Spend Your Life With Jesus
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Spend Your Life With Jesus
Zach Baker [Lead Kids Minister]
Sermon Points & Scripture References:
Mark 3:13-19, Romans 10:9, Acts 4:13, Mark 14:67, 2 Corinthians 2:14-16, Romans 12:1, 2 Timothy 4:1-2
A life spent for Jesus must be spent with Jesus.
Be sent to declare Christ to serve others.
What if spending time with Jesus could transform your 2026 from surviving to thriving? A powerful blueprint for authentic discipleship—be with Jesus, declare His truth, and serve others. Genuine time with Christ creates an unmistakable spiritual aroma that changes lives. Whether you're navigating grief, celebrating victory, or somewhere in between, this message offers practical wisdom for experiencing Christ's presence in every season. Don't miss this timely challenge to simplify your walk with God and live transformed!
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Church. Now, look, I'm used to being with kids. When I say good morning, they yell at me, good morning, church. Morning. Welcome.
We are so, so glad that you are here. You survived the holiday season. You were blessed to have some family come. You were blessed when some family left. I get it.
In August, I had gotten a phone call from my mom, and she said, hey, we want to surprise the kids with a cruise for Christmas. Is that okay? And I, yeah, that'd be okay. Let's do that. And then a few weeks later, she called me back and said, okay, here are the dates for the cruise.
We got it all booked. Said, okay, what is it? It's December 22nd through the 27th. And I thought, what are you doing? I have five kids.
We have our traditions. We have the things that we want to do. You're booking us a cruise over Christmas? Can I be a Christian and go on a cruise for Christmas? I don't know how to navigate this.
So I was a little bit flustered trying to figure out how we were going to make this work. But then my wife and I walked through a pretty traumatic season of life. My father suddenly, very tragically, very unexpectedly passed away October 20th. Today, December 28th, is actually. Would have been his 75th birthday.
And the more we talked about not wanting to go on a cruise over Christmas, the more God was putting things in place for us to do something very out of the ordinary that would actually help us get through this Christmas season. So I'm very thankful that just yesterday I still have my sea legs. We got off the boat yesterday morning in New Orleans, drove here, and now here we are. And if you've never gone on a cruise, certainly you have experienced the stress of Christmas. And what do people stress out about the most?
If you're in my house, people stress out the most about food. There's one thing you don't have to stress out about on a cruise. It's food. I quickly found this camo shirt so that I could cover up all the stuff that I had eaten and you wouldn't see it. But really, we're just so thankful that you are here this morning.
Thank you for joining us on the last Sunday of 2025. We do pray that you were able to slow down, that you and your family were able to ponder the entire reason that we celebrate the birth of Jesus. The birth of Jesus wouldn't hold significant meaning if not for the life, death, resurrection of Jesus. And it's our prayer that through this season, you are rejuvenated, you are thankful for the things that Christ has done. I was so glad to have Sidney read our message to us this morning from Mark, chapter three.
We're going to be spending some time there. Go ahead and highlight, if you will, specifically verses 14 and 15. We are going to be spending a lot of time on this quick sentence that takes place in the Book of Mark. Now, normally we're in the middle of a series and you've been given a lot of context that leads up to this. I'm doing a one off, so you don't have a lot of context.
So quickly and briefly, I want to get us up to speed with everything that's happened in the Book of Mark. Now, this is a family service, families with kids. If you want to start in the gospel somewhere, go to Mark. Mark is incredibly fast moving with our kids today that have attention spans of about two seconds. It's a good book to be in.
We go in Mark 1 from the arrival of Christ arriving in a way very unexpected. A quiet arrival away from a royal entrance, not to a royal family, but to a very ordinary family. However, arrived in a way that was promised way before, as a descendant of Abraham, through the house of David would come the Messiah. And he arrives. And quickly Mark moves to the baptism of Jesus.
Then we move immediately to being driven into the wilderness. And we see where Jesus is successful in resisting the temptation of Satan. It's a very stark contrast when you look at Israel over and over and over again. Israel fails when it comes to the temptation of sin and Satan. But Jesus successfully resists temptation and he begins preaching.
And there's no doubt that Mark purposefully starts his gospel with the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel. This is more than a teacher giving advice. This is a king announcing arrival. And then in Mark 1 and 2, we see the incredible authority in which Jesus does his ministry.
