In The Mean Time Part 1
Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34; Mark 4:35-40; 16:17-18; 1 John 3:21-22; James 1:6-7
Introduction
It has been said that we are either getting ready to go through something; are already in the midst of going through something; or we have just came through something. Regardless of our situation, we are always dealing with or getting ready to deal with something. Some of us, even if we are not dealing with our own “something”, are also helping others deal with theirs so there is always “something” going on. And, for those of you who may not realize it, we do not always have time to prepare for these “somethings” because they come suddenly. Each one of you are either getting ready to, or are currently going through (even if the situations just came out of the blue), or just completed going through something. In every phase of our dealing with something, there is a time when we think about what we are getting ready to go through, what we are going through or just came through. This time of thinking is I want to refer to as “In the Mean Time.” When we are getting ready to go through something, we often spend our in the mean time thinking about how we will get through it. We spend time thinking about all of the potential outcomes of our decisions. We spend time preparing for the worst case scenario. When we are actually in the midst of going through, we spend our in the mean time thinking about what is happening around us and how we can best handle the situation. Sometimes it is here when we realize that we cannot control the situation and we stop and pray, giving it over to the Lord. Finally we reach the point when we come out on the other side. When we have come through, we spend our in the mean time thinking about what happened; how we came through; how to stop it, if possible, from happening again; and we sometime remember just how good God really is. Regardless of what you are dealing with, there is a “in the mean time” when you are thinking about what will happen, what is happening and what has happened. This is what I want to talk about this morning in this message I have titled, “In the Mean Time”.
In Matthew 6:25-27; 33-34, Jesus says the following: “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? (33-34) But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” In these verses Jesus tells us not to worry, advice which goes against the very core of what we actually do. But we must understand why He says this. Jesus was able to say this because of how He spent His “in the mean time”. Jesus was able to say this because He had a relationship with God that He was encouraging us to develop. In these verses He tells us what to do in the mean time if we want to always be able to walk through a situation and have peace. He says in verse 33, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” This is what we must be doing in our “in the mean time” and I will address this more later in the series.
What we do in the mean time directly impacts how we go through something. The out come of most of our situations are actually decided or influenced by what we do “in the mean time.” Let me give you an example. At the company that I work for, we are facing another round of job terminations and realignments of responsibilities. Some of the job terminations took place 3 weeks ago with upper management. Next week another level of management will be affected with greater than 50% losing their jobs. Then over the next 4 months decisions will be made that will affect managers at my level and at the representative level. So I have roughly five months to “go through” to find out if l will have a job. Right now, while decisions are being made out of my control, I am in my in the mean time. While some people in my position are actively looking for another job, I am seeking God’s Kingdom. While some people have actually stopped working because they are unsure of if they will have a job in a few months, I am seeking God’s righteousness. Why am I doing this? I do this because Jesus promised me that if I do this, everything that I need will be provided to me. My job is to seek Him; His job is to take care of the rest – those things I need in this life. When I stop trying to do His job and start doing my job (seeking Him and His righteousness), things fall into place. While others have shut down and started preparing for the worst, I have chosen to spend this “in the mean time” looking to the one who brought me to this job. I believe that He is my source, not my company. What happens with me rests in His hands, regardless of the decision that my company makes. Having this understanding allows me to sleep at night because it is not about me, it is about God. So this morning I want you to consider what you are doing “in the mean time” when there is uncertainty and you do not know what will happen. What are you doing “in the mean time” as you are going through? And finally, what are you doing “in the mean time” when you have come through? So let’s start with the beginning, when we are preparing to go through something that we can see – something that does not come at us out of the blue.
I. Preparing To Go Through
Turn in your Bibles to the fourth chapter of Mark. In this Scripture we have a situation where the disciples were suddenly faced with a situation and immediately gave into fear. I want us to focus on the responses the disciples had to the situation as well as Jesus’ response because Jesus’ response to this situation speaks directly to what we should be doing as we are preparing to go through something. Let’s read verses 35 through 40.
