Welcome to Day 2341 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Prepare Your Heart - The Time Has Come – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 03/03/2023 Prepare Your Heart – The Time Has Come - Mark 1:14-34 Today, we begin a five-week Lenten series ending on Resurrection Sunday, March 31^st. Today, our message is, “The Time Has Come!” This is the season many refer to as Lent, when we spiritually prepare ourselves for Resurrection Sunday, more commonly known as Easter. This is a particularly appropriate season for remembering the Gospel stories about Jesus. Although the distance of years and time may seem to separate us from the events back then, let us use our minds' eye to bring it all back to us. We will try to do that during these five Sundays by using five phrases from the ministry of Jesus. First, imagine what it was like to be there as Jesus began his ministry with his resounding words, “The time has come!" Let us return again to Galilee and see before us the boat that Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee used, with the gentle waves lapping against its side and Jesus coming up to them and saying, “Come, follow me!” Let us walk along with the crowds as they surround Jesus, and one from that crowd, a desperate person, cries out, “Lord, have mercy!"  Let us listen in as our Lord talks privately with his disciples and tells them, “Take up your cross!" Let us see Jesus telling a story about the reward that awaits us in heaven for following him, as he says, “Enter into the joy of your master!" During this Lenten season, let us use these phrases — “The time has come!" “Come, follow me!" “Lord, have mercy!" “Take up your cross!" and “Enter into the joy of your master!" — as we imagine what it must have been like to be a Galilean disciple. Our Scripture reading for today comes from Mark 1:14-34. Let us open our hearts to the Word of God: After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.  When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.  They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach.  The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.  Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee. As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. Let us transport ourselves to the maternity ward of Marietta Memorial, and we peek into a room where a baby had just been born a couple of hours earlier. The mother is sound asleep. The father is sound asleep. And the baby is sound asleep. Everyone, especially the mother, seems so exhausted now that the nine months are finally over. Nine months is a long time for a mother to wait, but that moment finally came when she knew her baby was coming. And when that realization happens for a young mother, that is when she turns to her husband and says, “The time has come!” Now, a husband might want to ignore this news. He might deny it or argue with her, saying, “No, the time has not come.” He might want to go back to sleep. But when a baby decides it will be born, it will be born. There is no stopping that baby. So, when a husband hears those words, “The time has come,” he had better stop doing what he is doing and pay attention. In today's scripture from Mark 1:15, Jesus announces, “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” When we hear those words, Jesus wants us to pay close attention to his words. He does not use the ordinary word for time here — for tick-tock_, chronological time. That would be the word, Kronos in Greek. But here in Mark 1:15, Jesus uses a different word, kairos. Kairos marks the arrival of an event, like the birth of a child, a high school graduation, or a harvest. Kairos time happens in its own time, when things cannot be held back. When Jesus said, “The time has come!” he stated that a significant event had just happened in God's plan of salvation for the world. He was announcing to the world. He was not stating an opinion, or debating a point. No, he was stating a fact, like an announcer who reports the news or sporting event. And what was this important thing? “The kingdom of God has come near,” Jesus said. God’s kingdom has finally broken into the world in force. The kingdom of God has come near. In the time of Jesus, many Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah to arrive. They divided history into two parts. They called the first half of history the olam hazeh, which means the “Present Age.” It is the period before the arrival of the Messiah. They called the second half of history the olam haba, meaning the “Age to Come.” It is the time of the Messiah, when the kingdom of God finally becomes established in its fullness on earth. They looked forward to the time when Messiah would end all oppression, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, cast out demons, and perform the perfect will of God on earth. The kingdom of God would rush in like an unstoppable invasion. When Jesus said, “The time is come. The kingdom of God has come near,” he announced the arrival of the “Age to Come.” He was the Messiah. Through him, God was now invading Satan’s temporary realm.   That is why, immediately after Jesus made that announcement, we see him performing the signs that prove that the Age to Come has arrived. We see Jesus healing the sick and casting out demons. Read the entire Old Testament, and we can find only a few scattered stories of exorcisms and miracles of healing. But when we open the pages of Mark's Gospel, the first Gospel written, we find a rush of miracles and exorcisms. God was invading Satan’s temporal realm through Jesus Christ. One person who felt the power of God was Peter’s mother-in-law. She was sick in bed, with a high fever. Jesus came to see her, and he took her by the hand and drove out the fever from her body with his power. Word spread. That evening, everyone who was sick came to Peter's house to be healed.| I read a story about a doctor in Egypt. He said that before modern medicine arrived in his village, he would see many people walking around with horrible deformities and hideous diseases: growths, tumors, and injuries that healed improperly. He saw people bent over and suffering from chronic pain and some just crawling on the streets. The sick in the village of Capernaum must have been just like those people as well. With no modern medicine to help, they must have had horrible diseases and deformities. Instead, they experienced the Kingdom of God through Jesus, filled with authority and power. Legs were straightened. Tumorous growths vanished. What joy must have filled their hearts when Jesus delivered them! How the suffering crowds must have wept for joy! Good news had come at last! But Will We Believe the Good News? Today, the invasion continues. God is still invading the world, influenced by Satan. As God’s kingdom grows, Satan’s influence will slowly diminish. But the big question is, will we repent and believe this good news? Most of us know of World War II only through others who are now past. Yet, there is a true story from that time that is genuinely relevant to what we are talking about — believing in the good news. In World War 2, a group of soldiers were being held as prisoners of war. Among them was a captured chaplain named Murdo Ewan MacDonald, called “Padre Mac" by the men. Another prisoner who possessed a secret