He Is Good | Mark 1:1 | Coleton Segars

We are going to begin a new series today in the Gospel of Mark, and we'll spend a number of months with breaks in between, but a number of months just walking through the entire Gospel of Mark, 16 chapters of that, doing section by section.

And so today, the teaching text is Mark 1, verses 1 through 8.

Mark 1:1–8

Mark 1, verses 1 through 8.

Mark 1:1–8

And this is Mark writing, he says, The beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way.

A voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, confessing their sins, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

John wore clothing made of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

And this was his message.

After me comes one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am unworthy, to stoop down and untie.

I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

We are titling this series, He is Good.

Next slide here.

And each week I'm going to do my best to do this, but this is a painting of Jesus being baptized from Mark 1.

And I just love good art.

I like, I like connecting scripture with, I mean, these people who are artists were brilliant.

And so each week I'm going to try and do this.

And Colin's such an artist.

And anyways, he's really impacted my life and journey with Jesus.

And so but we're calling the series He is Good.

And the reason we're calling it this thing, while we're the whole gospel of Mark, why we're calling it He Is Good, is because Mark in verses and just the first verse here, next slide here.

Oh, excuse me.

Sorry, never mind.

Don't do that.

Mark 1-1, maybe I don't have it.

Mark 1-1 says, This is the beginning.

This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus.

This is what he titles his writing.

This is what like what he's about to say is the title of his gospel.

He doesn't call it the gospel of Mark.

We call it that.

He calls it, this is the beginning of the good news of Jesus.

This is the good news of Jesus.

And so what he's saying is, Jesus is good news, and what he's about to write is something good for you.

And so 16 chapters, which we, you know, we the people put the chapters and verses into it.

He just wrote on these things.

But but what he's writing is that Jesus is good.

He is good news.

And so what he's saying for us is our experience as Christians, as people, is that our experience with Jesus is supposed to be good.

Our our when we talk about him, when we speak of him, good should be one of the adjectives with which we describe our life with him, our journey with him, our faith in him.

Good is supposed to be our primary experience.

And I say that because I think for the majority of people who call themselves Christians, uh, and maybe it's not the majority, but I I think in my experience, uh they don't experience their faith as good in their lives.

Um that's just not their primary experience.

And here's some stats to prove what I'm saying.

Um so the Barna group, uh, who does a bunch of um research on churches and things like that, this is what they say.

More than 60% abandon the faith of their youth when they enter into adulthood.

That's one stat that's just looking at the the generations of Christians, more than 60%.

And then this one, the Pine Top Foundation in 2018, they found this.

They said, based on current the current pattern in numbers, by the year 2050, over 35 million people raised in Christian homes will disaffiliate from Christianity.

This means over a million people a year will disaffiliate from Christianity over the next 32 years.

And so what I find so interesting about this is like the what's the message, Mark?

Like, what's the title of your book about Jesus?

Oh, he's good.

He's supposed to be good.

Your experience with him is supposed to be good.

And it's like, okay, well, 60% of us are gonna bail hard after a little while because I don't wanna, I don't wanna, that's not my experience.

I'm not experiencing him as good.

And what I find so interesting about this particular these stats, these same people, 60% are abandoning their faith, 35 million over the next 32 years, those same people will not abandon their colleges or alma maters or their sports teams at those colleges or their pro sports teams, and primarily many of you who you know cheer for certain teams, all you get is bad news.

Like it's all bad all the time.

Like, and and like that's not my I'm a Georgia fan, so that's not my experience, but like some of you have like really hard goes at it, but like they don't do that.

No one gets in there and like, it's just another like Alabama lost yesterday, NC State lost yesterday.

Nobody's like, well, that was the last straw.

I'm out, I'm not an Alabama fan.

Like they're and actually, if you were to suggest that, like, hey, look, you lost again, you should probably bail out.

Maybe you should disaffiliate from Alabama or NC State because they're they're not gonna win a championship in the NCAA.

Everybody would be like, no, I'm not doing like no, like that you would actually get angry that anybody would even suggest that you would put your team aside.

And yet the primary experience for most colleges is bad news, and most pro teams is bad news, and no one disaffiliates.

And yet, Christianity, whose message is it's good, your experience is supposed to be good.

People are launching out of there in droves, just going, like, I don't want this, I don't want this, I'm I don't want to be a part of this, sticking with their football team or their racquetball club, but not Jesus, who's supposed to be good news.

And so I just find that interesting because Mark is saying our experience with him is supposed to be good, and it's just not, and it's leading people to disaffiliate.

Brendan Manning, in my experience, uh his quote on the current Christian experience still rings true.

He says this for many people in church, Christianity is not good news.

The gospel is not glad tidings of freedom and salvation proclaimed by Jesus.

And again, I think that's the primary experience.

And maybe for you, you're like, man, that's a real downer of a message after Easter.

Like, what's happening?

I promise this has an up to it.

But I do want to set the stage for like this is there's something happening here that's interesting because it's primarily supposed to be good, but with our sports teams or our college, we know that this the state of it is like it's probably gonna be a little bit of good, a little bit of bad, but mostly bad because there's only one winner or whatever.

And yet we stick with those things and we're dropping on this thing, and that's just culturally true and statistically true.

And yet, Mark says your experience is supposed to be good.

And so, what I want to do today is look at these things that I believe, and there's eight of them, that are stealing the good that we're supposed to experience inside our faith with Jesus.

And so, eight beliefs, eight uh undermining ways about going about our faith that kind of snatch from us and steal from us the good that we're supposed to experience.

Now, before I launch into them, these are not judgments on anyone.

