Hello friends, welcome back. Am I turned on? I
think I
have a battery problem. Can you hear me? There
we go. Okay. How many of you just heard Max
Locato? And you think I'm going to follow Max
Locato. I mean really. Thank you for coming
back in here though at 4:00. Wasn't he
absolutely fabulous? I mean just a great gift.
Let's start with prayer and see if the Spirit
will bless us too. Father God we come into
your presence asking you to bind Satan from
this very room. For the next few minutes Father
all we ask is a sense of your Spirit and your
presence. Give me the gift of teaching. Give
us all the gift of hearing your Spirit and
experiencing you in new and fresh ways. Father
thank you for what you're doing in us. Thank
you for what you're doing among us. Father
we pray as we end the day that you would take
all that we have experienced at Summit and
you would work through us. That you would work
not just because of Summit but because
of who you are. Thank you Father. Thank you for
letting us call you Father. We truly love
you in Jesus name. Amen. Yesterday we began and
we talked about paradox and the fact that
often times when conflict comes into our life
or we're experiencing what we often think
of as contradictions that if we would stick
with it and we would look and ask the questions
differently not why is this happening to me
where we become the center of the universe
but rather we ask the question what is God
doing here? What is this that I'm experiencing
in the story of God? And see our lives as a
part of a journey that all of a sudden the
contradictions become completely different.
That the Spirit comes in and engages in a
way and they are no longer contradictions they
are paradox. They are substance to the
story of God. I gave you several examples in my
own life of where I couldn't figure
out why. Why is this happening to me? What is
going on here? And sometimes it takes time
but the encouragement was stick in there and
hang in there and begin to ask the questions
differently because you will see God at work. I
promise today to give you some hints on
how we do that. How do you sustain yourself in
the contradictions? In the paradoxes of
relationship how do we live through it and in
it and how does he work among us so that
we can see him? Open your Bibles to Mark 5 if
you would because this is where we are
going to really look at a story today and
really see how well just kind of learn some
things about how we might be able to sustain
ourselves and turn contradictions into paradoxes
of our life. I am going to begin reading in
verse 21. When Jesus had crossed again the
boat to the other side a great crowd gathered
around him and he was by the sea and then
one of the leaders of the synagogue named
Jairus came and when he saw him fell at his
feet and begged him repeatedly my daughter is
at the point of death come and lay your
hands on her so she may be made well and live.
So he went with him and a large crowd followed
him and passed in on him and now there was a
woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage
for 12 years. She had endured much under many
physicians and she had spent all she had and
she was no better but rather grew worse. She
had heard about Jesus and came up behind him
in the crowd and touched his cloak for she said
if I but touch his clothes I will be
made well. Immediately her hemorrhage stopped
and she felt in her body that she was healed
of her disease. Immediately aware that the
power had gone from him Jesus turned around
in the crowd and said who touched my clothes?
And his disciples said to him you see the
crowd pressing in on you how can you say who
touched me? He looked all around to see who
had done it but the woman knowing what had
happened to her came in fear and trembling
fell down before him and told him the whole
truth. He said to her daughter your faith
has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of
your disease. There are three things that
I'm going to give you today that I think we
pull out of this story and only three that
I think turn contradictions into paradox. The
first one is listen for what's going on
around you and claim it. Notice what it says.
It says before she ever did anything she said
if I if I but touch his clothes. The
contradiction in your life has to be named. It
has to be
claimed and it has to be that way in order for
you to get involved and engaged in the
pursuit of paradox. In the pursuit of seeing
what God is doing. I asked you yesterday to
write down paradoxes in your life and conflicts
and contradictions in your life and I think
so many times we live with them for so long
that we just take them for granted that we're
going to just have to just live with them. That
we don't really take them intentionally
and ask God to work in us and among us and
through us in these contradictions. We just
whatever it is it is. I was with a woman this
morning whose husband is dying and she said
it is what it is. I said oh no but it's not.
What is God doing here even at this point?
What are you seeing? What are you experiencing?
In our grief so many of the times what we
want to do is we want to put it underneath and
we want to deny it because what happens
is when we claim it it's painful. Let me remind
you that when you lose someone in the depths
of your pain, your pain is directly related to
the depth of your love. If you hadn't of
loved them you wouldn't hurt. And it's the same
way with our father. He works through
those contradictions to allow us to grow in our
love for him. We must claim that contradiction
but we must have vision for what's going to
happen. If I but touch his clothes I can be
made well. It's significant what she says there.
Notice what she says. What is it she
wants? Talk to me. She wants to be made well.
Okay. Hang on that hook right there. Okay.