crystal radio used to listen to the BBC. One day, the announcement came through that D-day had come, and the Allied troops were victorious. The man turned to Padre Mac and said to him three words: "They have come." Padre Mac knew exactly what was meant. He then repeated those three words to other prisoners: “They have come.” Quickly, the news spread throughout the entire prisoner camp. And whenever a prisoner heard those three words, the response was electrifying. Men started laughing out loud and celebrating. The moment those men heard that announcement, everything changed for them because they believed what they heard. Outwardly, their condition had not changed. They were still prisoners of war in a camp behind barbed wire. But inwardly, those prisoners felt hope for the first time. Padre Mac and the other men could have ignored the message from the radio and continued walking dejectedly around the camp. But they did not. They believed the good news, and it immediately changed their lives. For the first time, they knew that the end of their ordeal was drawing closer. In the same way, Jesus wants us to believe the good news of the Gospel. God is invading this world, influenced by Satan, to set things right. But do we honestly believe in this Good News, or do we believe the news media and other sources? The problem is that we still live in an in-between time now. God's invasion of this world has started but is still ongoing. The will of God still is not being perfectly done. The kingdom of God is already here, but not yet completed. There is still disease, evil, and suffering. The hearts of many still do not belong to God. That is why Jesus taught us to pray, “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” There is still work to be done, and we are called to this work by the power of God’s Holy Spirit that dwells within us. Sometimes, we can get so discouraged by what we see going on that we stop believing in the power of the good news. We are tempted to live like there is no message of hope, no power to that message, and no Savior. When Jesus said, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” it is not repentance from sin that he is talking about. It is repentance from hopelessness. From despair. From the feeling that God is powerless or that God is not doing anything. From the idea that the Gospel cannot change lives. We need to repent from a mindset of defeat. In that prisoner-of-war camp, Padre Mac and the other prisoners had been living without much hope. But when they heard the good news, “They have come,” it changed everything - it turned them around. They were not the only ones. The news affected everyone involved in the war. When the news of the D-Day invasion came to England, most people were at work. All across the nation, people stopped what they were doing and listened. In war plants, the announcement was read over loudspeakers, and men and women stood back from their lathes and sang, “God Save the King.” Then they returned to their jobs with renewed vigor because they knew there was still work to be done. The overall war had not ended. In America, the announcement came at 3:33 am on the East Coast. Still, in a Brooklyn shipyard, under the harsh glare of arc lights, it is reported that hundreds of men and women knelt down on the decks of partially finished Liberty ships and said a prayer. Then, they went back to building their Liberty ships. The war was not over, but victory was in sight. All across America, as some heard the news, they called friends. Switchboards were overwhelmed. Lights came on. Quiet streets filled with sound as radios were turned up. People woke their neighbors. In Marietta, Georgia, people filled the churches at 4 am to pray and praise God. Then they all returned to their ordinary routines, but this time with a renewed hope and more vigorous prayers for the invasion's success. Jesus made his announcement, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near." But that is only half the story. The other half is believing in what he announced. Only then will the church feel the power of the Gospel. “Repent and believe the good news," Jesus said. “God's D-Day has come. Hear the announcement. And live as you have heard it." So, why do we so often live like defeated prisoners of war who have yet to hear the announcement of a successful D-Day? Why do we commonly think and act like there is no power to our faith? Why do we give up on prayer, serving God, caring for those in need, or praying for people to come to Jesus? I read another story about this young boy who would walk past a huge, mysterious brick building in his part of the city. There was no sign on it,>even though it was a large building. It had huge windows that were never opened, and he could not see through them. There was one small door, but he never saw anyone enter or depart. He never saw any delivery trucks. Yet, day after day, he heard a deep humming noise coming from within that building, a noise that never stopped day or night. Then, one sweltering summer's day, this boy found the giant window open, and his curiosity got the best of him. He slowly walked up and peeked inside; he could not believe his eyes. In that building was a machine more enormous than any machine he thought possible. It nearly filled the whole of that vast building. It was a giant turbine generator. The building was a power plant that generated electricity for the entire city. That is what we are as a church: a powerhouse. On the outside, we may look quite ordinary. We might feel ordinary and powerless. But within our midst, there is a giant generator at work, day, and night. That generator is the good news of the Gospel and God’s Holy Spirit in us. Jesus announces that God is invading the world through him. You and I are called to believe in that message and the power still at work in and through it. Even if we are small in number, we must never forget the power that lurks in our midst. It can suddenly call us, challenge us, and empower us to join in God's invasion of Satan's domain and build God’s kingdom until Christ returns to establish the Global Eden here on earth. During this Lenten season and beyond, will you believe with fresh eyes in the good news? That Jesus is the One through whom God is invading this world? Will you reaffirm that prayer can bring a long-lost family member to God? That telling a person the simple story about Jesus dying on the cross for their sins can actually change their life. That the Gospel can penetrate into even the hardest, most resistant lives, communities, and nations? That demonic powers can be cast out with a word of command uttered in faith? The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. As we prepare our hearts for Resurrection Sunday this season, may we repent and believe the good news! Next week, we continue our theme of Prepare Your Heart in a message titled “Come Follow Me.” Please read Mark 1:16-20. If you found this podcast insightful, subscribe and leave us a review, then encourage your friends and family to join us and come along tomorrow for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy. Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal. As we take this trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Everyday! See you next time for more wisdom from God’s Word!