So Loved // Holy Interruptions

So if you have your Bibles, let's open up to Mark chapter five.

Mark chapter five.

Bibles, iPhones, whatever you need to do.

This is a little bit of a longer passage with a couple movements in it, but you can track with me.

We'll have the verse on the screen behind.

This is Mark chapter 5, starting in verse 21.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea.

Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death.

Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be well and live.

And he went with him.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all she had, and was no better, but rather grew worse.

She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him, and the crowd untouched his garment.

For she said, If I touch even his garment, I will be made well.

And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, Who touched my garments?

And his disciples said to him, You see, the crowd is pressing around you, and yet you say, Who touched me?

And he looked around to see who had done it.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.

And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your disease.

While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, Your daughter is dead, why trouble the teacher any further?

But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not fear, only believe.

And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John, the brother of James.

They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.

And when he had entered, he said to them, Why are you making a commotion and weeping?

And they laughed at him.

But he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.

Taking her by the hand, he said to her, Talithakumi, which means, Little girl, I say to you, arise.

And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was twelve years of age.

And they were immediately overcome with amazement.

And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

So in this particular passage in Mark, the scene before what I just read, Jesus had traveled by boat across the Galilee.

He arrived in the place called the Garriscenes.

Immediately, a man, a demonized man, came out and met him, a man with an unclean spirit.

And Jesus was, he he took this moment as he stepped out of the boat, an unclean spirit came to him.

He delivered this man of an unclean spirit, cast these spirits out to a herd of pigs, and they all ran off a cliff.

I'm telling you, this is all in the Bible, okay?

You can't make this stuff up.

So you got about 2,000 pigs just run off a cliff, all right?

They're all floating in the sea, all right?

It's just, I don't even know how that happens.

But he delivered this man of demons, and um, but but then it says that he travels back across the Galilee to go somewhere else.

And so we pick up in this scene where he comes back from the Galilee, or from across the Galilee, from the Garosenes, crowds are all around him, and he was not paying attention at all to the energy or the commotion coming from the crowds.

But somehow, within this crowd, a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus comes up to him and brings to him an earnest prayer My daughter is sick.

And Jesus, within the context of the crowds pushing in all around him, somehow he catches, he's he's caught the attention of this ruler of the synagogue in this earnest prayer of a girl who is in need of prayer.

And so he takes this opportunity to change whatever wherever he was going to go to the ruler of the synagogue's house.

Now, on his way to this house, the crowds are still pushing around him, and another woman comes to him, and she knows that he has the power to heal, so she pulls on his garment.

And Jesus, knowing that uh that something had happened, he felt a draw on him.

Have you ever prayed for somebody?

Have you ever felt somebody drawing on you?

Like they could almost draw on the spirit with inside of you.

This is what Jesus felt.

He said, Somebody touched me.

And his disciples were so confused because, like, there's there's people touching you on every side.

He said, No, somebody touched me.

And this woman exposes herself.

She says, No, that was me.

I was the one who touched you.

And I and I believe I was healed.

My blood dried up the minute I touched you.

And so he then says to her, Go, your faith has made you well.

And so, so catch this, guys.

He comes from a moment with an individual delivering him demons.

He comes across the sea, wherever he was going, and there's interruption number one, which is a man who his daughter's sick.

And so Jesus somehow stops for this man and decides this is worth me paying attention to.

And he makes his way to go follow this man back to his house.

In the middle of him following back to his house, interruption number two comes, and a woman decides that she needs Jesus to touch her, and so she reaches out and touches her.

He reaches out and touches her.

She's healed on the spot.

As soon as she's healed, he goes back, and he's got to get back to interruption number one, which is Jairus' daughter.

And he goes back, and by this point, enough time had passed that somebody comes back and says, actually, she is no longer with us.

She passed away.

So don't bother the teacher anymore.

No, no need to spend your time on this.

And so Jesus pays no attention to what they said.

He says, No, I'm going anyways.

He shows up, he pulls with him Peter, James, and John to come with them, to be with them.

He shows up, there's more crowds, there's more commotion, there's more things going on.

And uh and he pushes all those things to the side.

He shows up to this house.

They all believe that reality would show them that she is dead, but he says, no, she is not dead, she's sleeping.

And in the most non-anxious way, he tells her to get up and she arises and she gets up.

She's awakened from the dead.

Now, why do we read all of these passages all at once?

Um you guys know that in the Gospels, most of the moments where Jesus interacts, most of the miraculous moments where Jesus is interacting with other people were not planned opportunities, they were holy interruptions.

Most of the things that we read about in the life of Jesus happened while he was on the way to somewhere else.

