FBC Fellowship Devotional – June 6, 2021

Well, good evening. Thank you for taking the time out of your fellowship, however, you're doing that this evening and tuning in to this time together.

We can take a few minutes and look at the Word and meditate on it, and I hope it'll be a maybe an impetus for some discussion or at least for some time of prayer.

But you know, here we are. If there was any question as to whether or not summer had arrived, we've got that answer this weekend, haven't we?

In fact, it's Friday afternoon when I'm recording this and it's probably upper 80s outside.

If you hear a little background noise, don't don't mind it. It's just the cars passing by.

I've got the windows open, so haven't succumbed to turning on the air in the church yet.

Although, as you know, if you were in service this morning, we did have the air on Sunday morning.

So anyway, that is a prophetic statement since I'm saying that on Friday afternoon. But anyway, summertime.

Summertime is, you know, it's a time for a change of pace for many.

You know, we take things a little easier, a little slower, just for no other reason because of the heat.

Now, I realize that's not universally true, but generally that's kind of the way it is.

Remember the old maybe you don't, if you don't, that's fine. I've never seen the opera Porgy and Bess.

It was a Gershwin thing. But I have heard one of the songs from that opera entitled

Summertime. You remember that? It goes, Summertime and the livin' is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.

Obviously, this must have been set in the South. So up here in the Upper Midwest, we would say, and the corn is high.

And it will be within a few weeks. But anyway, summertime. The livin' is easy.

It's a time of change of pace. And that's really fine because there does need to be a little bit of a rhythm in life.

And, you know, summertime is usually sometime during the summer. We take a vacation, get away from things, seek to get some refreshment, rejuvenation.

Change of pace, it's good. Summertime is good for a change of pace. But whatever the change of pace, whether you get one or not during the summer, whatever the change of pace, there are,

I think, three elements that should move us to remain unchanged.

Three things I just want to share with you. And I want to share them with you from the life of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus.

And, you know, on Sunday evenings we're going through the Gospel of Mark. And these few verses

I want to read are from the end of Mark, chapter 1, near the end of Mark 1. And Jesus has just had a very effective ministry at the end of a

Sabbath, healing a bunch of people after Sabbath sunset and so forth.

So he's obviously up late in the night dealing with people because, remember, Sabbath ends at sunset.

So then in verse 32, it says that evening when the sun had set they brought to him all who were sick and those were demon -possessed.

And it says the whole city was gathered together to the door and Jesus healed many who were sick, various diseases, and cast out many demons.

And he did not allow the demons to speak. So he had a very busy evening. But the next verse tells us that something didn't remain, something didn't change.

There was a priority in his life that remained unchanged and whatever the season of life, whatever the season of the year, whatever the rhythm we're involved in, this is one of those things.

He was moved, Jesus was, by prayer. He made that a priority. So verse 35 says,

Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, he went out and departed to a solitary place and there he prayed.

So here's Jesus, the God -man who sees prayer, that is, that communion with the

Father. He sees that as important, as vital. He needs this time of communion.

He needs this time to intercede in behalf of his disciples, his followers, and those who are coming out to hear him and so forth.

And because Jesus saw the importance of prayer and made that a priority, he altered his schedule because of it.

You would normally, we would normally think, you know, you have a very busy evening, you're up late into the evening, then you could sleep in, in the morning.

And understandably so. And I'm not suggesting for a minute that there's anything wrong with that. But Jesus' understanding of the importance of prayer and the priority that it was in his life caused him to alter his schedule.

He got up while it was still dark outside, a great while before the dawn of day and therefore he was willing to sacrifice some, some luxuries for the sake of praying.

The luxury of sleep, the comfort that comes when you're, when you're lying down sound asleep, sleeping in, you know.

Well, he sacrificed that. And the result of being moved by the importance of prayer, he prayed.

He prayed. So I, I think about that in my own life. And I was reading the other morning in the

Gospel of Luke, another passage where Jesus, the night before Jesus chose his 12 disciples.