We see that he teaches with authority. He's not like a scribe, he's not even like a rabbi. His authority comes from the declaration that he himself is the Messiah. He commands demons and they obey. He heals sick, he cleans lepers.
And all of this buzz that is happening around the ministry of Jesus has created massive crowds. So massive in fact, that roofs are being torn off of buildings just to have access to Jesus, to lower somebody to be healed. But then we see a crucial turning point. Not only is Jesus drawing big crowds who are seeking healing, he has garnered the attention of the religious elite. And now there is conflict with religious leaders.
And this ministry of the Messiah. And I love that. In Mark 1, not only does he heal the paralytic man, he looks at him and says, your sins are forgiven. God is the only one who has authority to do that. So the religious leaders are scrambling, and by the time we get to mark 3, verse 6, there is already in their minds a plot to seize, arrest and kill Jesus.
And this is where we are finding ourselves in the context of this scripture. The crowds are massive. There's a clear line that has been drawn. People are out to get Jesus and people are out to worship Jesus. Those two are very contrast against one another.
And in all of the crowds, Jesus decides to do something a little unexpected. He retreats, he goes to a mountain. He seeks the will of his Father. And he begins to call out and choose 12. It's not random.
Jesus purposefully chose 12 to be with him. And we're going to see that not only are they to be with him, they are also to declare Christ and serve others.
Before I took this job about a few years ago, I was the director of Radiology for St. Thomas West. And one of the things that I had to be involved in was the outfitting of a new MRI machine that would go into an operating room and they would do active live mapping of your brain during brain surgery. The MRI was hoisted on the ceiling and it drove into the or this 34,000 pound machine. And I had to go to meeting after meeting after meeting that I knew nothing about what they were talking about. I was not an architect in any way, shape or form.
But over and over and over again they would look over the same blueprints and all the architects and all the medical scientists would be in there. They're making sure everything is just so. And if one thing was out of whack, it wouldn't move right or it would be catastrophic when it came to metal that would be in the room. And it was so interesting to be a part of all that. What Jesus is doing in this verse is giving you and I an exact blueprint what it means to be a Christ follower.
And I am so thankful that to be a disciple of Christ we don't have to go to 70 meetings in which we'd have no idea what the other person is saying. Jesus makes this as clear as he can make just about anything in the Bible. Jesus says in 14 and 15 he has chosen his 12 to be with him, that he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. I can't write a simpler statement for what it means to be A disciple of Christ.
You and I have the tendency to overcomplicate a lot of scripture. Are there things in here that are complicated? Of course. But when it comes to the message of the gospel, sometimes you and I have the tendency to overcomplicate even the good news of the Gospel. We bring our feelings of inadequacy.
How can God do what he's done and surrender Christ and resurrect Christ so that I can be saved? I've messed up so bad, there's no way he's done that for me.
We bring feelings of legalism. If I'm going to follow Christ, I have to do this, this and hit every metric and hit every mark. And if I slip up one time, that's it. I'm done for. We are over complicating scripture, the Gospel, the good news message of Jesus Christ says that Jesus came, he lived, he died, and he rose again so that you and I may look upon him and have faith and believe and be saved.
That message is not just for the Jew, it is for every person. It is for you and it is for me. Don't over complicate the message of the good news of the gospel. And I cannot think of a more over complicated term that we've done with the church more than discipleship. We have so overwhelmed the meaning of discipleship.
Think about it. Over the last 20 years, you've heard modern church talk about D groups D now. Discipleship conferences, discipleship, pastor positions, and listen. All these things are good. LifePoint offers many of them.
But there is a danger in D groups and small groups. The danger becomes that you and I replace our time with Jesus with looking forward to one day a week in a small group where we talk and we share. And again, those things are good and they're necessary and we want you. But oftentimes it justifies leaving your Bible closed and not reading it yourself until you get to your D group. Now listen, I wrote this question based on my own life experience seven years ago.
Don't take offense and don't raise your hand if this is you, but this was where I was seven years ago. The week begins with good intentions. I'm going to spend time in the Word this week. But then life happens. Work gets busy, there's laundry to be done.
You're feeding your family. You're getting kids ready for bed up in the morning and ready for school. Sports are happening midweek. You and your spouse are not on the same page. Things are stressful.