If you find yourself closely identifying with one of these, I didn't write this for you.

I mean, I wrote it for us as a community.

Um, but I I wrote these things because, in my experience of the last almost 20 years in ministry, these are the things that seem to snag the joy and the good from our experience with Jesus.

And so it's not meant as judgment, it's really just meant to show, like, I think we struggle with these beliefs, these things a little bit.

I think they get into our experience and our relationship with Jesus, and what they end up doing is they turn something that should be good into a bad thing.

And so the idea is let's see what they are, diagnose the one that is our main struggle and issue, and then figure out a way to get rid of it because it's the thing that's actually getting in the way and hindering our joy and goodness with Jesus.

Okay, does that make sense?

Okay, great.

So, first thing I want to look at is the things that keep us from experiencing Jesus as good.

Eight of them.

I'm gonna go, I realize this point has eight points, and or this message has eight points.

I'm gonna go pretty fast.

I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on these, but let me get into it.

Uh one, one of the things that steals our us our us experiencing Jesus as good is that thinking Christianity is just about not sinning.

Thinking Christianity is just about not sinning.

To me, these are the people that when they want to say a swear word, they make up fake swear words.

Like this is the type of person that's just like they're constantly thinking about not sinning, so they just come up, they're very creative.

Uh, and they want to say the words, but they don't say the words.

Actually, Google this, there's a website you can go to.

It was probably created by a Christian for Christians on how not to sin.

I'm gonna it was a ton of words that you can say instead of cuss words.

There's a website built on this, but I'm gonna give you the best top ten, the first one.

If you actually if you want to swear, but you're not supposed to.

The first one is son of a monkey.

That's one.

Number two, I didn't put these in any order, there's just the best ten.

All right.

Number two, sugar.

Number three, bullspit.

Number four, shiitake mushrooms.

Number five, shut the front door.

We're pretty familiar with that one.

Number six is a personal favorite, Barber Streisand.

Number seven, mother fathers.

Number eight, holy ship.

Um nine, H.

E.

double hockey sticks.

And then the coup de grab, number ten, William Shatner.

Which I just thought was funny.

Y'all laughed a I mean, y'all laughed a little bit, but I thought those are really I was I was dying.

I was dying when I was looking at some of these.

But to me, this defines the type of person that's like Christianity is just about not sinning.

I just need to not sin.

Their whole life is trying to not sin so they come up with creative alternatives.

And what's interesting about this is like their whole life isn't actually living.

They're not pursuing something.

It's anti-living, it's an anti-vision.

I'm not trying to do something, I'm just trying not to do something.

And if anybody knows anything about values and vision, like that is, you don't want to live that way.

It's not an inspiring way to live, it's not a compelling way to live.

People don't actually like that, not uh to talk about, but also it's not something that actually brings you joy either.

And so instead of thinking that the glory that Jesus is actually calling them into, they primarily spend all of their time thinking about sin and how to avoid it.

So they're not thinking about the things that Jesus is calling, like the great things that he's like, follow me into this, follow me into this.

They're thinking, how do I avoid this?

All of their thinking goes into I don't need to mess up, I don't need to make a mistake, God will punish me, I need to make sure I don't.

And it's like, man, that is stealing your joy.

For them, their primary words that Jesus has for them are stop, don't, no.

And it's like, man, if that if that we know this with like kids, and if that's your primary word, eventually it's like, I just don't want to spend time with those people.

Honestly, everything I ask them to do is no, and they're kind of a downer and a discouragement.

Jesus' primary words to these people are don't do that, please stop, or just stop in general.

And I think to us it it steals the idea and the truth that like Jesus is actually calling us from one glory to.

That's what Paul said.

He wants to lead you from one glory to another glory, and then to another glory, and then into more glory.

Like, and so instead of thinking that, it's like, I just need to be good, gotta stop sinning.

So that's one that steals our good.

The second view is that Christianity is just a list of do's and don'ts.

It steals our good.

Uh this is to think of Christian life as a list of rules, to see it like an instruction manual.

The Bible is the basics uh for how to live a good life.

And the issue with an instruction manual is that it doesn't do much for you instead of instruct you.

So have you ever been talking to someone and you go like, oh, I'm just really anxious?

And then they say the classic, they give you an instruction, oh, it's easy.

Don't be anxious.

And you're like, didn't think of that.

Like, thanks.

I've you just blew my mind.

How profound.

I'm worried.

Don't be worried.

Okay, okay, but I am scared.

Oh, it's it's fine, just don't be.

Like, that's so if that's not helpful to you, that's how Christianity will be helpful to you if that if you see it as an instruction manual.

As helpful as it is for somebody just to tell you, don't, that's that's if you see Christianity like this, you're gonna find Christianity to be just as helpful, which is not helpful at all.

It doesn't address the actual issues.

There's people who believe this, and if you're like, I don't know if that's me or not, the people who believe this, this type of person has a Bible verse for everything that you do, and they're constantly just launching Bible verses at you.

And the issue with that to me is like, I love, I mean, obviously, I love scripture and I love it so I mean genuinely, I love it so much.

I've devoted my life to it, I love it.

But if you look at the scriptures where Jesus is just launching verses at people, anybody know when he's just doing that and never walking with people?

Who is who is he just who is he talking to when he's only launching Bible at them?

Satan.

Satan is the only person, Satan is the only person that Jesus only ever launches Bible verses.

And we use, we do this as if we're like just Romans 8.28, God, you know, he will he will work all things to go to those who called and love him and are called according to his purpose.

It's like, thanks.

I'm going through some really hard stuff.