“That day when evening came, He said to His disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took Him along, just as He was in the boat. There were also other boats with Him. A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke Him and said to Him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’ He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to His disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Mark 4:35-40
When Jesus and His disciples decided to cross the Sea of Galilee, a strong wind storm suddenly developed as they were in the boat. The Greek word that Mark used to describe this wind storm is “mega” which denotes something of massive proportions. For example, we use the term when talking about computer memory (megabyte) and large Churches (mega-Church). This is the term that Mark used to denote this storm. It was fierce. When it came upon them suddenly, the disciples immediately became scared and feared for their lives. They went to Jesus, who was asleep, and woke Him up. They cried out to Him to save them. Jesus got up, spoke to the wind and the waves and everything was calm. He then turned to His disciples and asked two key questions, “Why were they afraid? and “Why they had no faith?”
When this storm blew up, there were two reactions that were recorded. First was the reaction of the disciples, one of fear, and second was the reaction of Jesus, one of faith. It is what Jesus had done before this storm arose that prepared Him to handle it. He did not doubt nor did He have fear. One key point you need to understand at this point is that doubt and fear is one of Satan’s most powerful tools. If he can get us to doubt in our minds (hearts) the goodness of God and His willingness to come to our rescue, half of his battle is already won. If he can get us to doubt our true relationship with God, then he wins. He knows that doubt attached to prayer means unanswered prayer. 1 John 3:21-22 says “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him.” Notice that John says that if our hearts do not condemn us. This means that if we are walking in righteousness with God then when we go before Him we should have every confidence that our request of Him will be answered because we walk in obedience. This type of confidence only comes through our spending time with God solidifying our relationship with Him. Notice what James says in James 1:6-7.
James 1:6-7 says “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord.” How is it that we can pray to God and not doubt that He will hear and answer us? That confidence again comes through our spending time with God (seeking His Kingdom and righteousness), being in His presence and building a relationship with Him. Just as we cannot have a relationship with each other if we never spend time with one another, the same applies to our relationship with God. We cannot have a full rewarding relationship with God if we never spend time with Him. When we spend the time developing a relationship with someone, we develop confidence in the relationship and expect that because of the relationship we have with that individual if we reached out to them they will be there for us. Again, this is the same thing that happens with our relationship to God.
Doubt and fear are very powerful tools of the enemy and he uses them very effectively when we are getting prepared to go through something. Have you every wondered why people expect the best but prepare for the worst? Although we say we expect the best to happen, what we do in action actually tells the truth. If we “prepare for” the worst, then we prepare for what we actually think will happen. If we prepare for the best, then we are actually expecting the best to happen. We have been programmed to walk in fear and doubt, something that was not associated with Christ. Now understand I am not saying that we should not use sound planning techniques in our daily lives (like having money set aside in case of emergencies), I am talking about how we respond spiritually to the “somethings” that are always happening in our lives.
When we examine the two responses, the response of Jesus and the response of the disciples to the sudden storm that arose, we find that Jesus had the confidence that I just spoke of while the disciples did not. The disciples experienced something that came out of nowhere and they were not prepared for it. Had they expected this wind storm, they would have been prepared and that my friends is the beauty of our relationship with God. When we walk in confidence with Him, we know that when things come out of the blue, we do not have to panic. We know God is already there and willing to provide the answers we need to get us through the situation. How will we know this? Because we have spent time with Him seeking His Kingdom and His righteousness. When the disciples came face to face with this unexpected storm, fear immediately gripped their hearts and minds and they feared for their lives. There is a reason why they had this response and I will get to that in a minute. Now let’s examine Jesus’ response to the sudden storm.