You finally feel like you can lay down. But The Bible in your home was never moved and never opened. You look up on a Tuesday, you realize it's the day you're supposed to be in small group. You quickly fling through your Bible, you try to get caught up on the reading. You go to small group, you have great discussion, you talk about the Lord, you share your burdens and you pray together.
Those things are good. But. But the problem is the D group has replaced spending time with Jesus on your own. I've been there.
What's dangerous about not opening your Bible and relying on a D group or a small group is that you begin to look more like the people in your small group than you look like Jesus. And sometimes that can be a decent thing. But that's not what we're called to look like. People in your small group can look like Jesus. Praise the Lord.
I hope they do. But we're called to look like Jesus, to emulate him and to be with him. Don't justify dgroup and small group as a replacement for you spending time in the Word. So today we want you to see a life spent for Jesus. Must be a life spent with Jesus.
Now, Kathy Ropp was one of our kids ministers. She has stepped down from kids ministry and is doing women's ministry at the creek. When she left, I became one of the oldest children's ministers on staff. I don't love that, but that's what happened when she left. And I'm not super technologically in the know.
I know enough to get by. And at the end of the year, there became this popular trend to go look at your Spotify recap. So my assistant, who is much younger than I, she's 25, she came into my office and was like, hey, everybody's doing this. I want to see what you listen to all year. Pull up Spotify.
And I was like, what is Spotify? I'm not that bad. I knew what Spotify was, but we pulled it up and we tried to do a recap on my phone. And I had zero minutes on Spotify. And she was like, you're a weirdo.
And I was like, well, I don't use Spotify. I use Amazon music. I don't know if that does the same thing. So we got on there and we looked at and sure enough, I had a breakdown of everything I had listened to for the year. I had a breakdown of every album, every song, every minute that I had spent with a particular artist.
And it was eye opening. I will say the number one person that was listened to the most was Travis Ryan shout out. That's because my daughter listens to him every night when she goes to bed, when she's sleeping. But I began to think about when doing the sermon, if you could pull up a recap of 2025 in your own life. If I could pull up a 2025 recap, what would the minute show in how I spent time with Jesus?
What would the minute show for you?
Would it be something that you would proudly show other people? I spent this amount of time and did this amount of study and did this amount of devotion and this amount of scripture reading, or would it be something you would tuck and you don't want anybody to know according to what we're going to read today? You don't have to show somebody your recap for us to know. If you spent time with Jesus, God calls his disciples to do three simple things. Spend time with me, declare the gospel and serve others.
So if somebody were to look at your life recap 2025, you know those days are gone. We don't get them back. You can't go back and spend more time with Jesus last year. But that is exactly what Jesus is calling us to do, to spend time with him. So verse 13 through 15 reads, he went up on the mountain.
He called him those who he desired, they came to him, and he appointed 12 so that they might be with him, that they might be sent out to preach the gospel and have authority to cast demons. Point number one, we've said it already, but be with Jesus.
To be with Jesus, discipleship is first a relationship before it is ever a task. If you look at the life of the disciples of Christ, they were not sent out immediately after they were chosen. Instead, over the next three years they would endure the life and ministry of Christ. And I say endure because for the most part, the ministry of Christ was so hard. Think about it.
Christ was hated by those who should have loved him. The most ridiculed, beaten, scorned, placed on a cross. All of that from the very religious community that should have uplifted him as the Messiah that he was. And then you look at the life after Christ, after his resurrection and you see that the disciples had it even worse. Almost all of them martyred and killed for their preaching of the gospel.
None of which would have happened if for those three years they were not transformed by spending their life with Christ.
To be with Jesus is to first have a personal relationship with Christ. There are so many professing Christians today that like and are a fan of Jesus but have no personal relationship With Christ, they enjoy the things that he does. They'll pray to him when things are bad. They don't necessarily go to him when things are good, but they don't praise him when things are bad. They want to ask questions and bring him in to the things that are difficult in their life.
And so they're a fan of what they do, of what he does from afar. But there is a present and a moment that in the life of a Christian, you and I are to live our lives through Christ in the moment that when we see things go awry and things are bad. 2025 had a lot of moments of bad.
