A Good Time

What is your idea of a good time?  Your answer will reveal much about where you are spiritually in life.  For most of us, a good time consists of laughter and joy.  Smiles and sunshine.  The lighter side of life.  Our study of the book of Mark challenges our concept of a good time.  Let’s go ahead and dive into the sermon recap.

Sunday’s sermon came from Mark 1:21-28.  Jesus is in the synagogue in Capernaum teaching.  I would say that this would qualify as a good time in church.  A good old preacher astonishing the crowd.  Making mouths drop open as He spoke with authority.  And then…there is an interruption.  Now, you may be different from me.  I am not a fan of interruptions.  Especially when I am in the middle of what I consider to be a good time.  At this point in the service, eyes shifted from Jesus to the man in the synagogue who cried out.

This was not an “amen” or a “hallelujah.”  No.  This man was sitting in the synagogue with an unclean spirit.  And as Jesus taught, the unclean spirit could not hold its peace.  In the presence of Jesus, it had no choice but to acknowledge Jesus for who He was- fully man and fully God.  The spirit knew that Jesus had the power to back up the words that He was saying.  So, it cried out and asked Jesus what He intended to do.  It wanted to know if Jesus had come to destroy it.

And for many people, this interruption in church would be the ultimate squasher of a good time.  But this interruption IS a good time.  It is an illustration of chronos (regular order of time, days, weeks, month, etc.) colliding with kairos (an appointed time).  Simply put, it is the intersection of our plans meeting with God’s divine plans.  We could plan every second of our lives.  We could have it all lined out perfectly.  But we have not truly had a good time until our plans meet head on with God’s plans.

God’s plan for the man sitting in the synagogue with the unclean spirit was quickly revealed.  Jesus commanded the spirit to be quiet AND come out of the man.  While it would have been easy to hush that unclean spirit and continue on with His teaching, Jesus wanted more for the man.  Too many times, we want to smooth over people’s infirmities.  We are comfortable with them sitting in church, sick to death, as long as they are quiet about it.  As long as they don’t interrupt the flow of service.  As long as they do not mess up our good time.  Clearly, we are in the wrong.  We should not just hush the demons that people struggle with.  We should be like Jesus and cast them out.  Then we will have a better understanding of a good time.

Jesus came so that we can have life and life more abundantly.  He wants us to have a good time.  But this requires us to shift our thinking towards His thinking.  Good times are not all smiles and giggles.  They are not all sunshine and sweet.  Good times are the times that grow us.  Good times are the times that God uses to make us into who He created us to be.  And often, the best times of our lives are a result of our feeble plans and timelines ramming into God’s Holy and divine timing.  #wepreach