Writers explore it.  Psychologists study it.  Prosecutors lean on it.  And preachers encourage it.  We all acknowledge it is real.  While the consensus of mental health professionals is that it is a form of compulsive behavior, surely the ‘urge to confess’ is much more than that. 

Unless you are a nihilist, you must acknowledge that guilt and shame are real, that they are more than cultural conditioning.  After all, guilt is universally observed and universally experienced.  And we all seem to intuitively know that confession is the first step in unloading its crippling burden. 

The Biblical word we translate ‘confession’ literally means to ‘agree with.’  Relief from guilt begins with ‘agreement’ that we have done what is wrong or failed to do what is right.  And that in doing or failing to do, we have wronged both God and man and must seek forgiveness.   But forgiveness requires more than a sinner’s agreement that he has sinned. More than mere repentance.  For if God is unwilling to forgive, our confession provides no relief from our crushing guilt or shame.  In fact, it only aggravates it.

While there is some mild release from getting things off our chest.  Such confession is cold comfort in the face of all the heavy temporal and eternal consequences each sin unleashes.  Another confession is needed.  A confession of faith.  A confession that rests completely upon the person and work of Christ as the only and sufficient savior of sinners. That is the urge to confess that makes the difference and unties the knots our sin has securely fastened.

The Bible tells us that if we “confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead we will be saved.”   But this confession is more than “magic words.”  It is no mere orthodox mantra conjuring a spiritual forcefield to shelter us from the righteous judgement of a Holy God.  Faithful confession flows from a Spirit-enabled ability to embrace the person and work of Jesus Christ as he is freely offered to us in the gospel.  Not as we imagine or desire that he might be.

The ‘Elephant in the room’ of Mark’s gospel is the question, “Who is Jesus?”  Is he a mere prophet? A reincarnation of John the Baptist?  A returning Elijah?  Or a new Moses?  Or is he a demon-possessed, anti-establishment rabble-rouser?  A political rebel?  Just who is he?  Until halfway through the gospel, only demons seem to know. 

The most religious of men are insensible.  The crowds more and more inflamed.  While the disciples are becoming dull and duller.  But apart from the effective working of the Holy Spirit, we are all equally incapable of understanding the person and work of Jesus, freely offered to us.

In Mark 8, following the progressive healing of a blind man, Jesus leads his spiritually blinded disciples to Caesarea Philippi and to spiritual clarity.  He asks.

And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” –Mark 8:27-30

The language of Jesus’ second question is emphatic and direct.  “But you, who am I to you?”   The disciples are beginning to understand, but like the blind man, they need a further revealing touch from their Master to understand fully who he is and who he is calling them to be.  How do you answer Jesus’ question?  For his question is no less for us than for the crowds of Caesarea Philippi.  Is he the Jesus of our imagination or our felt need?  Or is he the Jesus freely offered to us in the gospel?

Join us as we examine Mark 8:27-9:1 and consider what it means to us and for us that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Chronic headaches? Tired, bloodshot eyes?  Increasing light-sensitivity?  Floaters?  Hazy vision?  Difficulty reading or focusing? It’s time for a comprehensive eye exam.  Yes, there will be the traditional eye charts to measure visual acuity and assess near or farsightedness.  Flashing lights, right and left, test peripheral vision and the reaction of your pupils.  While various “viewfinders” are used to assess color blindness and depth perception.

But there is much more.  Retinal cameras and slit lamp biomicroscopes allow your optometrist to evaluate the basic structural and functional integrity of your eyes.  The tonometer, which we call the “puffer,” measures eye pressures to assess for glaucoma.  And for those who need corrective lenses, the phoropter with its multitudinous knobs and lenses allows the optometrist to hone in on a correct prescription while you imagine you are manning the periscope of a submarine.

Routine eye exams are important, because a loss of vision complicates common activities and creates significant challenges in doing the things that are important to us.  Worsening vision is frustrating and often a source of significant grief.  But for many, treatment may reverse or mitigate vision loss.  While for others, advancing technologies offer new means of help.

