Over the past week, I've been in Tennessee, visiting my father, who became very sick while trying to recover from a fall over a month ago. (I'm deeply grateful for Pastor Walter's stepping in at the last minute to deliver the sermon while I was away.) These have been very challenging and difficult days for my dad. Sometimes, his health situation has seemed bleak. Often, both our family and the wonderful health care professionals who serve my father face a lot of uncertainty.
It's been interesting for me that, long ago, the Lord led me to set aside this weekend to look at four stories in the Gospel of Mark in which people were facing very different kinds of difficulties. Why do you think God inspired Mark to put these four stories back to back to back to back? I think that they are there so that when we gather in a church and we have those times in which we feel rather helpless, we can come back and remember who Jesus is and how he asks us to trust him. The fact is that the Bible consistently teaches us that helplessness has been a part of our human condition ever since sin entered the world in Genesis 3. The sorts of situations that we read about in Mark 4–5 are the plights in life that all of us face at one time or another.
As I sat in my father's ICU room all week, I prayed about what God would have us learn from this powerful Bible passage. And, I think that the answer to that is very simple: We need to learn to trust Jesus. I will call us in a 21st-century world to have a simple, child-like faith in Christ. I want us to be assured that Jesus never leaves his people or his church lacking. Though we may not see exactly what he is doing in a situation, he wants us to come to him and simply say in whatever way we can possibly do it, "Lord Jesus, we need your help, and we're ready to follow you." I just want to call us in the simplest way that I know how to that kind of child-like faith that falls into the arms of Jesus.
I think that, sometimes, Jesus asks us the same thing that he asked those disciples in Mark 4:40:"Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" And, he says to us the same thing he said to Jairus in Mark 5:36: "Don't be afraid, believe..."
Just believe.
To His Glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor