Jeffrey Heine: If you have
Joel Brooks: a Bible, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 1. We're gonna part from Genesis just for a bit. We would be at the death of Sarah, and I I might actually save that for Easter. We'll see. I'm not joking.
It's a great text for Easter. But we're gonna look at Mark 1 this morning, and while you're turning there, I wanna take this opportunity to thank all of you who either emailed me or texted me, a link to that recent study that came out from Dartmouth about how the peak of unhappiness happens when you turn 47. And, and so, a lot of you decided that you really were concerned for me, I guess, and you sent me this this study because I'm 4 months away from that. And, the research, it came from from Dartmouth, and it studied a 132 different countries to measure the relationship between well-being and age, and the results were completely consistent across the board, regardless of education or wealth or the country that you lived in. When you reached 47.2 years old, you were at the peak of unhappiness.
And this is the age when apparently you're loaded down with responsibilities. You've been burning it hard at the job for for 20 years or so. You've got teenagers, your body begins to break down, but this time it won't recover. And so all of those things hit. And, apparently that is when you are, you're most unhappy.
And once again, thank you. Thank you for your concern. The many, many of you who sent that to me. But I want you to know this, that, I'm 46 years old and I've never had more joy in my life. I've never been having more fun.
And, and okay. I'm 4 months away. So maybe the bottom drops out, you know, right when you get to 47. But I don't think as Christians we have to worry about getting older. Alright?
As you get older, you actually find that more and more of your identity is rooted in Jesus. And you don't really let, other things sway you as much. You also, over a lifetime of having listened to God and reading His word and listening to His Spirit, you've, you've grown accustomed to hearing His still small voice. And, there's an incredible joy in that. And, that's actually what I want to talk about this morning.
I want us to look at what it means to live a Spirit led life and to listen to the still small voice of God. And, really, I could have chosen just about any place in the New Testament. But I've chosen Mark chapter 1 for us to look at. So Mark 1, beginning in verse 29. And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.
Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up and the fever left her and she began to serve them. That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons.
And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. And rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed. And he went out to a desolate place and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him and they found him and said to him, everyone is looking for you. And he said to them, let's go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also.
For that is why I came out And he went throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. This is the word of the Lord. You will pray with me. Father, we are gathered here together because we have the incredible privilege of calling you father because you have made us your children, through the death and the resurrection of your son, Jesus. And you have given us, in your grace, your Spirit, who fills us, empowers us, gives us new life, leads us.
And, Lord, we ask that your spirit will be present here in this room and do all those things. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
So how do you decide what you say yes to and what you say no to in life? Every day, you're confronted with many decisions that you have to make. Decisions that will affect your time, your energy, your relationships with other people, your relationship with God. Whether you carry out God's mission or not. And, and, and what guides you to make these decisions?
How do you decide that this is a yes? This is a no. For instance, in a typical week, in just a typical week, you might have to decide things like this. Should you go on the women's retreat or not? That's in 2 or 3 weeks from now.
You have to sign up at some point. Do you sign up or do you not? Or if you don't sign up for that, would your time be better spent maybe catching up on some housework or spending time with the kids? A couple from the church asks you over for dinner. Do you go?
Someone asks you to join them to go on a run or a bike ride. Do you do it? The kids want to sign up for another soccer season. Do you once again sign up for all the chaos in that? Your spouse asks if you have time to go for a walk.
An old friend calls you up and asks if you have time to meet them for coffee. A friend just had a baby at the hospital. Do you go and visit them? You need to respond to a wedding invitation that's been sitting on your refrigerator for a month now. You've got to RSVP at some point.
Do you go or not? You've just been invited to a fundraising dinner for a local charity. The deadline for the mission trip to Turkey is this week. Do you sign up for it or not? You're behind on your Bible reading plan.
Do you get up earlier to catch up or you're feeling sick? Do you sleep in to maybe help heal your body? A colleague asks you if you can fill out a reference form for them. You know you haven't talked to your mom in over 2 weeks. Do you give her a call or not?
You have 5,000 unread emails. Do you start going through that? A colleague asked if you want to go to lunch with him. Your boss asked you if you want to go to lunch with him. You you haven't met your new neighbors yet.
Is it time for you to go over there and introduce yourself and perhaps bring them a horse a housewarming gift? If they have a horse, entirely appropriate. And then, of course, on on top of all of those things, all of these normal, you have all these normal commitments. You've got your normal commitments to your job or to your school, to your church, to exercise, to to cook meals, to try and keep kids alive. You know, you have all of these things as well.
