Sip #1 – Read Chapter 6 of Mark in the HCSB translation as Round 5 rolls on
Sip #2 – Read my big takeaway from the day
Sip #3 – Add comments/thoughts/questions in the Comments Box (bottom of page). NOT REQUIRED
Sip #4 – Re-read any parts of Chapter 6 that impacted you
Sip #5 – Come back tomorrow as we move to Mark, Chapter 7

When I was out completing my 22-mile training run today (yes, you read that right… my last long training run before my 3-week taper before the Fargo Marathon), I thought about some lyrics that fit well with yesterday’s post. So, if you read “All Aboard the Crazy Train and Be on the Alert” before 5pm today, there is a tag-on to the ending that I highly recommend.  

Sometimes things like that happen when I’m out running. I’ve actually written a song or two while out running. Unfortunately, I don’t carry a note pad with me and whatever I wrote disappeared by the time I made it back home. hahaha

Let’s move on to Mark, Chapter 6, and take a good  look at verses 8-13…

“He instructed them to take nothing for the road except a walking stick: no bread, no traveling bag, no money in their belts. They were to wear sandals, but not put on an extra shirt. Then He said to them, ‘Whenever you enter a house, stay there until…

…you leave that place. If any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, when you leave there, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. … So they went out and preached that people should repent. And they were driving out many demons, anointing many sick people with olive oil, and healing them…”

It’s in John 20:21 where we hear Jesus say, “…as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” What is he sending them out to do?

• Preach
• Heal
• Free people

Other than saving the world, pretty similar to what the Father sent Jesus to do.

When you read this amazing section of scripture, there are two things that jump out at me (that is not printed on the page)…

• They needed a COMPLETE reliance on God (it was the obvious key ingredient to this recipe)
• There would be times when they should NOT push Jesus on people… and move on to NEW opportunities

If that is what the Disciples were to do back then… that is what we are to do now.

Why are those two things so hard for us to do sometimes? 

Full dependence on God is pretty difficult in a world that preaches SELF-sufficiency and SELF-reliance. While there is a difference between being self-dependent (basically, self-reliant) and self-sufficient, both contradict a full reliance on the Lord.

Self-sufficiency implies that one is able to sustain their life and fulfill their needs on their own without others’ input. Wrong. Self-reliance is more of a belief that one can manage and face challenges on their own. Also, wrong. Both of them cancel out God’s plan for us to seek Him for ALL of our needs, desires, and challenges.

The second unwritten point is also intriguing to me. Jesus basically tells His Disciples… “Listen, there will be a time when you need to stop pushing people so hard, and graciously move on to the next relationship I have planned for you.” I have seen (more often than I care to count) many well-intentioned Christ-followers push way too hard. It’s almost as if they feel like no one else will ever come along to help water the seeds.

It never works.

I have horror stories of when Pam and I were dating back in the day. Her parents attended a fundamental, King James Bible-only denomination at the time, and I would go with them to their weekly Sunday night service. I hated it, because they were the kind of congregation that was pushing people way too hard. I was a visitor and I never felt very welcome. And, the lengths they would go to make sure that hell was front and center in nearly every service was just not very pleasant to endure.

They pushed “Jesus” VERY hard, and, as a person who didn’t know what I believed back then, trust me… it only pushed me farther away. Yes, I was young and dumb then, but still… the brand of “Jesus” they were pushing was not a brand I wished to be a part of.

When Jesus sent out His Disciples, the brand of “Jesus” that he was expecting was not the brand that I experienced at Pam’s church back in the mid-80s. The brand Jesus was expecting was the real deal… a message of living hope in a dark world. The same kind of hope that the Apostle Paul would write about in Acts 20:24 years later… “…But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God.”

That’s a draw… not a push.

Bottom line… I just want to leave us all with a question tonight.

Which one of these two unwritten instructions do you find yourself struggling with the most in our culture?

Is it COMPLETE reliance on God?

Or, is it pushing a certain brand of Jesus on people too hard, fast, and inaccurately?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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