Being With Jesus

Transcript

Jonathan Odom:

From Mark chapter one, verses 14 through 20, hear the word of the Lord. After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God. The time has come. He said The kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news. As Jesus walked beside the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew, casting Annette into the lake for they were fishermen, come follow me. Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people at once. They left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zedi and his brother John in a boat preparing their nets. Without delay, he called them and they left their father Zedi in the boat with the hired men and followed him. This is the word of the Lord.

Jeremy England:

My name is Jeremy. I'm one of the pastors here at Journey and I get to talk to you about being present with Jesus. And the reason we are in this, we're talking about this, is as Jonathan explained last week, we're going to be learning kind of what it means to be followers of Jesus, to be disciples of Jesus. And we're going to try to hear from four unique voices, Jonathan, last week myself though I'm not unique to a lot of you, but different perspectives. And then we'll have Mallory and Carly. So we're going to have a bunch of different people talking about this topic, which is super cool. And I think it's so important as a follower of Jesus to hear different perspectives and different viewpoints of scripture and how we interpret it and all that. And the reason we're doing this is one, it's good we're in church together.

We should all learn to be better followers of Jesus and what that means and because scripture tells us to be better followers of Jesus. In Ephesians chapter five, this is kind of the guiding verse throughout the whole next four weeks, five, one through two, follow God's example, therefore as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love just as Christ loved us and gave him himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, do what God did because we are the children of God. That's why we are focusing on these different aspects of discipleship and following. Jesus starts with always in invitation for you to take a step to follow. Jesus starts with the invitation of come and see, come and see what is going to happen when you follow me. Come with me as we journey along and do ministry together and see when you believe in me, this is Jesus.

I'm paraphrasing. See how that's going to play out. See how it is correct to follow God and how to follow God. And so we're going to be looking at three things. Be present with Jesus, be shaped by Jesus and do what Jesus did. Be present with Jesus. Be shaped by Jesus and do what Jesus did. That's a challenge, Jonathan. There's a bumper sticker, that's what I call it, bumper sticker theologies, things that you can put into your mind and hold onto to guide you. Be present, be shaped, and do what Jesus did. So today we're talking about being present with Jesus. That's this focus of today's message. And that idea of being present or being with somebody I think boils down to one word and that is trust. That's the word that kept echoing in my mind of what does it mean to be present with Jesus and that is trusting in Jesus.

What does it mean to be present with anybody? I think for most of us, I would venture to guess that you would not put yourselves in situations or surround yourself with people willingly that you don't trust. I know that sometimes if you have a job that you're forced to work with people that you didn't get to choose. There might be people you don't like very much or people that you don't trust, but you're not going to go out of your way to spend time with them because you don't necessarily trust them. You don't want to be present with them because you don't trust. Trusting is the key and core thing, foundational thing to being with somebody and being shaped and being molded by somebody. Because to be with somebody is we're going to explore in a little bit. To be with somebody is to be shaped by that person.

And if you trust them, you're going to let your guard down and you're going to let yourself be shaped by them. If you don't trust somebody, your guard is going to be up. You're going to ignore everything they say or you're going to be defensive. And now we're talking about Jesus, the person, Jesus who walked on this earth thousands of years ago. We don't get to walk with a physical Jesus himself, but we have to trust and be present with Jesus somehow. So if you don't trust somebody and you're not around them, you have to trust ideas and we'll get to what I mean by that in a second. And the other thing, you would not be confident in trust going into situations if you don't trust yourself. And I was thinking about this. I have some pictures up here. I want to show you about a situation of trust and how you can enter into it so you can be present.

And the, I'll just put the first picture up here. This little contraption right here is called a heat trainer. It's an acronym from the army. And the big thing about being in the military is you get trained a lot to do things. You do the same thing over and over and over and over again until you're really good at it and it's automatic. So when I get trained by somebody or when I'm trained by somebody and then I have to go out by myself to do it, they might not be walking alongside me, but I trust that they knew what they were doing and how to navigate difficult situations. This is a representative of a truck. It doesn't look like it because it has the wheels in the front and the back, but not the sides. And what they do is they load you in there.

So this is what it looks like to be inside the truck. You buckle up, they close the doors, and then they say roll over, roll over, roll over. And if you look at this picture on the side, this side, you see that kind of protrusion that is the top of the truck. So that truck is full of people on the inside, rolling over, buckled up, and then they roll you like five times. You do this a bunch of times and then they stop the truck and you spill out of it, you unbuckle and you fall on the ceiling and you fall on your buddies and then you find your way out of the truck. Sometimes they put a bunch of smoke in there so you can't see what you're doing or where you're going so you can fall out of the truck. And why would the military spend a lot of good money to just roll some soldiers around in the truck just to scramble their brains?

And sometimes they don't buckle stuff down. So there's boxes flying around and hitting you in the head. And this is sideways. What you start out with is actually your upside down is the first one you have to get out. They buckle you in, they spin you around five times, stop you upside down and say, get out of the truck. And so then you unbuckle and you hear like five thuds. You go, okay, egress. They unbuckle go doom. And then everybody starts laughing and you get the doors and you get out. And the reason you do this is it's in a safe environment. Safe environment. You can't be that safe running around in a truck upside down, but they do this. So you know what it feels like to be rolled over in a truck because unfortunately during the war we lost a lot of soldiers from trucks rolling over.

And so they figured, how can we prevent this from happening? And so if you ever find yourself in a situation like this, even to this day, I know what I have to do. If I start rolling my car over, praise God, knock on wood, I will never have to do that. But I am ready to go upside down in a car. And the reason I bring this point up is because I don't know who those trainers are that rolled us around in that vehicle. I don't know their names, I don't know where they're from, but I do have a lot of trust in who they are and how well they trained us to be very good at that task right there. And so when you start to trust somebody or you start to trust a process, then you can start to be present in the situation to know how to navigate the world around you.

And so this call that we have answering the call of Jesus, of being present with Jesus, the invitation, come and see, come and be present with me into an unknown situation, right? This Jesus guy's walking down the side of the lake and he just looks out to you, says, follow me, follow me. And these people are like, okay, that sounds good. I'm going to come out and I'm going to follow you. And that's it. I mean, I'm going to reread the passage from today because I think it's important to always hear scripture multiple times, but the answering of the call of the invitation to be present was Jesus after John was put in prison, that's John the Baptist. So last week we talk about John the Baptist was baptizing people and then he says, Jesus is coming, the one is coming. That's greater than I am.

And when Jesus comes, he said, that is him. So John the Baptist was prophesying, baptizing people, preparing the way for Jesus and because he was doing that, people were not happy. So they put him in prison. After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God. The time has come. He said, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news. So the time has come, repent and believe. As Jesus walked beside the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew cast a net into the lake for they were fishermen, come follow me. Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. And once they left their nets and followed him, the invitation, the proclamation, the kingdom of God is near the invitation, come and follow me and I'm going to teach you how to navigate this next phase of life. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat preparing their nets. Without delay, he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

The proclamation, the kingdom of God is near the invitation, come and see, come and follow me and I'm going to teach you how to navigate this next part of God's story. And so I was very curious, how did a bunch of men just decide all of a sudden to pick up their stuff? Well, I mean the last two guys, right? John and his brother James didn't even pick up their stuff. They dropped whatever they had in their hands and left their dad with a bunch of works and said, see you later, I'm out of here. And they went and followed Jesus. So how does this happen? How does it happen that somebody just says, come here and they say, okay, that sounds good to me. It's hard. I used to think it was difficult to comprehend how somebody could do that until I came to Dallas.

I mean really Jonathan is not Jesus. But he called me and said, why don't you come down to Dallas? And I said, that sounds good to me. And I dropped everything. Well, I packed it all up, which is awful. Moved it down here and here I am, I mean answering the call of where I think Jesus was calling me and my family ended up here so I can kind of get a little bit of a taste of what that feels like. Come here and do the work of God and I will show you how to do it. But these men, they're from Galilee, the region of Galilee, and what I learned is that the Galilee, the Galileans were actually very well educated, and I don't know if they're just biased on my part, but we think fishermen and they just must be out there doing grunt work to feed the village, but they're actually very religiously educated.

Starting at the age of five, roughly. They start their education and they have different milestones, 10, 13, 15, 18. And once you become these adults, they study and they pick up a trade. So these men, the first men we read here, picked up fishing. And so they fish and they study scripture and they know it all very well. And then if you're really bright and really smart, at the end of this period, you go find a famous rabbi. That's what all the articles said. A famous rabbi, somebody you want to be like, and you ask them, Hey, can I come and study with you? Can I leave everything behind and come study and be like you? Not just that I want to study scripture and learn more. I want to be molded and shaped into who you are. They put themselves out there to find a rabbi that they cared for or admired or wanted to be like.