And somehow while he was on the way to wherever he was going, individuals would present themselves before him, and something in his heart was able to stop and to move towards them.

I read, there's just three instances within this whole passage here.

But there's plenty of other examples we can look at.

There's the paralytic that was lowered through the roof.

If somebody cut a hole in this roof, I'd just be plain upset because we just paid for this roof to be fixed, right?

Somebody just imagine somebody lowering through a roof while you're preaching.

There's the blind man who calls out to Jesus, Bartimaeus, that Jesus was able to heal.

There's the children, everywhere he went, there was, he would be speaking, he'd be in the synagogues, and the children would come up to them, up to him.

And somehow, while his disciples saw them as a distraction, he saw these as not just an interruption, but as a divine opportunity to be with the ones that God was present with.

Do you guys know that Jesus always takes time?

He knows he has a way of looking at what most of us would call interruptions and saying this is an opportunity for divine providence.

This is how Jesus ministers.

Now, he didn't do this with everybody, but he did this for some, all right?

He didn't do this for every single person, but he did this for some people, all right?

And just imagine this.

Jesus, the creator, the one who made it all.

He was the king, he was on a mission from the Father to live and to die and to rise again.

He only had three years to get it all done, all right?

He had the most important, arguably, the most important agenda or to-do list on the face of the earth.

Let me just ask, does anybody have a more important job than that?

No?

Okay.

And yet, somehow, the Son of God was highly interruptible.

How is the possible the one who came on mission with the Father to seek and to save the lost, somehow, the posture of his life and the content of his life was able to be rearranged in order to participate with what his father was doing every moment of the day, right?

But we see he didn't do this for everybody, he did this for some people.

So here's here's the thing: how did he know the difference?

Because uh most of us, and I know you guys are probably like me, from the moment that you wake up every day, we're contending with distractions from the moment we start our day, right?

Start to finish.

We wake up the moment we start our day, we have things coming at us from every particular level.

We have requests, we have demands, we have chirps, we have notifications, we have beeps, we have dings, we have dongles, we have I don't know, whatever.

We have a lot of things coming.

Uh and we're making strategic decisions from the moment you wake up, which emails you're going to respond to and which ones you're going to delete right away, right?

Which text messages you're going to respond to and which ones can wait for another day.

Which requests you're going to give yourself to, which are going to wait, which people matter, which people, it's not that they don't matter, but they can wait for another time.

We're making those decisions start to finish every day.

And we're conscious about that because we have to be, because we have things coming at us from every angle.

We have obligations to uphold, we have tasks that must be done, we have to rule out what's important and versus versus what's unimportant.

Is anybody with me on that?

This is kind of day-to-day life.

So we're constantly faced with this thing of what's the difference between a holy interruption and a distraction?

What's the difference between an interruption and a distraction?

See, I believe that Jesus knew the difference between what was an interruption and what was a distraction.

See, he stopped for some people, but then he rejected other situations as this is a distraction.

Well, he welcomed the needy, the hurting, the searching, and the hungry hearts.

We also know that he walked away from crowds.

He dismissed the commotion of the crowds.

And he would even walk away from crowds that wanted him to do miracles because they didn't actually, they weren't drawing on him out of hunger.

They were looking for entertainment and simply another magic trick.

For him, there were certain moments that were not worth giving himself to.

He considered a distraction.

Others were with the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.

They would set up theological traps for him and conversations and ask questions in such the right way to put him in an impossible way to respond.

And he knew how to see into their hearts and what they were doing.

And he didn't fall for it and he didn't give his time to it.

Why?

Because he knew that was not a holy interruption, that was a distraction that was keeping him from his mission.

So what would we say?

How do we know the difference between an interruption and a distraction?

Here's how I would say it an interruption is a momentary pause for a divine opportunity, and a distraction is a sideways diversion from God's mission.

Okay?

Interruption is a momentary pause for a divine opportunity.

A distraction is a sideways diversion from God's mission.

We are faced with this every day.

We're making decisions all day long.

What is God doing?

And how am I giving myself to what's God doing?

And so we have to understand the difference between interruptions and distractions.

Are you guys with me?

And so this is where the words kind of start to fall short, right?

Even the language of interruption, it falls short.

Because if you were to ask Jesus, he would likely never have referred to any of these events or people as interruptions.

They were each simply the next right step in staying in the flow of God's love.

He would have never referred to them as interruptions, even though we would read that into the text.

He saw them all as an opportunity.

This is the one that God has brought me.

And if I'm on mission with the Father, then whatever is on his agenda is now on my agenda.

Whatever's on his agenda is now my agenda because I don't live for myself.

