Eternity Is Now In Session - Illumanation. Woke! Series

These last four weeks we’ve been on a journey together. It’s been a personal journey. We’ve been following a roadmap. A roadmap of discovering Jesus, and allowing him to purge and remove sinful habits, attitudes, thinking and living from our lives. Not because he’s mean that because he knows what’s best for us.

Today I want to talk to you about about getting “woke.” Woke is one of the new vocabulary items in America. To be woke means that you suddenly see things the way somebody tells you they are. Everybody is getting woke these days….Today get woke to Jesus and get a new mental map of life.

Let me start with an example of getting woke…

Oral Leonard Hershiser IV. That is the kind of name that will strike fear into you is in it? Sounds like a chess player or some kid on the high school tennis team wearing a V-neck sweater. Oral Leonard Hershiser IV. Sounds like a bookworm or something. Oral Leonard Hershiser IV.

But Oral Leonard Hershiser IV played sports. He was blessed with a great arm and he became a pitcher. Eventually he made it to the major leagues. In 1984 Oral Leonard Hershiser IV entire mental map was changed and what he called “the sermon on the mound.”

Tommy Lasorda was the famous Dodgers coach and he knew that this kid had all the goods. But there he was on the mound fearful of these hitters that he was in awe of. He would go out and pitch and nibble around the corners and try to fool the batter and it wasn’t working. But Tommy Lasorda knew that this guy had the kind of stuff that he could go right after these batters and get them out. So during a game in 1984 Lasorda strolled out to the mound and he told Oral Leonard Hershiser IV that he had what it took to get these guys out and that he was going to give them a brand-new name and he called him “bulldog.” “You’re a bulldog and whenever you hear me say your name bulldog I want you to go after these guys.”

He was no longer Orel, he was now a bulldog. It changed his entire mental map about how he was to play the game And it changed his entire career and it was a Hall of Fame career. He got “woke.” He saw it!

All my life I’ve heard stories like this. The story of a teacher who slips a note to an ostracized student saying, “you’re beautiful.” She keeps the note for life.

The SS teacher who take boys aside and tells them they will be great ministers for God.

And suddenly someone’s whole mental map is changed.

Has this ever happened to you?

As a young man at the age of 18 I remember how my whole mental map was changed and I got woke. At that time it was all about girls, making money, having fun but secretly I was on a quest to know for sure if Jesus was for real. I determined that if Jesus is for real that changes everything. But if he is not for real, why bother with religion at all? And then in one night my question was answered and it literally changed the course of my life, my mental map took me in a completely different direction.

My roadmap begin to look more like this…

That Jesus was my leader, the Bible was my playbook, the church is my team, the lost are the mission, serving, grace and love would mark my character and walking toward the mess is what I would do.

I wonder, has this happened to you? Have you ever had an encounter with Jesus that literally changed everything, the entire mental roadmap of your life?

I would really like to talk to you today about your mental map - where you see your life going, where Jesus fits into all of this; getting woke to Jesus.

Jesus is about to ask some questions and create an entirely new mental map for his disciples, especially Peter.

Matthew 16:13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

This is the question that asks, “what is the rest of the world saying about me? What is the mental map that they’re trying to download do you?

The answers suggest that the world didn’t know what to do with Jesus. They didn’t know what to think about Jesus. They didn’t know how he fit in. Was he just a great teacher? Was he a resurrected prophet? Was he there with a message?