Digging in Deeper: Mark 10:31

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“But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Play to win. That’s the mantra – spoken or unspoken – of pretty much every sports team ever. If you’re going to play, you might as well put forth the effort to win. Otherwise, why bother? But just what exactly does it mean to win? Well, it means you beat everyone else. When all of your opponents are defeated and you are the only ones left standing, you have won. My Kansas City Chiefs played to win all last season until they got to the Super Bowl. Then they played to…whatever else it was they were doing…and got absolutely decimated by Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Always Tom Brady… In any event, we did not win. This is just how life works. Well, that’s not quite true. It’s just how life works here, but not in the kingdom of God. There winning takes on an entirely different look.

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Digging in Deeper: Mark 10:28-30

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“Peter began to tell him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ ‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus said, ‘there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more, now at this time – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions – and eternal life in the age to come.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There is a plague in our nation. It passes easily from person to person. It is no respecter of politics or religion. It cares not about skin color or socioeconomic status. It goes after both the very young and the very old. We don’t have any natural protections against it and can only keep ourselves safe by monumental feats of effort. This is made easier when we are surrounded by people who are similarly committed to evading its effects, but even that doesn’t offer perfect coverage. What am I talking about? Well, it’s not COVID. I’m talking about the disease of “whataboutism.” When Jesus told the disciples how hard it was for rich people to follow Him, they all got hit with a bout of whataboutism. Let’s talk about this together.

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Live Like It’s True

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Have you ever had someone be really unkind to you and then expect you to listen to what they had to say? I suspect you weren’t quite as interested at that point as they wanted you to be. There’s a lesson here when it comes to sharing our faith. As we continue in our series, Tell Someone, instead of turning to tips and tricks for effective evangelism, we’re taking a pause to talk about something we have to have in place before we start doing it (and I’m not talking about prayer). What is this thing? Read on to find out.

Live Like It’s True

In a headline that grabbed not a little attention a couple of weeks ago, the Gallup polling organization released a survey on religious participation in the United States. They found that for the first time since the organization began tracking this particular bit of data in 1937, church membership had fallen below 50% of the population. In other words, for the first time…perhaps in our entire history…less than half of the country reports being a member of a church. The problem runs deeper than just that, though. These folks who are leaving behind their church membership are overwhelmingly not just leaving that behind, they are abandoning the Christian faith entirely.

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Morning Musing: Mark 10:26-27

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“They were even more astonished, saying to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Looking at them, Jesus said, ‘With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the more memorable illustrations I remember from by days in youth group was when we were all given a coconut and told to figure out how to break it open. We all got pretty creative. I think my group went outside and smashed it on the ground for all we were worth. We made some dents, but didn’t ever get much more than that. It wasn’t until the leaders gave us a little prompting that we finally realized the trick. We needed to ask for help. It was not something we were going to be able to do on our own. Once we asked for help, our leaders gave us a hammer, and we were set. The task was a fairly easy one to accomplish, but it wasn’t going to be able to happen until we got the help we needed. The whole point was that this is how salvation works. The task of salvation is a fairly easy one for us to accomplish…but not on our own. We take this kind of thing as a matter of course in the church, but there was a time this was pretty big news. This morning we’re going to look at one of those times.

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