Luke tells us, and other Gospel writers do too as well, but Luke tells us that Jesus spent the whole night in prayer before he named his 12, the 12 who would be with him.

And I read that and what struck me was how rare it has been in my life that I've spent a night in prayer.

To be sure, there have been many nights where, you know, I've had a hard time falling asleep and I prayed myself to sleep.

And maybe even nights like that, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and toss and turn and pray and the tossing and turning.

But, but the deliberate conscious saying no to, no to bedtime so that I could have prayer time.

That, that, there, there have been few and far between occasions for that in my own life.

And that's a, that's somewhat of a rebuke. Again, this isn't something I'm suggesting to, to guilt us into saying, oh, well, you know,

I should probably spend one day a week and one night a week just doing nothing but praying all night. No, I'm not suggesting that at all.

I'm, I'm suggesting that Jesus saw prayer as such a priority and such a, an important facet of his life and ministry that he was willing to sacrifice a night of sleep, sleeping in in the morning after a busy evening in order to pray.

And that challenge to me is, is not, do I spend nights all night in prayer and do

I get up at three o 'clock in the morning to pray as some kind of a requirement for godliness.

But, here's the question, do I really consider it important, vital?

Do I make it a priority? Am I moved by prayer? Well, another thing that moved

Jesus and remained unchanged regardless of the season of of the year and the end of ministry is that he was moved by his mission.

He's moved by his mission. So in verses 36 to 39, it says, Jesus is out praying in this, in this solitary place and it says in verse 36,

Simon and those who were with him searched for Jesus. And when they found him, they said to him, everyone is looking for you.

But Jesus said to them, let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also because for this purpose

I have come forth. And he was preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee and casting out demons.

Notice, he's moved by his mission and his mission is founded upon a purpose.

He said, I have come forth to preach, to preach the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom that it has arrived.

He's, his mission is founded upon his purpose. So I asked myself, what is, what is my purpose?

What is your purpose? Why did you come forth?

What has God given you to do with your life? Well, whatever that is, that, that purpose established the mission and it, that purpose was followed by a plan.

He said, let us go to the next towns. Now what that means is that he left some towns and he didn't go to other towns and you know,

I think, I think sometimes we don't, that doesn't hit us, it doesn't strike us.

For example, Jesus never ministered directly in China or to the

Native Americans in, in the United States, what is now the United States, North America.

He never did that. He, he, he chose the towns that he was going into but he said, I've got to go to these towns.

I've come to preach. Let's go into these other towns. But that also meant that he left many good things undone.

A lot of good things. There were people who wanted his attention. They wanted to, they wanted him to heal them or heal a loved one.

They wanted to hear him preach or teach. That, and, and there were a lot of things that Jesus left undone in that city as he moved from there to go to another city.

And eventually he left that city and went on to another city. There are a lot of things that, good things, worthwhile things that he left undone because he had a plan and the plan was informed by his purpose.

This constituted his mission and all of this you, you sense in verse 39, he carried out with a passion.

Verse 39 says he was preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee. He didn't, he didn't view this as, you know, could take it or leave it as a, he didn't, he wasn't lax in this approach at all.

He was earnest about this. He was, he put his entire self into the work.

I'm reminded of the verse we looked at last Wednesday night in our Bible study time on on the subject of God's providence and providence at work.

And that is that whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. And the challenge there is what is your calling?

What is the work that God has given you to do? And we're to do that with a sense of passion or earnestness, putting our whole self into it.

So Jesus was moved by prayer. He was moved by his mission.

And then thirdly, he was moved by need. He was moved by need.

Now what I'm suggesting is that there should be a measure of parallelism in our own personal lives.

You know, these are some things that should remain unchanged regardless of the season of life or the season of the year.

It's summertime when the living is easy, a catfish are jumping and we'd like to spend the whole day out fishing, catching catfish or something like that.