Notice what happens then when she gets down and
what does she say immediately after she
had touched his garment. What happens? What
does she say? What's happened there? She's
freed from her suffering. Is that what your
translation says? The bleeding had stopped
and she felt her body freed from suffering.
Okay. Mine says in verse 29, immediately her
hemorrhage stopped and she felt in her body
that she was healed of her disease. What I
want you to see is that's not paradox. That's
not what she set out to do. And that's the
second thing that I want you to do is that I
want you to reach beyond your boundaries
to encounter Jesus not his stuff. Friends so
many, many times in the journey when we're
really asking God to come a part of our journey
and we're asking to see him work. Satan comes
in and he gives us a little bit of what we want.
And we think that's it. He's good at
it. He's good at tantalizing us with stuff. She
got in a little piece. Yes her hemorrhage
had stopped but that's not what she wanted. She
wanted to be made well. It was more than
physical healing that she set out for. Where in
your life are you settling for less than
what you really know in your gut that you need?
The story of the prodigal son, I think
it's interesting. Both sons it was about stuff.
What they really wanted was the father's stuff.
They didn't want his presence. They didn't want
to be with their father. The younger
son said give me what will be mine and he took
off and he left for the far country.
But the same was true of the older son, the
obedient son who had done everything right.
He had all the stuff. He didn't even want to go
into the party and party with the father.
It wasn't the presence of the father. It was
the stuff of the father. Where in our lives
are we settling for God's stuff? And we're
denying ourself of God's presence. Paradox
is only seen when we get into the presence of
God and we don't let Satan tantalize us
with God's stuff. How do we do that? I think we
can only do that with solitude, silence,
scripture, prayer, fasting, meditation,
worship, celebration, discernment. All those classical
spiritual disciplines that become a part of our
lives that open us up to see what God
is doing allow us to separate God's stuff from
God's presence. You're going to have
to break out of your boundaries just like this
woman did and get out and reach out to
do something beyond your boundaries. This woman
had terrific social boundaries. One,
she was unclean. She had been completely
separated for 12 years because she had been hemorrhaging.
And we know as a matter of culture that she was
not allowed to be in a crowd because anything
she touched then would also become unclean
because of her hemorrhage. Think about it
for just a minute. Think as women in churches
of Christ, the boundary that you have. But
think about the boundary that this woman had
and what she did. I've never had anything
this tough. This woman was not only put out of
the community, put out by herself because
of her physical condition. She knew that if she
went in and simply touched his garment,
she could be made well. But what she had to do
was when she went in and she touched his
garment, if anybody had recognized who she was,
she would have been stoned and killed.
If that's not enough, by touching him, he
became unclean and he would have been put
out too. I don't know about you, but I don't
think I would have had the courage to do it.
To have had a cognitive, rational reasoning
encounter and a belief in myself that if I
go do that, I can be made well. She must have
known he was God. Who else could heal? There
was something special about this guy. There was
something miraculous about him. He had
the power to do the miraculous in her life. And
by touching him, she had the power to
make him unclean. Talk about a boundary. And
yet, she did it. What kind of boundaries are
you being called to step out and reach beyond?
It makes all of ours look pretty simple, doesn't
it? And yet, what is it? Is it to get out and
have someone of a different culture that
knows really truly what it means to fast? Yeah,
you may have to get out and get uncomfortable
in order to deny yourself and reach out and get
the presence of God. Is it to get into
another kind of Bible study group where you're
going to learn something different about God
instead of hearing the same thing over and over
and over again? Is it going to be to
step out? You fill in the blank. What is it?
Second thing we have to do to have paradox
in our life is to reach beyond the boundaries
to encounter Jesus, not just his stuff. And
the third thing is that don't settle for less
than the Spirit has promised. The Spirit promised
her in the very beginning to make her well.
Notice this kind of conversation and how she
got caught up in that. Immediately her
hemorrhage stopped and she felt in her body
that she
had been healed of her disease and immediately
aware the power had gone from him. Can you
see it? Here she is, knowing she's touched him,
waiting to see what happens. And Jesus
looks startled. Put yourself in that scene for
just a minute. What's going to be going
through her mind? He starts looking around to
see who's done it. And she's like, just
go on. Please don't stop. Please don't let him
know who I am. This is going to be a mess.
Just go quietly. Jesus, please go. Immediately
aware that the power had gone from him, Jesus
turned around in the crowd and said, who
touched my clothes? Now the clueless disciples, they
have no idea what's going on. They have no
sense of what's happening. The disciples said,
didn't you see the crowd pressing in on you?
