02-05-17 Jesus on the Move: In or Out of the Boat

The groundhog is not normal.  It was warm, then it got really cold, then it was foggy and overcast, and as I write this Sunday Morning Update, the ground is covered in snow.  I don’t understand what the groundhog is up to, but the little guy is clearly disturbed.

Nonetheless, we had a great day in the Lord on Sunday, even though a third of our FCCers seemed to be home sick (because roughly 85% of Central Illinois seems to be home sick right now).  Both of my children, my wife, and now me -- we’ve all gotten permutations of this respiratory thing now, and I’d kinda like it to stop soon.  Even my church computer has become very ill, since several of the church’s little children decided that unsupervised banging on the pastor’s computer sounded like a whole lot of fun.

Let’s just say that I’m looking forward to the week-long vacation that I’ll be going on next week, starting on the 13th.  It’s not a particularly long rest, but it’s still a rest, and I could really use one at the moment.  If you have anything going on where you’d need pastoral help, please contact Bill Wenzel, or one of our other Elders between the 13th and the 20th.

In our message this week, we continued to look at the Gospel of Mark, following a Jesus who’s decidedly “on the move” all of the time.  This week, after having taught about the importance of deciding what kind of soil you’re going to be for God to plant His seed in, after having shown His disciples that His true family is comprised not of those whom He grew up with but rather those who truly trust in Him, Jesus went out on the lake with His friends and fell asleep.  But when a storm rose up, the disciples were shocked that Jesus wasn’t scared about what they were scared about... and Jesus was shocked that they were so scared...

See, it’s not that Jesus didn’t care about the disciples or their lives (as they immediately assumed), but rather that He did care, and they were thus under His protection.  They were scared to be in a boat in that storm because they wrongly thought that the dangerous situation around them was bigger and more powerful than Jesus.  And when they got to shore, they appear to have been scared to get out of the same boat when a terrifying demoniac scrambled out of the tombs toward them because they still wrongly thought that the dangerous situation around them was bigger and more powerful than Jesus.

Just how big is God in your life?  How important a priority is He, and how sovereign is He?  Jesus has authority over the wind and the waves, and He has authority over the demons.  He has authority over everything that you’ll ever have to face in your life.

So will you decide to live by fear or live by faith when you face those things?  The time to decide that is now -- before they ever even come up...