Alright, good morning. Sir, how y'all doing?
Good, good, good, good.
What are some discoveries that we made about the technology that we've been through here in this room?
Anybody have an old school flip phone? Brick phone? Bag cell phone?
Nobody? Yeah? You had the bag with the, yeah, okay.
And then when the cell phone plans were like astronomically like crazy, or you had to wait until the weekends or 7pm to different things of that nature.
Technology has come a long way. I'm going to actually start and share a poem called Vices.
It's about relationships.
It's a love letter of sorts. Alright.
At least we're not like those other couples.
At least I listen.
I speak back. I'm dialed in. I'm committed.
And I'm so happy that you've got a plan with me.
Those other couples, they argue, they cheat, and they fall for cheap impressions.
But I'm here now and generations to come.
So please stay close enough for me to hear the vibration of your voice and for me to respond to your every touch.
Let me feel the warmth of your skin sliding across my face.
Please, please, I beg you, protect me.
And please be gentle. Even if you drop me, I will do everything in my power not to fail you.
Let nothing come between us. Let's not be like those other couples.
Remember, we have a plan together. Remember, our love can last as long as there are clouds in the sky.
I can't wait until you pick me up again.
I love you, Siri.
P.S. Who's Alexa?
Yeah, that's one of those poems you thought that was about.
They're like, Crill, what are you talking about?
Do you get some of that?
Our love can last as long as there's clouds in the sky.
You're going to make me cry.
It's not about a person.
Marriage counseling happening in the room.
Yeah, they thought that up. Sorry, that's not for you, Trish.
But our relationship that we have with phones is an interesting thing because the technology continues to advance.
There's different phases of technology, not just with phones but with everything.
It's interesting how it will kind of relate to some of the things that we'll talk about.
Because in fact, with technology, there's things that just get old.
Some of the awe of a bag phone that you try to describe to our kids.
You really have to carry this heavy thing with a bag.
They don't understand how the battery or the computer had to be bigger than a microchip.
They're like, it was heavy. The battery was heavy. That's crazy.
You had to carry it. You don't use it this time.
Why were phone bills so high? You had to pay by the minute.
All these different things.
There's things that we were in awe of once.
Then you don't know anything about that anymore.
You're just like, whatever.
We're kind of programmed. We're ready for the next thing.
Keep that in mind as we are cruising through the book of Mark.
Mark the first gospel. Today we're going to be in Mark chapter 6.
Actually, it's interesting because I think about one of the first smartphones.
I thought it was a smartphone.
I graduated from college and we got our first cell phone.
Mine was just a regular little flip phone, old school flip phone.
That was pretty cool for me. It was my first cell phone.
I was really proud a couple years later.
I had a full-time job and stuff.
I'm like, let me get this Razor Motorola Razor flip phone.
MP3 player.
This is going to be hard for some of the young folks to imagine.
Trish and I, it came with some kind of a plan where you could actually watch a TV channel.
A TV channel?
The basic ones.
You could watch the stuff, Grey's Anatomy, because there's 50 seasons of that or whatever.
I think it was in its 50s.
I would get off work and we had this small little phone.
I'd flip it open and we'd be like, set it up right there.
We'd watch a show and we were like, this is great.
We're watching a show on our flip phone. This is crazy.
It would get kind of staticky sometimes or it would glitch a little bit.
We were in awe of that.
We're like, we're watching TV on our phone.
As you know, stuff got better.
Stuff came out and you kind of get rid of that.
You kind of lose some of that awe and astonishment.
Well, Jesus in this passage that we're going to go through today,
we're going to comb through this, just six verses in chapter six,
chapter six, verse one through six.
We're going to see Jesus goes to his hometown and they're in awe.
This message is funny to me because they kind of go from being in awe to what I call gnaw.
That's kind of the title of the message.
I usually don't have a title of the message, but it's called from awe to gnaw.
I don't know.
We see this happen. It's flip-flopped.
