Awaken City Church

Time and again throughout the gospel of Matthew, Jesus has told people who He was. Through parables, teachings, conversations, healings, Jesus has demonstrated and defined who He is. Across Matthew 16 and 17, the disciples fail to listen, preferring to listen instead to the circumstances around them. In the Transfiguration, this glorious turning point moment in the story so far, God the Father tells the disciples to listen. This is what God tells us to do: listen to what Jesus says and build our lives around it. 

The most important question we will ever ask ourselves is "Who is Jesus?" This is the question Jesus asks the disciples in Matthew 16. The only correct answer is what Peter answers, "Christ, the Son of the Living God" - that Jesus is fully God and fully man who died on a cross to save his people from their sins. It is only when we see Jesus rightly that we can take up our cross and follow Him. 

As Jesus sends the crowds away and the disciples across the sea so that He can pray, hours later, as high winds assault the disciples, Jesus comes walking to them on the water. The disciples, afraid Jesus is actually a ghost, refuse to see the signs He gives that it is Him. Peter tells the Lord that the way He can confirm it is Jesus is if He calls Him out on the waters. After sinking, being rescued, Peter along with Jesus return to the boat as the winds cease. It is at this point they finally worship Jesus as the Son of God. We will only see and worship Jesus when we tell Jesus to call us out of the boat, doing reckless things that only He can enable us to do. 

Jesus doesn’t require you to bring everything that’s needed, just everything you have, and then to trust him with the rest. As the boy brought his lunch to Jesus, we follow suit as we bring all that we have to Jesus and watch Him take and use it for the good of others and God's glory. 

God invites us as a people to pray big prayers and ask the Lord to do above and beyond what we could ask or think. God delights in answering prayers that could only happen with His work. As a church family, Awaken City exists to see God do incredible things in and through us as God builds His kingdom. 

Jesus continued teaching the crowds and his disciples in parables. The Kingdom of Heaven Is like Wheat vs weeds, a mustard seed, a valuable pearl. It is seemingly insignificant but is infinitely valuable. As Jesus goes to his hometown, the people refuse to believe that He is who He says He is. Whether our perspective of Jesus is Dismissal or Refusal, Jesus invites us to believe in this too good to be true but is actually true kingdom of Heaven. 

Jesus begins teaching in parables. Parables demonstrate whose hearts are open to the message of Jesus or not. The first parable Jesus teaches unpacks the state of our hearts by using a farming illustration. Your heart might be hard and reject the message of Jesus. The cares of this world may have choked around the message of Jesus and drowned it out. Your soil might be open, but the roots of the message of Jesus may not have rooted down deep. Or, you might be totally open to the message of Jesus. Jesus asks us the question with this parable: "How's Your Heart?"

Proximity to Jesus or mere openness to Jesus does not make one part of the Kingdom. To experience Jesus' power, like the cities Jesus criticizes in Matthew 11, and fail to repent and believe is to remain far from Jesus. To have a relationship with Jesus is to repent and believe in Jesus. Those who trust in Jesus do so by living a life of rest in Jesus - of declaring need for Jesus and going to Him. 

John the Baptist was imprisoned for publicly identifying with Jesus and he sends his disciples to Jesus with a question. "Are you the one who is to come?" In the middle of his suffering, John began to question the foundation upon which his life was built, and the conviction upon which his ministry was based. Disciples of Jesus will also suffer, but we suffer well when we take our questions about faith or our suffering to Jesus, as John the Baptist did. When we find ourselves in a jail cell, or circumstances we didn't ask for, suffering will clarify and temper our faith.