Fielder Church Sermons

We often guard our hearts to protect ourselves from pain, disappointment, and uncertainty. But when we begin guarding our hearts from God, we hold ourselves back from the One who can be fully trusted. In Mark 14, we see two very different responses to Jesus: Mary, who poured out everything she had in worship, and Judas, who chose to protect himself instead of remaining faithful. Jesus Himself showed us what it means to hold nothing back when He willingly gave His body and blood for our sins. Because He gave everything for us, we can trust Him with everything we have, even when His calling leads us into difficult or uncertain places. True faith means surrendering our whole hearts to the One who sacrificed everything for us.

The world wants to make us think life will always be the same and nothing will change. It wants to lull us to sleep so that we forget God’s mission and the urgency we should have for fulfill it. Christ came to earth, died, and was raised in order to build a new kingdom for eternal life, and the world desperately needs to hear it. When we read the signs and remember our calling, we will live on mission until all have heard the good news that Christ is King and we can be his.

We tend to prefer knowing about God rather than knowing God in relationship. Knowing about God allows us to keep ourselves as King, using religion to serve ourselves rather than give all we have for our King. God doesn’t want portions of our lives; he wants our whole hearts. He doesn’t want us to know about him and his kingdom; he wants us to know him and be a part of his kingdom by surrendering our life to Christ as our king. Jesus gave His whole life so to make wholehearted devotion possible.

Jesus threatens our human authority and power. We will do anything to gain it and defend it. The gospel teaches us that human authority and power lead towards death and destruction, but divine authority and power lead to blessing and life. Jesus gives us access to this authority and power through his death, burial, and resurrection.

When we either forget, or aren’t willing to admit, that Jesus is heaven’s King, we forfeit heaven’s power in our lives because of a lack of faith and prayer. Jesus was heaven’s King, not an earthly king, and his war was won on the cross, not the battlefield. The resurrection proves his victory and secures his throne. Our job is simply to confess it, trust in it, and call on heaven’s power from heaven’s King.

Our pride poisons our faith because it causes us to attempt to use God for our own purposes. We can turn believing in God and His power into a means to make us God over Him. The gospel of Jesus should humble us, knowing that God-in-the-flesh had to bleed and die to save us from the stain of our sin. That truth should make us humbly appreciative and faith-filled that God can move on our behalf even when we don’t deserve it. That humble faith makes the impossible possible.

We don’t trust God to meet our needs, so we use and exploit other people to meet those needs. There is nothing on this earth that compares to our greatest need. Our need for salvation. When we put our complete trust in Jesus and obey His call to surrender, He shows us how much He sees us and loves us through going to the cross on our behalf, overcoming death, and giving us eternal life.

Pride is white noise in this loud world, as everyone fights to be on top. But pride stands against the kingdom of God, and Christians must have no room for it. It opposes the very character of Christ. The resurrection shows the power of the humility of Christ on the cross. When we fight against the world’s favorite spice, pride, and instead live in the salt of humility, we gain power to change the world itself. But this can only happen when we confess our pride and let Christ cast it off of us.

Our physical eyes struggle to see Jesus for who he really is, so we don’t trust him as we should and thus miss his power in us and through us. When we pray, we get to see Jesus for who he is, the crucified and resurrected King of glory who owns this universe. That sight gives us the faith to trust in Christ, and that faith to trust in Christ releases his supreme power in our lives.

We tend to look at the kingdom through the eyes of the world, when we should look at the world through the eyes of the kingdom. We cannot expect kingdom power through worldly sources. Kingdom power comes from kingdom living. Jesus modelled for us at the cross that power comes through sacrifice, not strength. When we trust Christ’s ways and love his kingdom and not ourselves, that’s when we experience Christ’s power most fully on earth.