The youth concert we held on October 25 was meant to launch the youth service of our local church in Las Piñas City, Cross Tower Ministries.  Although the turnout out was massive, as God has confirmed to us long before it occurred, many of us in the youth ministry and music team were somehow nervous that the next youth service might not be as jam-packed and exciting as the concert was.  We became all the more nervous when at 6 pm on November 8, attendees were merely trickling in.  Thankfully though, by 7 pm, at which time we started (late again, obviously) the place was filled with so many young people – with new faces to boot.  We are thankful to God that He has caused the youth ministry to take off now.  The next step of course is effective and strategic discipleship.  But even more importantly, the Lord reminded us of one clear thing which we lost sight of leading up to the youth service: that we ought to be prepared spiritually all the time.  Pastor Jerome confided to me that our spiritual adrenaline level went down this time and it was not a good sign. 

Anyway, let me share with you the message I delivered on that day – which I believe still had impact on the youth judging from the response to the call for prayer.  Taken from John 5:1-13, the passage proceeds from the story of the Samaritan woman.  It’s about Christ healing this crippled man who had been waiting for his miracle at the pool for 38 years already. 

Without sounding judgmental, I have observed that there are many of us Christians in the world today – or at least in the groups that I have become part of - who walk about professing our faith in Jesus without necessarily being conscious of the sincerity that ought to go with such profession.  In other words, we find it rather easy to write “Christian” in the space provided for the “Religion” category in our CV, for instance, without pondering the implications on lifestyle.  This, I think, is very well indicative of what can be called as Christian lip service, or the idea that one can say he believes in the Lord Jesus even if he does things that are contrary to what Christ exemplifies or deep inside him, he feels otherwise.  Among the young people, this is rampant.  Somebody can argue that hey, it is completely impossible to be perfect anyway, so what’s the point in comparing ourselves to Christ, Jayeel?  In response, that is not really the point of this message.  Although perfection is impossible for us mortal beings at this point in time, each of us has the ability to choose to which direction we shall orient our lives.  In other words, Christ-like or otherwise?  Or put differently, does Jesus really really have anything to do with my life such that when I say that I am a Christian, Jesus is concerned about how I live?  The brief (and at times boring, as I initially observed) passage from John 5:1-13, without being pushy about it, says yes.  There are three key points we can learn from this passage:

 

  • Jesus is personally concerned about you – yes, you (verses 1-8).

 

The introductory sentences reveal that in that pool were so many ill people waiting for the water to bubble.  What were they doing there?  They believed that water bubbling means an angel has touched the water and so the very first person to get into it shall be healed.  Talk about endless queues that you normally encounter when buying at McDonald’s and that doesn’t even compare.  Of all the people in the large crowd, Christ goes to this man and asks him, “What do you want to happen, dude?” 

 

Of all the people, why him?  There are at least two speculations, with one more convincing.  The first possible reason can be merely Jesus felt like doing it just to get it over with.  After all, He was extremely tired from previous encounters with other people.  Maybe deep inside Him, He wanted to exhibit one miracle and after that, sneak out and rest.  A day’s worth of work is over.

 

But I think a more compelling reason, knowing Christ’s character, is that He saw through the man’s struggles which He felt needed one personal attention.  The crippled man who is the subject of this story has been waiting for his own miracle for 38 years.  But that doesn’t reveal much about the man.  When Christ asks him what he wants to happen, he immediately responds, “Hey you, I’ve been waiting here for 38 years and even if the water bubbles, there’s no way that I can get myself into it as by the time that I pick myself up, thousand others have jumped into the pool”.  What does this quick reply say about this man?  There is a tension going on in this man’s heart.  On one hand, he says he believes that a miracle can happen to him one day.  But on the other hand, by virtue of his own admission to Christ, he seems unconvinced that it will ever happen anyway.  Talk about Christian lip service.

 

And more importantly, this reflects the condition of many young people today – hopelessness.  Yes, there is no doubt that we believe in God but many of us have learned to accept certain struggles in our lives as “normal” thereby becoming part of our daily living.  These can be problems with our relationships in the family, with money, with emotions, even with illnesses, and the list can go on.  On one hand, we believe in God who can help us through, but on the hand, we feel that maybe all these are normal so we better accept them. 

 

Jesus sees through your own struggles and He is concerned about you personally.

 

Without batting an eyelash, Christ says, “Stand up and pick up your mat”.

 

  • Jesus wants you to stand up and face the world (verses 8-13).

 

Then came the power of the Almighty upon this man.  Why did Christ have to ask the man to pick up his mat?        

 

It was meant to show the world that he was no longer under the curse of the mat of sickness, that it was time for him to pick up himself and walk away from his own struggles. 

 

In Psalm 139:17-18, we are reminded that the Lord has so many beautiful thoughts and plans for us.  The reason why Christ had to ask the man to stand up was because the man would not be able to fulfill God’s plans for his life under the stronghold of personal struggles.  In other words, people trapped in their own issues in life are unable to see the greater things ahead of them. 

 

When Christ died on the cross and rose back to life, that simply meant even death no longer has power over anyone.  This was the conviction that Christ had in John 16:33: “Fear not for I have overcome the world”. 

 

  • Jesus wants to complete you (verses 14-15).

 

The man moves on and Jesus is out of the picture.  But sometime later, Jesus finds him again in the thick of the crowd with a clear and better message: “Stop sinning”.  As if the first miracle was not enough, Jesus had to look for this man again in order to tell him that “Hey, now that you’re healed, don’t ever think of going back to the things that trapped you.  You no longer belong to sin.  You belong to me”. 

 

The man needed a better miracle – the miracle of a brand new life. 

 

The man, if we remember, was waiting for his miracle at the pool, thinking that he would be made complete by a divine intervention that looked like it came from God but God was not really there.  You see, the attention of the man was on the possible miracle and not the miracle-giver. 

 

That was the reason why Christ had to see him personally again and make sure to him that what he needed was God and not just the miracle. 

 

In other words, we can have all the miracles – or “blessings” as we call them – in the world and yet have our hearts be so far from the Lord.  When that happens, we continue living looking for things that will complete us – perhaps another miracle, another blessing, another achievement can make me complete.  Just one more.

 

When you have Christ, you are complete.  Yes, Christ is concerned about your welfare, which is why He healed the man.  But He is more concerned about the wholeness of your life that only He can give, which is why He came to see the man again. 

 

In Psalm 138:7-8, we are told that the Lord is willing to fulfill His plans for our lives.  I believe we can choose to orient our lives to have Christ as the center of everything we do and the source of everything that we need. 

 

The life that we live as Christians can be more beautiful and effective than the mere lip service that we pay to Christ when we write in the space next to “Religion” in the CV.