But we need to be moved by prayer and we need to be moved by our mission and those things will affect what we do in the course of a day.

But Jesus was also moved by need. So even though even though his mission is directing his steps, his purpose is affecting his plan and he's carrying out that plan with a passion, he is not insensitive to the needs of others.

This comes out very clearly in verse 41 when this leper comes to Jesus imploring him, kneeling down to him and saying to him, if you are willing you can make me clean.

Now you can be so absorbed in your tasks, in your mission that you lose sight of the place that people have in that mission, in that task, in that work.

And I've known people like that. They don't have any time for you because they're too zoned in on their task.

They're so task oriented. They have no room for people. Well, Jesus is clearly task oriented.

He's got a job to do. He knows what it is and he set out to do it. But that doesn't mean he's ignoring the needs of those around him.

Here comes a leper, says to him, if you're willing you can make me clean. And he doesn't say to him, I don't have time for you. Go away.

I've got a mission to be on. I've got to go someplace else. He doesn't do that. Instead, what it says is that he was moved with compassion.

He stretched out his hand and touched him, which was itself, you know, a taboo thing. You don't touch a leper.

He touched him and he said to him, I am willing. Be cleansed.

And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

So note the order though here in this sequence of the passage. The order is that the meeting of the need was always within the framework of his mission.

In other words, were there needs back in the city that he left? Yes. But if he just stayed in that one place all the time and just kept meeting needs in that one place all the time, then his mission would go by the wayside.

No, he's on track with his mission. And in the carrying out of his mission, he is attentive to the needs of those around him.

So the meeting of the need that Jesus carries out here was always within the framework of his mission.

I would also have you note that this aspect of need, it adds the human dimension and some drama to our mission.

So, you know, for example, you may have the kind of job or responsibility, career that is very much focused on things.

You know, you may have to sit behind a computer screen all day and work on that thing all day. And with that being your mission, your calling with that career, you could easily lose the human dimension and the drama of life and your mission.

And where that drama comes in and where that human dimension comes in is when you look around and you get tuned in on the needs of the people around you.

It may be the needs of the people who are requiring the product that you're working on.

Do you think about that as you're working your tasks? But it may be a co -worker, it may be someone in your family, it may be someone in your church family.

But whatever the case, whatever the case, as you are carrying out your mission in life, don't lose sight of the needs around you.

So these three key elements in Jesus' ministry at this stage of his ministry, they remained unchanged.

And I'm suggesting here in the summertime, don't allow the easy living, the change of pace, whatever you want to call it, in these warmer months where we want to get some recreation, want to do other things and all that as well and good.

Don't allow those good things to sidetrack us from the essential things.

Let's remain unchanged in praying, in our mission, and in looking at the needs of those around us.

All right, well, I hope that will be a blessing and an encouragement to you. But now as you have some time,

I trust you'll share some needs with one another and spend some time in prayer.

And of course, remember the needs of our church family as you think about things.

And I trust that this morning in the Lord's Day service, I was able to share some updates on Jodi and we keep praying for her.

And also, if you think of it, pray for Scott Williquitt, our missionary of the week this week and the

School of Church Planters that begins tomorrow and is going through Wednesday.

That would be a very productive time because think about this, think about the lives impacted by that school of church planting, pretty significant when you stop and think about it like that.

Well, anyway, spend some time in prayer, enjoy your fellowship together. And I trust that this evening will truly be enriching and encouraging to you in your walk with Christ and you're getting to know one another.

So, I'll close with a brief word of prayer and then you also encourage you to pray together as well.

So, Father, I pray that we would be challenged by the life of Christ in this phase of his life, in this little snapshot of his life, where he stayed on target.

He was moved by prayer, by his mission and by the needs of those around him. I may that encourage us to live likewise, we pray in Jesus name.

Amen. All right. Well, you have a good evening. God bless you the remainder of your time together tonight.