Yeah, but Romans 8.28.

It's like, okay, so it's hard for me.

Yeah, well, you know, he's gonna work through your suffering.

Perseverance produces this and this and this and this and this.

It's like, mm-hmm, that's great, it's good, it's good stuff.

And it's just not helpful.

I'm not saying that the Bible's not helpful, but there's these spaces where like the only time that Jesus ever does that is when he's actually talking to Satan because he has nothing else to say to him.

I have only my word to say to you, because there's nothing else to address.

But with people, he goes a lot slower, even with the Pharisees.

He still talks, Nicodemus was not a bunch of Bible he was throwing out of him.

He was trying to explain things to him.

And so for us, if we view Christianity as a list of do's and don'ts, as helpful as it is when someone tells you not to worry when you're worried, Christianity will be that helpful to you.

Jesus will be that helpful to you, and at the end of the day, that's not very helpful.

And so we won't experience him as good.

Number three, people who over over-identify Jesus with their religious, with the religious people and or organizations who hurt you.

So people who over-identify Jesus, like they've been hurt by the religious establishment and people, and I think one, that's awful and that shouldn't happen, but it is true and it does happen.

But when we over-identify Jesus with those people, then we start allowing who they were and how they talked about Jesus and how they lived their faith to begin affecting how we experience Jesus as Father, or Jesus as leader, or Jesus as savior, or Lord.

And so we allow those things to shape how we uh view him because we over-identify Jesus with those those people.

Um so it works like this.

If you, if it was in a Pentecostal church that you were hurt, who was very spirit-led and all those different things, if you were hurt in that church, you will become very wary of passages that talk about the spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues, um, being spirit-led, and like I'm just spirit-led.

And it's like, honestly, you said you were spirit-led and you were kind of a jerk.

Um, and like that's that's so you're very wary of some of those things.

Uh if you grew up in a legalistic church and that church hurts you, uh, then you're very wary of any preaching that comes off as restricting or telling you that you shouldn't do something, you can't do something.

If you grew up, or if you were at a church where the this is mine, where the pastors are leaders that kind of abuse their power and hurt you, you become very skeptical of other leaders and in churches when you have your guard up and you don't trust the leaders of the church, and you're constantly like checking and making sure, and it's hard to get plugged in because you don't know.

So you spend so much time on the back end because you're like, man, I've been hurt before by leaders and elders and deacons and all the rest of it, and the words trigger something in you.

If you've ever served in leadership at a church and they abused your volunteer position and they told you to do this, and they never gave you a break, and anytime you wanted to break, they didn't give you one or they made you feel bad, because like you're serving Jesus, you just need to do this thing.

And it's like, yeah, but I also'm supposed to Sabbath and all this stuff.

If you've done that, then you the next church you go to, you don't want to be hurt again, so you're very slow to jump into the church and you're very slow to do some of these things, or you just refuse, like I'm just gonna attend for a while and heal because I don't want that to happen again.

And the issue with all of those is not you shouldn't feel that way.

Of course you feel that way.

You were hurt by people in the church.

That's not the issue.

The issue is the scriptures talk about all of these things as things that are good.

And so if you cut yourself off from spiritual gifts or the Holy Spirit or spirit-led, you're actually gonna cut yourself off from something good that Jesus actually wants to do in your life and through your life, but you're cutting yourself off from it because you've over-identified that hurt me, and so I don't want anything to do with it anymore.

And so you push some of the scriptures aside and then you miss some of the good that it has.

The scriptures also talk about like holiness and seeking to practice those things and to fight against sin and all that stuff.

But if you're nervous about legalistic churches that are like slamming down on purity culture or whatever that is, and you're harmed by those things, then you start kicking aside anything that's like Jesus telling you not to do something or calling you out of something into something.

You start shifting those things to the side and going, well, I don't want to, you know, don't tell me I can't do that because I did I had that before and I don't want to do that.

It's like, but it's still true that you're there are things that you should avoid in life.

Uh the same with elders and leaders and serving, like we're supposed to, those things are good things.

And they were just perverted.

Someone used them incorrectly.

And so what happens is if you choose to set them aside, you're actually removing some good things from the scriptures and that Jesus actually wants for your life because you've just been hurt by them.

And so I think this happens.

We're hurt, and so we shove those things aside, and like, I want this, I want 75% of Christianity, but just not this stuff because that stuff was used to hurt me.

And it's like, man, you're gonna you're gonna miss out on some of the good things.

Just because they did it poorly doesn't mean that other people don't do those things well.

And so the call is to reconsider some of those things.

But that's, I don't know if that's three or four.

Uh that's that's another one.

Uh keep your faith private is this the fourth one, I believe.

To keep your faith private, this steals the good that we're supposed to experience.

This is people saying, I have faith, but it's private.

It's personal to me.

I don't want to talk about it, it's personal to me.

The issue with this is that everyone understands that good things that we experience naturally, we take those things public.

We do this with burgers we eat, and food we experience good, and movies and comedians.

Like anything that's good, we primarily talk about it because we like it.

We are natural evangelists.

We love talking about the things that we love.

And people around us normally love hearing about the things that we're passionate about.

And so for us, if we do this with our faith and we go, this is super, it's super important to me, but it's very public.

What happens is if you feel like you can't talk about it, it will cease become, it will start to become less and less important to you because in your normal conversations in daily life, you don't talk about this thing.

And so you have this space in your life that you're like, this is very important to me, but I can't talk about it with anyone because and then you say, like, it's because it's super private.

All of a sudden that very important thing gets less important and less important and less important because what you end up spending all of your time doing and thinking and talking about are the things that you do feel comfortable talking about.

