...and the Kingdom of God is Advancing... | Part II

Series: …AND… | The Movement of God and His People through Mark
Title: Week 3 ...and the Kingdom of God is Advancing... | Part II
Text: Mark 1:35-45

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

My name is Andrew Haws, one of the leaders here. And regardless of whether this is your first time or your 500th time, I really do believe that you are here because you wanted to hear from Jesus this morning. Am I right? The Bible tells us that where two or three are gathered in his name, there he is also. And there are far more than two or three. So I think Jesus is here this morning and he wants to speak to us. And my prayer for you is that your heart is prepared to hear from him. Over the last couple of weeks, we started a new sermon series in the book of Mark. And we've called this sermon series and. Yes, and like I think that's a preposition. Um and you're like, well, okay, why? Why and well, here's the reason. Mark is one of the most fast-paced tellings of the life teachings, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. And when you go through the book of Mark, what you see is that Mark is constantly seeing Jesus on the move. Jesus did this, and then immediately he did this, and then he did this, and then he did this, and then he did this. And really captures that movement, that momentum that Mark is drawing us into. But here's what Mark does not want us to miss. As he highlights moment after moment after moment of Jesus' activity, he does want, he does not want us to miss that we are not just supposed to observe what Jesus is doing, but we're supposed to reflect on what is revealing about who he is. And in the midst of that momentum, Mark is inviting us not simply to be spectators to the movement of Jesus, but to be washed up in the movement of Jesus, to join in the movement of Jesus, which Mark calls the kingdom. So if you have your Bibles, open it up. We're in Mark chapter one. I'm gonna just drop us back really quickly to Mark chapter one, verse 15. Jesus begins his ministry and he says this it's like the most simple, basic, but amazing message in the world. The time has come. Everything in your life that you look at and you're like, oh, it's not as it should be. Everything in the world that you look at and you're like, this is not right, this is not as it should be. Mark is saying at Jesus' announcement that God is decisively acting to do something about it. And how is that gonna happen? Jesus says, secondly, that the kingdom of God has come near. God is going to act by entering into our reality and bringing his kingdom to bear on every aspect of our lives. And the final piece of the message: repent and believe the gospel, the good news. He is calling all people to respond, to turn away from the way that they were living and join his kingdom movement. And so last week, what I did is I walked us through these first three stories, which Mark is actually highlighting for us as pictures of what happens when the kingdom actually comes to bear on our reality. The kingdom is invitational. We saw that. Jesus comes, he's walking along the Sea of Galilee. There's some fishermen, he says, Come follow me. Jesus is inviting us to participate in the work of his kingdom. Number two, the kingdom is a kingdom of freedom. Jesus doesn't just come as a powerless king, he comes as a king in power who can come and break the chains of the things that are holding us. And number three, it's a kingdom of restoration. We saw that beautiful picture of Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law. Uh, some of you may remember that um last week I shared with you that my little baby boy Sawyer was sick. Um, Shem was actually in the ER for nine hours last Sunday with him in church. Can I just thank you all so much? I was up here to pray last week, and two people came down not to get prayer, but to pray for me and my family. And I am just gonna testify before all of you that my little boy, he went to the hospital. They said he has RSV. There's nothing we can do for him right now. And and Shannon, who's a nurse, my wife, she said, I'm really worried because uh the way that RSV works is that it usually peaks on day five, but that was day three, and he only got better from there. And I believe that is because we have a God of restoration. Amen. So thank you, church, for praying in faith for me and my family. Today we're gonna continue on and we're gonna see two more aspects of what the kingdom looks like. So if you have your Bibles, I'm gonna jump in where we left off last week, verse 35. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Now, so it pauses here for a second. If we go back to verse 34, it talks about this momentum that has started to build. Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law, and then it tells us that people started coming to him. Jesus healed many who had various diseases, and he also drove out many demons. So Jesus is in this place where he has got ministry momentum going on. He is healing, he is proclaiming the gospel. Everyone's coming to him, and for all intents and purposes, it feels like he's in this movemental place, and then he does something so odd to us, maybe. He simply stops. A few years ago, West Village, um, just before COVID, started this pattern of doing these uh these nights we call taste and see. And they were prayer nights. And this is like confession, you get to see the depths of like the brokenness of Andrew's heart. Um, so so these were getting organized, and uh, and um Chrissy, you know, is talking to the staff and he's like, hey, you know, you guys don't have to be here. But but I kind of like, I felt like, you know what, I don't have to be there, but everyone's gonna judge me pretty hard if I'm not. So I'm gonna I'm gonna show up. And I showed up and I was like, why are we doing this? Why are we sitting here and praying? It kind of feels like you know, we should be out there doing things. And this kind of feels a bit like a waste of time. Now I know some of you are out there and you're like, why is this guy at the front? He thinks prayer is a waste of time. That was where my heart was at. And I think if some of us are being honest, you might feel the same way. You're like, I am all about the movement, I'm all about the momentum. And Jesus here shows us that the kingdom is not movement without purpose, that the kingdom must be anchored into the will of the king. And this is what happens. He goes out into the wilderness and he begins to anchor himself once again to the Father through prayer. And as we look at this, I see Jesus modeling a couple of different things that I think we need to take into ourselves as we think about how to anchor ourselves to the king. Number one, Mark tells us that he went out early in the morning. He went out early in the morning. Now, I just want to imagine together how Jesus must have felt. Have any of you ever had a day where you were just like pouring out to other people for the entire day? This is how Sundays often go for me. Uh, I get up, I kind of do my quiet time in the morning, time with Jesus, and then it's like, get myself ready, make sure my kids are ready, rush off to the gathering, talking to this person, talking to that person. I come up here. If I'm preaching, I preach. Uh, oftentimes I have something going on after. And then I get to like Sunday night and I am tuckered. And I get to Monday morning and I'm like, I need to not talk to anyone for a little bit. I'm gonna read like some kind of book in my bed because I'm just tired. I've been pouring out all day. Imagine Jesus is God, but he's also a human being. He's been sitting there at the door, person after person after person, bringing their needs to him. Do you imagine how exhausted physically, emotionally, mentally, Jesus must have been? He probably wanted to nap for days and days and days, and yet he gets up early in the morning. Why? Why is this so important that he is willing to sacrifice sleep? Because he knows it's more important to stay anchored in the Father. First thing that Jesus models for us is that doing this anchoring is sacrificial. Sometimes we have to move other things aside to make space for this. The second thing that it tells us is that he went to a lonely place. He went to a lonely place. It was solitary. It was solitary. He was away from everyone else. Why? We'll listen to what happens next. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed, Everyone is looking for you! Uh I was having this conversation with my wife Shannon yesterday. We have four kids, and they are awesome, amazing alumni bits. They're so loud, they are so needy. I mean, one of them can't even talk or walk. And Shannon was like, I am overstimulated all the time. I know there's a few moms with littles. You get you get what she's saying? You know what that I come home from work and you know, I'm coming from like, you know, nice quiet coffees with people or working in the office and you know, doing stuff on my computer. And then I just get this barrage of love and goodness and overstimulation. And sometimes in the midst of the busyness, in the midst of the crazy, in the midst of the need, it is really hard to actually be able to hear. But what Jesus does is, I need to cut out the noise. His disciples had opinions of what he should do. The people who were coming to him had opinions of what he should do. But he needed to know what his father wanted him to do. And so he found a solitary place. The second thing we see is as we're anchoring ourselves to the king, we're being called to find that solitary place so we can cut out the noise and focus on the source. Verse 38, Jesus replied, Let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages, so that I can preach there also, for that is why I've come. And so he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and driving out demons. You know, it's so interesting is that after this time of prayer, after this time of connecting in with the Father, anchoring himself to the King, Jesus switches course. He adjusts what he is doing. He is reminded by his time with the Father of why he came. And he aligns himself with that. So the third thing that Jesus models for us is anchoring ourselves to the king is also an act of submission. It's submissive.

