a sermon with a side of gut-check

What I heard this past sunday morning was BEYOND what I needed to hear. It had God written all over it! God spoke directly to me. I haven't felt this convicted of something through a simple sunday morning sermon..ever. Thanks youth pastor, for me it was your best sermon yet ;)!

The sermon was over Mark 2:13-17. The passage basically goes like this: Jesus is in this huge crowd, and he calls out to this guy named Levi, a tax collector who wasn't even in the crowd who was around Jesus - he was doing his job being a tax collector, and Jesus says "Come on, follow me!" And then Jesus goes to his house and eats supper with Levi and a bunch of other tax collectors who weren't very socially popular. So, a pharisee criticizes this and says "Dude, Jesus, why are you eating with the scum of the earth?" And Jesus replies with something really weird:

On hearing this, Jesus said to them,
"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Mark 2:17

So in the sermon, both perspectives were talked about. People who were spiritually sick and people who were "spiritually healthy" - actually, I think it's a little more clear from the version in my bible: not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners. So, the sermon went into how everyone is sick. And everyone needs God because everyone is sick. But then the part that stuck out to me, was how Jesus said "the healthy don't need a doctor". And I think that's something that I struggle with. I think I'm doing pretty well. A doctor can't help a healthy person, healthy people don't even go to the doctor, they don't need to. There's no way a doctor can cure a healthy person. So, like in the NLT, if you think you're righteous, then God can't help you. If you aren't spiritually sick.. or you don't think you are.. God can't help you! God can't help me with my yucky pride that whispers to me that I'm a bonafide Christian. And I know I'm sick. Everyone is sick deep down, we all live in a swamp of sin. But maybe I just don't admit it. The sermon used the example of how sometimes, people don't want/like to go to the doctor, so they don't. They make up excuses or just refuse. And maybe that's partly because the doctors office isn't very fun..but maybe it's mostly because they're afraid of what might be wrong with them. Maybe I'm afraid of what ELSE is wrong with me. Maybe it's not the fear of finding out, but the fear that what I see will sort of knock me off my high horse. I don't know a better way to put it then that. That's real ugly, but that's where my heart's at. I'm sick. I need God. I don't want all this pride in my life. I don't want to think I'm righteous. I'm obviously not. I guess I compare myself to others too much, I think if I'm better off than so-and-so on my walk with Christ that I'm "righteous". But I need to compare myself to God. Because really, everything else is of the world. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12:2

It's pretty crazy how God works through the strangest things. It's pretty crazy how when you open yourself up, God can really do some work in you. It's crazy how bittersweet joy can just erupt in your soul after you allow God into your heart to preform His operation. (Relient K song - Operation "I need an operation/Oh Lord please operate/I need an operation/remove the pride, extract the hate/bring the color back into my cheeks/because my flesh is wrong and my spirit's weak) God is good.

ps]summer is ROCKING! God is blessing my life all over right now :)