If I'm a fan of Jesus, there's no way I can navigate those scenarios correctly. You and I are called to have a close relationship with Christ where we pray and spend time with Christ. And the crazy part is he listens, but it's also where he gives discernment and guidance and we listen. 2025 was tough. I have a ninth grader who came home, had seen images of what took place on Charlie Kirk.
Not on his phone, but on a friend's phone that was riding the bus home. No doubt that your kids in this room, whether they have a phone or not, I would bet 90% of them have seen the very image of what happened, the violence that took place. I'm not here to talk about political beliefs or any of that stuff. I'm here to talk about a violent act that every single person witnessed on a screen. Adults, we don't know what to do with these images.
These are images that are hard for us to wrap our heads around. And our second, third, fourth and fifth grade kids are watching them on the bus to come home. How in the world do I navigate teaching my kids about the wrong and the moral decline if. If I have no moral compass to go by, if I'm not spending time with Jesus, there's no way I'm going to be able to navigate the world that our kids are thrust into. It's a relationship.
Secondly, it's a union to be with Christ. It tells us that through faith we are united in Christ. This is a union that Paul describes as, it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And this is what it means to be united, that you cannot be separated. That when you place your faith and your trust in Jesus.
And Romans 10:9 says, if you believe in who he says he is, and that the Father raised him from the dead, that you shall be saved. And in that moment, because of your faith in Christ, through his revelation to your heart that he is who he says he is, and you come into a relationship, you are united.
But the problem is we so often leave that union in that moment. And we're thankful for being saved, but we don't want all that comes with a life that's to be lived with Christ.
And so we may be united, but we miss out on the mission, spending time with Jesus, declaring Jesus, and serving others. We want to leave that. I don't want to touch that. We look at the life of the disciples and it's hard. We know it's going to be hard.
So we don't necessarily transform. To be with Jesus is to have a relationship, is to have a union. But lastly, and most importantly, it's transformative. A life surrendered to Christ, someone who has gone from sinner to saved is a life that should be radically transformed and noticed.
There's something really, really cool about how this is Word. In the original translation, in verse 14, we read that he appointed the 12. The Greek translation would accurately say, to make or to create the 12. So you can reread this verse. As he created the 12, he took men who.
Who were not significant. Nothing about them was known. They weren't famous, they weren't religious, they weren't scribes, they weren't rabbis. They were exceptionally ordinary 12 men. And Jesus made them, created them to be disciples.
Jesus longs to make you a disciple.
And when we are made and created to be the disciples that Jesus is creating, there's no doubt you've been transformed.
And look at what happens when you and I are transformed by Christ. Acts, chapter 4, verse 13. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they had perceived that they were uneducated common men. But they were astonished. Why?
Because they recognized that they had been with Jesus. Mark 14, the verse before 68. If you're a parent, you know why I didn't say that horrible number.
Thank you. And seeing Peter warming himself by the fire, she looked at him and said, you also were with the Nazarene Jesus. 2nd Corinthians 2, 14, 16. But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God, among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.
To one, a fragrance from death to death, and the other from life to life. I've said this before from this stage, but I think it's so fitting here. I believe this. I believe that the greatest evidence of the existence of Christ is not going to come through science or history, even though all of those things have genuinely pointed to Christ. The greatest evidence of the existence of Christ is in the radical transformation of somebody who has gone from sinner to saved.
The testimony that you and I carry of what my life once was to what my life is now rooted in Christ should be so radically different that people would know I can't make that change on my own. That change comes solely from Christ. And so you and I are called to be so radically transformed that we have the very aroma of Christ. When I was growing up, I played a lot of sports and I would get in the car with my mom after a football game and she'd just hold her nose the whole ride home. You smell horrible.
Then I was in the military. You don't even want to know the smells that took place there, right? The 60 man bays, we would come out and the drill sergeants would tell us things I can't repeat on stage. But we stunk, okay? You smell like the environment you place yourself in.
If you and I are first and foremost called as disciples to be with Jesus and we don't have the aroma of Christ, we haven't spent time with Jesus. He has called each one of us to sit with him. So much so that his sweet aroma becomes what you and I smell like. But you know what? The Bible is also clear that that aroma, it is like life to the saved.
It is like death to the perish.