They're in awe of miracles. They're in awe of some of his teaching.
Then they're like, gnaw, gnaw.
For us, with our cell phones, I wouldn't trade this for the flip phone.
Gnaw.
You're not going back where there's some reason,
and we have to kind of think about that and wrestle with that
and think about what that has to do with us today and our church,
of why did they go from awe to gnaw?
All right?
So let me pray for us, and then we'll dig in.
God, thank you so much for your word, and I pray, God,
that as we look through Mark chapter six,
as we look at Jesus returning back to his hometown,
and people filled with awe, and then they're not in some certain areas.
Lord, I pray that we can wrestle with some questions.
I pray, God, that as we reflect on some of these truths,
Lord, that it will, man, that we'll kind of identify our place
in how we view Jesus, and that we can leave here
in a better understanding of who you are, Jesus,
and how much you love us, and how you are worthy to be praised,
and you are worthy for us to continue to be in awe of you,
despite all the things that we know and all the things that we think we know,
but you are, in fact, a God that is worthy of our praise.
In your name we pray. Amen.
So I kind of did that backwards, but let us stand,
I was like, we're praying, yeah, so I'm going to go in backwards,
but let us, we have a tradition where we stand in the reading of scripture,
if you're able, in the heart, mind, and spirit,
and we're going in reverse.
But Mark chapter six, verse one through six,
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples.
When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue,
and many who heard him were amazed.
Where did this man get these things, they asked.
What's this wisdom that has been given to him that he even does miracles?
Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James,
Judas and Simon?
Aren't his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him.
He said to them, only in his hometown among his relatives,
and in his house is a prophet without honor.
He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people
and heal them, and he was amazed at their lack of faith.
Alright, be seated.
So again, this morning we're going to continue the series.
We've been walking through the book of Mark.
Again, there's no cell phones in this passage,
but the reality that Jesus' presence in his hometown generated a response
that people went from being fascinated to unbelief.
In this chapter, Mark will write about two significant reactions,
but one that we'll talk about this morning.
One is the people of Jesus' hometown.
The other, later on in the passage, is about King Herod.
You'll be able to go ahead and look at that later,
but we're just going to dig into these first six verses.
But between these interactions, there's an important question that we'll wrestle with,
and it's my prayer, again, that we'll walk away with something applicable to our life.
But the question is, why do you think people reacted so differently to Jesus?
How did they go from being in awe to gnaw?
So, let me unpack a little bit of context of what's going on in here.
So this is Jesus' second recorded time and his last time visiting his hometown of Nazareth.
And as far as we know, the last time, if we went into the book of Luke,
chapter 4, 16-30, we will see that the first time that he went back home,
it didn't go well either.
People were initially impressed by his preaching.
We will see that in Luke chapter 4, 22.
But ironically, the town he grew up in turned on him.
They became angry. They attempted to ride out on him.
That's what we say. They were trying to get him out of there.
In Luke chapter 4, verse 28-30, we see them trying to get reckless with Jesus.
But regardless of the incident, Jesus returns.
But this time, he returned with his crew.
He returned with the 12 disciples, guardians of the galaxy at that time.
But this made a marble reference.
Was Jesus trying to show the disciples his hometown and give them some job training?
Like, this is going to be tough, guys. I've been here. Tough crowd.
Maybe Jesus was a little bit more hopeful that things would be different this time.
But unfortunately, as a spoiler alert, he will be disappointed again.
As a matter of fact, the events in this passage were enough.
I wrestled with this, too.
This was enough where we'll see at the end in chapter 6, verse 6,
it was enough to cause Jesus to marvel at such unbelief.
For even Jesus to be like, man, that's kind of wild.
So even Jesus was taken aback by it.
So it's important for us to understand that Mark writes this story of Jesus.
Mark is a good book because it has a lot of action.
It's kind of action packed. A lot of action in there.
So along with telling us about Jesus' teaching and his miracles,
we get to see this story progress,
and we get to see, kind of get a front row seat of people's reactions to Jesus as he's doing these things.
