The last thing I encouraged you to do on our last visit, at our final gathering at Joseph’s place, was to dream dreams.
We are called to do the impossible
We are all busy people who get things done. That is how God has made us and He has used our “get things done” character to get things done in His Kingdom. But we are called to do the impossible. His dreams are bigger than ours. We are called to be risk takers.
We need to be obsessed by Jesus
But to be fruitful in our risky endeavours we need to listen carefully to Jesus. We need to eat and drink Jesus. We need to get away to a lonely place and listen to Jesus. We need to be obsessed by Jesus and not by the things we try to do in His name.
Our tendency is to make Him safe and acceptable
Jesus lived according to Kingdom culture and that often clashed with his native culture. That is the essence of living a prophetic life; courageously walking the Kingdom where it is contrary to our native culture. But our tendency is to make Jesus conform to our culture to make Him safe and acceptable.
We can easily become inoculated against Jesus
Covid 19 has set the world on an unprecedented search for a vaccine to inoculate us against the virus. Vaccines generally work by presenting to our immune system a cut-down safe version of the virus, so that our body can recognise the virus and trigger its defence system to prevent it doing us harm. Christians face the opposite problem. Through frequent exposure to the Gospels, especially when made safe for public consumption, we can easily become inoculated against Jesus! We can nod in recognition of the familiar stories without letting them infect us. We have defences against the words that challenge the status quo. We can easily end up like the Pharisees in the Gospels, thinking that we are OK; it’s the others who need to hear this.
Listening to Jesus needs to be a high priority in our lives
So my hope for these conferences is to re-expose us to the dangerous Jesus so that we get thoroughly infected by Him. My dream is that we all become obsessed with Jesus; that listening to Jesus becomes a high priority in our lives; that we become a truly prophetic people who hear and obey our extraordinary Lord.
What is your response to this?
“You are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is needed”
Luke 10:38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
What is Jesus saying to you through this incident?
Discipleship is not about doctrine or behaviour. It is teaching people to listen to Jesus.
The primary need that all of us have is to sit with and listen to Jesus. Discipleship is not about teaching people good doctrine, or good behaviour. It is teaching people to listen to Jesus. Everything else flows naturally from that.
What does Jesus want you to do about this?
