Who Can You Trust Completely

Here is a question to get you thinking:  Who do you consider the hero’s of today.

Can you think of a person or persons that you could trust enough to share your most venerable feelings and past with?          

Feb 8, 2015 Readings:  1 Corinthians 8: 1-13, Psalm 111, Mark 1: 21-28

If you were attentive to the 3 readings this morning you may have heard this very interesting connection.  There is a voice of authority in our midst that can moves mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead and yes even drive out evil demons from one’s life.  Even people who take the Lords name in vane know the power surge it offers them.  I challenge you try using any other name while cursing, it doesn’t work.   

According to Mark the voice that speaks to the heart, to compassion, mercy and love, also speaks to evil and given time, will call evil to account.  One of the great Mysteries of our bible is this:  Is Jesus the voice of God incarnate, or is Jesus just the conduit for the voice?  Well, according to Paul’s writings in 1 Corinthians verse 6 and I quote “ yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.    How come the same?       

Paul’s perspective here seems to suggest that Jesus and God are actually one in the same.  In the Gospel of Mark we also find that the evil spirit within the man apparently recognizes Jesus’ voice and refers to him as and the Holy messenger of God.   Jesus is not speaking to the man, he is actually speaking to the evil spirit within the man. 

Again I say to you folks, it matters not how you perceive Jesus, as God incarnate, Lord, The Son of God, Messiah or just a prophet with an unusual sense and understanding of the Holy.  What really matters is do YOU recognize the authority in Him.  Can you count yourself as one who is willing to follow Him?    As a Christian, can you put your full trust in Him as the authority, mentor, lifelong companion and your guide? 

Over these last couple of sermons we have been thinking about “THE VOICE” of authority and how we too have often heard it speaking to the spirit within ourselves.  Follow its leading and you will eventually receive a blessing, remembering that faith does not always give you instant results.  On the other hand, Ignore the voice and eventually you will pay the piper as the old saying goes.  From a theological prospective I believe that we struggle with the many voices that we listen to during the run of our day.  Some are audible and some seem just to crop up out of the blue in the mind.  I recently referred to it as that mad monkey mind we all have at times.   Paul refers to them as the voices of other gods {with a small g} in his writings, their domain lay in worldly ways, and materialism.   Major negative ones might be the voice that calls us to jealously or to unrighteous anger.  Then the voice of anger calls upon rage and the voice of rage leads to death.  Not so drastic to us are the voices of greed, selfishness, or lust but, they very well might be, to an innocent by stander.  As Christians, we are committed to listen to the one voice who claims, I Am the truth and the life.   Here is an interesting perspective.   When Moses asked God on the mountain top, “what shall I say when they ask who sent me Lord”, and God said, “tell them I Am sent you.”   I Am is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through I Am.   Case in point:   John 8: 23-25  NIV. But he continued. "You are from below: I am from above.  You are of this world: I am not of this world.  I told you that you would die in your sins: if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins".  "Who are you they asked. "Just what I have been telling you from the beginning."  Jesus replied.   John 10: 30  " I and the Father are one". 

Wow!! Isn’t that a new perspective.  I believe Jesus is suggesting that He is the "I Am"? We also know, that the voice of God often speaks to us through ordinary people.  Through their writings, their poems, their acts of love, compassion and kindness.  John 14: 20  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 

I do not personally see the image of God as being a physical image.  Meaning a physical body with long white hair, sitting on a throne, as some may have learned to image God.   The references in scripture to God having eyes, a head, torso, hands, feet etc. I believe is metaphor.  Yes we were created in God’s image but I believe the image that was intended, is not a physical one but the image of love.   A love that is completely all encompassing, a love that never fails, and is completely unconditional, no strings attached.  Isn’t that what we seek in our wonderings, to fill the lonely, rejected empty spaces in our lives?   This love allows us to make up our own minds, a love that give us the freedom to choose and fall, and it is a love that allows us to learn how to get back up.   Here again I think it might be good to remind ourselves that belief and faith are not the same folks.   Belief and religion can be manipulated, you can learn to believe in anything, some good, some bad.  Case in point, just watch TV or listen to the news today and you can see or hear about the atrocities that are being committed in the name of an unloving god, a god of conditions.

Faith and trust on the other hand cannot be manipulated, you either have an unconditional faith that you can trust in, or you do not.  Case in point, Jesus and His way.  Let us pray.