How can you say? And notice what the woman
is doing. She just lets this all happen. She's
quiet. She doesn't exert herself there. And
how many times do we want to get in and jump
into the fray, defend ourselves? No, she's
just quiet. You see the crowd pressing in on
you. How can you say who touched me? He
looked all around to see who had done it. But
the woman, knowing what had happened to
her, came in fear. Yeah, think about it. Came
in fear and trembling. No doubt. Fell down
before him. Told him the whole truth. What do
you think she said? The whole truth, nothing
but the truth, so help me God. And yet it has a
whole new meaning in this story, doesn't
it? After all, isn't that what we really want?
Is to be completely understood. The clueless
disciples are standing here arguing with him
about, you're not going to do this, you're
not going to figure this out. And she quietly
comes up and says, here I am. Have you ever
told the whole truth to God? Have you ever had
him listen to the whole truth? Again,
my friends, it doesn't come in church services.
It comes in desert meetings. It comes in silent
retreats. I've tried it. I can tell you. You
get out there in a silent retreat and
you get out there by yourself and there's
nothing there. You have no books. You have
no cell phones. You have no people around you
to affirm you. You've committed the
time whether it be three days, a week, maybe
it's just a day. But it's just going to
be you and God and it's going to be telling God
the whole truth. And you finally get to
your destination and you're beginning to settle
down and get quiet. And what happens
is all the yuck of your life just comes
bubbling up. And it's awful. Because you know he's
got to have the whole stuff if he's going to
make you well. Oh yeah, he can heal you
of that disease. That's not a problem. But if
you're going to live, and he can handle
that little contradiction, but if you're going
to live in the presence of the Father,
you're going to have to deal with the whole
truth. And all the Yuck comes. And what has
to happen is just like a cleansing. You begin
to just let it go and pass over it. And you
begin to experience his presence. And you begin
to experience that rich feeling. Just
like Max just talked about with a woman where
he says, neither do I condemn you. Let it
go Rhonda. Forgive yourself. I took care of it
on Calvary. I would rather have died than
have you worry about that. And friends, truly,
that's the only way it will happen. In our
busyness is where Satan majors. In our noise,
in our hurriedness, it's got to come in that
silence and let it pass. Because that's when
you fall in love. Think about it. For those
of you that are in this room that have fallen
in love with somebody, you know it's only
after you have gone and you have spent time
alone with each other. Oh yeah, you date and
you date in couples. But it's when you've been
alone it happens. I'm going to close
today by giving you four other steps from an
old saint patron of the church out of the
11th century. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, there
was a mantra that he worked under and
I give it to you hopefully so that it can be
helpful to your journey as well. He says
there are four ideas that we have to go through
or four stages that we have to go through
in learning to give our whole self to God. The
first stage is when we are loving our
self for self's sake. Now that's pretty easy to
do. You know how that works. Anybody
that's had a child knows how that works. We
love ourselves for our own sake. Everything
revolves around us. I have a four-year-old
grandson. I think he's the most precious
thing in the entire world. But Weston's world
pretty much is about Weston. I mean it's really
about Weston. He loves Miss Nika's tractors
like I told you yesterday, but it's really
about Weston. Loving self for self's sake. I'm
not going to spend much time on that.
You know what that is. The second step is
loving God for self's sake. That's loving
God's stuff without loving God's presence.
That's loving the church without loving God.
That's loving God's people without spending
much time with God. That's loving God's plan
without giving God your time and your presence.
It's telling God part of the story, but
not the whole story. Loving God for self's sake
is I'll make God what I want God to
be. I'll use God when I need God. God is my
tool in the shed. It's being healed of
the disease, but not being made well. It's
living with the contradictions. Yes, it's
living with the contradictions. Not abandoning
it, but it's not being made well.
Third stage, and I think this is where most of
us live today, is loving God, excuse me,
is loving self for God's sake. You know the
people that have moved out of loving God for
self's sake and have begun loving self for
God's sake. It's seeing yourself in God's
plan. It's seeing yourself as a part of God's
story, but it's still questioning. It's
still waiting. It's still in the discernment
stage. Bernard of Clairvaux would say that
it is loving God partially. And the last stage,
as you can imagine, is loving God for God's
sake. Total sacrifice, total giving of oneself.
It's the sensing of the presence that moves
us out of the contradictions into the substance
of God's story and saying, here am I, send
me. It's not enduring the journey, it's loving
the journey. It's not enduring God's
people and tolerating God's people and just
staying in the church because you think you
need to be there. It's loving God in spite of
the church and seeing God work in the church
and in your life. I appreciate you coming. I
appreciate you being here. I have loved
being here. I appreciate Abilene Christian
inviting me to be a part of the summit this
year. Hasn't it been absolutely wonderful? It's
just been a really good, great gift.
Go with God. Blessings on your journey.