Sunday Recap @ da Chapel
Reverend Joshua Goodin
Mark 2:1-12 (NRSV)
“Who’s in Your Circle?” pt.2
How can you connect the people in your circle to Jesus? Are you ashamed of your faith? Do the people in your circle know that you’re saved, not because you told them, but because they look at your life and see salvation all over it? Or do they see that you just go to church on Sundays? Salvation has a look.
It’s a good thing when people can’t comprehend what you’re saying sometimes because some people if they really comprehended what you said they would try to find you a therapist. What you say sometimes when you’re trying to express and explain where you are and what’s going on, can sound really crazy.
Sometimes your spike level of things making sense goes beyond a place where you even want to share with other people. Even if you don’t have peace in your mind, thank God for sanity, that you don’t act on what you think.
*When the people in your circle know you need to have a come to Jesus moment, do you fight them or do you willingly go? Some of you fight against the people that try to get you to a place of peace because in reality you’ve become comfortable in insanity. When peace of mind becomes abnormal, that’s probably an indication that you need to see Jesus. When you function best in confusion and chaos that’s an indication you need to go see Jesus and a therapist. The day of going to get help is taboo, is over. Taboo will keep you terrified, angry, and frustrated at people that never did anything to you. People will take out their feelings on people who really love them, that should be geared to the ones who really did something to you, but because you never got the help for it you’re mad at the wrong people. Sometimes the way to get to whole is by confronting some things and some people. Every issue you deal with if you don’t confront it then you confirm it. If you don’t know who you are, how can you know where you’re going? If you don’t know what you are not, then you will respond to anything. There are people that will say you are this and you are that, and you are perplexed in your mind because of what they said to you because you have not identified what you are not. Don’t allow people to speak self-fulfilling prophecies over your life, because you won’t take the time to realize who you are and who you are not.
Ask yourself these questions this week:
**What keeps you from changing your circle?
**Have you become so comfortable that you don’t realize when the circle is not beneficial to your life?
**If you developed a criterion for people in your circle, how many people presently would still qualify?
*How determined are the people in your circle to help you become better? There are some people in your circle who want you to stay broken because as long as you are broken it makes them better than you. Do they want to see you be better in your marriage, your relationship, your parenting, your workplace, or are they content with you staying where you’re at? If the people in your circle don’t push you to be better, that means they’re not concerned about your growth. They can’t be your friend and not grow. They don’t have to be on your level, but they should be growing.
*Why do you let people expose things to you, your family, your children, and you know they’re toxic? Why do you let people around your kids and you know they are terrible parents. When people want to see you be better, they are concerned and attentive to see where you are, is not where you’re supposed to be. There are some people that will stay a part of the church and they are a catalyst for killing growth in new membership. Some people hinder growth and push people to not want to come back because their disposition is nasty or their personality is trash. Don’t get in the way of someone getting to Jesus, but sometimes that happens because you have your own personal agenda and want to keep your village the way you want it. The church is supposed to be a growing organism, constantly expanding, but it can’t expand if you have things apart of the organism that causes blockage.
*Do the people in your life have a mindset that they are going to come together and get you what you need? It matters if you get off your bed because there are some things that God has assigned you to do that are connected to someone else’s life. As long as you stay on your bed, you can’t fulfill your assignment in their life. You need to get up off your bed, so you can help them get to where God is trying to take them. They can’t be your friend if you stay on your bed, because there’s too much potential in you for you to keep laying on this mat. You are assigned to people, and when you don’t fulfill your assignment it creates an issue. You may not like them, but if God assigned them to your life, you better do what you’re supposed to do for them. If that means forgive them or bless them. The quicker you fulfill your assignment the sooner you can get away from them. You think God told you they were supposed to be there for life, but they were seasonal. It’s a season, you are carrying them for a season, not for life. If you can get them to Jesus, you don’t have to carry them anymore. You have become a professional carrier and have developed a mindset where you have become comfortable with people leaning and depending on you, it creates self-fulfillment. You’re always the support person, you need to be used. You get so comfortable with being used and depended upon, that you don’t know how to depend on other people. Don’t become so defeated by people not being able to help you, that you never ask for help again. The worst thing to do is to ask somebody for help and they don’t come through. Now you have written everybody else off, and think others will do the same thing everyone else did to you. Everybody isn’t the same, there are people in your life that say they will come through for you, actually come through and they mean it. You’re stuck on who disappointed you, that now every person you encounter you feel like is going to disappoint you. It’s one thing to choose it, it’s another thing when you allow past experiences and hurts to create you to be a person that now you’re shut off.
*Does your circle have the kind of faith that makes Jesus respond? When your faith won’t get you there, the people’s faith around you joined together, gets Jesus’s attention. Faith grows as it continues to progress. When was the last time somebody in your circle was so determined to see you healed and be better that they tore the roof off?