Hearing Aid
Good Morning Harvest!
Don’t forget to go out and vote today! I’ve made myself a nice little “cheat sheet” on all of the candidates, judges and propositions to take into the polls so that I don’t hold up the lines. Now all I have to do is punch everything out correctly and not leave any “hanging chads!”
Let’s continue to pray for all of our nations leaders, the spiritual state of our government, and the direction of our communities. Continue to thank God for the many blessings He has afforded us in living in the United States!
byron
Harvest South Bay November 2nd, 2008
Hearing Aid
Great Expectations: The Gospel of Mark
Mark 7:31-37
Narrative: Jesus takes a deaf man with a speech impediment aside and heals him while people disobey Jesus’ commandment to keep the miracle a secret.
The lack of understanding of the disciples: The disciples keep displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of Jesus and His mission. He tells them on 3 different occasions of His persecution and death (Mark 8:31;9:3; 10:33,34) and each time they display their lack of understanding. This is the reason why we understand Jesus’ healing miracles in this section (Mark 7:31-37;8:22-26;10:46-52) as more than simple healings: they also serve as parables which illustrate the need to hear and see Jesus for who He truly is: the suffering Messiah who comes to redeem us of our sins.
3 prerequisites to hearing God
1. Realize that Jesus is the one who opens our ears
2. Understand our hardness of heart.
3. Challenge conventional wisdom.
Weekly Application Exercises
1. Memorize some part of the Bible this week and seek to think on what you memorize throughout the day- seeing how God challenges you with that piece of His instruction.
2. Identify a part of the Bible which you have previously thought as impractical in it’s application. How would God want to challenge you in implementing that Scripture in your life?
Recommended reading
1. Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
2. How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
3. Children’s Thinking, Robert Siegler
Some additional questions from the sermon:
1. Recall some sins that you continued in for some time but now have rejected. What was that process like? What circumstances made you hold on tightly to those sins? What kind of excuses did you hold to internally which kept you from giving up those sins? How does that experience of breaking from from sin inform any present processes in your life in identifying, breaking from, and being victorious from sin?
2. In your life, what has hearing God’s voice and experiencing Him been like? At what times has He spoken to you and in your pursuit of Him, have you simply tried to recreate those experiences rather than recognizing His authority in revelation?
3. Rate your countercultural-ness on a scale between 1-10 (1= very much like society around me, 10= very different than everything!). How does your conformity to norms interfere with pursuing God’s will for your everyday actions and overall plan for your life?
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