My aroma in Christ should be so sweet that to those who are also have life in Christ can recognize it. And they're uplifted by the life that I'm living and by the life that they're living. And we encourage one another and it's sweet. But to the person who doesn't know Christ, they look at a life that has the aroma of Jesus and it should be so distasteful that they wonder, why is this person so different.
We have so many Christians who claim Christianity with no aroma of Jesus. And the people around them have no desire, no conviction to live any different because they look just like the world that they're living in.
But when you and I spend time with Jesus, we give off a sweet aroma. And that aroma is symbolized in the Old Testament. It symbolizes devotion and sacrifice. It's no mistake that Paul uses the words that he uses in Romans 12:1 that I appeal to you. Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living.
Aroma can be translated there a Living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to God. So what is holy and acceptable to God? That I have spent time with him so much that my very life gives off the aroma of Jesus.
That is what it means to be a holy, acceptable sacrifice in your life. Aroma also spreads not from you, but from its source. That by you and I spending time with Jesus that we begin to give off the aroma from the very source of Jesus. It's not about you. It's not about twisting scripture to make it say something that you would rather it say to keep a friendship.
It's not about twisting scripture to say something that you would rather say to not offend your daughter or your son. It's not about twisting scripture to not offend your spouse. You give off the aroma of Jesus and you take the Word for face value.
The word is black and white. We muddy it up. We make it hard to discern. And we want to bring in culture and we want to sway it this way, to not offend anybody. If you're not offended by scripture, you're not reading Scripture.
The word of God cuts through lies. It tells us that the aroma must spread from the source, not from your opinion.
Aroma also differentiates between life and death.
If you've ever had the privilege of smelling decay, you know what I'm talking about.
A life spent with Jesus smells sweet, like a fresh bouquet. And it's something that people around you will be drawn to.
All of this, everything that we've talked about so far, and we haven't lifted a finger, there's nothing wrong with being so ready to serve Christ. I know in the beginning it's so exciting when people first come to Christ and we call it on fire for the Lord, and it's good, and they want to go and they want to do and they want to preach and they want to share their testimony, and all of that's phenomenal. But there is something that the word clearly defines here, and it says, just sit with Jesus for a minute.
Just be in the presence of Jesus. I usually listen to a podcast on my way to work from Ligonier Ministries called Things Unseen by James Ferguson. He's one of my favorite people to listen to. He has a really cool accent. And one of the things that he was doing in the morning lately is challenging pastors.
I. I say lately, this was a few months ago. He was challenging pastors to not take notes during quiet time. And I thought, well, at first I'm a little offended because that's what I like to do. I like to really get in there, I like to open up a commentary. I like to give myself context and know what the Word is saying and what's happening historically.
It's just how my brain works. And he's saying to all the ministers, don't do that in your quiet time. Open up the Word, read its words and just sit there. And I thought, I'm going to prove him wrong, so let me try it. And I was proven wrong.
There is something transformative about the Word of God alone. When you and I can take a moment and sit with Scripture and then instead of rushing to try to figure things out, open up and pray, seek Christ, sit with him. So now I'm developing two quiet times. One where I just sit and the other one where I'll study. And it's made a difference.
There's a challenge here to spend time with Christ. Why do we do this? For the next two reasons. To declare Christ and to serve others. There is a mission to being a Christ follower.
We are not to just sit on the sidelines and watch everything around us burn and decay. We are called to take and declare the gospel message to those around us. But you cannot be successful if you have not first spent time, time with Jesus. So what does it mean to declare Christ? That as we are with Jesus and we emulate Jesus in our Christ likeness by spending time with him, we declare Christ to others by simply sharing the gospel.
What is the gospel? It's good news.
2025 was plenty of bad news.
It feels like every time we turn the TV on, it's more catastrophic than the day before. We can't walk around without shielding the eyes of our kids because people are so far removed from reality that they're making up realities that don't even exist, that they can be however they feel. And we're shielding our kids and we're trying to protect them. And we're walking around in a world where it's just bad news after bad news. How.
How about we share some good news? That as I have come to realize the reality of Christ, that I can share that reality with people who are lost and hurting, that I can tell them that Christ was not just for the Jew. He is for the Gentile. He is for every person, every nation, every tongue. And to you who are hurting and you've accepted the lies of the world, he's for you.