So first that we're going to see that there's a large number of people that were drawn to Jesus.
As a fact, we see that all the way, Mark, chapter 1, all the way to where we're at today.
The second thing is that we see that there's people's responses and reactions were very different.
So I'm going to just blast through some snippets of, in this book, Jesus' greatest hits so far.
All right. Some greatest hits so far in chapter 2, verse 2.
So many are gathered that there was no room left even outside the door.
Chapter 2, verse 13, a large crowd came to him.
Chapter 3, verse 7, a large crowd from Galilee followed him.
332, a crowd was sitting around him.
Chapter 4, verse 1, the crowd that gathered around him was so large.
Chapter 4, verse 36, leaving the crowd behind him.
Chapter 5, verse 14, the people went out to see what had happened.
Chapter 5, verse 21, a large crowd gathered around him.
Chapter 5, verse 24, a large crowd followed him and pressed around him.
So just want to get, there's a lot of stuff going on.
Big crowds.
Also, there's some responses.
Chapter 2, verse 5, when Jesus saw their faith.
It's interesting. Jesus saw their faith.
In chapter 2, verse 7, why does this fellow talk like that?
He's blaspheming.
He was catching heat from Mark chapter 2.
Mark chapter 2, verse 12, this amazed everyone and they praised God.
And then, Mark chapter 2, 15, there were many who followed him.
Mark chapter 3, verse 6, the Pharisees went out to begin to plot how they might kill Jesus.
Chapter 3, verse 10, those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him.
Chapter 3, verse 20, he's out of his mind.
Chapter 3, verse 22, he's possessed by Beaselwood.
Who is this?
That's his own followers.
Chapter 5, verse 17, then the people began to plead Jesus to leave their region.
But then, in the next verse, the demoniac that got healed said,
take me with you, bro.
Chapter 5, verse 20, all the people were amazed.
And Pastor Greg was talking about the healing of the daughter that was dying.
Chapter 5, verse 23, my little daughter is dying, please come.
Chapter 5, verse 28, if I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.
Chapter 5, 40, they laughed at him.
Chapter 5, 42, they were completely astonished.
And then, here we are.
So, there's a lot of reactions going on.
There's some healing going on, some miracles going on, some hating going on.
Jesus continues to stay who Jesus is.
And here's his first, a lot of stuff going on in these six verses.
The first verse, Jesus left there and went to his hometown,
accompanied by his disciples.
When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue,
and many who heard him were amazed right now.
Something astonishing, astounding, staggering, stupefying, what does all mean?
If you've ever been in that state where we're watching a movie on this flip phone, crazy.
We're in awe.
We won't be in awe of that anymore.
We've moved on past that.
In real life, a dog shaking his paw probably won't leave you in awe.
That kind of rhymed, too.
A dog being able to call 911 for his owner, you might be like, oh, that's kind of cool.
Michael Jordan for the first time jumping from the free throw line, leave you in awe.
LeBron breaking the scoring title, probably not.
I'm just hating.
Look at that.
I had to put that in there, All-Star Weekend.
20th year, on his 20th year.
Maybe not astonishing, but the truth is, anytime that you find yourself kind of gasping and saying,
I can't believe what I'm seeing or hearing, you're probably seeing or hearing something astonishing
and leaving you in this state of awe.
As we've seen before in this book, we know for a fact that the Scriptures tell us that.
The Scriptures tell us that people were amazed.
What was it about Jesus' teaching that astounded many people in Nazareth?
Because it shows us in verse 2, it says they were astonished.
They were in awe of his wisdom and the miracles.
So there's no doubt, in fact, in the Scriptures that Jesus was a captivating person.
There's no doubt about if people agreed or not, he was a captivating person.
People were following him.
There were large crowds.
But in his wisdom, when we think about the way that he taught, people knew that he made sense of life.
He explained profound things in simple ways.
But why were they in awe of this?