You can't say yes to all of them. And you realize, every time you say yes to one thing, you're actually saying no to something else. So what guides you as to what you say yes to and what you say no to? You can try to say yes to everything. And some of us do try.
But, but how is it that we actually decide? And, and if you feel like you carry around with you kinda this low grade guilt at all times, because you know that you're disappointing somebody. You know that you could be doing more and you are not. So, is your current plan to to just try and say as yes to as many things as you possibly can until you burn out. If that's your plan to just, you know, I'm just gonna keep on saying yes.
Because these are all good things. And I'm just gonna keep saying yes until my body breaks. How is that turning out for you? Because I bet, you're at the point of utter exhaustion. Let me ask you this question.
When's the last time you have said a guilt free no to someone? Someone asks if you wanna come over to dinner and you say, no. And, you just walk away. And you are guilt free. I mean, Lauren says I'm I've gotten too good at that.
And she goes, at least tell them why, you know, we're doing something. I just say, no. And now, we we move on. But when's the last time that you have said no convictionally? Usually we never say no.
What we always do is we say, not right now. I'd love to, maybe later, maybe next week, and that's just called kicking the can. You know, you kick the can down the road. And what I found that many of us do, we just kick a can and kick a can, and soon we have 100 of cans. And we're just constantly kicking these cans down the road, and we're utterly exhausted, because we can't say any guilt free no's.
We can only say, maybe later. Let's try later. And we just keep kicking all these cans and we're burning ourselves out and we're not actually even doing anything. It's hard to even keep up with all the the decisions that we have postponed. Is that the life that God has called you to live?
What's the solution? Is it maybe a couple more hours in the day? Is that the solution? I mean, we say it all the time. I just need, a couple more hours to get things done.
We know that wouldn't help us at all. We would just fill up those extra 2 hours and we would exhaust ourselves because the problem isn't the amount of time we have. The problem is our hearts. Something is wrong with the engine of our hearts that we feel like we have to keep saying yes. We have to keep doing this and doing this and doing this and doing this.
It's a hard issue. And when we say things like, there's just not enough time in the day for me to do it all. What we're essentially doing is blaming God. Blaming God for us spinning our wheels and kicking the cans, because God's the one who created the day. And, we're like, God, you know, I know you decided on 24, but 20 6 would've been a better idea, God.
But the problem isn't in the amount of time we have in a day. The problem is, is we don't listen to God in in deciding what we do with our day. Are we listening to God to decide how we spend those 24 hours of every day? The result of us living at the pace that we're doing, is burnout. It's us living in this constant state of guilt and exhaustion.
And it's also us seeing so little fruit for our efforts. I mean, most of us are working hard, so hard, and yet we have so little to show for it. I mean, things that matter. I mean, yeah. There's there's some kind of productivity happening, but but things that actually deeply matter, there's so little fruit for the amount of effort we are putting into it.
Is that what a spirit filled, spirit led life looks like? I don't believe so. Let's look at the text that we just read. In this story, Jesus has just finished an exhausting day of ministry. He healed Simon's mother-in-law.
He cast out some demons. He healed a bunch of people in the city of all their infirmities. And then we read that the next morning, Jesus rose up very early while it was still dark. He snuck out so he could be alone and he could pray. And apparently, he prayed for a long time because everybody was out looking for him.
And this was the pattern in Jesus' life. He would often go away by Himself to pray. Often praying through the night. And when you have those long periods of prayer, that means you're listening. Those are listening prayers, because when you go just, you know, to to ask God for things, well that could take a few minutes.
If you go to declare things to God, to praise him for things, well that could take a little bit of time. But if you're gonna pray through the night, you're listening. You're listening to what God would have for you, what he would have for you to do. You're asking to be filled with his presence. And this is what Jesus is doing in this time.
Jesus, as he's out there, the the disciples, they're being bombarded with all these questions. As to where is Jesus? The disciples got up. They don't know where Jesus is. And they're slightly embarrassed.
Because Jesus, by this time, after He heals so many people, He's become popular. He's become in demand. Now crowds were already beginning to form. And they're asking, where's Jesus? You know, perhaps somebody came and they're like, you know, my back hurts.
I was wondering if Jesus could heal my back. Or a father comes and he says, I was here yesterday, but I couldn't bring my son. My son's with me. Can Jesus heal my son? Where's Jesus?
And the disciples don't even know. And these crowds are coming and I'm sure they're trying to keep everybody calm. Jesus is coming back any moment. He'll be here any moment to take care of your needs. John, Andrew, go find Jesus.
And finally, they go and find him. And the the first thing out of their mouth is, where were you? Jesus goes, let's go someplace else. Let's go someplace else. People were waiting for him.
