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Faithfulness - Week 7

Monday

Mark 10.23-31

23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

24 The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

26 The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”

27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”

29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

What do you think of when you read the words in this passage, “…all things are possible with God?” I immediately think of the “rich man” in my life, one of my best friends, who calls himself a “devout agnostic”! He has everything he needs and has been successful in many areas of his life. He is married. He has children and grandchildren. He has health and riches to enjoy life.

But…he doesn’t believe in God, or more accurately, he doesn’t believe we can know if there is a God to believe in. Is it “possible” for him to ever “enter into the Kingdom of God”?

One of the encouraging words in this passage for me is “difficult/hard” as it relates to a “rich man” entering into the Kingdom. Jesus doesn’t say it is “impossible”! There are many things in a “rich man’s” life to hinder him from putting his faith in God and trusting him with his life. All of it could be summed up in the word: “self-reliance.”

In my witnessing to my “rich man” friend, I have learned to share with him unapologetically how rewarding and enriching it has been for me to rely on God and his faithfulness to meet every need in my life. I tell him about specific answers to prayer and God’s provision and protection in very challenging circumstances. In other words, I share with him what it is like to live in “the kingdom of God.” Because these stories are real in my life, they can’t be denied or argued against. It opens up to my friend the “possibility” that God does exist and plays a personal role in this world. It helps move God out of the realm of the “impossible” for him.

Do you have a “rich man” in your sphere of relationships? I would encourage you to put your trust in the faithfulness of God to reveal to him/her the limits of “self-reliance” and the richness that comes with a relationship with the God who is there and loves us unconditionally and lavishly. I would also suggest you live out your relationship with God without apology and with boldness. God will do the rest.

~Roger Bosch

Tuesday

Luke 7.22-25

22 So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 23 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”24 After John’s messengers left, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? 25 If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces.

I remember the Sunday school lessons and songs growing up in church. I remember how the stories of Jonah and Noah captured my imagination. I was intrigued by God’s faithfulness and credibility in those stories. My imagination was challenged as a child but I accepted it as truth because of the faith I saw in my parents and the Sunday school teachers.

Over 40 years later, I continue to be amazed by God’s faithfulness and credibility. When I first came to the US from Ethiopia, nearly 30 years ago, my apartment was a few blocks away from LAC on Oakland Ave. I was only 19 years old and overwhelmed by the new city I found myself in. This was the first time I left the city where all my extended family lived. Suddenly, I found myself in a situation that was as difficult to comprehend as the stories I heard in the Bible.

During the next several years, I slowly started integrating into the community around me. I was overwhelmed by the drug epidemic that was present in the 1980’s. Since I had my High School education behind me, I was able to press forward in pursuing and obtaining my Bachelor’s Degree. It was around this time that I accepted Christ and surrendered my life to Him. I remember attending LAC on Saturdays and an Ethiopian church on Sundays.

I knew enough about God’s faithfulness that I started volunteering in Sunday school. I then realized that I needed to continue my studies if I wanted to better my life, so I applied to graduate school. I knew at the time that applying for graduate school because of my immigration status and my financial situation would be a challenge. However, I went and applied, relying on God’s help and faithfulness. I experienced God’s faithfulness by the way he provided for my daily need and opportunity to attend school. In spite of my weakness and shortcomings, I now find myself serving and doing “life” with my brothers and sisters at LAC.

In Luke 7.22-25 Jesus sends the messengers to report to John the Baptist about the miracles they saw and heard. He also reminds us that He works in ordinary people’s lives to display His credibility and trustworthiness.

In summary, how often do we stop and remember God’s faithfulness? When doubt and fear creep into our minds, we can stop and remember God’s faithfulness in our lives and the lives of the people in the Bible.

~Tsega Worku

Wednesday

Mark 1.40-42

40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

Jesus was (and still is!) the ultimate example of faithfulness. As he was connected to the divine life through the Spirit, he always demonstrated his deep commitment to his Father, to the mission for which he was sent, and most importantly to the people he came to save.