And then those things are elevated to the place of primary importance, and this other thing finds its way in the background somewhere.

And this thing that was supposed to be this glorious thing where you're experiencing the good news of Jesus pouring in and you're talking about it, and other people are sharing it with you, no longer becomes a thing that's shaping your life because we're choosing to keep it quiet.

And so if you don't experience anything good with Jesus, or if you do experience something good with Jesus and you can't talk about it, it's almost like it never happened for you.

And so it turns into something where you're not experiencing those things anymore because it's you give your life to other things.

Another one is an unwillingness to change.

This also steals our good and the good that we're supposed to experience with Jesus, an unwillingness to change.

Jesus wants to be in a relationship with you and not be an instruction manual to you.

And so relationships challenge you and naturally change you.

And so an unwillingness to change with Jesus because he actually wants to change you is to actually cut him off of what he actually does, what relationships naturally do in your life.

I'm a completely different person than I was when I met my wife.

I know the word empathy now.

I didn't know the word empathy before I met Rainey.

I can empathize with Rainey really well because she asked me to do that, and I had to learn through years and years of grinding counseling on how to empathize.

You know what, you know what my high school friends never asked me to do?

Empathize with them.

No one ever said that.

You get beat up, you say stuff like that.

Will you just empathize with me?

No, man, what's wrong with you?

But Rainey, in relationship with Rainey, I learned not only learned the word, I learned how to do it.

Because relationships naturally challenge and naturally change you.

And the relationship with Rainey made me better.

And I think many people don't experience Jesus as good because they don't actually want to change.

They want to keep doing whatever they want to do and following Jesus into the spaces where he wants to change us actually just gets in the way of what we actually want to do.

And so we don't experience where he's trying to lead us, these good places he's trying to lead us because we don't want to change.

And to me, at the end of the day, uh, this person believes that Jesus would restrict their lives.

So they want the salvation uh into heaven, but every other space, they're like, I think Jesus would make my life worse if I followed him in these spaces.

And so they don't experience the good because they're never willing to follow him into those changes that he wants to make.

The next one is that God has let you down.

God has let you down.

This one's very personal to me.

I'll talk about it more in just a second, but.

This is what's your experience with Jesus?

Is it good?

It's like, ah, he's really let me down.

And so it shapes all of your experiences with him.

God didn't answer that prayer.

He didn't heal that person.

That marriage you prayed for failed anyways.

The suffering that you see around you in other countries or just here in Memphis or other spaces, it leads you to be like, man, he is just letting me.

If he is all powerful, if he is all good, how could he possibly allow some of these things to happen?

And so God lets you down.

It leads us to thinking he's not good.

It leads us to experiencing him as not good.

The next one is no expectation of hardship.

This steals our joy, this steals our good with Jesus.

No expectation of hardship.

Many people chose to follow Jesus because they wanted to avoid hardship.

Most people entered into faith with Jesus just like, I don't want to go to hell.

That sounds hard.

I don't want that.

And so many people choose Jesus to avoid the hardship of hell.

And so, in many ways, their faith is I want my life to be easier.

And I feel like if I choose Jesus, my marriage, I will get married, I will have a great marriage because I chose Jesus.

I will have kids and they will be very obedient and awesome and get into the best colleges because I'm doing the right stuff.

I'm following Jesus and they will just have normal, healthy, really great lives, and people will look at us with envy.

And that's the life that we think.

I chose Jesus to avoid hardship, and Jesus is going to give me a good life.

And then all of a sudden, what happens is they start experiencing hardship as a Christian, and they're like, this is really confusing.

Like it made sense that I was struggling and going through hardship when I was living in sin.

Of course, God was punishing me.

But now I'm doing it right.

Like, why is God not holding up his side of the bargain?

Like, I'm doing good.

You're supposed to bless.

We have a good system working here.

Like you should do this thing, and you're not keeping up your side of the story and the bargain and those things.

And so their marriages, they find out, are still hard and can still end in divorce.

Their kids can still rebel against them and be prodigals.

Their kids can still grow up in a way and not get into the college.

Their people still die, even though you're a Christian.

You still experience hardship and suffering and things like that, and it's confusing.

And so for them, again, they're thinking, I deserve a good life.

I chose Jesus to get a good life, and now life is hard.

And these people don't experience Jesus as good because to them he's not doing what he said he would do.

And realistically, it's just bad theology.

Like they just didn't understand when they got into this thing.

Jesus actually talks about this.

He he mentions and says, There will be people who respond to my message with joy, but the hardships of life will choke it out and will choke their faith from them.

That's what Israel experienced in the desert.

It's like, man, an incredible deliverance of salvation out of Egypt.

But the hardship of the wilderness ultimately led them to go, like, I don't think he's good.

I don't think he'll take me into the thing he's promised.

And so incredible deliverance missed out on the promises that God had for them.

And I think for so many Christians, this is a huge struggle.

Incredible deliverance.

We've been saved from death to life, from hell to heaven.

We have been saved.

The deliverance has happened.

But in the process, we experience hardship and it can lead us to go like, but I don't think that he's good.

And so we miss out on the promises because we're like, man, this is just too difficult.

That was number seven.

The last one, and maybe the most insidious because I think this affects all of us, uh, or at least most of us who are Americans in this room.

Practicing American Christianity instead of biblical Christianity.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm I hate this one.

Um and I talk badly about this one later.

So it's not men is judgment, it's just it just affects all of us in some way.

American Christian uh American Christians have no expectation that God will do anything for them except save them from hell.

And I would even argue, I don't even know if they really believe that.

