Just Try It Series

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• I am glad you are here today as we continue on with our Next Steps series. The other 2 messages are on our web site or you can access them with the church app!

• Thus far in this series, we have discovered that God wants us to grow into spiritual maturity. He loves you as you are but desires for you to reach your potential, much like a parent desires a cute baby to grow to maturity.

• We also learned in week one that in order to grow, it is about Training, not Trying! I could try to enter the Tour De France, but without the proper training, all my trying would do is to get me to the first massive hill.

• Spiritual grow requires one to train.

• Last week we explored two of the top spiritual disciplines that will help you to grow spiritually, studying the Word of God, as well as prayer. We even explored an action plan to help us on the path, so that we could overcome spiritual A.D.D.

• I hope you were challenged to exercise the plan from last week.

• Isn’t it easy to get motivated to do something, only to fall flat after a few days? Maybe last week you got the You Version app for the first time, or you bought a journal. You set the alarm to go off a little earlier on Monday.

• Then you hit the snooze. You were tired. As the week progressed, maybe you lost some steam.

• Before we go on today and talk about some other really exciting ways to encounter God, I wanted to address the elephant in the room: Why do we so often struggle with making time with God a priority?

• BUSY!

• HOW MANY times have you heard someone tell another person, “I have nothing to do?”

• I want to give you a quick test, do not answer out loud, and do not copy off your neighbor.

• I took a test, and I want to give it to you. Warning: It might be little challenging or convicting.

1. Are you haunted by a fear that there are not enough hours in the day to do what needs to be done?

2. Do you find yourself nodding faster when listening to someone else to encourage the talker to accelerate? I AM WATCHING!

3. When approaching a stoplight and there are two lanes, do you find yourself guessing which lane will get going the fastest?

4. At the grocery store, if you have a choice between two checkout lines, do you find yourself counting each person in line and assessing how many items are in their cart? Then do you watch the line you did not choose just to see if you picked the right line?

5. If tomorrow evening were unexpectedly freed up, would you use it to do work or a household chore?

• If you can answer “yes” to any of these, then today is for you.

• You might be thinking, “Yeah yeah yeah. I know I’m too busy, and you are going to say some things that are going to make me feel guilty about being busy, and I’ll get convicted to slow down to make time for God.

• That will totally work until tomorrow when my life happens. (Preacher), you just don’t know all the stuff I have going on. I can’t just stop being busy.”

• I’ve got some good news. I’m not going to give you a lecture telling you to be less busy. Now you do not have to tune me out; I’m not taking you on a guilt trip. Here’s one of the reasons: Jesus was busy.

• In fact, an examination of one 24-hour day in the life of Jesus that would put your busiest days to shame.

• Regardless of what you believe about who Jesus was, there is no denying that he was a man that got stuff done.

• Think about it. You try in the course of three years starting a movement that would last for over 2,000 years, and, oh yeah, also pay for the sins of all mankind so that they could spend eternity in Heaven.

• The day I want to cover is found in Mark 1:21-35. I will not read it all, but this happened after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, and after He called Simon, Andrew, James, and John.

• This was Jesus first recorded day of his public ministry.

• It was the Sabbath. It is the beginning of His Galilean Ministry.

• SLIDE #2

• MAPS

• This was Saturday in the Jewish culture. In Mark 1:21-28 Jesus enters the synagogue and began to teach. The folks were taken by the way He taught, then in the middle of His teaching, He cast out an unclean spirit from a man. News spread quickly.