And then the rabbi looked at these people, tested them, and then they said yes or no. If they said yes, which is a very prestigious small group, then you left everything behind and you went and you followed the rabbi and you learned and you basically became little disciples of that person. You started to look like them. You started to talk like them. You understood the scriptures and the world like them. If they said no, which was more likely than not, then you had this trade. So a good thing you learned how to be a carpenter or a fisherman or a basket weaver or whatever, because now you have a way to support yourself and you have a purpose beyond that. So all of these men were very well educated from what we could tell from the area that they were from. And they must not have got chosen because they were not following a rabbi at the time.

And so Jesus did something that very few rabbis did. Most people, they came to you. If you're a rabbi, they came to you and asked if you could follow them. Very few rabbis went and said, I want you to study with me. And if a rabbi says yes, so no matter how it happens, if a rabbi says, yes, you can follow me, then there is a belief in you as a person that they see something in you that can be used for a greater good in the kingdom of God. They saw great potential in you. So it was a very affirming thing. So for Jesus to go around, they don't know that this is Jesus yet. I mean they don't really know until after Jesus is dead and he comes back from their dead. They don't know. They just know that he's a teacher and that he has put value in them by saying, well, why don't you come and follow me and be my disciples? So it's a very great thing for them and a very cool thing for them to be chosen. They saw potential in you. And there's an old saying, it's show me the company you keep and I'll show you what kind of person you are. And there's a lot of different variations of that. The earliest known part of that saying is from Phoenix Fragment 8 0 9 by a Greek tragedy in Euro Greek man's hard.

And he says this, he says, every man is like the company he's want to keep. You are like the people that you surround yourself with. When a rabbi chooses you, it's the opposite of that. He is saying, I want you to be a part of the company that I keep because I see potential in you being like me. And that's pretty cool, I think. And so in this case, you're represented as an image bearer of the rabbi that you follow. You're no longer James the fisherman. You are James the follower who is with Jesus. You are of Jesus. You're a descendant in that tradition. So then these disciples, they enter the call, the kingdom of God is near repent and come with me. Come see what happens. And so the disciples say, yes, sounds good. And they spend three years of their lives following and being with Jesus, learning from Jesus.

They were there through the ups and they were there through the downs. They were there for when Jesus had great crowds to speak from, they were there when Jesus had to sneak away between some columns to avoid getting murdered. They were there when people were picking up stones to stone him. They were there at the last supper. They shared meals with him. Everything that they did with Jesus, they all did. Or everything that Jesus did, they all did with him. They were learning. They were being molded and shaped and formed by Jesus, by being present with Jesus. And so only thing I could say about that is, I mean, how lucky are they? How lucky were they that they got to walk around and be with God in flesh on this earth? I think that's very lucky. And as we see their lives grow, their trust in Jesus grows.

They took this big leap of faith at the beginning, follow Jesus, follow me. And they said yes, but as they follow him, their trust begins to grow more and more. You can see them changing from brand new Christ followers, newbies, if you will, to going out at the end to spreading the good news, to being sent out, to go spread the gospel message amongst all the world they come from, not understanding Jesus who he was, to proclaiming Jesus as the son of God, from having a view of scripture and a view of God's redeeming plan here to understanding the fullness. When Jesus comes back from the dead, they changed from people who thought they knew a lot to people who missed every point and asked a bunch of questions that just seemed kind of out there and demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of who Jesus was to all of them eventually being martyred, almost all of them being martyred for proclaiming the good news of Christ. That's a very big change in three years to not understanding much to dying for the teachings that you have been given through Jesus.

So what does it mean to be present with somebody? So the disciples did that. We see that they followed him, they ate with him and all that. But I think there's a few things we can look at is be in the moment and to be aware of what is happening that's simple, following somebody to be present with somebody 1 0 1. The disciples travel with Jesus. They saw him and they saw him interact with the crowds and they saw him interact with his immediate disciples. They learned, they asked questions. Like I said, they ate meals together. They watched as he worked. They watched him do stuff. They watched him bless bread, interact, heal people. They watched him allow kids to come be near him instead of shooing them off. They watched him eat with sinners and people that were deemed as other in his time. They had the opportunity to be present with somebody is to ask questions and to learn, right?

If you don't understand something, most of us went to school, I would assume there's always one person in the class that will ask all the questions that somebody is thinking, but nobody is brave enough to ask it, right? There's that person they need the next question. They didn't know every single detail, and that's kind of annoying sometimes. But if it's somebody that you get to be present with and you're going through life with, you can ask all those questions because you have all day to do it right? You are spending time with this person from sunup to sundown. It's like having a sibling. They're going to annoy you, they're going to bug you, but you're get to spend all this time with them and learn from them and learn how to fight with each other. And to be present with somebody, to be present with Jesus all the time gives the space and the opportunity to learn and to ask questions. And I think this is a natural question. What does it mean to be present with somebody? It's a natural question to ask when specifically mentioning Jesus? Because how again do you trust somebody who isn't walking around next to us? The disciples could reach out and touch Jesus. They could feel him, they could smell him. They could make a joke if they wanted to with him. They could ask these questions.

