Category: reMARKable

Re:Verse passage – Mark 4:1-20 (day five) When we read Jesus’ parables, we are often tempted to immediately try to resolve the tension. What I think helps us “listen/hear” better, is to first ask questions. With whom or with what do I identify most?  What may the parable be saying about me and a needed change in action or perspective?  How does this parable reveal what I think about God?

Jesus is the “Master Teacher” who uses parables to not only capture our imaginations but more deeply connect to and capture our hearts. It is at this second level that Jesus’ parables and the entire scriptures are meant to operate Hebrews 4:12.

Parables aren’t just stories that entertain; they’re agents of change. Jesus’s parables define and direct us in a way that gives us ownership in the journey. – Pierce Taylor Hibbs

Re:Verse passage – Mark 4:1-20 (day four)

David Brooks, the famous Christian journalist, once said, “Rather than asking someone what they believe, ask them how they came to believe the way that they do.” This causes the other person to speak about themselves in a narrative. They might tell you about their upbringing, or formative experiences they had. The conversation often goes better when we frame something in a narrative, because narratives are the primary way that we see and experience the world.

We may not have an audible voice narrating our life like in the movies, but we often view ourselves as characters in a story that’s playing out in real time. This isn’t just a quirk of the human imagination, it’s how God designed for us to think and experience the world. We are part of a larger cosmic story of God’s work in the universe, a story that is revealed to us in Scripture and one in which we are certainly not the main character.

Jesus reflects this cosmic narrative by speaking to his followers in narrative. As Bryan said, Jesus is the master storyteller. My hope is that we will place ourselves in the stories we read in Mark and respond to Christ accordingly. This week, we find ourselves as seed among soil. Where are you in relation to the sower? What kind of soil do you find yourself in? What must happen in your life for the seed to take root and bear fruit? How does your place in this story reflect your place in the larger story of God’s work in the world?

Re:Verse passage – Mark 4:1-20 (day three)

“Do you not understand this parable?”

This question Jesus asked his disciples reveals that not only did they not grasp the points of his parable, they also didn’t know how to listen to him. The things being taught (for instance: the way you live will influence your receptivity to wisdom) are important. But information transfer alone will never make a person fully aware of what is happening in real time. For that, you need a story, because only in a story can you begin to see how your experiences present you with opportunity or questions or temptation or new ways of living. While it might be true to say, “the concerns of this life will keep you from what’s really important,” that doesn’t intersect your life. Jesus said it better: “What feels like a weed growing out of control in you?”

Re:Verse passage – Mark 4:1-20 (day two)  In a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy;  and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away. v. 16-17 

Did you make New Years resolutions? How’s that working for you? Sorry, too soon? There is something about turning that calendar over that makes us re-think priorities, and to try and get a handle on areas of our life that we have either neglected or that have gone off the tracks. This is a good and cathartic practice, so why do they so often fail? Everything is well and good in theory, but we rarely weigh how entrenched we have become in our routines and patterns of life. To alter any area can take a seismic shift in our focus. Not impossible, but often more challenging to execute than anticipated. This is the kind of reaction Jesus warned against in this parable. We can see the benefits of fully trusting and following, but we have not counted the cost. It will take a seismic shift in our hearts that can only come from the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Don’t be discouraged, the Lord is in the soul tectonic shifting business. Trust him to plant those seeds in good soil, and let him work in your routines.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:31-35 (day seven)

This passage is one of the greatest proofs of the resurrection of Jesus found in Scripture. Help me connect these dots:

“Your brothers are outside looking for You.” Mark 3:32

“For not even His brothers were believing in Him.” John 7:5

“James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” James 1:1

How does James (presumed to be James the brother of Jesus) go from thinking his brother is insane to calling himself a “servant” to his “Lord Jesus.” Extra-biblical sources tell us that James goes on to become the leader of the church in Jerusalem and eventually a martyr for Christ. How is this possible if just a few weeks before Jesus died, James didn’t believe? Something extraordinary must have happened to prove to James that Jesus is Lord.

Answer: The Resurrection! If Jesus hadn’t returned from the dead, do you really think his non-believeing brother would go to his death claiming that Christ is risen?!

He is risen indeed!

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:31-35 (day six)

“…no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.” -Jesus, John 3:5

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. It’s no wonder then the same must be true of us if we are to be his brothers and sisters. It’s always been faith over flesh. Faith in Jesus begets spiritual rebirth, hardwired with a new spiritual DNA. Soon enough, we can’t help but look like family.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:31-35 (day five)

“For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother.”  When Jesus proclaimed “the Kingdom of God is at hand” in Mark chapter 1, He was announcing that life would look and feel different as a citizen of this new kingdom. Being a citizen of God’s Kingdom would affect everything. Priorities, practices, prejudices, and now relationships were being redefined by love, service, grace, and obedience. Life in God’s Kingdom was/is larger and longer that people recognize.  It is fitting that Jesus reshapes they way we should think and feel about other believers too- family.  Vulnerability, forgiveness, sacrifice, accountability, and obedience all are distinguishing marks of the members in the “family of God”.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:31-35 (day four)

There will always be someone ‘outside’…someone close to you, related to you, or thrown together with you through circumstances…that will be set on distracting or diverting you from obedience to what God wants you to do.  They may make a frontal assault or present as a caring companion offering a common sense approach.  Even more insidious an enemy though is sin.

Sin masquerades as a harmless distraction that can do us no harm.  (Picture trying to run a race when you are entangled in a fishing net.)  In fact, we must recognize sin as a subtle and pervasive enemy that seeks to rob us of spiritual power and victory.  If we call our sin a weakness or bad habit instead of confronting it for what it really is, we can never have victory.  Hebrews 12:1 warns us to throw off the sin that so easily entangles us.  Thank God there is no sin that entangles us that God’s grace does not abound more!  (Romans 5:20)

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:31-35 (day three)

“Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Did Jesus need the intimacy of family – mother, brother, sister, father? To feel uncomfortable with that question is to recognize that we have deemed need a weakness, a frailty, a liability. But is it? Consider the kind of person for whom fellowship is not an integral part of that person’s being. That person would most certainly not be God, for God is revealed in the scriptures as an eternal fellowship of three persons. Moreover, the only way God is presented to us in the Bible is as a creator seeking fellowship with the created. To distill a “pure” form of God who exists apart from his desire to live with human beings is to suggest a God who doesn’t actually exist. We need fellowship’s intimacy not because we’re weak, but because we bear God’s image.