And he can radically transform your life. So how do we declare? 2nd Timothy 4, 1 2. I charge you in the presence of God in Christ Jesus, who has judged the living and the dead, that by his appearing and his kingdom to preach the Word, to be ready in season and out of season, to reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Look at what it says in the very first sentence.
I charge you in the presence of God, you and I cannot declare the good News if we are not in the presence of God.
We are called through our union to live Christ through me. If I am not in the presence of God, there's no way I can declare the good News.
Number two, to preach the Word. You cannot declare Christ if you don't know the Word. Again, if somebody were to take that recap that you've done of your life and see the amount of time that you've spent with Jesus, would you be able to look at that time spent and boldly proclaim the Word, or would you be embarrassed? Listen, we're all this seasonal, right? We go through moments where, man, I'm doing really good, I'm spending time in the Word, things are going good and I'm bold for Christ.
And then we go through times where we get busy or life is tough, or sin has taken root in our life and we distance ourselves from God. I understand all of that. But there is no excuse as a Christ follower to not open the Word of God.
And again, when you open it, don't change its words.
Every word, every thought is there on purpose. Preach the Word by knowing the Word in the presence of God. And lastly, in season and out of season, there are going to be seasons in your life that are so difficult that feeling the closeness of God is tough.
My father took his own Life on October 20th. I don't know how to deal with that.
There has been moment after moment after moment where I've just sat and I've cried.
I have not felt the closeness of God in moments. And then there's other moments where I have felt so wrapped in the arms of a loving God that that's the only way I could make it through that day.
I understand that life is going to hit you. And when it does, there are going to be moments where it hits you so hard that this spending time with Jesus feels like the last thing you want to do. I've lived that the last two months. But I can also tell you that with the community that I've had around me and my wife that's been with me, we have stayed rooted in Christ. And the only way I've been able to make it through is because I've spent time time with Jesus and I'm still going to have struggles.
I'm still going to go through hard things. So are you. How does the world navigate these things without Jesus? If you look around you, you can see that it doesn't navigate it very well. The transformative nature that's in the life of a Christian, a believing, professing Christian tells the world around them that we don't look at situations like this without hope.
I don't look at my marriage that's falling apart without hope. I serve a Christ that can bring it together and renew a respect for my spouse and renew a love that I had for my spouse. It allows me to look at my kids who are struggling with their faith. To look at them and still have hope that there have been seeds planted and they will come back to the truth of Scripture.
Spending time with Jesus and looking at the things around us doesn't allow us to collapse with the world when things are bad. It gives us hope for a future that's coming that Christ has declared will make all of this go away.
In season and out of season, we are to declare Christ and lastly to serve others.
Who's ready to go cast out some demons. Yeah, that's what it tells us in scripture. Right. Let's give some context to that verse. Looking at the Gospels and seeing what the disciples did throughout their ministry is a part of the whole of their ministry.
Signs and wonders done by the apostles fulfilled a very specific purpose. They were uniquely sent to do incredible signs that gave authenticity to the message of Jesus. Now, don't hear me say that Jesus does not still perform miracles. I promise you he does. I want to give you some insight a little bit into kids ministry and what's gone on.
If you haven't known or heard, we have had two kiddos, both of who were in the fourth grade in the last two years, come down with really serious diagnosis of leukemia. One of them, their diagnosis was so rare that they were flying doctors in just to see it. The prognosis was pretty grim. Gabriel Miles was one of those who just almost 18 months ago found out that he had leukemia through hip pain, went to the doctor and found out he had leukemia. He began coming back to church when he could fill up to it and ready, his hair was gone.
And I can tell you, just two weeks ago, I was surprised to see Gabriel walk through the doors. And he looked at me and did this with his just hair flowing right almost down to the middle of his back. And we praised God in that moment. Right.
His grandmother just came out and I just want to share this story. With you because God still does miracles. Debbie came out to me and said, you can share this during second service if you remember it when. Which I was like, good luck, here we go. She said, just the other day, I got a phone call from Nicole, who was Gabriel's mom, and she said that Gabriel was walking out of the store with Nicole and saw a homeless man and turned around to Nicole and asked for $20.
Nicole gave it to him. He walked over to the homeless man and gave him the $20, but didn't stop there. He then put his hand on the homeless man and prayed over this homeless man. Fifth grader.
