October 20 - Choosing to Believe

Mark 15:21-32

"Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. (Mark 15:32 ESV)

As Jesus hung upon the cross there were many people gathered to watch the horrible event unfold. Many of the onlookers were hostile, but not all of them. Some that had gathered were believers, and still others were not. Those that had yet to believe were frightening the cruelty of the crucifixion by heaping prideful mockery upon Christ.

We don't know the numbers but many people who followed Jesus to Golgotha where he was crucified were there to lament and mourn for him. There also were those present who did not believe. But the one defining difference in the two groups was their ideas about who Jesus was. It was a difference of belief.

My position is that belief is a choice. You choose what you do or do not believe. The scribes and religious people regularly asked Jesus to perform signs, but when he did they didn't meet their super religious criteria, or they somehow cut out their scandalous religious pyramid scheme. So those guys chose not to believe in Jesus despite all the miracles he had performed in front of their eyes.

They taunted him. Casting their doubts in the form of dangling skepticism and might-have-been-belief, but the simple truth is that they had chosen not to believe Jesus was the messiah. What do you believe?

June 3 - Laughing at Jesus

Read: Luke 8:40-56

And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. (Luke 8:53 ESV)

Jesus had just healed the woman with an issue of blood while on his way to Jairus's house. Arriving at the house he found a crowd of pessimistic and skeptical mourners. They had actually tried to dismiss him from coming at all as they believed her to be dead. When Jesus informed them that the situation was not beyond hope they laughed at him.

I enjoy a good joke. I like to laugh, and try to find humor in things that are sometimes difficult. A dead little girl is not a laughing matter. Neither was Jesus' commitment to minister to the family in the situation.

Why did they laugh at Jesus? Because he spoke with authority and confidence that the girl was going to be ok. Jesus was telling people that a dead girl was going to be fine, that they needed to merely believe and all would be fine. That seemed impossible. It was ridiculous. After all curing someone of something while they were still alive was one thing, but who has the power to make life return to a body that has ceased to function? God does.

Jesus did the inexplicable for Jairus's family. Some of us need him to reach down from heaven and do the inexplicable for us. He can. I believe that he wants to. But if he told us the enormity of the magnitude for what he had planned would we believe him? If Jesus looked at the impossibility of our situation and declared authoritatively that he was about to undo the impossible would we believe? Or we would join the crowd of skeptics and laugh at Jesus?

It's not enough to merely believe in Jesus. We need to move beyond the point of simply believing in his existence and begin to believe in his words. We need to believe in his power. We need to believe that he has our best interest at heart, and in hand. That's no joke.