Welcome to this week's message. I hope that everyone is having a good week. I know that my week has gone well, and I am thankful to the Lord for that.
Today, we are continuing in our series where we are going through the Gospel of Mark to see what the Lord would have us to learn. In our message today, there are a couple of applications from the text that I would like to point out.
As we have seen, Jesus began His ministry in the area of the Sea of Galilee with His home base being Capernaum. Jesus began His ministry by healing those who were sick and by freeing people from the bondage of evil. He taught with authority, and the people were impressed because they had not heard someone teaching in this manner before.
As Jesus healed and delivered more and more people, the news spread far and wide about Him. People began to come to where He was teaching from all of the area around the Sea of Galilee. However, news spread about the works of Jesus beyond that. People came from across the Jordan, from Judea and from as far away as Tyre and Sidon in present day Lebanon.
There is a point for us today that I want to bring up. People were attracted to the Lord because of the good that He was doing and the message of deliverance and love that He was bringing. If we as the people of the Lord today are going to bring people in to hear about Jesus, we are going to have to be doing the same things.
If people see that those who follow Jesus are doing good and helping this world to be a better place, they will want to come and find out more about Jesus. If they hear a message of love and forgiveness and deliverance like the Lord Jesus preached, they will be drawn to Jesus and want to give their lives over to Him as Savior and Lord. We have to be sure that we are doing good to the least of those among us and that we are not being hateful or nasty in any way in the things that we say or do. We always want to draw people to Jesus as His ambassadors here on earth, and we never want to push people away so that they do not want to learn more about the Lord Jesus.
Now, I want to move into the second part of our text for today. Jesus had many disciples. There came a point where He wanted to chose a select group to be the leaders. These would be the ones who He would invest the most time in teaching and training them to take over when it was time for Him to ascend back into Heaven.
Jesus chose twelve to be the core group. What impresses me is the diversity of those that Jesus chose. He chose the fisherman like Peter, James, John and Andrew that He had known for a long time. They were ordinary men who worked hard for a living. He also chose a tax collector in Matthew. He even chose a political revolutionary like Simon.
The point I want to get across is that Jesus calls all sorts of people today to follow Him and to do His work. You don't have to be from a certain race or ethnic group. You don't have to have a certain background. The Lord uses all sorts of people from all over this planet to do His will and to accomplish things for Him. He may even be calling you to be one who will do great things for the Kingdom of God. Don't think that God can't use you, or that God can't call you to His service. The Lord Jesus called ordinary people to do great things for Him.
In all that we do, let our lives be yielded to the service of the Lord. May we do what He has called us to do and be a light shining in the darkness telling all of the love of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Prayer Requests
Please keep praying in regard to my health. I am gradually doing better. Thank you.
We must be in prayer for peace in this world. The war in the Middle East must come to an end. Pray for peace in this region. Keep praying for peace in Ukraine. Pray for peace in Sudan. That conflict is horrific, and we just don't hear that much about it. Pray for peace wherever you know there is war.
Pray for those who are dealing with the flooding in Hawaii. Pray that they will get the help they need.
For our prayer focus countries this week, let us pray for those in the nations of Yemen and Jordan. Pray that many will come to know Jesus.
Next week, I will post the verses on Monday. We have finished with the James commentary posts, but I will repost them again in the future. I will post the message next Friday. May God bless you all.
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