They just heard it and prayed a prayer one time.

Um, American Christians have a low view of God, no expectation.

They pray because they they have to, and they're supposed to take their hat off when they pray, but they have no expectation that God's actually going to do anything in their lives.

One of the best lines I heard from a pastor recently was um he was telling his people to pray.

He said, Pray to the God of the Bible, not the God of the American church.

I think we have it here.

Pray to the God of the Bible, not the God of the American American church or American Christianity.

Because, like, man, he's just become impotent.

The American way of being a Christian is to believe that God is no greater than we are.

Um the French painter Henry Rousseau says this.

He said, God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, return the favor.

And so what you're left with in this, making him into our we've made God into our own image.

What we're powerless to do, so is he.

What we can't do on our own, he probably can't either.

And so what we end up asking God in prayer to do and expecting God to do in our lives is basically what we can do for ourselves.

This is American Christian.

And so there's no good that you'll experience in this because you can't make your life good.

You can't bring yourself joy.

We can give it a shot, and sin is the best way to give it a shot, but it will never actually deliver on those things.

It can't give you what Jesus can.

But if you believe that he is this way, make him in your image, you don't experience him as good.

In this way, making God in your image, what God says to do, you do if you want to do it and if you agree to it.

And so the tragedy with this type of thinking is that Jesus wants to save people from sins and struggles that they could overcome, but because they don't want to step forward in those things, because they don't believe that he can actually do it, they choose to stay stuck in those things.

He wants to bless your marriage.

The biblical God wants to bless your marriage and to heal it and to reconcile it and to make it joyful and to be this thing that declares what Jesus and the church are supposed to be like, supposed to declare the goodness of God.

And yet so many people just choose in American Christianity to go like, well, I'll just have a mediocre marriage at best, a filled with bitterness marriage at worst, and but you know, I'll post good social media when I need to to show everybody that it's actually not as bad as I thought it was.

And so we just have this thing, and American Christians get stuck in this thing, especially if you're practicing American Christianity.

And so the quote that I would say is like practice the faith of biblical Christianity, not American Christianity.

There's something about the cultural dynamics of this that steal what Jesus actually wants us to do.

And this thing gets in us all, and it's a part of us because we've been so formed and shaped by our culture, there's no way around it.

We're in this culture, and we've been at different churches, and we've watched other people online or in our spaces be cultural Christians.

It's like, oh, that's all it is, okay.

And it's like, man, you wind up in this space where you're missing out of all the good things.

And to me, American Christianity does not experience the fullness of what Jesus is actually calling us to experience.

And so all of those.

All of those hinder our experience of Jesus as good.

All of those do not have the vision in mind of Mark one.

Like, he is good.

Your experience with him is supposed to be good.

All of those things get in the way of that.

And so, what are we to do in these spaces is one, to self-diagnose, to figure out which one of these do we struggle with the most.

Because the truth is, there's, and if you're like, I don't struggle with any of these, I'm crushing it.

My Christianity is just thriving.

It's good, all like, great, right?

Please come do a seminar next week.

I would love for your vision to be a part of our community.

But I think more than most things, like these things are just things that we struggle with.

And there's just parts of these things where it's like, man, for me, God has let me down.

And that is space that I have to deal with and walk through.

There are spaces where we're like, man, I didn't realize that hardship was a part of it.

There are spaces where it's like, yeah, I've just I can't I kind of came into faith thinking that it was like, don't do this, do this, don't do this, and God will be nice to you and bless you.

It's like, man, these things get in the way.

And so we're supposed to self-direct to figure out which one of these we struggle with.

And then the next is to choose a different and better direction.

Choose a different and better direction.

It's what the Bible calls repentance.

We're called to repent.

Now, for us, again, cultural experience with repentance.

Repentance is the guy standing on the street corner shouting, turner burn, turner burn, turn or burn.

And that's not repentance.

That's not what it was.

I mean, I guess it is in some ways, but like you've miscontextualized this whole thing.

Um it's really like there's Jesus isn't necessarily just calling us away from something.

He's calling us into something.

His primary thing is like you should repent because something better is available to you.

And so in those things, those spaces where we struggle, the idea is you can repent.

There is something you can do something else if you want to.

And the invitation is to do something else if you want to.

You don't have to stay stuck in this not good experience with Jesus.

The idea is you can turn to something better.

To me, Dallas Willard has the best example of this by far.

Um, and this is what he says about his childhood.

Um, wow, that's a we we'll work on this the slides later.

I'm just gonna read this to you.

Uh he says, uh Dallas Willard says, uh, on repentance, he says, as a child, I lived in an area of southern Missouri where electricity was available only in the form of lightning.

He says, but in my senior year of high school, the Rural Electrification Administration extended its lines into the area where we lived, and electrical power became available to households and farms.

And he says, when those lines came by our farm, a very different way of living presented itself.

Our relationship to fundamental aspects of life, daylight and dark, clean and dirty, work and leisure, preparing food and preserving it, could then be vastly changed for the better.

But we still had to believe in the electricity and its arrangements, understand them and take the practical steps involved in relying on it.

And then this here, he says, you may think this comparison rather crude, and in some respects it is, but it will help us understand Jesus' basic message about the kingdom of heavens if we pause to reflect on those farmers who, in effect, heard the message, repent, for electricity is at hand.

Repent.

Turn from your kerosene lamps and lanterns, their iceboxes and cellars, their scrub boards and rug beaters, their woman-powered sewing machines and their radios with dry cell batteries.

The power that could make their lives far better was right there near them, where by making relatively simple arrangements, they could utilize it.

