Father's day

This morning we are going to look at a father in the Bible and how he follows Christ. His daughter is sick and he has not found any healing for her and he knows that JEsus is nearby. Jairus is a man of influence and authority but still finds himself at the feet of Jesus desperate.

What we will see as we walk with Jesus and Jairus toward the healing of his daughter is significant places of formation. Jairus responds to Christ in ways that a Christ follower would hope to.

Jairus is following Christ at the pace of waiting.

How do you do when you have to wait.?

How do we react when we are put in places we have to wait?

Your level of patience is in relationship to whatever is waiting on the other side.

If you are waiting in line for ice cream, likely you will be able to wait with patience

If you are waiting for a kidney, likely patience will be more difficult.

And it is in those moments that we get glimpses of who we are, bad and good.

Learning to wait, learning to live with patience, growing in that as a fruit of the Spirit, will change our relationships.

So if we are going to live with patience in our lives we are going to need something bigger to focus on while we are waiting.

patience is the invitation to allow Christ to work in wherever it is you are waiting

How are we patient when everything is urgent?

Mark 5:22–24 (ESV)

Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” And he went with him.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

Jairus is in a bad spot. His daughter is sick to the point of death. He has no other options. So He finds Jesus and implores Him to help.

And Jesus agrees.

We often don’t have to implore Christ to help us, we just have to come before Him.

Waiting for God to respond is hard work

Patience is hard work. To be patient is not for the weak of heart. It takes real spiritual formation to live patiently.

And it will take a work of the spirit to do so.

We are commanded to be patient

Ephesians 4:2 ESV

with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,

And patience is so important it is a fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

We are called to be patient and given what we need to be patient.

But why patience? What does it produce?

Slow steaming

Slow steaming is the act of modern container ships slowing down to the speed of what a steam powered vessel hunderds of years ago would have gone. Slow steaming began in 2007 when it was calculated that if you crossed the ocean as fast as you could on a container ship you would exponentially waste more and more diesel fuel. But they figured, if you slowed down to about half speed, 18 knots or so, you would save on 50% of your diesel costs round trip. Slowing down saved fuel.

Slowing down, acting with patience, will not drain your resources.

PArt of our current problem is that because everything feels urgent we have the urgency to keep up. But as followers of Christ, we can trust that God will move and work behind and before us. Our patience is an invitation for Him to work. And our patience, slowing down, will not deplete our finite resources.

But how do we actually do it?

Let’s look to Jairus.

In patience, we look for His work

Mark 5:25 ESV

And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years,

Pretty quickly into the story we run into a hiccup.

A woman approaches Christ and touched the hem of his robe and was healed.

GReat news.

But let’s stay with Jairus’s perspective for a moment. You have gotten the help that you finally need. Jesus can do something. But then you are sidelined by a sick woman.

And what is celebrated in the healing of the woman could simply be aggravation for Jairus.

the woman is healed and Jesus wants to talk with her!

I can’t imagine what Jairus is thinking!

He’s watching this all unfold but cannot do anything to get to his daughter any faster.

He is at the complete mercy of Christ.

What started as relief for Jairus turned into a supposed agony.

Following Christ toward healing and then having to wait. HAving his agenda put on hold, his desires, his real and true need.

Now in full disclosure we don’t know what Jairus is doing here. There is no mention while this is going on. But he does have a front row seat to healing. JEsus heals this woman’s medical issue and her shame issue. And Jairus sees it.

Jairus sees the Christ doing exactly what he wants Him to do for his daughter.

And we get to points like this, where we see God doing something else somewhere else and these are crucial points for us.

Because these areas can distract us or draw us in,

They distract us when we think, why is God doing that over there and not over here?

We compare God’s work elsewhere to the desert we are facing in our lives

But these moments can draw us in when we see the ability of God to completely change and transform a life.

Patience by looking for God’s work when we are not seeing it in our direct lives can draw us into the goodness of God.

Look for God’s work while you are waiting

In patience, we hear His voice

And imagine this point, the tension that you would be feeling as Jairus. And then you see some of the people from your house walking toward you. They aren’t running, they aren’t smiling, just walking. Why aren’t they urgent?

And the people just tell Jairus that his daughter has died, stop bothering the teacher.

We have an important exchange happen at the worst part of Jairus’s life.

Now we know this ends with his daughter being raised from the dead but I’m not sure if Jesus’ statement would be any different today.

His crew had just told him to not bother the teacher and Jesus replies to Jairus

Mark 5:36 ESV

But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”

Jesus in this one statement is pitting fear against belief. That belief is enough to drive out fear. That belief can strengthen the hardest situations and be stronger than death itself.

Jesus is facing death itself and is telling Jairus to believe. How can He do that? In order for us to not melt in the face of fear we need something bigger than our biggest fear.

Jesus faced a similar situation when dealing with a friend of his who died, Lazarus.

Lazarus had already died by the time Jesus arrived at his home. And Lazarus’s sister had some strong questions for Jesus. It could be the same question that Jairus could have asked Jesus.

John 11:21 ESV

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

She is hurt that Jesus wouldn’t show. She is questioning His timing, His will, His intentions.

in that Jesus only replies with telling her who He is. He doesn’t tell her what He is going to do or when or why but just affirms His character.

John 11:25–26 ESV

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

When we are placed into times where we are waiting for something, waiting for breakthrough or waiting for a relationship, we have an opportunity not only to see His work but to hear His voice.

His words reveal who He is. And it is not that Jesus simply tells us to believe. He tells us to believe because He Himself is the resurrection and the life.

So our belief is not a simple belief that something good will come out of this. Belief as Jesus talks about it is tied to Him.

Jairus is not simply told to believe, He is told to trust the God who can do something in his belief.

In patience we stand amazed at His grace

Mark 5:41–43 ESV

Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

If you walk with Christ long enough. If you learn to wait in Him, to have patience in Christ, you will end up amazed at what He has done.

Jairus has lived a lifetime in this walk from first finding Jesus to seeing his daughter rise from the dead.

And while we don’t always get to see things this dramatically (this is not a promise to see every sick person healed)

we do trust that the presence of Christ is leading in every situation. That Christ Himself does not shy away from imperfect situations.

We often don’t want to wait because we are not satisfied with the outcomes we are staring at. And so instead of waiting we make drastic shifts.

But in our waiting we see that Christ enters into imperfect situations

Keep in mind that in this situation, Jesus, as a Jewish male, especially a rabbi, would not have been able to touch anything that had died. To do so would have made Him ritualistically unclean. But Jesus did not shy away. He entered into the situation and brought healing.

The promise we see is not that Christ brings healing in the way we want it every time. But the promise is that if we wait on Him. If we are patient in a way that leads to belief then we will see how Christ has entered into and has worked in imperfect situations.

We are built in such a way that we think that patience is a weakness. That it is a lack of acting.

But patience is really the invitation to allow for someone else to work.

And we need the presence of Christ in our walk to see Him work.

To wait is not to let go of a situation that matters.

To wait is to give someone else the option to speak into a situation that matters.

Asher and the bus

I will tell him the bus is coming but he doesn’t believe me

I can see the bus because my perspective is better than His.

I can see further and better than he can

God’s work and His word are the ways we can slow down and trust Him to speak into our situations while we wait.

Jairus’s waiting is not a lack of care, Jairus’ waiting is giving His daughter into the complete care of Christ.

Where do you need to see the work of Christ in your life?

Where do you need to hear His voice?