Speaker 1 10:54

It's about obedience.

Speaker 11:00

I think sometimes you know we we can get caught up in these moments where like I I really have this idea of how this should go, God. This this is looking really good over here. And I just gonna wide, why I want just want to wide this wave of momentum over here, but Jesus might actually have something different for us. Now, I'm gonna say this and I'll probably repeat it a few times. But movement for movement's sake is not actually helpful. Because movement that is not anchored in the mover is mutiny. I'm gonna say that again. Movement that is not anchored in the mover is mutiny. If we are not aligning ourselves with God's will, we are actually going to be working against it. What Jesus is telling us here, what he's inviting us to understand is that we actually, if we want to see the kingdom continue to advance, if we want to be part of that, that we need to regularly anchor ourselves in the king because he is the one who needs to direct our movement. And so far from being a pause to movement, this is an essential part of making sure we're moving in the right direction. Prayer is not a distraction from mission. Prayer is the necessary anchor that keeps us focused on mission.

Speaker 1 12:29

So let me ask you a question.

Speaker 12:33

All of us live in this reality where life is busy. I know I'm not the only person here with four kids. I'm not the only person who has a bunch of things going on. Life gets busy. So when your life gets busy, what gets crowded out? What's the thing? Like, I don't know if I have time for this. And what does that tell us about what we're anchored to? That favorite TV show that we watch just before bed. Does that get crowded out? That book that we just can't put down? That hobby that we care so much about. Jesus is inviting us to understand that the this thing that needs to be essential in our lives, the thing that we need to stay anchored to, is our time with the Father. Theologian NT Wright says this Jesus knew his need of a God-given sense of direction and inner strength, both to build on the apparent success of the previous day and to take things forward in the right way. As we Christians pray today, especially when this prayer is costly and sacrificial, not merely a perfunctory few minutes now and then, the presence of the same Jesus has promised by his spirit to guide and encourage us.

Speaker 1 13:56

To guide and encourage us. Church.

