When we are called to go, we are not always guaranteed comfort.
Three years ago, the summer before my senior year in high school, I was sitting aorund with nothing to do on a summer day, when I got a call from my friend Andy. Since I was bored out of my mind, I was happy to hear that he wanted to get a group of guys together to go to Kansas City that day. We had wanted to go to a random baseball park for a long time, and at that point, it just so happened that this day was going to work out.
There was one obstacle looming in the way, however. That was convincing my mom to let me go. So when I asked my mom, I may have neglected to tell her that we didn't have a place to stay once we got there. In fact, part of the adventure was that we were going to find a random place to stay. It's called couch surfing. People offer up their houses online and let you stay on their couch for free, rather than you paying for a hotel.
As we drove to Kansas City, we dialed over and over the different phone numbers of people we found living in the Kansas City area until we got to a person who would let us stay with her. Sounds safe, right? Well, in the end we had a great time at the baseball game, and ended up staying with a hippied out woman who had a 1984 gold Mercedes which was powered by veggie oil. We made it out with a good story to tell.
When Jesus sent out his disciples in Mark 6 he told them to go in groups of two, and to pack light. It probably would not have been the most comfortable outing, but they went with the authority that Jesus had given them, and they went with obedience to him. We are not always called to be comfortable when Jesus calls us, but as disciples, we are still called to go and proclaim his message.
How does Jesus send us out? With authority!
Mark 6:6-7 (NIV) says, "Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits."
Bob Utley, in his commentary titled The Gospel According to Peter: Mark and I andII Peter says it this way. "Say this command that Jesus sends out the discipleswith may not reflect a universal charge. Ithink what Jesus is getting at here, as he sends out his disciples, is a specific charge to show his authority throughout their region. It's a short term mission. Although the sending appears to be short term, the power and authority with which the disciples are sent out with is undeniable. Jesus'authority would ahve been delegated directly to his disciples as he sent them out and would manifest in their actions on their journey. Jesus sent his disciples out with authority."
This April, I had a chance to take another trip to Kansas City. This time, however, I did not have to ask my mother's permission, as I was now asophomore in college. She would have been happy toknow that I wasn't going with the intention of couch surfing. This time, actually I was going to Kansas City to visit this church known as the International House of Prayer. As far as I knew, this was achurch movement devoted to praying 24 hours a day. And it was.
There is a prayer room where prayer and signing response is led for 18 hours a day. So that leaves 6 out of 24 hours. That was the part that I did not expect. During those other 6 hours, the church moved to a location in a different part of Kansas City where they hold 6-hour-long awakening services about 4 nights a week. It was intense! What I did not expect to see were the types of manifestations of spiritual authority that happened at this awakening service. People were being slain in the Spirit, and people were speaking in tongues, and there were physical healings occurring during this service.
One of these healings included a kid being healed from a wheelchair he had been in for the past 2 months. I later saw the same kid sprinting around the room. The way I have been raised, I havebeen conditionedto believe in the healing power of the Lord, but I have just not been a part of that type of church. So it caused me to think a lot. To be honest, I was taken back, because of the fact that I have never been at a more charismatic gathering before. But here in Mark 6 I read that Jesus sent his disciples out in authority to do healing.
We should be confident as we go out in Jesus' name.
Now, I am not here to say that all spiritual authority manifests in charismatic acts such as the ones I saw at the International House of Prayer. However, the encounter that I had with that spiritual power got me thinking. How does the authority and power of Jesus Christ manifest itself in our lives? The answer is that it manifests itself in the way that Jesus wants it to.
Essentially, the charge I get from this particular verse is that if Jesus lives within us, then we should be confident as we go out. As we go out and encounter God's creation, let us act confidently in the authority that Christ has placed over us, and be open to his supernatural acts, if he so wills for that to happen withinus. God is ready to work in a number of different ways in our lives.
So we are sent with authority, and we should act confidently in that. However, to live in this confidence, we must first be obedient.
We must be obedient to Jesus'instructions.
I want to move back again to the text as Jesus instructs his disciples before they go out. Mark 6:8-9 (NIV) says that Jesus instructs them to, "Take nothing for the journey except a staff-- no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic."
So Jesus' charge to the disciples as they went out is that he is calling the disciples to dependence on God, and thetrust that he will provide what they need to live as they are going. They could take a staff, which would have made it a slightly harder task for robbers and wild animals to accost them as they encountered them. He also said that they could take only the clothes on their backs. We catch this statement in Mark 6:8 (NIV), "Wearsandals but not an extra tunic."
It has been suggested that the extra tunic may have been used as something to sleep in while traveling about thier region. It would have provided an extra measure of security against the elements. But if the disciples were to go, they needed to be obediient to Jesus in his instructions as they left, and they needed to trust him for their needs while on the road.
