Today Pastor Jeff taught from Mark 6:1-29.
I want my children to grow up to be like Jesus and John the Baptist. Perhaps more than anything because I admire these so highly.
The confidence and panache exhibited in their bold loyalty to the Truth of God is inspiring. I love hearing someone preach something definitively true in a manner which is as true and definitive as the truth of which they speak. There is something about it that rouses me from within. It makes me want to rise up and meet the challenge and defend that truth and do radical things like live and die for it, reorient my current life around it, and preach it to others.
I pray that God provides me the opportunity and platform from which to use my passion to preach for His glory.
I pray my children would be so inspired and thankful in the and to the work of Christ that they might stand in any context in front of any person and speak rightly the oracles of God in Christ Jesus.
John the Baptist lost his head for speaking the truth and refusing to recant or repent of that to which he had devoted his life. Because he was so devoted to God, he called each and every man to repent of everything else.
When you throw your lot in with God, all other lots must be cast away. John knew this and recognized this and taught it as explictly as it was. No watering it down or pandering. Just pure Law & Gospel. A message strong enough to offend and potent enough to regenerate the heart of the dead ears on the receiving end.
The only way we see and know the regenerating power of the Gospel is if we preach it and actively cast away ourselves and our persuasiveness. The Gospel will call men and women out of darkness all by itself. The Gospel will provoke the wicked to harden themselves even more all by itself. The Gospel creates the wheat and the weeds.
Jesus is the hinge of history and the human heart. Either direction it swings, it depends on Jesus.
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