Get Real Series Week 1 from Shawn Gray on Vimeo.

This is highlights from October 7th. This is week one of the Get Real series that we will be in for the month of October. We talked about what it means to Get Real. Hope you can make to the rest.

Fork or Spoon from Shawn Gray on Vimeo.

Forks are good. Come Next Wednesday (October 14th) from 6:30-8:00PM. Don't forget to come hungry.

John 5:1-8 says: "Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?" "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked."

The question that Jesus asked the lame man at the pool was "Do you want to get well?". Since everyone was there waiting for an angel to stir the water so they could be healed, why would Jesus ask such a ridiculous question? "Do you want to get well?" Of course he does! I yelled at the bible. Why would he be there if he didn't want to get well? It had to be that Jesus knew something that we didn't.

We all know people who profess to want help out of their circumstance, but really want help to stay in it. I like to call them "we will work for food people". In Hot Springs, Arkansas it was a common sight to see them. People sitting at heavy traffic areas with a hand printed, cardboard sign that says "will work for food", or something like it. Several times while I was a youth pastor in Hot Springs I constantly had jobs were I could use some help. When these projects would come up I would stop and offer them simple, unskilled labor type work. Not once did I find any one who would take me up on the offer, even though they seemed able bodied and even though their sign said otherwise. I got an array of reasons that people couldn't work paintbrushes and brooms. My conclusion was that they didn't want to work for food at all. As long as people continued to toss money to them for just sitting there, why would they?

So I believe that is why Jesus asked the question. He knew that when he healed the man he would be faced with responsibility.

So what was the lame man's answer? He said "I have no one to help me into the pool." What a ridiculous question followed by a non-answer. This answer is so typical for someone who lives in "excus-a-polusa".

I find that so many Christians are "we will work for food" people. They are looking for a free hand out from God. They want the food but aren't willing to work for it.

"and Jesus sat on them...and Jesus entered Jerusalem." - Matthew 21:17,18

Remember, Jesus had freed a donkey tied to a post. He took an ordinary, discarded, unappreciated animal, freed it from it's bondage and gave him the privilege of carrying the Lord of all creation. Simply put, He made the donkey extraordinary. So because of this awesome gift, we then out of love and gratitude, carry Christ every where we go. The problem comes when we get tired of carrying Him. I mean face it, He just gets heavy at times.

Now that I live in Colorado I've had many opportunities to climb mountains. Brook and I will be climbing Pikes Peak this summer. It is sixteen miles to the top. I can't imagine carrying Brook to the top. That would be a climb I don't believe I could finish.

However, that's our purpose. We will face mountains and valleys, yet we are to carry Christ up and through them all.

Sometimes we go places that God is not welcome. So we kindly ask him to dismount, taking a rope and tying Him to the post outside to wait. What a sight. The very one who freed us, gave us a purpose, took us from an ordinary existence and made us extraordinary, we tie to a post.

Seems crazy right. Yet we do it every day. People who know that when they are a Christ-carrier there are certain places they can't go and certain thing they can not do, yet they exclude Christ from their life when they tie Him to a post, taking an extraordinary God and making Him ordinary.

In Matthew chapter 21 it says: "¹As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, ²saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.'"

The most important thing about this scripture is not that Jesus asked His disciples to steal a donkey from their neighbor. Because God owns everything. Duh! It is that He asked them to untie it. Don't you want to be set free from your bondage. I bet the donkey did. I bet he might have even gave them a He and a Haw to thank them for there wonderful act of kindness.

You know that when we come into a relationship with Christ that we have an immense amount of freedom. The problem comes when we think that because of that freedom we then have the right to run around where ever we want. The important thing to remember about this story is that the donkey was FREED FOR A PURPOSE! His purpose was to carry Christ.

Whats your purpose? Let me step out on a limb here and say that it is to do the same thing that the donkey was to do. Carry Christ. Remember! We are free in Christ because he has given us freedom. However, that freedom comes with a purpose. So be a donkey for Christ sake and carry Him into your schools, homes, and your very lives. The world needs a message of hope. Christ is counting on you to take Him into your world so that it can be shared.

What do you think about the statement, "We'll never make a significant difference in any arena until it becomes a righteous obsession?" Well, I think about Rizpah. In Samuel 21:1-14 there is a story about a woman with a righteous obsession.

During the reign of David, there was a famine that hit the land for three successive years. This famine had come upon the land on account of Saul and his blood stained house. Saul had all but decimated the Gibeonites, in spite of God's warning to leave them alone. David went to the Gibeonites and asked how he might make amends for the wrong done to them at the hand of Saul. They responded by asking for seven blood relatives of Saul to be put to death.

So King David said "I will give them to you." He handed them over to the Gibeonites, who killed and exposed them on a hill before the Lord. They were hung and their bodies were to remain until the rain fell. Rizpah took a sack cloth and stayed with the bodies, one of them being her sons, beating away the buzzards and beasts of the night for five months.

She made her children her righteous obsession. They were accounted as accursed and unworthy of the burial of dogs' but she would not cast them out of her heart. Even though the bodies were rotting away she still stood by them and beat away the flesh eating buzzards.

The rain came. David noticed what Rizpah had done and, because of her heart of endurance and love, he took the bones and placed them in Kish's royal tomb. Rizpah's righteous obsession helped them to go and see the king.

Do I have a heart of endurance and love that keeps fighting for sin-decaying souls? Am I filled with a righteous obsession for the lost and decaying souls of this world? Am I causing others to go and see the king?