I live for the mission of the King of the universe, right?

And that's why C.S.

Lewis he put it this way: he said, the great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's own or real life.

The truth is, of course, that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life.

The life is God, the life God is sending one day by day.

What if the things that we or the people that we consider interruptions oftentimes are not outside of what God's doing?

It's just they were outside of our own agenda for the day.

So if that's true, then we have to have a way to kind of be able to reset over the course of our days, or else we're just gonna plow through every day, missing the moments where God might be bringing those to us where He's wanting to do something great.

You guys with me?

So an interruption could be a neighbor who asks for help lifting something in their garage.

That might be actually an opportunity from God.

But a distraction could be someone in the church who wants you to listen, but actually they just want to be able to gossip to you.

That would be a distraction.

An interruption might be a coworker you notice that needs prayer or encouragement.

A distraction might be an acquaintance who wants to argue politics to no end.

Hello.

That could be a distraction.

But it's really the Spirit of God who helps us kind of look at every opportunity and say, God, is this an interruption from you or a distraction from the evil one?

This week I had an opportunity to go visit somebody in the hospital that is part of the church here, and you might say, like, yeah, that's what you do, you're a pastor, that's your job.

I'm like, okay, well, I can't, you know, like it's one of those things where there's so many opportunities that I have to even make uh, you know, I have to stop every time there's an opportunity and say, God, is this something you want me to do, or is this not for me right now, right?

Because if I go and I do this, I I I was notified uh of somebody I love here in the community that was in the hospital and given like within an hour's notice to go drive to South Denver to go do it.

And certainly when I heard about this, like everything in me was like, Man, I I need to go.

But I would face a really uh real situation like if I say yes to this, I'm saying no to my family tonight, right?

If I say yes to this, I'm saying no to my family.

So I stopped and said, God, is this from you?

Fortunately, uh most of the time when God wants to speak to me, he speaks through my wife, all right?

And so I went into the other room because I knew that they were gonna have to pay the price for this if I was gonna go, because it was gonna eat up the whole night.

So I went and said, Megan, here's what's going on.

Should I go?

She's like, you absolutely need to go do this, all right?

So I was wrestling, is this a distraction or is this from God?

And he spoke through my wife and said, No, this is what you are to go do tonight.

And that's how God speaks to us when we include him in the discernment process.

He shows us what's from him or what's maybe not in a particular situation.

Are you guys with me on that?

So we discern with God, but why is it that we that we sometimes resist the interruptions of our day?

Now, some of you guys are like me.

I like efficiency.

Any other lovers of efficiency in this room?

So some of you guys wake up, you create your list for the day, you know what you got going on today.

Um we often resist interruptions because we equate them with inefficiencies.

And we live in a culture obsessed with optimization schedules and productivity hacks.

I'm all about it.

All right.

I want to see how much can I get done today?

How much can I just push it to the limit and maximize every possible second of the day?

But oftentimes, what happens in our culture, we have to watch out because efficiency becomes an idol.

We can actually live our lives bowing down to the idol of efficiency versus the God who is ordering our days.

Okay?

So a research uh in 2019, a study in the Harvard Business Review found that 80% of professionals feel guilty when they're unproductive.

Some of you know what that feels like.

When you're not productive, you just feel this insane sense of like shame or guilt.

But how many of you know the Jesus life?

God didn't, Jesus didn't call us to be productive, he called us to be fruitful.

Not that productivity is wrong, there's nothing wrong with productivity, but fruitfulness is different than efficiency.

Love in general is incredibly inefficient, okay?

And you know this because just think about you know, the moments of love where you felt most loved in your life or when you've most loved.

And when Megan and I were dating, we didn't care how far we had to drive across town.

We'd drive like half an hour.

The amount of gas money that she spent to go visit me in Boulder.

I didn't even have a car at the time.

But the amount of gas money she spent, like we weren't calculating the amount it took and the amount of time it took.

Why?

Because love is incredibly inefficient.

Bob Goff said it like this aim to be stunningly inefficient in the way that you love.

There's something about love in itself that is not preferential, it is inefficient.

And this is why Jesus, whenever he went somewhere, there was a nature about him he was non-anxious, he was not in a hurry, and he was uncalculated in how much he was willing to give.

Why?

Because every opportunity for him was in line with the mission that God has had given to him.

And so if that's true, if that's true, that sometimes we resist the interruptions or the possibility for taking a moment of our day for the extra conversation or to walk across the street or to do something more for a person because we're worried about uh what is going to lack in the rest of our life.

Then we need to ask the questions am I moving too fast to become a person of great love?

Am I doing too much?