Jesus was asleep and even though the boat was bouncing along the water, He did not wake up. When His disciples came and woke Him, He rebuked the winds and they stopped blowing. Then He turned to His disciples and asked them why were they afraid and why did they not have faith. The key word that I want you to focus on is the word “why”. When Jesus asked them “why” it tells us that there was an expectation that their response should have been different. Because Jesus expected their response should have been different, He may have been angry or surprised that they were scared. Jesus expected more from His disciples who had been walking with Him and sitting under His teachings. Before this incident, the disciples had listened intently to Jesus’ teachings and had witnessed Him healing the sick and casting our demons, yet they did not think it was within them to do the same. Jesus did not question what was within Him because He had spent time building His relationship with His Father. He knew if He spoke to the winds, they would obey. He knew this because of the relationship He had with His Father and He acted on what He knew. The disciples had not developed this relationship “yet” so they did not fully understand what was within them through Christ so they too responded based on what was within them, fear and doubt which is within all of us. But let me go back to my point of what we should be doing in the mean time while we are preparing to go through.
In the mean time when we are preparing to go through, we need to be seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. By doing this, we develop a relationship with God that builds our faith in Him. Through the development of this relationship through Christ Jesus, we will gain an understanding of what God has placed within us. We will gain the knowledge that God truly does have our backs and that when we turn to face Him instead of focusing on our situations, we will receive the answer. This is the one thing the disciples got right, in their fear and doubt they knew to turn to Jesus for help. When we are in the mean time preparing to go through a situation, we need to continually seek out God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. Christ will always be where He needs to be, the problem rests with us. So in the mean time, we should always be working on this relationship. This time that we spend with Him before we go through a situation is critical. Remember, it is what we do when we are not going through that helps us to go through. (You may need to read that sentence several times for it to make sense to you – just an FYI.)
Before I close out part one, I want to share with you something that you may not be aware of right now as you listen to me. When we accepted Christ as our personal Savior, everything that was within Him was placed within us. Because of this, there is a true expectation that we will walk in what Christ walked in. When we do not walk in what Christ has given us, fear and doubt takes over. When this happens Christ asks us the same question He asked His disciples – “Why?” Whenever we are asked this by Christ, we know that there was an expectation that we should have met that we did not meet. Even though there is an expectation that Christ has for us, we often do not meet it because we do not believe we are capable and we are not willing to do what is required to reach that level. We love our flesh too much. But let me share with you what Christ’s expects of us which will also explain why Jesus asked His disciples “Why” they were afraid and had no faith. Consider these Scriptures:
“Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also, and greater works than these he will do because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” John 14:12-14
Look closely at what Jesus said. He was having a discussion with His disciples explaining what it meant to be one with the Father. Now because of the relationship that He had with the Father, He was going to open a door to us so that we too could have this relationship. When He was talking with His disciples, He told them to believe that He was one with the Father and if they could not believe for no other reason, believe Him because of the works they saw Him doing (verse 11). What were these “works”? He was healing the sick; casting out demons; ministering to those in need; and most importantly, sharing the love of God with them. These were some of the works that Christ was doing. But look at what He said about us in verse 12: “…..and greater works than these he will do because I go to My Father.” Who shall do these works – those who believe in Him! So because He has gone back to the Father, He has opened a door for us to do greater things than He did while He was on earth. The door is wide open – but we are not walking through it. Because of this expectation of what we should be doing, when we walk in fear and doubt, Jesus asks us “Why?” Turn to Mark the 16th chapter for our final reference for this morning. Look at verses 17-18. “These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.” These signs will follow who? Those who believe! It did not say they will follow the Pastor or the praise leader. It says they will follow those who believe. Those who believe what? Those who believe in Christ Jesus as Savior and actually believe they can do them.
When we are preparing to go through something, if we are seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness we have a promise, a promise that our needs will be met. We have a command that we should not worry, because God will take care of it. When you are stressed about something and you go to the person who can make a difference and that person tells you not to worry because they have it under control – do you continue to worry? No, because the person you talked to said they would take care of it and they had the power and authority to do it. Well God has all the power and all the authority. He can make your enemies do good to you – so do not worry. When you are facing your situation, remember if you are seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness, you do not have to worry. If you are not seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness, then yes, you have a reason to worry. Next week I will continue this series with what we do in the mean time as we are going through.
May God bless and keep you.