And then he says this strangely, a few did not accept it.

They did not enter the kingdom of electricity.

Some just didn't want to change.

And what's interesting to me, I think it's just one of the best because it it uh illustrations of or analogies of what it means to repent.

Because what he's saying is like, man, there was a way of life that just changed life.

And you can you can stay where you're at, and you can just do everything by hand, or you can allow something far greater to do that work for you.

And so for us, what Jesus calls us into, and the the idea of repentance is something better is available.

You don't have to stay in this thing.

And by making relatively few arrangements, you can actually step into something far greater.

And that's the message of Mark, that's the message of Jesus.

Like, you don't have to, if your experience with him isn't good, good is available to you.

And I would actually say, glory and something wonderful is available to you in Jesus.

And so I want to do this for each one of these and just look at them and then running back through all eight of them and going, here's the truth, here's the space that we're called to repent.

Not as they like you need to repent, but like you get to repent.

Like you get to turn to something far greater.

You don't have to stay there going, like, I don't know, it's not very good.

It's like, oh, fine, great.

You don't have to stay at that, you can go to someplace else.

Like if you taste bad food and you're like, I just don't like that food, it's like awesome.

There are other restaurants for you.

You can go to another place.

Like there's something greater.

Okay.

So the first, you think it's not just not about sinning.

The truth is that Jesus calls you to follow him into something greater.

He did not wake up in the morning with his disciples and be like, all right, guys, let's not sin today, okay?

It's not what he did.

You don't read that anywhere in the scriptures.

Like instead, it was like, okay, let's go do some cool stuff.

Driving out darkness and demons and healing folks and doing this stuff.

The disciples were never like, I don't know, he just really just wants us to be good.

It was never, actually, they would have loved that.

It had been less borough less like storms at the seas and all those different things.

It was never that.

It was like, I'm calling you into adventure.

Follow me.

I will call you.

He doesn't say, follow me, Peter, Andrew, and James, like, follow me and I will make you not sin.

He's like, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

You will do things for the kingdom that excite you, that stir something within you.

You will sin less because you're following the sinless one.

That is true.

But it's not about just not sinning.

He's calling you into something and calls you to follow him into something greater, not just to turn from something.

That's the truth of that one.

So if you struggle with that, the truth is follow him into something.

And you will sin, you'll struggle, but he'll forgive you in the midst of it.

Okay, the next.

If you see Christianity as a list of do's and don'ts, the truth is, Christianity is the story of the instruction manual becoming a man.

This is the truth, this is the truth of Christianity.

The instruction manual, the scriptures themselves, the word became flesh and dwelt among you.

He is the instruction manual becoming a man.

Because God has always, always, always wanted to be more than a textbook to you.

He's always wanted to be with you.

In the garden, he was he wanted to be with Adam and Eve, and he did give them his word, and then they broke it, and they separated from him.

And then all of a sudden, he he makes this declaration to Abraham like, I through you, like I'm going to bless the nations and I will be with these people.

And then you get to Moses, and Moses is like, What do you want?

It's like, well, I need you to tell them my word, but then I need you to build a tabernacle by my word, because I want to dwell in the midst of my people.

Then you get to Jesus, who is God Himself, Emmanuel, God with us.

God has come to be with us.

He is the Emmanuel made man.

And then you get to Acts where Jesus goes, like, hey, now I'm going to ascend to the Father, but I'm going to send you my personal spirit that will not just dwell among you, but it will live in you.

He wants to be personally acquainted with you in a way that's deeply rooted in friendship and relationship.

It is not just do this, don't do this.

He does not want that relationship with you.

If that is your relationship with him, it's not much of a relationship.

Because an instructured manual can't comfort you when you're sad.

It can't walk with you through the hardships of life.

And so he's never wanted to just be an instruction manual to you.

He wants an actual relationship with you.

So that's the second one.

Number three, an over-identified of Jesus with the people who hurt you.

The truth, it was the religious people that crucified Jesus.

And so if religious people hurt you, you are in good company with Jesus himself.

He was not crucified by the tax collectors and prostitutes.

They were not happy about they loved him.

It was the religious people that were like, you're stealing some of our power and some of our influence.

We got to get you out of here.

And so they twisted the scriptures and they used them to condemn an innocent man to death.

And so Jesus is the person who's experienced what you've experienced and what I've experienced more than anybody else.

They took something from you.

They actually took his life from him.

And I'm sorry that they misrepresented God to you in that way.

And that shouldn't happen.

And it's awful.

But it is true.

And Jesus understands that story, and I think he understands it the most.

And so to me, I would just spend time with the one who was treated poorly by religious people.

I would get to know him so that your view of him isn't shaped primarily by the people who hurt you, but that your view of him is actually shaped by the person himself who was hurt by similar people to the ones that hurt you.

And so that's supposed to be the experience.

Don't allow the people who hurt you to control how you follow Jesus.

Allow Jesus to determine how you follow him.

And to those who do it poorly, you now have experience that you can move into a situation and into a church and to do it well because you've actually learned it from the man himself and not from the people who just misrepresented him.

Again, in that, I'm not seeking to make light of your pain if you've walked through church hurt and all those different things.

I think that's super real and very, very personal to each person and to me as well.

But I do know that it's true that he understands that and wants to walk with you through that.

Next, the person seeking to keep your faith private.

The truth is that Jesus does want a personal and unique loving relationship with you.

But love that is kept private is either an affair or it's non-existent.

Love that is kept private is either an affair or it's non-existent.

And to me, to have a personal, unique, loving relationship with Jesus, it is personal, and mine will be different than yours, and my kids will be different than mine, and so on and so forth, and it should be because we are different people with different personalities.