So how do we do that? Eventually the disciples, in the case of the disciples, you start to look like him. So Jesus comes, he says, follow me. The disciples follow Jesus. And they are slowly formed and shaped to be like Jesus, to talk like Jesus, to act like Jesus, to interact like Jesus. And then they take their knowledge and what they have learned, and they surround themselves with people who start to look like them and talk like them and act like them. So it trickles down in a way. You start to get crazy and say things like, one of my favorite quotes of scripture, one of my favorite verses is when Thomas said to the rest of the disciples, let us also go that we may die with him. And so at this point, Jesus was preaching, and then this is where he almost gets stoned to death, and he sneaks away because he says, why are you trying to stone me?

I'm just telling you the truth. And they say, well, we know you're telling the truth, but we're stoning you because you say you're the son of man or the son of God. And then they escape. And then Jesus has to go back because his friend Lazarus has passed away and he's getting ready to go raise Lazarus from the dead. And so the disciples don't know what's going to happen. All they know is that Jesus came from the spot where he was almost killed to Jesus saying, let's go back to that same spot. And Thomas says, well, let's go. Let's just go and see what happens. Because he has built up trust to know that Jesus probably knows what he's talking about. And so they go, and that boldness, that boldness allows us to do the same at times. Let us go where Jesus goes, it doesn't really matter what happens, but that would not have happened if he had not spent time around Jesus all the time.

And so when you surround yourself with people, then like Thomas, you start to get the same attitude as well. And so I do want to re-highlight here that being discipled or being in a discipleship program and being present with somebody 24 7 is very different. It's not the same thing. Entering into a discipleship program is not the same thing as being present with Jesus. Structure and systems are not bad. I strive myself on structure in systems, but they should not exist simply to move up to the next level of enlightenment. They exist to build up the church, to be discipled is to allow ourselves the freedom and the opportunities to open our hearts to be shaped by the Holy Spirit. They don't replace the work of the Holy Spirit. And so being present with Jesus is to absorb his teaching. I don't know how many people think of your best friends or whoever you spend time around with all the time and think if there are any phrases or words or sayings that you have picked up simply by being around somebody else.

I call people jokers all the time. That's not anything that I grew up saying. That is not anything that I just thought of myself. It's because I spent time so much time around somebody else who always used to call people jokers. They're just absorbed into who I am as a person. So being present with Jesus is to absorb teaching correction and intimacy just simply by being with Jesus. An example is as Peter, when Jesus comes back, raises from the grave raises and comes back to life. Peter is on the side of the water cooking and Jesus comes to him. And if you don't know before, as Jesus was getting ready to be crucified, Peter denies Jesus three times. So they say, Hey, you Peter, aren't you the man that was, you're with Jesus, right? Which is again, you're intimately following him every single day of your life.

We know this. And Peter says, Nope, that's not me. And then he did it again. Hey, aren't you of Jesus, aren't you with? Jesus says, Nope, not me. He does it a third time. Aren't you with Jesus? No, it's not me. And so then Peter feels awful because this person that he has dedicated his life to say, I want to be like that person. I want to be Jesus. I want to follow him. He's denied that whole part of his life the past three years. And so being with and following Jesus and being open to correction and restoration and intimacy is when Peter or Jesus comes back and says to Peter, Hey Peter, who's going to feed my sheep? And he says, I will do it. He says it three times. He restores him. No, there's not judgment in that. There's not ary. It's simply a question.

There's not teaching like, Hey, don't you know what I just did for you, Peter? It is simply doing it. Peter understood it because he knew who Jesus was. He was able to absorb that because he had been present with Jesus all this time. He understood simply because he knew Jesus. Discipleship on the other hand, is a method in today's terminology. Discipleship in today's terminology oftentimes is a system or a method to pass information along to help facilitate a connection to the church or to Jesus. You get take of all the multiple step programs or different shapes and different circles. There's one I'm particularly fond of. Here's an example. Jesus taught the crowds and then he taught the 12, and then he also taught the three that were closest to him. And you could take those steps and write a whole bunch of books on it and say, this is how you're exactly how you're supposed to disciple somebody.