And because of Jesus’ abiding faithfulness, others could place their faith in him. In other words, Jesus’ commitment to his priorities led to him being trustworthy. Due to what they saw in his actions and heard in his words, people felt able to trust Jesus with anything and everything.

We see this truth in our text for today. Jesus had just begun his ministry and already his commitment to love and compassion was widely known. In fact, Jesus’ fame had grown to such a degree that even those who were literally excluded from society caught wind of it!

Those suffering with leprosy in the ancient world (whether the disease we call leprosy today or other various skin disorders) were consciously marginalized from their communities. And this was for a good reason: it was understood that they were (or could be) contagious, so exiling them made sense.

Thus, people suffering from leprosy tended to live in leper colonies outside of cities and villages. The only people they came into contact with were other lepers or people who dared to come near. But despite all this social isolation, the leper in our passage had heard enough about Jesus to trust him. He ran up to Jesus and begged him for healing, saying “If you are willing, make me clean.”

Here’s the big thought for today: We have complete access to Jesus through the Spirit…and yet so few of us are willing to come to him with the same kind of trust that we see here from the leper. What is preventing us from trusting Jesus? Why are we more inclinded to try to figure things out on our own?

Friends, instead of going to Jesus as a last resort, let’s be more like the leper in this story – let’s run to Jesus, asking him to heal us, to make us clean, to make us whole. And as we do so, through the power of the Spirit, we will experience Jesus’ faithfulness. He will heal us, cleanse us, and make us whole (in his own way and in his own timing, of course).

But being touched by Jesus comes with a responsibility. Jesus doesn’t help us just for our own sakes. No. He’s faithful toward us so that we can learn how to be faithful toward him and others in return.

As you are connecting with the Spirit through prayer, community, and obedience, how are you being led to be more and more faithful?

~Matt Barnes

Thursday

John 19.28-30

28 Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. 30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

The sometimes grueling cost of keeping our word…

It’s pitch black outside and it’s the one time LA freeways actually flow freely – 4am. I am on my way to fulfill a commitment I really don’t want to fulfill, but I will keep my word.

How often do we find ourselves in positions where we absolutely don’t want to do something that we have committed to? It could be going to the gym with little results, meeting with a friend who we know won’t listen, doing homework that seems unimportant or it could be as small as being home when we told family members we would. There are so many forces against us being faithful, so many things that distract us from fulfilling our commitments.

But, none of us have faced the grueling test of faithfulness that Christ faced.

It’s pitch black again, there’s no city lights and the three friends you brought to have your back are sleeping. You are filled with emotions you’ve never felt before and the task ahead weighs so heavily on your body that you begin to sweat blood. The 33 years of your life have come down to this. All the teaching and healing have come down to this unfathomable moment where you seal the deal.

Can you imagine the immense weight and emotions Christ must have felt in this moment where His commitment would cost him his life? John 19.28-30 tells us that as He is dying He is contemplating whether or not he has fulfilled His commitment.

How committed are we to being faithful? And what is the source of our faithfulness? Romans 8.11 declares that the same Spirit that rose Christ from the dead is alive in us! And, in John 14.12-14 Christ says that we will do even greater than Him because the Holy Spirit is alive in us. We sometimes think of this “even greater” in terms of big miracles or the ability to reach even more people. What if Christ meant that through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit we would have a greater ability to be faithful in times of challenge and temptation? What if he meant that in community we would be able to bear even more than He did? He had to bear His deepest burdens alone while He has graced us with Christian community to support us through the devastating disappointments that tempt us to be unfaithful.

Faithfulness is a few parts grit and our ferocious commitment to keep our word and a few parts the inspiration of the Holy Spirit giving us an ability to perceive and overcome the obstacles to our faithfulness.

Let’s be faithful.

What is one way you would like to be more faithful to important people in your life? Talk about that out loud with our family or a trusted loved one and let’s pray together that the inspiration and power of the Holy Spirit alive in us would make us more faithful.