Yours should look different, and yours should testify to something in me that I don't know about Jesus, and mine should do that for you.

It will be unique to us and personal to us, but it was never meant to be private.

We don't love things quietly.

And so, in my experience, the people who do want to make these things private, want to make their faith private, they primarily want to do that because it's awkward to talk about.

They don't know how they'll be received by their co-workers and in their spaces or by their families if they talk about it.

And the issue with that primarily isn't that they don't want to talk about it.

It's just like they're just afraid of the awkwardness of it.

They're afraid of what people think of them.

And for the for you, if that's you, what you really need to pray for is not a private faith to yourself that eventually goes by the wayside, but you need to pray for the fear of man to be broken in your life.

For the Spirit Himself to be like, I will give you a boldness that allows you to speak into these things.

Our whole culture, y'all, is based on living your truth.

You get to do that too.

And if your truth is Jesus, then you get to live that publicly.

And if they're like, well, I just disagree with that, it's like, great, man.

Everybody disagrees with everybody in our culture.

Like you're in good company.

Like this will be great.

And so for us, it shouldn't be private.

It does need to be unique and it needs to be yours, but it needs to be, if it's going to be good for you, it will definitely be something that you talk about.

Because if you can't talk about it, it will really it will cease being good and it will cease being important.

So don't keep your faith private.

All right, next.

Unwillingness to change.

Unwillingness to change.

Don't have an unwillingness to change.

I realize I just said don't worry to those who worry.

But the truth is, the ways in which Jesus wants to change you are things we try and fail to do on our own.

The ways that He wants to change you are things that you want to change too, you just don't know how and can't do it.

You've tried and failed.

The fruit of following Jesus is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

There are currently apps on your phone built to build these things into your life.

The whole world recognizes you want these things.

There are therapists that you pay to make you not angry anymore, to make you more gentle, and to make you more kind.

Like there, I mean, like these are things that we want for ourselves.

We want to change these ways too.

We just struggle to do it and we fail to do it.

The reason many of us want a better job or more money or to go on vacation is so that we can experience some peace and to have some, like we want these things and we're searching for those things.

And so the stuff that you're longing for to change in your life, he actually just wants to build into your life.

And so that's what he's seeking to do.

And so don't hinder him from trying to change you in the ways that you actually want to change.

Don't be crushing apps on the app store, being like, I just need to have some zen because like he can actually build that into you.

Like he can actually, you don't have to spend money on that.

It's actually free, he'll give that to you.

It's just a fruit of walking with him.

And so these are the things that he wants to do.

And also, if you don't want to change, the people around you also want you to change.

It's not just Jesus, okay?

The people that you're in a relationship with, they also want you to change.

So no one's gonna get mad at Jesus if you become more patient.

They're not gonna be like, ah, your Christianity is the worst.

You're now really patient and kind.

No, they're gonna be thrilled.

All right.

So if you are nervous about changing because everybody just likes who I am.

No, they don't.

Let Jesus change you.

Alright.

God let you down.

God let you down.

This is uh maybe the biggest struggle of mine.

Um for me, it's because I I struggle.

Um I struggle to understand why like marriages I pray for fail.

You know, like um like people in your life die that you're like, but they don't have to, right?

Like maybe one day, uh, but like not not like that, not now.

Um and so there's these Christian songs, and I kinda love K Love, kind of.

But it's like they sing these songs like he won't fail, he won't fail, he won't fail.

And I'm like, man, I understand that theologically, eschatologically, but I gotta be honest, if if I'm honest, he has he's he's let me down, he's failed in ways that I don't understand.

And the truth is, and this is just from experience, that he will walk with you in the pain and in the confusion of this, and then the hope is that we know one day all things will be made right.

But here and now, it is true that there will be these spaces where it's like, man, why?

And in the anger and frustration and confusion and difficulty of trying to see him as good and loving, when he let someone good and loving die before you felt like it was their time.

And a tragedy of what I'm like, what I've noticed is that he does walk closely even if you don't want him to, he refuses to go away.

Um it's like um I had to hold Teddy, my son's leg down when he was a little baby, and I had to hold his leg down so the doctor could give him a shot because he needed medicine.

And obviously to a little baby, like I couldn't explain to him, like, hey man, here's how your body works, and you need some medicine and all this stuff.

That's why I'm holding your leg down.

I can't explain that to him, but what I could do is I could pick him up after it was over, and as he cried, I could cry.

And like that's the thing.

Um and I feel like that's the way the Lord is with things like this.

He does walk closely, and so with this, uh, I think I would encourage just be honest about how you feel.

The repentance is like, what can I walk into?

I feel like he's let me down.

Just be honest about that and feel like that's okay.

He already knows how you feel.

You're not more holy for holding in your angry thoughts.

If he knows your heart, he knows those things are there.

Be honest about those things.

He can handle your honesty.

And then I would encourage you, remember that you're in good company.

You're in good company.

Job didn't get what he asked for.

Neither did Moses.

Neither did King David.

Neither did the psalmist Heman the Ezraite in Psalm 88.

Read Psalm 88 whenever you get a chance.

He ends it.

It's the only psalm that doesn't end on a happy note.

He ends it with darkness is a better friend than you, God.

Darkness is a better friend than you.

Habakkuk didn't get what he asked for.

Jesus didn't get what he asked for.

The Apostle Paul didn't get what he asked for.

In those spaces, they also prayed for things that were just denied and told no.

And so you are in good company when you feel that way.

And I do think, I was telling this to Bryce weeks ago.