I try to kind of grasp of what would this look like?
Let's say that I bought a pair of new Jordans and I wasn't pleased with them, so I called the hotline.
And I actually got a human that called me back and said,
Hey, I worked for Team Jordan. Let me hear your complaint.
That would be kind of delightful.
But what if Michael Jordan called me and was like, Hey, you got a problem with my shoes?
I'd be like, Is this for real, Jordan, bro?
Let's FaceTime real quick. You know what I mean?
But you would be in awe. So picture Jesus is not only teaching you, but you know,
we're up here preaching stuff, we're quoting stuff, we're quoting scholars.
He ain't quoting nobody. He's like, I'm him.
It's the source.
Like, I'm coming to you and I'm teaching you. I'm not quoting no peer-reviewed articles.
I don't have a PhD or a master's. I'm him.
So what I'm telling you, this is me. Like, I'm talking about like the one that's coming up.
Like, I'm here.
So it's different. So people are astonished at this wisdom because they're like, man, this makes sense, man.
But it's him. Like, he's saying, like, I'm the guy.
There's no sources. I'm the source.
So it calls this thing in people where it's just like, man, I think that's your right, but who are you?
He's just a regular person, especially when he goes to his hometown.
Secondly, people obviously respected the miracles.
You know, everybody kind of likes David Blaine a little bit. You kind of got to respect the tricks.
You're like, that's cool stuff. I don't know. That's cool.
We hear about it. We've seen Jesus snap. He's doing some great things.
But the wisdom and the miracles were not enough for people.
In his hometown, in verse three, they start asking questions.
They begin to use kind of their own logic by asking, where did this man get these things?
Like, essentially, they're asking like, OK, for real. So where you learn all these tricks, bro?
They rejected him. And when we see this group of people in the matter of three verses go from all to none,
they're face to face with the infinite God, the infinite God, man, Jesus.
And they looked with their finite wisdom and logic and deduced him down to just a regular guy.
That's kind of cool. Says great things. But we ain't putting our faith in you, though.
No, they deduced him down to just an ordinary town's guy.
In verse three, they're breaking down his portfolio.
We know your mom, your brothers, your sisters.
You fixed our table, put our roof on. Your dad, you know, he was a good dude.
You guys do some good work, good woodwork, good carpenters here.
Like, we grew up with dude, but you can't be him, though.
Like, you really can't. They thought they knew him better than anyone else because he lived there.
You can picture them saying, we might not be able to explain this wisdom and these miracles, but we know who you are,
and you're not really that important.
Nazareth was known to be kind of a nowhere town made up of nobodies.
And it's estimated that the population was between 150 to 200 people, not thousand. 150 to 200.
So insignificant was this town that is not mentioned in the Old Testament,
and it only receives a little attention in the New Testament.
Nathaniel, if we flip to the book of John in verse, John 46, there's kind of an interesting story.
Nathaniel's being introduced to Jesus by Peter, and in hearing about where Jesus is from,
Nathaniel said, can anything good come from Nazareth?
They're like, hey, bro, you're going to meet Jesus. Jesus, where he from?
And Jesus meets him and is like, bro, you don't even know. You don't even get it.
And Nathan's just like, could anything good come from there?
So in the same fashion in Jesus' presence, Jesus is being ridiculed by his people.
His hometown doesn't deny, but it's not enough for them to put his faith.
They can't seem to reconcile what Jesus has done with who they think Jesus must be.
And we have to remember there's a list of miracles that he's done so far in the name of Jesus and God.
But Jesus, he speaks on this. He speaks directly to it.
He kind of says, you think that you know me because I grew up here.
You think you know me because I've done some work maybe for you in your own house.
You think you know me because I've been around and your cousins know me.
And you know, you might even call me cousin.
But he says a prophet ain't even welcomed in his own town, not even welcomed here.
And what happened in Nazareth after this is very interesting.
And I don't have all the answers, but the better question is what didn't happen.