Speaker 14:07

And he needed to take space to root himself back in the will of the Father. So that is true of him. How much more true of us? Andrew Johnson told me this story a while back about a pastor friend of his. He was part of this church, and they had this practice of doing prayer on Wednesdays. And one day Andrew was coming in to join the prayer, and the pastor hadn't shown up yet. And so he went over to the office to see if the pastor was going to join. And the man looked swamped. He was sitting there, he was obviously behind in what he needed to do. Andrew just kind of popped in and said, Hey, are are you going to join us today for prayer? And the pastor kind of wistfully looked up from his book and he said, Andrew, I'm too busy not to pray. Church, when we're at our busiest, when we're at our most chaotic, that is precisely the time that we need to take a step back, anchor ourselves in the Father, so that we can know how He would direct our steps. Some of you are like, this sounds really good, but I I don't I don't even really know what you mean. I don't even know how to how to start this. Well, we we have a couple of suggestions, just simple starting points. Here's the first one. Wake up 15 minutes earlier than you normally would, or 15 minutes earlier than your kids will. From a very young age, uh, I had uh a mom who who modeled and disciplined and encouraged me to create some personal time with Jesus. And I had this um this dialogue that was going through my head that said, I am a night owl. I am not a morning person. I hate mornings. Any of you out there, you're like, I hate mornings. Okay, there's like not that many. I thought it'd be a few more in here. I guess the people who hate mornings are all in bed still watching this online. I I told myself I hate mornings. In fact, when I was a youth pastor, I would stay up till two o'clock in the morning and wake up at 10 o'clock in the morning, or say two o'clock in the morning, wake up at 10 o'clock in the morning. I still got my eight hours of sleep, but it was just a different eight hours than most people. And uh, and so I had this habit where I would do my quiet time right before I went to sleep at night. And, you know, I had some discipline and there's there's many good things about that. But what I started to find, or what I often found, was that this time was not as productive as it could be because I would come and it'd be the end of the day, and I was exhausted, and I have so many things on my mind. So I'd be reading my Bible, but I couldn't really concentrate. And I found that it just wasn't always fruitful. And it was so easy to just be like, ah, I'm not gonna do this today. I'm too tired. So it got bumped and it get bumped. And the Holy Spirit had this moment where he started to convict my heart about this excuse I was making. He was saying, God, I don't, I don't want your last time, I want your best time. I want the time before the distractions. And as I started to process this call in my heart, I realized that I needed to stop telling myself I was a night owl. I needed to live a life that was somewhat sacrificial. Some of you are like, this is not a sacrifice, dude. You're 30 years old and you're waking up at 10 o'clock in the morning. Time to grow up. Put on your big boy pants. But I started to get up earlier. And at first it wasn't significant. It's like instead of waking up at that point, I was getting up a little earlier. Uh, you know, instead of waking up at 7:30 or 8, I get up at, you know, 7, 6.30. And I started to push myself and push myself. And I'm really glad I did because now with four kids, if I don't wake up before seven and have that time with Jesus, like the chaos ensues. The noise begins. And so now I have this habit where I wake up at 5:45 and I spend that time with Jesus and I would not trade it for the world. It is so sweet to get away, to get away from the noise. But I didn't just arrive there. It took little moments of stretch. So take that little moment. Wake up 15 minutes earlier than you're used to, or 15 minutes earlier than your kids wake up, and just start spending a little bit of time in prayer. A second thing that might be helpful, if you find yourself easily getting distracted and not sure how to anchor yourself in Jesus, maybe consider writing your prayers down. This has been such a helpful practice for me personally, is just taking a moment to say, hey, I know it's so easy for me when I don't have something tangible with my hands that to get distracted, to look around, but when I'm focused on writing, it focuses my mind and I can actually speak to God without distraction and hear from God without distraction. A third one. A couple of weeks ago, when Andrew began this sermon series, he challenged us to read through the book of Mark every week. Uh Westvillage, I think, actually has a reading plan if you want to jump on on the UVersion app, but um it's simple. Just start reading parts of Mark. And if you're like, hey, I'm not, I can't read through 16 chapters every week. That's okay. I'm not reading through 16 chapters every week. But I've been going through the book of Mark and I read like a little paragraph at a time, and it's been amazing as I encounter Jesus and I take time to reflect on who he's he's inviting me to be in light of who he is and what he's done. And I just have this really simple pattern, and feel free to steal it. This is like not proprietary information. Like you can you can do this too. I I ask four simple questions. What