I do think it's possible to struggle to experience him as good in this space, but still to love him magnificently in these, even while you're walking through something challenging.

No expectation of hardship.

No expectation of hardship.

The truth is, followers of Jesus are actually told they may suffer more hardship than non-believers.

Not only are Christians not immune to the normal hardships of life that hit everyone, they have the added benefit of experiencing persecution for being a Christian.

So sign up right away and be a Christian.

You will experience, and the scriptures testify, in this world, Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble, but you can take heart and be of good hope.

I have overcome the world, but in this world you will have trouble.

We literally follow a man who suffered the most.

And so if you are following him, you will experience hardship.

He suffered, and so will we.

He said, Take up your cross and follow me.

He talks about those things.

C.

S.

Lewis talks about how God redeems our suffering and our hardships.

This is what he says.

This is how he redeems him.

He says, Some of God's special favorites I know.

Some of God's special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.

It is during such trough periods, low periods, much more during the peak periods, that people are growing into the sort of creatures he wants them to be.

Hence, the prayers offered in a state of dryness are those which please him best.

He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand, and if only the will to walk is really there, he is pleased even with their stumbles.

The cause of Satan is never more in danger than when a human looks around upon the universe from which every trace of God seems to have vanished and asks why he's been forsaken, and yet still obeys.

This is a beautiful, I mean, this is this is the thing that he's seeking to build in.

It's Jesus going, Why, God, why have you forsaken me and yet, but I know what you've called me to is good, even though I look round upon the universe and see no evidence of you.

But no, you are still who you say you are, and your promises still remain.

And so he's seeking in our hardships while we walk through them.

He is seeking to actually build something in us, which doesn't make the hardship all the more easy, but it is something to look at and to go like he has not abandoned us in this.

He has walked through the most difficult hardship and he will walk through ours as well.

And then the last, practicing American Christianity instead of biblical Christianity, the truth.

American Christianity is a joke.

American Christianity isn't Christianity at all.

Jesus talks about this type of faith with strong warning.

In Matthew 7, he says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

Do we not drive out demons and perform miracles in your name?

Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you, depart from me.

I don't think he says it happy.

I just think he's saying, like, but we never, we never had anything.

Your vision of me was something that was crafted by man and not by God.

And so I think while other world religions have their own space and their own beliefs, I think American Christianity has become its own world religion.

It's just another cultural thing.

And to me, it's built big buildings, it's drawn huge crowds, but it's done a ton of damage.

And I think for most people, of the 35 million who are abandoning the church, the 35 million over the next 32 years, my hope is they're just abandoning American Christianity and not biblical Christianity.

Because most of the time when I talk to people who are leaving the Christian faith and I go, why are you leaving?

They're like, Well, I just can't believe in a God who, and then they tell me an answer.

I'm going, I don't believe in that God either.

I don't know where you got that.

Like that's not biblical, that's not in the scriptures, that's just something that was made up at your church, and I'm really sorry, but that's not him, and that's not true.

And so for these people, it is to go, where has American Christianity creeped into my life and to align yourself with the scriptures and to read them and to have them actually form your faith so that we're not sitting there just becoming something and doing something that Jesus goes like, I don't know you and I don't know this.

I led, want to lead you and died for something completely different.

I rose to give you something completely different, but what you're walking in, there's nothing good in it.

And it's not, it's not a path that I have charted.

It's nothing I know.

And so for us is to look where those things are and then allow real faith to grow in the place where American Christianity dies.

Our experience, worship team, y'all can come on up.

Our experience with Christian faith, with following Jesus is supposed to be good.

And we're gonna spend uh several months looking at how Mark wants us to see these things take shape in our lives, how it's supposed to be good.

And so for us, you can go back to the slide of the self-diagnosis.

Figure out which ones of these actually shape you and form you in certain ways, and then go to war against that thing.

He actually wants to do that.

And the good news is because of the cross and the resurrection, he has created the space where you can always return, repentant, you can always turn into something greater.

There's always the opportunity to come home and to step into something better for you.

And so that's the call, that's the encouragement that I would give you is to figure out where that is and allow these things that Jesus has actually called us into to be good in our lives because that's why he's led us into those spaces, and that's why he's trying to bring us into that.

So let me pray.

Lord Jesus, thank you for uh your word.

Thank you that uh the life that you want with us, even though it it endures hardship, that you still, it can still be good with you, that you would walk with us and stay with us, that you don't abandon us or forsake us.

That our sin is never too great for you, to where you're like, I just can't anymore with them.

You never do that.

Life with you is supposed to be good.

And so, God, I pray that you would stir that in us, that that would be the space that we experience you.

That you are good news, and that our uh walk with you, and that the definition of what that walk is like, that it would be like He is good and He has been good to me, even in those difficult spots, even in those places where I feel like He has let me down, He is good and He has been good.

And so, Father, I just pray that you would stir that in us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We're gonna take communion.

Um, we do this every week with a liturgy.

And so, what I'd encourage you to do is that we'll have some people to our left and to our right.

We'd love for you to come and uh receive communion.

Communion is the opportunity each week to look out and look back and go, You meant for this to be good.

You, it was your body crushed, your blood spilled so that I could feast.

I don't have to have my body crushed or my blood spilled.

I get to just remember you and remember the goodness of the gift by just feasting.

You died so that I can feast.

And so I would encourage you to take some time in your seats and just talk with the Lord, prepare your heart for this, and then come and receive the communion elements, and then take them back to your seat, and we will actually commune together and take the bread and the juice together.

And so, uh, if you help set up communion, please come over here and uh just come receive the elements when you're ready.