People got up there early to go and be with him, and Jesus, after spending the evening with his father in prayer says, let's go someplace else. So Jesus leaves all of these people. He could have stayed. He could have done more work. He could have done more good work.
It was good work that was there waiting for him. But, instead, he did what God was calling him to do. And, apparently, during that time of prayer, his father had said, it's time for you to move on. And so he obeyed his father. It's the key to Jesus's life.
Jesus listened to what his father wanted him to do and he did it. No more. No less. Regardless of the expectations that were on him. In John chapter 4, we actually read that Jesus says his food, his food was to accomplish the will of his father.
Meaning that that's how his soul found life and nourishment, was in obeying what his father had asked him to do. No more, no less. And we looked at this several years ago when we went through the gospel of John. But in chapter 17, Jesus says something that absolutely blew my mind. He prays this in John 17:4.
It's the high priestly prayer, and he says these words. He says, Father, I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. I glorified you here on earth having accomplished the work you gave me to do. So as Jesus's life and ministry on earth is coming to a close here, he says in absolute terms that he accomplished everything the father wanted him to do. He lived a perfect obedient life and did it all that his father asked.
Yet, look at all Jesus did not do. Jesus never left Palestine. He never went to the neighboring communities around there. So he never, essentially, went on mission trips, if you will. He didn't even go to all of Palestine.
He, He really only went to a handful of towns. Jesus also did not heal everybody. Sometimes, he skipped by entire times, leaving everyone there in their sickness and their oppression. And then he went to the next town. Do you remember the story?
It's a famous story. It's in John 5, of Jesus healing that crippled man who was at the pool of Bethesda. He was waiting for the waters to be stirred so he could be put in there. In John chapter 5, we read about this. And, we we read that there was a multitude of invalids.
Says there was a multitude of the blind and the lame and the paralyzed were all there. And here Jesus, he goes and he heals that one man who had been crippled for 38 years. And then he left. And, we rightly, we study the miracle and we praise God for the miracle of what happened. But, I want you to actually really picture that scene.
Jesus comes up and there are many people in desperate need who are hurting. And Jesus quietly walks through all of them. And he goes to 1 man. Quietly heals that one man. And then he makes his way back out through all of them.
He left the vast multitude of people in their hurt and in their pain, and he only healed one. And can I just say that as a pastor, this completely rubs me the wrong way? I mean, I I get almost angry when when I when I visualize this scene, and I I see what happens. Because that's not what I would do. It's perhaps not what you would do either.
You would You'd feel called to do something, wouldn't you? I mean, you go there and you see all that massive hurt in front of you, you know. And and as a pastor, I jump in. I'm like, okay. What can we organize?
Or what are the doctors I could call to bring in here? What nonprofit can I start to to help deal with these needs? What programs can I get going? I've got to find something to where I could at least try to help most of the people, and at least feel guilty for not helping some people. But Jesus, he doesn't do that.
I feel like I have to try to help everybody because I have a savior complex. And here's the irony. Jesus is the savior of the world and he didn't have a savior complex. He didn't feel like he had to help everyone. What he had to do was listen to his father.
What he had to was be led by his the spirit. And that meant going to that one and to that one only. And then, he left. He said a guilt free no to all the others. He was accomplishing the will of his Father.
Because he fully entrusted himself to the Spirit of God and was guided by the Spirit of God, he knew what he was to do. And there were times that this led him to work and to work hard all day to the point of exhaustion. So much so that he could go and he could get in a boat and fall asleep in the fiercest of storms. And it was hard to even rouse him. Because he had worked so hard doing the Lord's work.
Then there were other times he would walk past entire towns or just go to 1. And the key was this. He listened to the spirit of God, leading him, guiding him. His goal was obedience, faithfulness. Nothing more, nothing less.
This is how Jesus was able to accomplish all that his father wanted him to do. He didn't accomplish everything. He accomplished what he was called to do. It's what spirit led light living looks like. Are you being led by the spirit?
There's a lot more examples we could go through. So let me just give you one more of Jesus healing somebody. Do you remember the story of Jesus healing Jarius' daughter, as she raises her from the dead? You find the story in Luke chapter 8. If you remember, there's a man named Jarius.
He comes and he falls at Jesus' feet. And he says, will you please come and heal my daughter? And Jesus says, okay. And so He walks with Jarius. He's going to Jarius' house and there's, the crowds are just packed all around Him.
Jesus stops at one point and he says, somebody touched me. Like, what do you mean? Everybody's touching you. He goes, no, somebody touched me. I felt power go out from me.
And he pauses and he looking around and he calls out a woman. She comes forward. It's a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years. And Jesus, you know, says, your faith has made you well. You know, they talk a bit and it's all wonderful.