Do I schedule my days so tight that I'm virtually uninterruptible?

That I'm virtually uninterruptible because what Jesus shows us is a completely different kind of life.

Am I able to be interrupted in the course of my life?

Or am I designing my days around simply, this is what I need to feel good about myself?

All right.

So the idol of efficiency is the one thing we have to talk about, but the second thing is the fear of losing control.

And so many of us, if we're honest, we crave control over our schedules, our interactions, even our spiritual lives.

But surrendering to Jesus means surrendering to his interruptions.

And so Jesus, when he's inviting his disciples into these moments, it's oftentimes these messy, unpredictable, spirit led encounters.

Because again, Jesus had a deep sense of mission.

He said his mission was to come and seek and save the Lost, he didn't have a different mission.

He wasn't trying to grow a ministry.

He wasn't trying to grow a platform.

He let crowds walk away.

He was designing his days so clear around God, this is what you've given me to do.

And so he wasn't in fear of losing control because he knew what the Father had given to him.

And I guess the question for us, for you today, with whatever work that you've been given, are you clear of what the Father has given to you as your primary mission when you wake up each and every day?

Now, to be clear here, I'm not saying this is permission to get super flaky wherever you work or whatever you've been given to do, all right?

I'm not saying, you know, show up too late to work because you went to go minister to whatever, you know, guys on the street.

Like, listen, your job is, you know, honor your employers, right?

Honor the people that you work with, honor your commitments and your obligations.

But for most of us, so much of our life, we are, we do have the capacity to show up in the course of our days and even at work and to think of what are those extra moments, what are the things that I'm not just working for my boss, I'm working for the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.

Jesus is my real boss today.

So, God, you have put me in this work, not just to make money, but for your missional purposes on this earth.

Show me the moments I would otherwise miss and help me rearrange the way I think to see every person I'm interacting with as somebody that is a target of your love today.

Right?

God, show me how to build more margin in my day so that when I wake up in the morning, yes, this is the person who writes my paychecks, but you are the one who provides everything for my well-being.

And I'm giving myself to you.

You are the master, you are the Lord, you are the king.

And let that be clear in me from the moment that I wake up every day that I am the one living on your mission, not just me inviting you into my mission.

Amen.

So we the opportunity here, guys, is huge because to be people following Jesus into a life of love means that we get to be a people willing to be rearranged, willing to be interrupted so we can pray for the sick, so we can encourage the discouraged.

What does that mean?

I think number one, it means this starting each day with a prayer of openness.

And we'll do that in just a second.

But what do you start your days in the morning with a prayer, some historically in the church called a prayer of indifference?

Of God, make me indifferent to anything but your will today.

Make me indifferent to every attachment of my heart, every outcome that I am so clinging to, everything that I need to feel good about myself or to feel like I crushed it today, whatever those things are, we thank you for those things.

But God, let me be indifferent to anything but your will.

It's the prayer that Mary prayed.

May it be unto me according to your will.

What if you prayed every morning?

What if you woke up and that's the first thing when you centered your heart before Jesus and said, God, this is the day that you've made.

These are my plans, these are my obligations.

But show me where you are at work, even if it's different than what I have planned.

Give me eyes to see who you want me to see.

Give me the ability to know the difference between what is competing for my attention and what is actually a divine opportunity.

What if we yielded ourselves every morning and say, God, I am yours today.

I am yours today.

You gave everything for me.

Help me to know the ones that you're sending me to.

So we start our day with the prayer of openness, but two, we started reminding ourselves, what is the assignment that God has given me today?

Who are the people that I am serving?

Who are the people that I'm leading?

Who are the clients that God has given to me?

And they're there not just to provide a good or a service, they're there to extend grace and strength and to serve them well.

God, show me who you've given to me today.

Let me know the assignment that you have from me.

Everybody has been assigned work, good work.

It says in Ephesians that God prepared good works beforehand that you may walk in them.

That He has given you good work to do, to know your assignment.

But then, kind of like the third thing that is critical for us, so much of our life, and you guys know, so much of our life is so full to the max that we literally have no margin to see people or to spend time with people or to love people beyond what we're currently holding.

And listen, there's grace to you.

If you're in a season of life, you got young kids and you got sports schedules, listen, I get it.

I'm there too, right?

There's a lot going on.

But what I'm saying, one of the ways that we protect the life of God inside of us is that we refuse to give into a way of living that loads our days up so full, start to finish every day, that it does not allow us to even be present with the people that we are with every moment of the day.

And it's it's out of a desire to maximize and to optimize and to make the most.

But what happens is we actually uh it actually grates against the very Spirit of God that wants to pour out and wants to flow through us to the people that God loves.