is this passage telling me about who God is? Like, what's his character like? What's he revealing to me about himself? What is this telling me about how God acts as it describes Jesus? What does this tell me about who I am to be in light of that? And what does this tell me about how God is calling me to live in light of who I am in him? And then at the end, I just do a simple little exercise, super easy. I I call it an I will statement. Just one simple point of obedience. Jesus, what are you calling me to that I can start doing right now, today? If some of you had jumped into our challenge a couple of weeks ago to pray for two minutes for two weeks, two minutes a day for two weeks, keep going. Add another two minutes, increase it to four minutes. Whatever it is, it may require a sacrifice, but find that time to get away and anchor yourself into the king. Because movement that is not anchored into the uh the mover is mutiny. So Jesus continues on his ministry, and he's traveling through Galilee, and Mark records a second scene here. He says, A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, if you are willing, make me clean. Now, Jesus has been healing, he's been going about bringing people back to restoration. But what's so interesting about this story in particular is the man does not ask to be healed. Did you notice that? He doesn't ask to be healed, he asks to be cleansed. Now, leprosy was a very challenging disease to have. It was a fatal disease. It's a disease where your nerves get deadened. And so you stop having feeling. And over time, you get cuts or scrapes or scratches, and you don't take care of them. So they get infected, and your flesh starts to slowly disintegrate because of the infection. Not being treated. It was a disease that was very much feared in the Old Testament and in this early first century. Author Rosaria Butterfield, to help us understand this, puts it this way: she says, the ceremonial law deemed the leper morally and physically unclean. Leprosy was more than an infectious skin disease. It rendered the person who embodied it unfit to be part of a healthy community and unable to join in the worship of God. See, in this day and age, the people were looking back at the Old Testament commands that God had given the people of Israel. And in chapters like Leviticus chapter 13 and 14, God had very specific requirements on how to deal with the disease like leprosy. Just listen to this from Leviticus chapter 13, verses 45 and 46. Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face, and cry out, unclean, unclean. As long as they have the disease, they remain unclean. They must live alone. They must live outside the camp. Now that sounds harsh to our 21st century mindset, but here's what I want you to understand. The ancient Hebrew people lived in a nomadic set where they were close, like they were, they were in close proximity to each other. And God in his grace and mercy understood how disease works. When you are in a close proximity to each other and a disease comes that's infectious, it is going to spread and spread and spread. So God, in his grace and mercy, he gives the Israelites this law on how to treat something that's infectious to protect them. But here's what happened: our human nature, our sin nature, we start to take that in and we start to look at it not just simply as a disease in God's grace and to protect us from spread, but as a way of lowering someone down to lift ourselves up. And it became a mark of shame. In several parts of the Old Testament, uh, God actually deals with someone by giving them leprosy as a curse of some kind or as a disciplinary measure. And that all got gathered together in the Jewish mindset to become this thing in which leprosy was a clear sign of sinfulness. It was a clear sign of God's displeasure. And so this man who was coming was not simply coming with a disease. He was coming with a huge bag of shame. Butterfield continues, she says, When Jesus walked the earth, leprosy was this rep thus a repulsive corporealization of original sin. It was not caused by a particular sin or behavior, rather, it pointed to our sin nature, the walking time bomb inside each and every one of us. The only solution was containment of the leper and protection for the yet healthy. Whole chapters of the law, Leviticus 13 and 14, are devoted to how to contain the contagion and restore the healed leper. Thus, this disease could transform a beloved father or mother into a despised outcast overnight. One day you could enjoy belonging, touch, recognition, value. The next, you were as good as garbage. In this day and age, lepers were not allowed to go near people. They had to stay in set zones. They had to call out to people unclean, unclean, and they could actually be severely disciplined if they broke those laws. And yet, this man carrying all of those realities with him climbs out of wherever he has been hiding and makes his way to Jesus and in desperation falls to his knees and says, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Many of us have no idea of how to conceive of this because we have almost nothing in our lives that is similar. The best analogy I can think of is the way that AIDS was thought of in the 1990s. That it was connected to sin in and of itself. Didn't matter that many people who contracted AIDS did so by no fault of their own, whether they got it transmitted to them through a parent or an unfaithful spouse or partner. It was considered a disease linked towards sin.