And we read in verse number five. It's very interesting.
It says he referring to Jesus could not do any miracles there.
He could not do any. I just I've been looking at this scripture all week.
He could not do. Jesus could not do any miracles here.
He couldn't. Is that a typo? He wouldn't. He couldn't.
What should it say? It says he couldn't do any miracles there.
But there were a few people that he healed. And then it says he was amazed at the lack of their faith.
I kind of want to throw my anchor down here.
The miracles didn't do it. His wisdom didn't do it.
And Jesus reflecting on their lack of faith, their trust in Jesus, because it's faith.
You get anything from us today as your faith invites Jesus into a situation,
into your life in order to do the miraculous.
And we could see in the scripture that in this case, unbelief restricted him.
And I kind of wrestled with it a little bit. And sometimes, you know, if you're a parent or whatever,
sometimes you can think of some of the things that you might want to do with your kid.
And you can do something crazy and mess it all up.
And you're like, I can't, we're not going to McDonald's now.
You see what you just did?
The environment's not really conducive for me to bless you with a Happy Meal right now.
You know what I'm saying?
In this passage, right, and I can't, this is mind boggling in some ways.
And there could be some people that are going to be like, just take the kids through the drive-through.
Sometimes we're like, no, we're not doing that today.
And I feel like we've come to this moment where Jesus is like,
this environment's not even right for this.
Like, they're whiling out.
It's not happening.
There's a few of y'all that really get it.
Is that right or wrong?
In this situation with Jesus, we see that some people not only missed out on who Jesus is,
but missed out on this true interaction with Jesus because of their unbelief.
And I reflect on that with us, and what does that mean for us?
Right?
Because we can look and we can argue, but how is it possible for a human being can hold back the powers of God?
But when I think about the deal here, think about how apart from the eyes of faith,
we can't really see who Jesus truly is.
Miracles can only take us so far, but in and of themselves, it's not enough.
His teachings point to him.
His miracles point to him.
There are these divine signs and billboards that we could just miss.
Has anybody heard about what's going on in Asbury?
Asbury.
Revival.
It's been interesting, right?
Because when you talk about things like this, there's a lot of skepticism, there's a lot of stuff going on.
I know I kind of scrolled right past it when I first heard about it.
And this week as I was wrestling with his passage, and I'm looking into it not really deeply,
but I have a friend of mine that Greg and I went to Judson University,
and I'm good friends with the guy that's in charge of the chapel services.
He's worked there for quite a number of years.
He does Christian.
He's a teacher in the Christian ministry department as well.
But he's a really good dude.
He went, and he just was like, I just wanted to go.
He's in charge of his own chapel services on the campus,
and this sparked off at a chapel service on another campus.
He just wanted to go and just be a fly on the wall for his own little deal.
And I want to just read some of his thoughts, because when I read his thoughts,
it just reminded me, it just reminded me of this passage.
It reminded me of how we can interact with this as we go.
But these are his words.
It's been a couple days since I returned from a spontaneous trip to Asbury
to see for myself what was happening among the student body.
My summary, this is everything that we've been praying for.
I'm on a national email thread with campus chaplains and deans talking about how
chapel, especially after COVID, has changed.
Each dean recounts the same thing, phones out, headphones in, laptops,
and talking loudly during services.
Students all over the states, disaffected, disconnected,
disinterested in cultivating their spiritual lives.
And I see this at my university too.
This move cuts through delusionment, distraction, cynicism.
It's the real deal.
Powerful, prayerful, orderly, passionate, patient, full of testimony, worship, and prayer.
I'm typically skeptical of revival talk and what may be emotionalism.
This is not that.
This isn't driven by personality nor preaching.
It's all organic and rather ordinary.
It's unimpressive from the outside.
No fancy lights or fog, no drum kit, no lyrics on a screen.
It's the ordinary work of worship, prayer, confession, intercession.
Students are confessing sin and encountering the love of God.