Fifth grader. Do you know why I believe Gabriel did that? Because Gabriel has spent time with Jesus. Because Gabriel, when life threw him a big curveball and he didn't see how this was going to end very well. The prognosis wasn't looking great.
His body has been healed. He is currently in remission, praise God, and he wants people to know.
Amaya Bobo, a week before November 6, goes into the hospital, not really understanding anything that was going on. She had some bruising on her legs after a fall, immediately was diagnosed with a super rare form of leukemia. Was taken, monitored, started chemo that day. Less than a week into her hospital stay, developed a brain bleed. That brain bleed was caught because the doctor was aware enough when he talked to her to notice that something just wasn't right.
And within a week of her diagnosis, her mom now knows that she has cancer and is now being wheeled to emergency surgery. And we reached out and we had people praying and we wanted to get the church involved. And the church was praying. And because of some gracious people here, two weeks ago, I was able to deliver Christmas gifts to Amaya, who's at home, released from the hospital and told that she is in remission. Now.
She's still doing some chemo heavy doses for the next six months, but she's in remission. God still does heal.
But I share that with you. To share this last part, we are called to serve. If you and I have spent time with Jesus, we should smell like Jesus. If you and I have spent time with Jesus and we smell like Jesus, we begin to declare Jesus. If we declare Jesus, we have to take him to the people who need him the most.
We take Jesus to people whose life we don't agree with.
We take Jesus to the daughter or son that has chosen to live a life contrary to the Bible.
We take Jesus into work, to places where people who don't know Jesus are hurting. We bring Jesus into our home and we teach him to our kids.
The challenge for you and I is to not overcomplicate discipleship.
Spend time with God, declare God, serve those around you, not just in duty and activity. Serve those around you by sharing the good news of the gospel. They need that more than they need anything else. I'm going to ask you to stand and we're going to get ready to sing a song. And as we sing, I want to challenge you to do something before Monday as we close out the year.
You have an opportunity to right now do the very thing that this scripture is challenging you and I to do. And that is to just be with Jesus. You have a chance to sing and be in the presence of God. The Bible is clear where two or more he is here.
And if somebody could look at your Life recap of 2025 and go, they claim it. They claim to be a Christian. And yet I don't see any minutes spent with Jesus. Start that now.
As we sing this song. I ask that you worship with everything that you have.
Spend time with Jesus. Dear God, I'm so thankful for the reminder of what you have told your disciples.
God, you did way more than just appoint 12 random people.
You made them disciples. You created them.
Over the next three years of your life and ministry, you would spend every minute with them.
They would see the good and they would see the heartache of what it means to be a Christ follower.
And God, I pray over those in this room today that are in heartache.
God, I pray for those who have diagnoses that are difficult to deal with. I pray for those who are struggling in marriage. I pray for those who are struggling in work.
God, heartache is something that you don't just take away, but God, I also pray that those who are experiencing heartache would sit with Jesus.
I pray that they would spend time and God as they do, that they would begin to give off a sweet aroma of a life that is a living sacrifice to God.
God, I pray that as we wrap up this year and we look at the coming year, that God, we would commit to spending time with you in season and out of season. That we would recognize the union we have with Christ. Not I, but Christ who lives. And that we would take our relationship with you serious.
We love you. Amen.
Main Idea: Spend Your Life With Jesus
Passage: Mark 3:13-19
Highlight: What did the passage/message say?
How would you summarize the passage in your own words?
As you read the passage or listened to the message, were there any words, phrases, or themes that felt significant or impactful to you? If so, what were they, and why did they stand out?
Explain: What does the passage mean?
What do we learn about God from this passage? How does this correct any false ideas we have about Him?
What do we learn about ourselves and the world from this passage?
Apply: How does the passage change my life?
How should this passage change what you think, believe, or do this week?
Are there any specific actions or habits you can implement based on the truths we’ve discussed this week?
Respond: How do I respond to what God has said?
Praise God for the truths He has made known in this passage.
Confess any sin this passage reveals in your life.
Ask God to help you walk in holiness and obedience in response to this passage.
Resources
You can use the basic discussion outline seen above (H.E.A.R method) to aid in your Bible reading and comprehension. Learn more about the H.E.A.R method.
