Mark Jones – In His Dust

Rob Bell’s nooma dvd, ‘Rain’, talks about the ’storms’ we go through in life.

He asks a question. Do you think God intentionally puts us through trials? I don’t think so. I think God uses these Storms that sometimes we find ourselves in or get ourselves into as a chance to help us grow and become stronger – as long as we seek him during those times.

It’s like that story… (matthew 7:24-27)… where it’s talking about buildingyour house on either the sand or the rock. Why? If you build your house on the sand… the next storm that blows by (like every day for the last week) will bring it crashing down. You need a firm foundation if your gonna stand up to the storms. If, you’ve got your house built on the rock however… with a firm foundation (in God)…you’ll be able to stand up strong against the storms. You might get a bit wind swept, but you’ll come through ok.

Have you ever felt like… God just isn’t there? Usually, when someone goes through a hard time in life, they can sometimes feel that God isn’t there. (It must be in their head…!)But God says these amazing things…like… When we cry out to him, he’ll listen. He can’t ignore our cries when we’re afflicted.

Ok…. God is God. But I’ve never done the whole ‘fancy chat’ to God. I speak to God the same way I’d speak to my buddies. It’s the same idea with people that struggle with prayer because they “don’t know what to say”. Talk to him as you’d talk to anyone else. The point I’m (trying) to make is… God isn’t going to shrug off your worries and troubles because He’s God. He wants us to come and dump all our troubles and stuff on him. Like i said in my last post… God wants us to come to him with all our junk, problmes, all screwed and messed up. He’ll help us through. He’ll help us bare the load.

 It’s kinda hard sometimes though, isn’t it? If your going through a crappy time… and your like… what’s God letting me go through this for? I’ve fallen out with my parents loads of times before. It’s a teenager thing – apparently. But when I look back at the times when i’ve fallen out with them – usually for something they wouldn’t let me buy, or somewhere they won’t let me go… 99% of the time it’s because they had my best interests at heart – which is sometimes realy annoying, I know.

Or when we jump in a car with someone, or in a bus… we trust that the driver knows where they’re going and aren’t going to drive of a pier or a bridge.

God’s the driver… If we stick close to God, and trust he knows where we’re going… We’ll come out ok. We’ll maybe come out having learned something. Having grown up a bit. Having gotten closer to him.

 So trust.

“In his dust” is talking about disciples who would follow their rabbi so closely, that the dust that was kicked up by the rabbi would cover his disciples.

 I was watching one of those Nooma (Rob Bell) dvd’s a while back called ‘Dust’ where it’s talking about this. Thought it was quality.

 Rob Bell talks about how to be a disciple of a rabbi, is to try your hardest to be everything like your Rabbi – to follow and copy everything he does. To follow him so closely that you’ll be covered in his ‘dust’.

You kinda see this with Peter and the whole ’step out the boat’ thing. Jesus was Peter’s rabbi. So, Peter saw Jesus walking on water, and instanly wanted to do what Jesus was doing. But when Peter actually goes to walk on the water, he begins to sink.

“You of little faith”, he said, “why did you doubt?”

 Is this a lack of faith in Jesus, or a lack of faith in himself? Considering Peter went for it, and stepped out of the boat… I don’t think it was his faith in Jesus that let him down. I think it was his faith in himself. He loses faith that he can actually be like his rabbi.

 Other Rabbi’s only took on the best of the best as their disciples. Jesus took on the low life as his followers. The fishermen, etc.

I think sometimes, we can get wrapped up in the whole ‘I’m not good enough to follow Jesus’ thing. We shouldn’t. God wouldn’t have us follow him unless he had faith in us, surely? Look at the responsibility he left the disciples when he went up to heaven?

 So yeah, It’s important to believe in God. But i think its realy important to believe that God believes in us as well. It’s important to have faith in Jesus, but we need to know that Jesus has faith in us – that we CAN be like him.  

Mark (with alot of help from Rob Bell – LOL!)