But what if our vision loss is spiritual?  Loss of our physical sense of sight is worrisome, but how many of us are concerned about the condition of our spiritual vision?  Are we as anxious about hardening hearts, struggling faith, or spiritual apathy as we are about weakening eyesight?  How careful are we to examine the condition of our souls, of our faith, of our growth or regression in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ?  And if our spiritual vision is failing, what can be done?

In Mark 8 Jesus concludes his Galilean ministry and sets his face to go to Jerusalem, to betrayal, to rejection, to the cross, to death, and to resurrection.   As Mark’s narrative progresses Jesus’ popularity has increased, but his disciple’s faith has increasingly struggled.  Sandwiched between the healings of a deaf man and a blind man, in the final of the “boat narratives,” Jesus confronts the disciples with their spiritual blindness and deafness in a series of pointed rhetorical questions. 

Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? …Do you not yet understand? – Mark 8:17-18

As the boat moors at Bethsaida, Jesus puts an exclamation point on his rebuke, as he progressively heals a blind man.  In one of the most unusual healings in the gospels, Jesus shows his disciples and us a gracious picture of the importance of examining ourselves for spiritual blindness and seeking treatment from Christ alone.

Join us as we examine Mark 8:22-26 and consider Jesus’ unusual healing of the blind man and what it teaches us about our concern for spiritual growth. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Happy Wife, Happy Life!  Isn’t that what they say?  Sounds straightforward, right?  But is it?  Of course, we all want to love our wives as Christ loves the church.  But that comes at the expense of some of our notable tendencies.  It means we must realize that conversation requires both our mental and verbal participation.  It means we must stop actually “thinking about nothing.” Or as one friend called it, “thinking about the empty box.”  And as one dear saint once chided, “A good husband keeps his wife’s knives sharp!”  I thought it was a metaphor.  But no, she meant the kitchen knives.

And it is no small feat to keep a good, sharp edge on a knife.  Every stroke has a dulling effect.  Both sharp knives and sharp lives require vigilance, intentionality, and skill.  As knives and lives age, both feel the effects of a growing dullness.  The mental and physical edge, effortless in our youth, requires concerted effort as we age.   We join a gym, we get serious about eating the right things, we work crossword and sudoku puzzles, we develop rituals and build memory palaces to help us recall things that should be familiar and important.

What is true of our knives and our lives is no less true of our faith.  Of course, we understand that faith is a gift.  The effectual calling of the Holy Spirit imparts faith to men incapable of grasping spiritual truths or coming to faith through unaided reason or experience.  And yet the Bible speaks often of a growing faith. And warns us against allowing our faith to become dull.  

While reason and experience can never produce faith, they are important channels for the means of grace used by the Holy Spirit to give and grow our faith.  Which is why we are exhorted to be disciples – followers who are disciplined in the “diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption.”  We are told that faith comes by hearing the word of Christ.  That we are to study to show ourselves approved, rightly dividing the word of truth.  We are counseled in anxiety to go to the Lord in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.  Faith is given and grown as a gift, but are called and enabled to be active receivers, guarding, contending for, and growing in our faith.

Is your faith dull?  Have the strokes of life taken the edge off?  Have you become complacent, callous, enfeebled in your faith?  Without spiritual care, without intentionality, without spiritual discipline our faith can become dull.   As the Gospel of Mark unfolds, Jesus wraps up his Galilean ministry and prepares to move toward Jerusalem and the cross.  At the same time the faith of the disciples grows increasingly dull.  The men who spent three years with Jesus, who heard with their ears, saw with their eyes, and touched with their hands the incarnate God struggled with spiritual dullness.  If this was true for them, how much more of a danger is it for us?

Join us as we examine Mark 8:1-21 and consider the dullness of the disciples’ response to Jesus’ warning to be vigilant against the chilling effects of religious formalism and worldliness.  But the warning was not for the Twelve alone.  For we too are warned about the causes, consequences, and cure for a dull faith.

We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.