I have been blessed my wholeentire life to be a part of a church where people truly embrace this ideaof living on faith for God. I see people who have sacrificed their finances bygiving above and beyond their normal tithing. I have seen volunteers spend countless hours pouring into the youth ministry and the children'sministry in support ofsummer trips andVacation Bible School. I haveseen men who go out of their way to extend a helping hand to women in need, who are notcapable of fixing things around their house.
When these men and women of Lakeside were called, I am not sure that they were totally prepared right away, but regardless, they responded to the call in obedience. I have constantly seen the faith that comes with just embracing the call of God to go out, no matter if it be a big or a small task. As a church body, let's feed off the witnessthat surround us. God is calling each and every one of us to service in his kingdom. I see it alive and well here at Lakeside, and I am greatly encouraged by that.
It is not so much about the size of the task, but it is about the obedience to that task to which we are called. There is no way that we can proclaim the message of our Lord unless we are first obedient to him. As we are sent out in service and obedience, we witness to the glory of God, and maginify his presence to those who need to know him.
As much as we wish that obedience led to the smoothest ride possible, we all know that there are bumps in the road when Jesus calls us. How then should we deal with these bumps in the road?
We must protect ourselves from those who are not receptive to our message.
InMark 6:10-11 (NIV) Jesus continues his instructions to his disciples by saying, "Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."
In this text Jesus is giving instruction to his disciples about how to care for themselves while they are out on their mission. At the front, Jesus encourages his disciples to accept hospitality. This is confirmed in his saying, "Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town." As much as the disciples needed to accept hospitality,it was highly unlikely that they would receive hospitality everywhere they went.
In a Jewish culture, the idea of ordinary men bgeing sent out with authority to drive out demons would have been preposterous and blasphemous. However, since Jesus was the source of authority, the disciples could have confidence in that, and that confidence in turn could give them the resolve to move on from inhospitable scenarios. By shaking the dust off their feet as they left unwelcoming places, the disciples were protecting themselves from bitterness toward those neglecting their message. This would allow them to remain confident as they continually proclaimed their message as they went out.
The first semester of my freshman year of college, I was invited by my rommate to go to Arkansas with him. My roommate had a girlfriend at the time who attended Harding University in Searcy, Arknasas, and he really liked her, but needed to split the gas bill with someone so he could see her. So I went with him. It was a seven hour drive into the night, and by the time we got there it was almost curfew hour for the girls at the school, so he didn't get to see her all that long.
The first night, we stayed in a random dorm room with a guy I had an obscure connection to, but the second night we had to find ourselves a new place. As we searched aoround on our poor college budgets, we finally finagled a deal with the manager of the Country Haven Inn for 20 dollars for one night. It was low on class, but it was essentially the only option within our price range. While we were at the hotel, my roommate's girlfriend came over and said that she needed to talk to him. While they were out talking, she told him that she had determined that she wanted to break up with him. He came back into the room devastated, feeling no longer welcome in Searcy, Arknasas.
Now, my roommate would take the breakup pretty hard after we got back to Lincoln in the folowing weeks, but what he demonstrated through the situation was the resilience to move on right away. We woke up early the next morning, packed up, and left to go back to Lincoln.
When we are received inhospitably, our reaction can often be to blow up and forget our Christian witness. My roommate had put himself onthe line, and got rejected. So rather than cling to his old girlfriend, he left Arkansas letting her know, without acting in a classless manner, that he did not want much to do with her.
As we present the message of Christ, often we will encounter people who want to refute and or reject what we say. They may even try to hinder us and our message. Rather than clinging to useless arguments with these people, in our confidence and obedience to God we must split ourselves from those who hinder us, in the hope that we wiill proclaim his message to others who are more receptive.
Our acts of faith lived out in our lives are much more convincing than fruitless arguments. We are called to present our faith to others, but if they are rejecting us and hurting our message, we should make our stance clear, and then live in a way that shows what we believe, rather than continuing to argue.
We must have a faith of action.
We are sent in authority, and we are called to go out in confidence and obedience even as we experience bumps in the road. None of these things mean anything, however, if our faith is not a faith of action.
Mark 6:12-13 (NIV) continues, "They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them."
It would have been pointless for Jesus to inform his disciples to go out and proclaim the message if the disciples had decided to just stay where they were once they heard Jesus' instructions. Rather, we find that the disciples went out and tangibly did what Jesus told them to do. I know that when the disciples had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, they were compelled to go out in the authority of Christ and drive out demons and heal sick people. We are having a personal encounter with Jesus right now. The way in which we respond equals our witness, and is the determining factor in whether or not we are obedient to God.
This much is true: God will restore mankind to himself, and will complete the work that he has started. He is now giving us an opportunity to go and be a part of that work of redeeming the world in the name of Jesus. So do you wantto be a part of that? We are not always called to be comfortable when Jesus calls us, but we are still called to go and proclaim his message as his disciples.