But can you imagine from the Father's point of view? I mean, time is of the essence. His daughter's dying and so he goes to Jesus as his last option, his only hope. Can you come? Can you hurry?
My daughter's dying. And Jesus says, yes. And hope fills his heart. And they're walking towards his house. And then Jesus just stops.
He goes, hey before we go any further, somebody touched me. What do you mean everybody's touching you? No, no, somebody touched me. I need to deal with this. And then He goes, and it's not even an urgent issue.
I mean, His daughter's dying. This woman, well, she's been sick for 12 years. She wasn't gonna die today. She wasn't gonna die tomorrow. And yet, here's Jesus just taking time to shoot the breeze with her.
And then, his worst fears are realized, as Jesus is talking to this woman, delaying getting to his house. Somebody comes up to Jarius and says, don't bother the teacher anymore. Your daughter died. Can you imagine how that father felt in that moment? I mean, certainly incredibly grieving over the loss of his daughter.
But, I guarantee you, there was anger. Anger that Jesus didn't come. That Jesus didn't come to what was urgent over here. Instead, He just stopped to take care of this non urgent need and shoot the breeze with this woman. I'm sure there was anger, but Jesus just looks at Jarius and He says, don't worry.
And He goes, and He raises Jarius's daughter from the dead. I mean, the whole story, it's remarkable on so many levels, but one of the things that jumps out to me when I read this is Jesus was not a slave to the urgent. He was not a slave to the urgent. He he seemed to have a different timetable, a a different agenda than everyone else around him. He's not gonna let others dictate to Him what He should or He shouldn't be doing.
Instead, He's so in tune listening to His Father, He knows what He should do. And it's not always the urgent. What mattered to Jesus was faithfulness. He's been guided by the Spirit, and the end result of this was resurrection power. God received more glory.
Jarius received more joy, all because Jesus did not respond to the urgent, but instead was guided by God's Spirit. We could look at many, many more texts. Jesus did the same in raising Lazarus. He hears Lazarus, his friend, is sick and he just sits there for 2 days and lets Lazarus die. Instead of looking all these other examples, let's just pull these threads in because I want this so much for our church.
I want every person in this room to live into what we're seeing here, and that's this. God has not called you to just scramble through life, always reacting to things. Reacting to the latest email. Reacting to the latest text. Rely reacting to the latest sports calendar that's out there.
Whatever it is. Just just reacting to that. He has not called you to be a slave to the urgent at the expense of neglecting the greater work that God is calling you to do. God has called you to joyful obedience. He's called you to a life in which you were led by his spirit.
So how do we do this? What does that look like? Well, first off, we go to the scriptures. We go to the word of God. The Bible is God's word.
It's where he teaches us about himself. It's where he teaches us how we are to live. And so we go there, but but we also realize that the Bible's only gonna give us this information in general terms, not specifically. So the Bible's gonna tell us things like you need to be generous to the poor, but it's not gonna tell you who exactly you should give to. The Bible's gonna tell you that you need to share the gospel.
You need to share your faith. But it's not gonna tell you whether you do that here or whether you go overseas. The Bible's gonna tell you that if you get married, you can't marry an unbeliever. But it's not gonna tell you, you know, to to Mary John, you know, or Mary Mary or whoever it is. The Bible doesn't give you those specifics there.
It speaks in these general terms to know specifically how you apply what you're finding in the Bible. Well, you've gotta be Spirit led. Spirit led. Any of y'all watch the show Chopped? Alright.
I I've never watched it, but my children love to play it. And so, they, whenever they have people over, they get all you know, all the different ingredients of all these different foods. And they they put it all around. Everybody has the same ingredients and then it's essentially a competition. Who can make the best dish and then I'm the judge of this.
Alright. That's kind of what we see going on here. Metaphors break down, but bear with me. Alright. We go to God's word.
We go to the Bible. And we all have the same ingredients. There's no new ingredients we pull in. We are given the ingredients. We don't get to come up with our own.
We we know things that we are to be loving, patient, kind. We know that we're to be generous to the poor. We know that we are to be sexually pure. We know all of these things. We're given the same ingredients.
How do we put it together? This is when the spirit of God tells you how. I've given you my word. I've given you my ingredients. Now, now let me blow into this and tell you how you put all this together.
And in each one of our lives, we're putting it together in different ways and we're making something beautiful. But we need to rely on God's spirit to teach us what to do. And not just go at this thing blindly. So the spirit of God, he's taking the word of God and he's telling you exactly what that looks like in your life, how you apply that. So that's what it means to be Spirit led.
