on the shore. He taught them by telling many stories in the form of parables, such as this one: “Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seed. As he scattered it across his field, some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plant soon wilted under the hot sun, and since it didn’t have deep roots, it died. Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants so they produced no grain. Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” Then he said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”
Later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples and with the others who were gathered around, they asked him what the parables meant. He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secret of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders, so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled:
‘When they see what I do,
they will learn nothing.
When they hear what I say,
they will not understand.
Otherwise, they will turn to me
and be forgiven.’”
Then Jesus said to them, “If you can’t understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables? The farmer plants seed by taking God’s word to others. The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message, only to have Satan come at once and take it away. The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word. The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced. And the seed that fell on good soil represents those who hear and accept God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”

It is crucial to note that Jesus’ parable of the farmer scattering seed is in many ways foundational to the other stories he tells, not just elsewhere in the Book of Mark but also throughout the remainder of Scripture. Read the red text in your Bible and you’ll find mostly little narratives, I’d reckon, stories and illustrations, allegories and, yes, parables. But Christ himself implies here in Mark 4:13 that if his listeners do not grasp the meaning of this parable, that of the farmer scattering seed, that the remainder of his teaching would be cryptic to them. Useless.

These are strong words. Surely, though, every great discipline has its fundamental principles. How, for example, could one ever grasp algebra without a comprehension of basic addition and subtraction? And one’s appreciation of poetry would be severely crippled without their grasping simile and metaphor. So, too, is the case here with Jesus’ instruction. One must understand the meaning behind the farmer and his seed in order to accurately make use of the rest.

This all, of course, skirts the underlying question that many have doubtless pondered, including (and especially) the Pharisees in Jesus’ day: Why not make it plain? Why does Jesus not just come out and speak his Truth directly? Why teach in metaphors when explicit instructions tend to be more easily followed? His approach is certainly not what I would do. But Jesus, thankfully, is much smarter than I. He understands that something has deeper, more satisfying meaning when it is sought after and obtained rather than when it is spoon-fed. Cheap truths don’t always have meaning, after all. (Donald Miller writes extensively about this very distinction in his text Searching for God Knows What.) Something’s worth, in other words, resonates loudest in the mind only after it is sought and won. Pastor Sy Rogers perhaps said it best in one of his messages here last summer: You will never possess what you are unwilling to pursue, for pursuit is proof of desire. The same goes for Biblical truth. One must first desire to understand before they ever will. They must wrestle, and question, and pontificate, and discuss, and then wrestle some more before they will likely ever tap into any lasting revelation. One, for example, doesn’t read a book like Job one time and walk away with 42 chapters’ worth of revelation. It takes time. It takes, in fact, a lifetime.

So let’s take a brief look at this parable. Since it’s so important.

Here we have a farmer, who could best be understood as God’s messenger. After briefly introducing us to this character, Jesus describes four types of soil, denoting the state of one’s heart attitude, the various conditions, that is, that will receive the farmer’s seed. How many times, for instance, has somebody come into our world—a pastor at the pulpit, a coworker’s encouragement, a friend’s advice—and deposited something that we have completely missed out on due to the fact that the soil of our heart was unhospitable? This must be a frustrating turn of events for God; He takes the time to carefully package and deliver His divine message only for it to be lost between the cracks of our clumsy hearts.

Other times we’ll actually manage to receive the seed being planted, and it’ll begin to take root, but this time it is tribulation, persecution, or hardship that’ll cut short the growth. This is what Jesus is referring to when he speaks of those who possess only shallow soil, those who have perhaps returned to church after having being backslidden. Or maybe they’re a new convert. An excited, but obviously fledgling Christian. These are the ones who can pick up the posture and the lingo almost effortlessly. They’ll learn to say “hallelujah” and “amen” at all the right times. They might even pop down to the local Christian bookstore and place one of those big fishes on their bumper. The church will probably rejoice in this verve, and their friends might be fooled. But if theirs is a shallow soil, the root will not take a firm hold. Tribulation will thus cause a subsequent separation.

The interesting problem in all this is that it can even be God’s revelation that’ll cause this tribulation. This is a troubling turn of events for the new, and even the enduring, Christian. Take marriage and family for example. A person might find that God has put it in their heart to take a husband or a wife and to multiply and fill the earth. So they do. They find that guy or that girl, get serious, get engaged, and get hitched. But then the baby comes, or the marriage lands on testy territory, and it becomes hard, but really hard. One can react to these turn of events in two ways: they can either question the word and its messenger, question the revelation itself—they can, in short, give up or become bitter or regret—or they can take a step further out in faith and recognize that the problem is not external, but internal.

