Get Focused

The Best is Yet to Come - Week #7

Get Focused

Luke 13:10-17

1.   Our focus has to be up.  

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues,  11  and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all.  12  When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her,  “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”  13  Then he put his hands on her,  and immediately she straightened up and praised God.  Luke 13:10-13

* Religion is when we make much of us, Christianity is when we make much of Jesus.

2  Very truly I tell you, whoever believes  in me will do the works I have been doing,  and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.  13  And I will do whatever you ask  in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  John 14:12-13

* Jesus did not die on the cross so you can live an average, ordinary, normal life.  

2.    We have to focus on giving some things up

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath,  the synagogue leader  said to the people, “There are six days for work.  So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”  15  The Lord answered him,  “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?  16  Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham,  whom Satan  has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” Luke 13:14-16

WE NEED TO GIVE UP 2 THINGS:

a. Our Comfort

* God did not call the church to be safe; he called the church to be dangerous.  

After saying this, he spit  on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.  7  “Go,”  he told him,  “wash in the Pool of Siloam”  (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.  John 9:6-7

b. Our Conditions  

* We cannot place conditions on God

* When we place conditions on God as a church, we begin to do ministry without Jesus.  

Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits  tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus  whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.”  14  Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this.  15  One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?”  16  Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.  Acts 19:13-16

When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated,  but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. Luke 13:17