Speaker 1 26:40

And even that does not quite capture the severity of how people looked at leprosy.

Speaker 26:50

Maybe we can't relate to someone who has a disease that keeps them away from everyone else, but I think we can probably relate to the shame that that man felt.

Speaker 1 27:14

Some of you are here today, and you feel like lepers.

Speaker 27:22

Yes, you don't have decaying skin, your flesh isn't rotting away on your bones. But you feel like you have a scarlet letter on your back, declaring your failings, declaring your insufficiency. Shame because your marriage collapsed. Shame because although you tried your best, you have kids who are not following Jesus. Shame because there is an addiction that you cannot break, a lust that you are entrapped to. Shame because of sin that has been done to you, that's devalued you, that's made you feel like used goods. Maybe there's just shame because you were late this morning. This week I had to face my own shame burden. We got an email from my kids' school. Uh, the head of school said, Hey, um, you know, we we've had we've had some struggles with your son Ben. Now, this again, this is more revealing about my heart than anything to do with my kids. You know, I take a lot of pride in how we raise our kids and how intentional we are, you know, and and I've I've said this, like we're starting a, we want to, we are going to be starting a school in the spring. Um, you know, I get to come up here and talk to you guys. So all of that sometimes puts me in this place where I'm like, okay, I need to have kids reflect sort of the type of of institutions and families that we want to have. And so when when your kids, when you get a call and your kids are in trouble and they're not behaving, you start to to kind of spiral a little bit. Like, what did I do wrong? How have we failed as parents? What are people gonna think? And we're sitting there, we have this meeting. It's like four lovely, amazing preschool teachers. Uh, we're all in these little preschool chairs. I just want you to imagine the scene. Okay. Shannon and I are sitting behind this, you know, preschool-sized uh table, and it feels like we're in the principal's office. That's how I feel. Okay. And I'm just sitting there and they're like, they're the sweetest people. They're like, we want to just help Ben be successful. We want to find strategies to help him. And I keep thinking, I failed. What did I do wrong? What, what, how did I mess up as a parent? And when you get into these moments of shame, we we have some temptations that come with them. Sometimes we just we just want to get rid of it. We want to hide it away. We don't want anyone to see it. And we do that in a couple ways. One of the ways that we do is we project it on other people. Anyone guilty of that? Like you're ashamed as a parent, and so you project that shame on your kids. I can do that. Some of it times we we just we just try and bury it. We hide it, we try and make it so that no one else can see it. It reminds me of that scene in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, they eat the apple, they sin against God, and God comes walking in the garden, and what do they do? They hide. They cover themselves up. Sometimes we try and cover ourselves up. There's this uh analogy, this picture, metaphor called the shame ladder. Some of the ways that we try and cover ourselves up is we we just try and go a little bit higher on the shame ladder so that we can look down on the people below us, so we can lift ourselves up and pretend that we don't feel shame. And oftentimes we want to we want to hide our shame from God. We're like Adam and Eve, we're in the garden. But but look at this. When God is in the garden looking for them, does he say, get away from me, you're stained, you're unclean. No. Where are you? See, the beautiful thing about this scene is that the leper intrinsically understands that the only one who can make him clean is Jesus. And so he runs to him, not runs from him. He doesn't try and hide his shame. He brings it and he lays it in on display at Jesus' feet because Jesus is the only one who can actually take that burden of shame from us. If you are here in this room and you are just hiding and you're trying to put your shame away, Jesus is inviting you to bring your shame to him because he is the only one that can deal with it. Listen to what happens next. Jesus was indignant. Now, I'm gonna go on a tangent here, but I think this is important. When the NIV here translates that Jesus was indignant, he wasn't indignant. He was, he was mad. He was choked. He was P.O.'d. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that from the stage, so I'm just gonna say PO'd. Now, people are like, was he mad that this guy was asking for cleansing? Because that's kind of how it seems here. No, no, Jesus was mad because he looked at the ravages of a sinful, broken world put on display on this man. Not just the effects of sin in this illness, but the effects of sin in a society that rejected this man in compassionlessness. And Jesus was angry about this injustice. And church, I just want to make this point really clear. Anger is not a negative emotion. There is such a thing as righteous anger. And if you are going to be part of the kingdom of God, you will need to be filled with righteous anger. You will need to have, you will have to go into the world and you will have to see the effects of sin, broken marriages, people confused about their identity, um, like wars, injustice, abuse. You should not look at those things and be complacent. You should not look at those things and think, uh, it's not that big of a deal. You should be angry about it. You should go out into the world and see things that are not as they should be, and you should desire that they would be made right. Jesus looks at a man who is living a life of injustice and isolation from the people that he is to be part of, and he is angry about it, and he wants to see it change. And so listen to how he responds to the man. I am willing, he said, be clean.