The big idea of this parable, then, is to continue refining this sacred soil—to make it ready for the seed God wishes to plant there, seed that’ll often come packaged in the words and examples of others. God’s Truth here, again, is the seed, those acquaintances of ours the farmers, and our heart the soil. Make ready this soil, church. For even the Holy Spirit cannot make revelation take root if the soil’s not accommodating. Indeed, even He cannot (or more accurately, will not) override the will of a stubborn man. In the end, you alone govern your heart. If you wish to cling tightly to your issues, your hang-ups, and your grievances, you are able to. God allows it. The life you have, in the end, is the life you have created, for the good or for the ill.

Finally, keep in mind as well that we are not always the listener, the soil, in these exchanges. Sometimes we are the farmer, the one sowing into another. At times we’re aware of this role; we’ll go into an important conversation prayerfully, knowing that we’ve got a word for our friend or spouse. But there are also times when God will use us without our even knowing or preparing for it. He’ll put a word on our lips that we’ll perhaps speak before we’ve the chance to allow our minds to engage it. Or maybe it’ll be a throwaway line that will become stuck in our listener’s heart, causing them to engage God anew. When these things happen I believe that it is the Holy Spirit tapping our bodies in a way that has nothing to do with physiology whatsoever. He just borrows our physical vessel for a moment for His glory. And this, of course, is why we are ultimately placed in community, in His church. Because without farmers our soil, good or bad, will remain barren; and without the surrounding fields we, the farmer, have no place to sow.

So because we are both farmers and fields, ready your soil to receive, and, what’s more, ready also your heart to impart. Why? Because that’s what Jesus did.

The filter or prism that we look through defines how we see life and can change how we see God. If you were raised to believe that God is angry with you, that is how you will view God and it will affect your actions. If you were raised in an abusive home, that will affect how you see – and possibly treat your own family. The Bible gives us an amazing way to change how we see things. It doesn’t really matter how we see things because many times our prism is not reality. It’s our perception. We see certain things and they become our reality. But when I change the way I see things, I can discover God’s reality – discover the truth and discover how God sees. To start out this new year, we are going to shift the prism we look through and stop living in an environment that never allows us to tap in to what God has for us.

Paul was the master of seeing that people’s lives could be changed by seeing things through God’s eyes. He was amazing leader, because he didn’t see people as they were, but as they could become. You have to take a leadership responsibility of your own life, and everyone in this context is a leader. You have to make difficult decisions about your own life, and nothing around you can change your life. But you with God can bring monumental change. Every one of us how the power to make incredible shifts and changes in our lives, and find ourselves living in a totally different environment – a God environment – a place where God designed for us to live. It is the same world you are living in – we just change our prism so that we can better represent God to the world.

Colossians 1:6 – The same good news that came to you is going out all over the world, and it is changing lives everywhere. God is into change. Jesus is the Gospel – the good news – and the act of God sending Jesus in itself is change. When you have an encounter with God or meet God, you change. It changed your life “the first day you heard and understood.” This doesn’t mean that everything is suddenly different in our lives. Hearing or even having an initial conversation with Jesus does not change much in the natural. It changes a lot in the spiritual. When the Gospel is heard and understood and becomes truth – then change begins to happen.

v9 – We continued to pray for you that God would give you complete understanding of what God wants to do with your life. It isn’t just your redemption – your initial encounter. Finding faith in Christ as your Lord and Savior is the easy part. A lot of times people find Jesus in a time of crisis. Allowing God to work in our lives and change our lives is the difficult part. Our humanity is a tyrant and causes us to struggle with things in this life. We start to drift away from how God sees things and back toward the way I see things. That is why God says this Word is like food – it is feeding you. When you drift away from the God’s words, you begin to drift back and impede change and progress. We have to stay connected to God and the saints, to be sharpened, challenged and held accountable so that we can continue to move forward. When you are living around people who believe the same, you all move together. It is also smart to listen to people that know more than you and learn from them. Always listen to people who have fruit.

Truth and revelation – Paul brought one of the most powerful revelations and life builders ever brought to earth – v9 – I pray that God will give you complete understanding of what He wants to do and make you wise with spiritual wisdom. v10 – Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord. Once you have an encounter, wisdom and understanding begin to come and you begin to live a life that pleases the Lord. Now when we mess up, God still loves us – that’s what grace is for. But the more I get to know God, the less I want to let Him down. The more of His heart that is revealed to me, the more I want to live up to His vision for me.

Ephesians 1:16 – What do you want to do this year? What do you want to see change? Put God first, and He will help you in all areas of your life. “I have never stopped thanking God for you, and I have never stopped praying for you that God will give you spiritual wisdom and understanding, that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future that He has promised to those He has called.”

This is all talking about getting a revelation. A revelation is truth revealed. When truth is revealed, it changes your behavior. Not in your mind – that is understanding. What happens in your mind is never enough to change behavior. Revelation is truth revealed in the spirit. Change begins with revelation. A revelation stays alive in you forever. Once you get a revelation, it doesn’t matter what happens around you or what your circumstances are, they won’t change your belief, your faith or your behavior. Revelation is foundational – it is the foundation to rebuild your life. Revelation brings knowledge alive and makes it usable – the truth that changes your perspective and causes change.