And you could follow the steps exactly, but if you don't practice the presence that comes along with that, you're only getting half of the equation. So I'm particularly fond of this method, this discipleship method. It's from a program called three dm. The last church I was at liked to use this model a lot, and it's big on shapes. I'm a visual person. I like shapes. So this is called the Discipleship Square, and it goes around 1, 2, 3, 4. The idea is I do something and then you watch me do it, and then the next step is I do something and you're going to assist me in doing it. And then the next step is you do that, something that I've been doing, and then I'm going to help you with it. And then finally, the last step is you do that thing and I'm just going to watch you and see how it goes.

That's great. That's a great model for any discipleship, scripture, reading, leadership, a business that this is a good model to follow. But that model does not necessarily make you a Christ follower. That model can allow you to open your heart to better serving and to being present with Jesus. But that's just a model. So discipleship and being present are two separate things. And so how can we be present with Jesus today? There's a bunch of different ways. Spiritual disciplines are a big one. We love spiritual disciplines here. We talk about them a lot with you all. We talk about them a lot amongst ourselves. We talk about them and try to model them sometimes without even talking about them. But the first big one is how do you be present with Jesus is scripture. I said that's the easiest one to start off with. Read what Jesus said.

You have a modern translation of the Bible, and there's red words in the four books in the New Testament. Those are all the Jesus's words. Be present with Jesus by just reading the red words and seeing what he said and how he interacted with the world around him. The Holy Spirit, I mean God, the Trinity Candle. There are three wits, father, son, and Holy Ghost. They're all God distinct, unique, but not separate. So allow the Holy Spirit to enter into your life to be with Jesus. Prayer, both corporate and individual prayer. We pray together so our hearts are aligned and our words are aligned and our thoughts are aligned. That's why we do corporate prayer with an individual prayer where you can spend time to commune with Jesus. Being in creation, I think this is a big one that we have that we can sometimes overlook and that is ate from John chapter one, verse three. It says, through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made. That has been made. So all of creation, all people, all animals, all nature, everything that has been made, all creation was done through Jesus. So spend time in nature, spend time in prayer in nature, spend time in community with one another, and you're going to be spending time with Jesus.

Spend time in solitude. Sometimes being quiet is a good thing. It's okay to get away because Jesus himself stepped away to pray and to be alone. And if it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. Be generous with our resources, our gifts, and our time being generous. I mean, Jesus is the ultimate generosity where he gave up his life for us. So be generous with your times, which opens opportunities for us to witness and to see creation and to see other people and to see Jesus in other people. And then allowing ourselves to be generous without expectation of return, I have found allows me to be present in the moment to see how I can be generous. I forget if Jonathan shared this with everybody here, but a few weeks ago, we got asked to help move somebody. And so we did that.

Jonathan and I went out, we helped move a whole bunch of furniture and all that stuff. And about 10 o'clock at night, just sitting around getting ready to go home, somebody says they locked their keys in their car. And so Jonathan having all this stuff in his truck says, I have some things that can help you get these keys out. And then so for about a half an hour, myself, Jonathan, a security guard, the person who locked their keys in their car, another person who helped us move, were all standing around a truck with phone flashlights and crow crowbar and blinders stick. We're all sitting around helping and being present using our skills and what we was expertise to get into this car for it to happen. And that was only because we were able to be present in the moment and being generous with our time and our resources.

And finally, community. If I am made in the image of God, then others also must be made in the image of God. And so being around people who have accepted the gift of grace is a good thing for us to grow and to be in a diverse community of culture, of economic status, of race, of anything, genders, anything you can find yourself in community with fellow believers is a great way to see how big Jesus is and how diverse Jesus is, and how we can shape and be closer to who God is. And what God created to be present with Jesus is to be present in holy love, to live in holy love. When we start to surrender ourselves and bear the fruits of the spirit, we start to live in holy love with the power of the Holy Spirit. Then you yourself, wherever you are, can be present with Jesus.
Jesus has already invited you to be present with him at all times. Jesus has said, repent, the kingdom of God is near believe and follow me. He has already extended the invitation to each of us and to everyone out that is not here. It is then up to us to answer that call and say, I am going to follow you with everything I have so that I can be shaped by you, so I can follow the ways of Jesus, so I can be present in my community so I can be shaped, informed into your image. That's our job to accept that call, not just once, not twice, three times every single day that you wake up. You say, today, I'm going to follow you more and more and to be shaped and to be open to your love and to your grace and to your mercy. And then we will be able to say, I am present with Jesus because Jesus is present in me. I have chosen the invitation of a new life.