The culture of this space centered on three things,
radical humility, purity of heart, and hunger.
Radical humility counters the insta-famous impulse, like look how spiritual I am.
Purity of heart counters change for thee but not for me.
And hunger counters cynicism.
My prayer for Gen Z is that this is woven into the fabric of their faith.
May it be in my school as well.
And it really hit me that there's sometimes, you know, as we're in this day and age,
where we can grab all this information and do our own research and look into everything,
and then we can form a conclusion of exactly what we think,
and we can kind of prescribe this is how God's working in this situation.
And I'll show you all my evidence of this.
And sometimes, sometimes I feel like when I look at this story,
we can kind of dismiss the people of Nazareth, but that's kind of the story of us as well, if we're honest.
Because we can just be like, mmm, that's not happening, I don't care, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I don't believe in revivals because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then something happened to me before, and I got this church hurt, and I'm deconstructing right now, or whatever.
Now, I'm not making light of these things.
However, there's times that we, Jesus could be doing real things in and around us,
and we can just be like, whatever.
I know that's not real. Or blah, blah, blah, blah.
Or I had a friend that told me this, or blah, blah, blah, blah.
And this has been real convicting as I've done this message this week,
because it's really easy to point a finger at the people of Nazareth.
But it's very difficult when I point the finger back at myself
and think about how many times that I may have dismissed God's Spirit, or dismissed God's presence in my life,
or dismissed something because of Chris Britton's knowledge, and my experience as youth ministry.
So I can tell if somebody's really living it right or not, because all the examples I've had with all the students that I've worked with,
and I can just be like, I know they say that they're living for Christ, but they're fake,
because I saw what they posted on Instagram.
Not real. Right?
And I could do these things.
The problem is sometimes I believe having a childlike faith as an adult, sometimes people think that that's a weakness,
or people will say like, ah, that's weak. You can't just have faith in it.
You've got to prove this stuff. You've got to see evidence in all this stuff.
You can't just believe in Jesus. You have to prove everything.
And I don't have all the answers. Today I'm not giving you a whole bunch of answers.
But I want to challenge us not to have a revival, but I start thinking, God, can you help revive all in me?
Revive all. What does that mean for you individually?
Because I believe if we're believers in here, there once was a point where there was this divine all in your life that drew you to Christ.
And maybe that's just wore off like a flip phone now.
And that's the thing of the past or the old, or you flipped it closed because of something that you've experienced
or something that you don't believe God did or some hurts or some pains or some church stuff or relationship stuff or bad things or whatever the case.
Or maybe, just maybe, like Nazareth, there's people that just lived there the whole time.
They're just like, you know, I've talked to some people, I've said, I've been a Christian all my life, and they act like they're bored.
They're just like, hmm. I heard somebody say, I really don't have a testimony. I've just been a Christian all my life.
I'm like, so what? And they're just like, yeah, I don't really have a testimony.
I'm like, yes, you do.
Through God's spirit, he spared you from a lot of stuff that you wouldn't have to see. That's your testimony.
You don't have to be wilding out.
I know a teenager that told me one time, like, Chris, I really don't.
I think I'm going to give my life to Christ after I really go through some stuff.
I got to go out there and experience some stuff.
So you might not see me at the youth center for a little while till I get this testimony.
I'm like, dang, are they on sale or something right now? Where are you going? It's a door buster.
And unfortunately, I remember I didn't see this kid for like six months.
And they came back one Saturday evening and they had tears in their face and stuff.
And they were like, I should have never left. I don't know what I was thinking.
Horrible story this young lady was telling me about what she experienced in them six months.
There's a little part of me that wanted to be like, was it worth it? You see, like.
And at that moment, I saw them kind of in awe of God's love saying, I know God still loves me.
But are we sometimes too wrapped up in ourselves and our own minds and our own thoughts and our own research that we miss out
on the awe that once drew us to our faith?
Or we could be on the other side where we haven't even taken that step towards Christ because we're already just like,
nah, I ain't ready to put my trust in Christ like that, my faith in Christ like that.
