The Jesus Challenge
Acuff, you’re all talk, I thought to myself. While driving somewhere, I was listening to an audio book and the writer was saying that anyone who wants to follow the Jesus who really was, rather than the Jesus we make up in our own image and for our own needs would do well to always be reading the gospel accounts of Jesus.
Haven’t been doing much of that lately, I thought. I tend to hang out in the NT letters, Psalms, and reading through the Old Testament – because that’s good for you.
So, I started reading the gospel of Mark. Not just reading, but reflecting on one story at a time, or what we bible scholars like to call pericopes. I was pretty familiar with Mark. It was the first sermon series I did twenty-five years ago when I began as a pastor. I had even spent a week several summers with students at a camp studying the first eight chapters. (That was actually more fun than you might think.)
But, now I was reading it devotionally. Not for sermon material, but for life material. And I was immediately surprised by what I began to see.
That was over six months ago, and now I am excited to begin a new teaching series on Mark, starting this Sunday, Pivot Point: When Everything Changes.
We begin this week with Mark 1:1-8.
I think that you are going to be surprised when you see what God was doing through Jesus. The ones who first knew him were, and everything changed.
It’s just that big a deal.