Speaker 1 33:56

And then something amazing happens. Immediately, the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. Church.

Speaker 34:14

In any other part of the Bible, when someone touches an unclean person, you know what happens?

Speaker 1 34:22

They become unclean. But look at what happens when Jesus touches the unclean person. You know who's infectious? Not the leper. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. This is good news.

Speaker 34:49

Because if you're here like me, and you are carrying shame for your insufficiencies, things that have been done to you, things that you cannot overcome on your own, whatever your story is, Jesus is saying, Bring it to me, because I can take it away. I can make you clean.

Speaker 1 35:18

And he does.

Speaker 35:23

Because Jesus doesn't just stretch out his hand to the leper, Jesus stretches his hands out on the cross. And on the cross, Jesus bears the weight of our shame upon his own shoulders. This is actually how he makes us clean. The Bible tells us that he exchanges his perfect, shameless life in exchange for our shameful ones. Church, if you want to receive cleaning uh cleansing today, Jesus is simply inviting you to come, to lay it at his feet, and allow him to touch you and make you clean.

Speaker 1 36:24

The way that this story ends is a little bit odd.

Speaker 36:30

Jesus has this powerful cleansing moment. And then verse 43, it says that Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning. Again, the NIV kind of tampers the language here. It's like Jesus threw him out and he basically rebuked him. See that you don't tell this to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer sacrifices that Moses commanded for the cleansing as a testimony to them. Listen to how the man responds. Instead, he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news, and as a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places, yet the people still came to him from everywhere. I don't think it's an accident that Mark anchors these two stories together. One in which Jesus stops to listen to the Father, right next to a man who is healed, and then does the exact opposite thing that Jesus has, and it stalls out Jesus' momentum. One of the things that Mark is inviting us to understand, once again, is that movement not anchored into the mover is mutiny. This man was joyful, this man was sincere, this man was passionate, but he wasn't obedient. Some of us are going to have moments where Jesus does a powerful and potent work in our life, but we're being called even in our passion to submit ourselves to Him, to trust Him, because He ultimately knows what is best. Jesus was not trying to suppress the good news when he cautioned this man, but he was directing it for the sake of both the man and the mission. You see, the man was risking the very integration that he so longed for. Yes, Jesus had cleansed him, but in order for that cleansing to be verified and him to be welcomed to community, he had to go through the process of going to the priest. And he compromised that by just running around instead of going and obeying Jesus. And Jesus knew, Jesus knew that he would lose the freedom to freely go to the towns that he was called to. Today we're being invited to anchor ourselves to the mover of the movement. And we're being invited to come and bring the weight of our shame to Him. As we end, I want to invite us to take just a moment here to consider how we respond to this. If you have a journal, a phone, something that you can write this down, feel free to write this down. Take some time, think about it, process it out as a family or with a friend. Ask the Spirit to just guide your heart on how you are to act in light of this word. Number one, where is your life currently anchored? Simple. Where is your life currently anchored? And what is one small step that you can take this week to re-anchor or anchor it in Jesus? Second question What area of shame is still shaping how you see yourself? And what would it look like to bring that into the cleansing touch of Jesus today or this week?