Where's The Juice?

Where’s the Juice? Or

What ’Secret’ Jesus told His disciples behind closed doors.

Sermon Mark 9: 14-29 ( reflection on Mark 6:6b-13)

Routines....

I wake up and the very first thing I do is make the coffee. Stumbling through the pantry to find the filters and scooping the coffee. Some in my family come down in the morning looking for a class of OJ and a toaster waffle/pop tart. This is where we get our morning Juice… Heck no, but now that you are in the wake up mode, and I have you thinking about food, let me get right to the point, where do you get your juice from? More specifically, where does the power in the Christian’s life come from?

At first, and quickly I hope you answered Jesus! And with out Him we would not be Christians and we would be domed to a life for today’s pleasures only with not a hope for the future and not a chance for the glorious fellowship that awaits us, who have accepted Jesus as our personal savior, desiring and turning from our sinful way of living, submitted our lives over to Christ and strive to walk in His ways.

If you have done this act you may consider yourself a Christian. A Christian who has the assurance that Christ died on the Cross to pay the penalty for our very own sin, thereby making the ultimate sacrifice which through Romans 10:10 tells us “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” This is the ticket to heaven folks! I hope you all have it, and if you don’t it really is this simple. It is having belief and faith. I know this might be different but here is where we need to stop first for a moment. If you have never made the commitment and the decision to follow Jesus this is your day. This is the day that the Lord has made, and He wants you to be part of it all, but you have to make the decision. Does anyone want to now choose to be on the side of Jesus and know that your fate is sealed. If you do lets get it done now!

I am inviting you right now to make the decision, you can do it in you chairs or better yet, come up here and make it publicly know, Jesus knows who you are, you know you need Him, and there is no reason in the world that you should wait another moment.

Special INVITATION ( this is a little different, I want to allow the Spirit to begin working right in the beginning , if no one comes forward to the prayer- ) I guess that settles it, you had a chance again of making the first public step in the Christian walk, if you still are not right with God at the end of this message you will have a chance to respond. But for now, lets get down to some meat and potatoes and see what the scripture tells us where the power comes from.

Ok So we all agree that Jesus is the Juice? Well lets look at the scripture to see what it says to us. You might be surprised to see what Jesus says.

Lets turn our Bibles together and read from Mark 6:6b-13 where Jesus sends His disciples out. (READ Mark 6:6b-13 )

It is clear that the Apostles, Jesus 12, had the Juice - the power of God, through Jesus. He gave them authority over evil spirits.

· Jesus then instructs them on how they should go out, with nothing more than the clothes on their back and a staff, no food, bag, money. You see Jesus wanted them not to rely on themselves.

But on the authority and power He gave them.

It is common for us to want to control things on our own, but here they must rely on His command. This is the problem today friends, we want to control the way things turn out, but there is a whole new way we need to think, and we can hand over control of our live to Jesus by accepting His will and power.

What did they preach…. That people should repent. This is the same today, we need to repent of … Sin.. And we, as mature Christians, need to be able to tell others that they too need to repent also.. Sin is not a good thing. We can’t just go around telling others not to sin, especially if we are sinners.. Sorry we are all sinners. So what we are telling, what the apostles were saying is that in order to get right with God, you must/ should repent, turn form your sin, and back to God. It is a personal relationship with God and not man. Can I be a sinner and tell others not to sin, sure, but it would be a bit more effective and a stronger witness to be demonstrating a holy life, a life living for God free from sin.. Really hard to do.