So what does that mean?

We must resist, we must resist every as much as we can, needing to fill and fill and fill and fill and fill and fill.

And rather pull back and say, God, make me open, show me what you're doing in my life, so I can actually stand a chance to be obedient to the people that you're leading with me, that you're leading me to.

We live with spaciousness because it's only with spaciousness that we can actually move into divine appointments, right?

And I bet if you think about the people in your life where you felt the most loved, it's because they created a space for you.

They didn't make you feel like a burden.

They didn't make you feel like you were rushed, you know, to go get on to something else.

Or they were rushed to go get on to something else.

They held that space for you.

Why?

Because that's what God does for us.

He holds a space open for us.

And so this morning, what I want to do is read a prayer, and I want to invite you to read it with me.

I'm gonna read it once first because I hate it in church when people say, read this on the screen.

You didn't have a chance to read it first, and so you have to read it on the screen and trust that you actually want to read it, all right?

So I'm gonna read this first and you can listen, and then I want to invite you to read it with me.

This is called the prayer of surrender.

This is a posturing prayer.

This is a prayer, you can take a photo of it.

This is written by Richard Foster.

Today, O Lord, I yield myself to you.

May your will be my delight today.

May you have perfect sway in me.

May your love be the pattern of my living.

I surrender to you my hopes and dreams, my ambitions.

Do with them what you will, when you will, and as you will.

I place into your loving care my family, my friends, my future, care for them in a care that I can never give.

I release into your hands my need to control, my craving for status, my fear of obscurity, eradicate the evil, purify the good, and establish your kingdom on earth for Jesus' sake.

Amen.

I'm gonna read this one more time.

And if you'd like to join me in making this your prayer today, and if you want to, you can make this prayer or a prayer like this a prayer every day.

It's a prayer of yieldedness.

How many of you guys know we have to regularly submit ourselves to Jesus as Lord of our lives to remind him that we are not the Lord of our own lives, he is the Lord of our lives because he is good, right?

Let's pray this with just pray this with me if you'd like to make this your prayer today.

Today, O Lord, I yield myself to you.

May your will be my delight today.

May you have perfect sway in me.

May your love be the pattern of my living.

I surrender to you my hopes, my dreams, my ambitions.

Do with them what you will, when you will, as you will.

I place into your loving care my family, my friends, my future, care for them with a care that I can never give.

I release into your hands my need to control, my craving for status, my fear of obscurity, eradicate the evil, purify the good, and establish your kingdom on earth.

For Jesus' sake.

Amen.

Now just join me as open up your hands across the room.

Let's just close our eyes for a moment.

Jesus, we thank you that we don't have to be Lord of our own lives.

And this morning, Lord God, as we seek to continue to become people that represent your love and your light and your kingdom, I just thank you, God, that we get to surrender our lives to you.

And as a church, as a people, as individuals, God, this morning, we say, take it all.

We give it to you.

Would you lead us and direct us?

And would you remind us that we're following you and it's good to follow you.

I thank you, Lord God, that continu to continue to lead us to the people you want to send us to.

I thank you for divine opportunities, and I thank you for miracles and signs and wonders to follow.

I thank you, Lord God, for conversations that heal.

I thank you for gifts to be given.

And I thank you, Lord God, to do more with our lives as we obey you in simple ways than we could do just designing our days the way we want.

We thank you, Lord God, that it's a good thing to give ourselves to your kingdom.

And so I bless my friends this morning, and we give ourselves to you because you're worth it, Jesus.

And it's in your name we pray together.

Amen.

Amen.

Hey, let's stand together.

Let's stand together.

And listen, every time we end a service, this is a fantastic opportunity to not rush out, but to go find some people, get into some conversations, find some divine moments and divine opportunities.

They're all around us, right?

Take a moment for somebody that you might not take a moment for.

Introduce yourself, pray for one another.

This is what we get to do as a body.

And listen, we're gonna have our ministry team up front, and uh and uh you're gonna you'll see, and they're gonna have like a purple badge that says prayer team.

And listen, if you're in the room and you're facing a situation in your life that you need prayer, you need someone to be with you in prayer, these are people that you can trust, okay?

Maybe you're going through some illness or sickness or somebody that you love is.

Come up forward to pray.

We believe that God wants to meet us in the actual details of our life.

So don't miss an opportunity to meet with God, all right?

And listen, I'm gonna bless you as we go to enjoy the day, to get into some so loved moments as soon as we leave.

So may the Lord bless you and keep you.

May He make his face to shine upon you, may He be gracious to you and give you rest.

Go in the peace of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Love you guys.