Sunday Night

This past Sunday Night I ministered from the passage of St. Mark that deals with Jesus healing blind Bartemaues. The story is found in chapter 10:46-52. The passage begins with a crowd following Jesus. This really was not an unusual scene. A matter of fact, it was common place for Jesus and His ministry to have a crowd following Him. As I read this story I wondered, "if I had lived in the days of Jesus, would you have found me in the crowd following Jesus?"

Automatically we answer, "yes, of course!" But don't be so quick to rush to a conclusion ... really think about it. We sometimes have our thoughts of how God is to work and move. We sometimes have our own conclusions of what is of God and not of God before we are even encountered with a situation. We often approach serving God with our own parameters in mind and we are so often accustomed to listening to others opinions and deciding for us on spiritual matters, that I do not know if many of us would have been in the crowd or not.

Let us take a moment and put the story in context. Jesus was not readily accepted by the religious community of His day. Many of the biblical scholars said He could not be the Messiah. Many religious leaders were saying He had a devil and the works He performed were from His father, the prince of devils. There were many questions surrounding Jesus. And then, these band of men who were always with Jesus. They were not the elite of society. They were not very educated men. I mean, after all, many were fishermen and one was a tax collector. And to top everything off, this Jesus spoke of God as His Father, and no one had ever done this before. Many considered this to be blasphemous associations and words.

To be in the crowd one would have had to defied conventional wisdom of the day. One would have had to turn a deaf ear to all the cynics. One would have had to risk being excommunicated from the synagogue. To be in the crowd one would have had to be willing to be called a fanatic. However, it was those in the crowd who so often received miracles and saw the impossible become a reality.

My prayer today is, "Lord, may I be found in the crowd today. Lord, help me not to approach you with my own parameters and guidelines. Help me not to rely solely upon the opinions of man. Lord, help me to push back all the doubts and fears so I can see the impossible become reality."

This is today

Pastor Gary