As I reflected this week, I cannot personally explain some of the things that have occurred in my spiritual life.
And I know that there's some people that have tried to explain it away.
Chris, you were just emotional. Chris, you were tired.
I know you were just going through some things.
But I know what I experienced with God's supernatural spirit guiding some key moments in my life, strengthening me,
giving me a piece that I didn't have, helping me to be bold when I needed and other times silent
and other times needed to take action that I probably wouldn't have.
There have been some spiritual moments that have changed the trajectory of my life as a result of my faith in Jesus,
of an action taken towards, okay, I really feel like I need to do this right now or not do this because of Christ.
I've shared some stories with people before and they're just like, oh, yeah, I can see.
But don't you think that you were just...
And at this point in my life, I'm kind of tired of trying to over explain it.
And some people might say like, well, you're just...
you believe in this imaginary character that you think that guided you through this stuff.
I believe Jesus' spirit interacted with me in a real way.
And I'm not going to argue with anybody about that.
My question, can we be a church full of people that ask God to revive all in us?
Can we be a church of people that place faith in a Jesus that really loves us?
Is it possible that there are corners in our life where God's not active because of our unbelief?
I don't have an answer to that.
I can't answer those things.
But in life, we know there's relationships that get old.
Sometimes things that are close to us gets old, not just technology and phones and all that kind of stuff.
But y'all know what I'm saying.
And I'm just hoping that we can get to a point again where we can ask God, what does that mean to revive all in us?
So we can't miss when Jesus is trying to impress upon us His love.
Because at the end of the day, I mean, Jesus didn't come to Nazareth to get dissed.
I mean, He came, He wanted to be a blessing to them, and they were kind of breaking Him down.
And He was amazed.
He was amazed.
God loves us, and Jesus loves us.
And I don't think that, I think this shows us that even though Jesus was amazed at the doubt, He understands.
He understands the inner battle that we may have to put our faith and trust in our life in the hands of Christ.
So this isn't one of those messages where I'm trying to beat everybody up, but it's one of those things where Jesus really loves us.
And Jesus, again, we see that He came back there.
He didn't have a good experience the first time.
He came back.
He still loved them.
He still came home.
And He still wants to come home to us as well.
He still loves us.
I think sometimes when I look at our faith journey, and when I look at the progression of cell phones, you know, every year there's not huge, huge updates,
but every once in a while there's this big new thing, right?
There's a big new thing that kind of marks that generation.
And sometimes I feel like that's where our faith, we might have a couple years where we're really struggling, but we might have some highlights where we really trusted God as well.
And in our life, maybe we get to that trajectory where we can look back on the different phases of maybe our belief and unbelief,
not just to look back and to be sad about it or to have all these regrets, but to look how God loved us all the way through each one of those phases.
And God carried us through each one of those new phases.
And we can trust that God's going to continue to update us in ways that we can't even imagine as we put our faith and trust in Him.
Let's pray.
God, thank you so much for your word.
I pray, I pray, for whatever is going on in Asbury, I'm not a spiritual detective,
but I ask that you continue to move on the hearts of those there and around the country.
But I also understand, Lord, that there's walls and barriers that as individuals that we put up sometimes, and I pray, God, that you revive all in us.
Break the barriers down so we can truly see who you are, how much you love us, and how much you are worthy of.
Praise.
I pray, God, that some of us return to you in new awe, some of us take those first steps towards you in faith as well.
But whatever the case, Lord, I pray, God, that we will understand that you are so much closer than we think sometimes,
as we may think that you're sitting up in a cloud somewhere shaking your head down at us or shaking your fist at us.
God, I know your spirit's here.
I pray that we can be in awe of that and that we might not have to understand everything.
I pray that we can put our trust and faith and hope in you and that your spirit will meet us where we're at
and that your love will minister to us in a way that is tangible for our journeys.
In your name we pray. Amen.