DAY 27 THE REBOUND OF FAITH What do you do now if you have made a wrong choice? Is all hope lost? Never! Jesus is too good and kind to lock the door on you when you fail. His greatest desire is to open a new door to you, to give you a new hope, to restore you, not to your former state but to a better state. Yes God is not a God of second chances, but a God of better chances. We have been dealing with the power of our decisions and choices and how they move us towards our goals or doom. And today we move into that borderline where we see people rebounding from bad choices. John Mark came from a wealthy family. Oral tradition has it that it was probably his house that the Last Supper was held with Jesus. It was in his house that the Church in Jerusalem gathered to pray when Peter was to be killed. Acts 12:11-13 So from what we can piece together, John Mark had a good foundation of the gospel and he had good influences around him. To tell the story of John Mark, you need to rigmarole through the New Testament because he is found in unlikely places and it could be hard to piece the story together because they are not all related. In Acts 12: 25 we see that when Paul and Barnabas visited Jerusalem, they had met Barnabas who incidentally according to Colossians 4 is also John Mark’s cousin and they took him along to Antioch. Perhaps it was his zeal for the Lord, that made them choose him. He saw the passion in Paul and Barnabas and resolved this was how he wanted to spend his life – in doing God’s work. Now your decision to follow God and actualize your purpose is always going to be tested. ALWAYS. At Antioch in Acts 13, Barnabas and Saul are commissioned to go on their first missionary journey and they took John Mark alongside. Bible historians say he was some sort of a secretary to the missionary team. The work was tedious, the road was perilous and the persecution did not demarcate between apostle and ordinary secretary. The road became so tough, John Mark could not take it any further, so he went back from Pamphylia. That was backsliding. That was failure. He had let his team down and Paul was really disappointed. When they were ready to go for a second missionary journey, Barnabas insisted on taking John Mark, but Paul could not stand it. How can you take someone you cannot trust to go all the way? The disagreement was so bad, the missionary team broke up – Barnabas going with John Mark and Saul going with Silas. Thank God for men like Barnabas who can give people a second chance. Thank God for men like Peter who knew the bitter experience of a fall and the joy of the rebound. Obviously John Mark went back to Jerusalem and their Peter mentored him on how to get back up when you fall. He simply told him, what I tell you today, “don’t give stop until you get there.” So let’s fast forward to the last days of Paul in ministry. Let us see what Pauls thinks of John Mark. In the closing remarks of Colossians, Paul commends John Mark as being a “great comfort.” In Philemon verse 24, Paul calls him a “fellow-worker”. In 2 Timothy 4: 10 Paul confesses that Demas has deserted him but he asks that Timothy should bring John Mark because he is useful to the work! Paul is writing this when he feels truly lonely and the person he asks for is Mark. It is not only Paul that has a great opinion about Mark, Peter too commends him greatly calling him “my son” in 1 Peter 5:13. Now this is more than comforting. Once, he could not be trusted but now the church counted on him, relied on him and looked up to him. What a transformation. Just in case you want to know how monumental that transformation was, then turn to the second book of the New Testament – Mark, it was written by this same Mark who could not endure the hardship and persecution on a missionary journey. His book was the very first book written in the whole New Testament and all the other Gospels (Matthew, Luke, John) used it as a reference. He was no doubt the person that prepared the training materials for Paul and Peter as they moved from city to city. He failed once, but he rebounded to even greater heights. That is what I call Falling Upward. Have you messed up? Have you failed God before? Welcome to the club. The failure is not the end. The fall is but your new beginning. So make it count. (c) DeepWords Devotional.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 22:45:45 +0000
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