~Mark Fields

Friday

John 19.25-27

25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

In my role of pastoral ministry over numerous years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time visiting people in hospice. Hospice isn’t just for the elderly, it’s also a place where I’ve visited dear friends at the end of their life due to injury or disease. Surprisingly, it’s not just a sad place, but a place where you see people from all walks of life, where I’ve cared for or helped others make peace in the last days of their lives. It’s a place where you see tenderness expressed not only by those caring for the dying, but also those receiving tenderness from people who are at the end. What is most important changes when you enter the doors of hospice. Before my parents were in hospice, every time I came to their house the news was on the television. Once in hospice, the television played nothing but classic movies.

In John 19.26 the lesson is “take care of the people who depend on you.” We see Mary at the foot of the cross coping with her grief as a mother about to lose her son. I wonder as I read this if she is thinking about what the future holds for her now. I know I am. Knowing women were treated as second-class citizens after the male in the family died, I know her life is headed for chaos. Her pattern is about to change forever. But just as she is wondering this, Jesus saw her and he says to the disciple next to her “here is your mother.”

It would have been perfectly acceptable for Jesus to leave his mother in the care of his brothers, but He used this moment to enlarge his family. At this moment John becomes as a son in Jesus’ place, which included significant responsibility. As Mary’s first born, Jesus was legally responsible for her welfare. This is at a time when all of the other disciples have run in fear. But John, the beloved, was with Jesus all the way to the cross. We know that John committed himself to this charge and was with Mary from that moment on, and accepted her as his own mother.

Jesus was perfect all the way to death. In the last words of Christ, it’s not just about His ministry. Instead, he is an example of love and showing responsibility to his family as well. He did not surrender his family for his ministry. He never let his own suffering make him blind to the needs of those around him. When we feel completely swallowed by problems that can be as large as death itself, we need to remember the pattern laid out for us by Jesus, that we never forget the needs of others around us. It would have been completely human for Jesus to enter into a selfish state, but we are not surprised that Jesus still uses this moment to show us that he honored others more than himself.

~Curt Gibson

Saturday

John 8.21-26

21 Once more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.”

22 This made the Jews ask, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, ‘Where I go, you cannot come’?”

23 But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”

25 “Who are you?” they asked.

“Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied. 26 “I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.”

Where we are from matters.

My wife and I have lived in California for almost a decade now and I’ve not lived with my parents for around eighteen years. So it only makes sense that when we return to Texas to visit my family I meet some people who didn’t know me when I used to live there.

So when I meet someone back home it’s fun for me to tell them that I’m my parents son. Doing so has taught me so much about how my parents are perceived by the people who know them. Here’s what the conversation tends to look like:

“So you’re Mike and Karen’s son?”

“Yep. They’re the best,” I reply.

“You’re right about that! And that must mean to you’re a pretty good guy too!”

And while I’ll leave that last point up to you to decide, I will say that having parents like mine means always having high expectations to meet! And the reason is simple: my parents are great! They are loving, kind, generous, supportive, and caring. And they didn’t just limit their care and concern to each other and my sister and me. No. They offered it out into our extended family, our neighborhood, our church, etc.

Being from my family means something to the people who know my parents.

And I think that underlying our passage for today is something similar. Jesus says that he is from above, that he’s not from this world. He is from the Father and to the Father he is returning.

And here’s the main idea: his Father is trustworthy, so Jesus is telling his disciples that they can trust him.

Where we are from matters, and not just with regard to our families. Brothers and sisters, as followers of Jesus we are (in the realest sense) from the Father too. Thanks to the sacrifice of the cross, the power of the resurrection, and the indwelling of the Spirit, we are part of God’s eternal family.

As such, we should begin to demonstrate some of our family traits as we are synced with the Spirit. One such trait is faithfulness. As we experience God’s faithfulness, it’s our call to be faithful in our lives too.

~Matt Barnes