Deferred Obedience

 Deferred obedience is a relationship killer. When we put off doing something we promised to do for a friend or loved one, it undermines trust and damages the relationship. The same is true in our friendship with God. For forty years(!) Moses put off having his family marked with the covenant of circumcision. This deferred obedience created a barrier that made Moses’ relationship with God timid and half-hearted. But God intervened in Moses’ life through his wife Zipporah to bring Moses to obedience (Exodus 4:24-26). Once that happened, God’s story through Moses really gets moving! If you missed yesterday’s message, you can listen to it here.

 

Have you been putting off something in your relationship with God? A sin that needs to be confessed? A relationship that needs mending? Help you need to ask for? Don’t put it off another day. Step out in faith and watch God move! 

Who's in Charge

 

In a culture that prizes personal freedom and rebels against anything that thwarts individual autonomy, Jesus’ invitation sounds strange – “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) We’re taught to chase our dreams and pursue our potential, not to deny ourselves and conform to another. And yet Jesus’ curiously uncompromising demand is followed by the great paradoxical promise of God’s Kingdom – “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8:35). The upside-down truth of Jesus’ realm is that when we surrender all, we gain all. When we do what looks like losing all for Jesus’ sake, we end up winning all. When we take Jesus’ path of self-denial, we discover the freedom of self-fulfillment. 

If you missed yesterday’s message, you can listen to it here.

Partnering with Jesus

 

While some people wear trouble on their sleeves, most of us tend to suffer in silence. When facing an obstacle in life, we’re more inclined to soldier on or try a new strategy. However, Jesus invites us to try something radically different: Give up. When faced with the obstacle of feeding four thousand hungry mouths with only a few scraps of food, the disciples query, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” The simple answer is, one cannot. The disciples had to literally ‘give up’ their inadequate resources (see Mark 8:6. Jesus literally takes the bread out of their hands) and admit they had an unmanageable problem. Real breakthrough and lasting change begins with surrender. It begins when we admit to God, and confide in another, that we need help. 

 

If you missed yesterday’s message you can listen to it here.