You know, one of the most common mistakes, that I have seen Christians do, is we're all the time asking for the power of God, but we're not often asking to be led by God. And so we go through our day and we're, you know, we're asking, God, give me strength for this. God, give me strength for this. But then we actually don't ask God, did you want me to do this? And we need to be focusing, oh, so much of our energy on not being Spirit filled and empowered, but by being Spirit led, because of, we know Jesus is leading us here through his spirit.
We know that Jesus will be empowering us through his spirit to do the task he's led us to. And so we seek Jesus and we seek his spirit as what are you guiding me to do? Jesus says in John 16 that his spirit guides us. His spirit speaks to us. His spirit declares to us things.
In Galatians 5, we read that we are led by the spirit. We live by the spirit. We walk by the spirit. We, do go step by step with the Spirit. We are keeping in step with the Spirit.
And if you were to put all of those things together, what you realize is that the Holy Spirit, he speaks to us and he guides us. He's always telling us what we should do. And I love that language of keeping in step with the spirit, because that implies a relationship. We don't go in front of the spirit. We don't lag behind the spirit, but we are walking side by side in conversation, always listening as we go through life.
Imagine, if you will, what your life would look like, If instead of merely reacting, reacting to everything demanding your attention, You instead rose up early to pray. Pray like Jesus did, and in your prayer time you said, Father God, this day is yours. You created all 24 hours of it, and you have a purpose for it. You have a mission. You have a purpose for it, and you've given me all the time I need to accomplish the work you're giving me.
Lord, would you tell me what you would have me to do? Holy Spirit, this day will you guide me. Spirit, would you lead me. I I have things on my calendar, but my only agenda is obedience and faithfulness to you. And whatever you've called me to do, the answer is yes.
I can already tell you it's yes. And then would you take time to listen? Listen. Don't just pray. Father God, send me your spirit to guide me and to give me wisdom.
Amen. And leave. I mean, that's like going to the doctor and, you know, no, you tell the doctors these things so that the doctor will then tell you what is wrong, tell you how you treat this. You listen to the doctor. You don't just complain to the doctor.
Tell the doctor your needs. Are you listening to God in your prayers? If you ask for wisdom, do you stop and listen for wisdom? Speak. Or do you just kinda pray for wisdom and say amen and go?
Our prayers should look more like this, Father, what is it that you would have for me today? Pause. Wait. Listen. Father, is there anyone that you would have maybe generous to today?
Pause. Listen. Father, is there anything I need to talk to my children about today? Is there anything I need to do in my parenting? Stop.
Wait. Listen. What is it that you would have for me today? The Spirit of God speaks to us. We need to take time in his presence to linger and to allow him to speak.
If you want to live a life that is full of joy and full of purpose, begin praying like this, and you are gonna be amazed at what the Spirit of God begins leading you to do. And now granted, you might find yourself doing some strange things. Alright. You might find yourself, you know, praying for the checkout lady at Walmart. If that bothers you, don't go shopping at Walmart with my wife.
Alright. Because that might happen. You might find yourself just deeply impressed to call up a friend you've not talked to in 3 years, but you just feel that God wants me to call this person. And you call them up out of the blue. It might lead you to say, yes to going to a nursing home and speak to 90 year old women.
Alright? Like I had to do a few weeks ago. It's an adventure, as you're listening to the Spirit of God telling you what you should do. But you will have such joy and you will see such fruit, as you have these Spirit filled yes's and no's in your life. Church, I have thought a whole lot about what I would like to see happen in our church this year, and I've kept coming back to this.
As your pastor, it's tempting for me to, you know, say things like, you know, this coming year, I'd like to see more people in Bible studies. I'd like to see more people in the mission field, you know. I'd like to see giving go up more. You know, I could set all of these goals or these metrics, but what I would actually like is for us to be a people who just listen to what God would have for our lives. Speak, Lord.
Your servants are listening. Could you imagine the impact this church could have just this week, if every one of us, tomorrow morning, got up and we said, Spirit of God, what would you have for me today? I have things on the calendar, but I have no other agenda than to obey you. What would you have for me today? Pray with me.
Lord Jesus, we do pray that through your Spirit, you would speak, for we are listening. Lord, you have called us into an exciting life of listening and obeying your spirit. I feel like a lot of my life I spend just spinning my wheels, because I'm doing things you haven't called me to do, but yet I'm expecting you to bless. So God, I pray that for me and for every person here, we would take time to hold our word, your word before you and say, Spirit, breathe life in this. Tell me what I'm to do with this.
And we would listen and we would obey. Lord, I pray that you would lead this church, guide this church, empower this church through your spirit. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.