Running Won’t Fix It

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, dear radio friend, how in the world are you? Doing alright? I’ve just been praying that God’s love and blessing and peace and power and truth might be in my voice and in the words I say. We can’t see each other, but somehow the blessed Spirit of God can take some word and fit it especially for your personal need. And that’s precisely what I want to see happen during these broadcasts.

You and I are talking about John Mark, a young man who started well, who faltered and quit on the job, but who later on became what the Apostle Paul called profitable. Now, what’s the score on all of this? What really happened, and how does it pertain to you and to me?

What was involved in the rehabilitation, shall we say, of John Mark? I think for one thing, you never get away from your childhood training. Sister’s son to Barnabas, he was, he was Barnabas’s nephew. He was brought up in a house where they prayed, and where they prayed in terms of asking God to do something. Specifically when Peter was in jail and his execution was scheduled for the next day or so, it says, “Prayer was made by the church unto God without ceasing for him.” Incidentally preachers, there’s a good text on prayer if you ever wanna preach on prayer, you’ll find the… You’ll find the layout, you may say, of the truth especially in that verse.

“Prayer was made without ceasing by the church unto God for him.” That’s Acts 12:5. We’re talking about John Mark, he was brought up in a house where people said, “There’s something that needs fixing here, let’s pray about it.” Give your children that advantage, would you, beloved? Some of you have young children coming up, and some of you have teenagers just going through the tempestuous teens, but they’re still home, and while your young people are still home… My father used to say, “As long as you got your feet under my table boy, I’m responsible for you.” [chuckle] Well, while they have their feet so to speak, under your table, give them the opportunity of being in a home where people really pray. Most of the time our praying is so formal and stilted in banal and shallow and pointless, isn’t it?

The kids need to know that when there’s a need, we pray about it. When there’s a crisis, we face it in prayer. When there’s a heartbreak, we turn it over to God in prayer. When someone has a heart attack, we give the anxiety to God in prayer, “casting all your care upon Him,” that’s our word for anxiety, casting all your anxiety on Him, “for He careth for you.” Give the young people, beloved, give your young people the plus that comes from growing up in a home where people really pray.

I shall always remember bringing to our family worship a good many years ago, while our two older girls were still little gals, a need that we had that involved some two or three thousands of dollars, you know it was a… It was a… It was a whopper for us; we just didn’t know how to meet it, and so I said, “Well now, we’re gonna pray about this and ask our heavenly Father to meet our need.” Which we did.

A few days later, two or three at the most, came a letter from one of my friends with whom I was associated in a small enterprise. He said, “I don’t really know why I’m doing this, I wouldn’t have to do it for six months.” But he said, “I think I want to take care of this obligation now rather than waiting.” And so he sent a check in the letter and that check, believe it or not, came within a very few dollars, it was a little over as a matter of fact, the very few dollars of being just what we had asked the Lord for. Well, you know I brought that letter with me to the dinner table that night, and put it out there, and I said, “Now, we wanna thank our heavenly Father for meeting the need.” Give your children the plus of growing up in a home where you really pray, pray about things, pray about needs, pray about crisis, pray about challenges, pray about disagreements; you don’t have to fight about it, pray about disagreements, pray about things that threaten you, and pray certainly about things that hurt or that are heartaches or that are scary, like a sudden illness. Pray about them with your family, I mean to say. The house was full of praying people where Mark was growing up, alright? So he never got away, I mean to say, from that background. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old… ” Solomon said, “He will not depart from it.”

What else contributed to Mark’s rehabilitation? Barnabas I think was a key factor. Barnabas took him in spite of Paul’s doubts about him. They had a big argument, Paul and Barnabas did over John Mark, said the contention was so sharp between them, that they parted asunder, and Paul took Silas and went on his way and Barnabas took Mark and went right straight back over the same territory so that Mark had to face his fears and conquer them in Christ.

Barnabas was a key factor. Let me ask you a question. Have you gone out of your way to seek anybody and to help anybody or to rehabilitate somebody who has failed and fallen and is sort of down about it? Have you done that at all? Barnabas did. When he heard the Saul of Tarsus had gone back to Tarsus discouraged because Jerusalem would have none of him, he went to seek for him, didn’t have an address, had to go around and ask people, “Did you ever hear of a person named Saul?” Well, they found him. It said he went to Tarsus to seek Saul, and when he found him he brought him with him back to Antioch and got him busy teaching the Word of God.

He went out of his way; he took a long journey, mind you. It’s a long way from Jerusalem to Tarsus. He went out of his way to seek a man. Now, the same quality was evident in his treatment of John Mark. Yes, John had quit and it was a real disappointment, and a sharp inconvenience, actually, to Paul and Barnabas to have their valuable gopher, their assistant, their minister quit on them. But Barnabas said, “This boy is valuable. I’m gonna see to it that he goes back and faces his failures, honestly, with the Lord. And so he took him along and brought him right straight back to Cypress where he began to falter.

See, John Mark quit when they got to the mainland of Asia, but he began to falter, you may be sure, under the pressures that occurred there in Cypress. People do not cave in, suddenly. They cave in by degrees from the inside out. And what you see as a sudden public failure, oftentimes, is preceded by months or even years of inner defeat. “Guard your heart,” the wise man said, “with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.” So it was that praying home and it was a tender-hearted, compassionate Uncle Barnabas, who was another factor in his rehabilitation.

Now, another thing is that Mark learned to keep on the job. Mark was there. He was mentioned in Colossians 4:10. That’s our text now. He’s also mentioned in 1 Peter 5:13. He was very close to the Apostle Peter and so Peter says, “By Sylvanus, faithful brother, I have written and the church that is at Babylon elected together with you salutes you and so doth Marcus, my son, John Mark. So he learned to stay on the job. Now how he learned and what happened to him we aren’t filled in on that. But evidently something happened in that trip with Barnabas that helped him to know that you don’t run away from things, but you do stay on the job; you don’t just run away. Have you learned that yet? You see the problem is you can’t run away from your problems because you bring them with you; that’s the problem.

They told me of this minister who announced one Sunday morning, said, “I have to tell you that our sister so-and-so has moved away to the West Coast; she’s gonna get a new start in life but I’m afraid I have news for her, she’s gonna have trouble there because you see, she brought herself with her when she moved.” [chuckle] Well, we do that, don’t we? We bring our faults with us when we run away. We bring the capacity to fail with us when we run away. And so, Mark had to learn that you stay on the job and face it with God. Oh, bring that lesson home to yourself, would you, beloved? Some of you today are facing some very difficult things and you feel like giving up; you feel like backing off and saying, “I’ve had it, this is it, no more for me.” Well, “it’s always too soon to quit,” Dr. Edmond used to say. How true that statement is. Always too soon to quit. Don’t back off. Instead, get on your knees and pray and seek God, and let Him give you a new touch and let him re-assign you to things that really count.

Elijah was ready to quit, he said God. “I’ve been very zealous for the Lord of host. Now, you better kill me before they do; they seek my life to take it away.” What God did was to rest him, feed him, and reveal Himself to him and recommission him. Don’t quit, seek God instead. Good idea? Well, we’ll talk about this a little bit more the next time we get together.

Dear Father, today, in Jesus’ name, we give ourselves to Thee, and ask that Thou would help us to be faithful in the rough times of life. In His name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!