Podcast 2.05 Step Over the Squashed Snake and Listen to Jesus

 

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Transcript

Episode 2.05
Step Over the Squashed Snake and Listen to Jesus

(Musical intro)

Intro: Welcome to the Encounter Jesus podcast, also known as the ‘feel like Jesus is hugging you today’ podcast. I’m Elizabeth Ellynshaw, and we’ve been talking about a woman, Mary of Bethany, who was always found at the feet of Jesus. In the last three episodes about I’ve shared about themes from this moment in Mary of Bethany’s life that have been very significant in my own life: the way she had a special consistent place in relation to Jesus and was always found at His feet, the way she had the courage to overcame the fear of man and the need to be a people-pleaser and to be satisfied with just being a Jesus-pleaser, and the way she stepped over the limits her religious culture placed on women in order to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to His words. She met Jesus in her favorite place at His feet, Jesus stood up for her courageous choice, and when He did, she let the approval of Jesus be enough for her.

Mary made a choice that pleased Jesus. It pleased Him so much that He seems to recommend to all the rest of us that we make the same choice. When Jesus said to Martha “Mary has chosen the beast portion and it will not be taken from her,” it sounds to me like He was recommending her choice not only to her exhausted, frazzled sister Martha, but also to all of us for all time to come. But how exactly do I choose what Mary chose, to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to His words? Jesus is not physically in my living room the way He was in Mary’s living room that day. I can’t go in and physically sit there at His physical feet and physically listen to His physically spoken words the way she did. So what does it look like to listen to Jesus now that Jesus has gone back to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to pull alongside us instead? How do I make the equivalent decision to Mary’s, the one Jesus said was the best choice she could ever make? Another major theme in my life that Mary’s story has been a part of has been asking and answering the question, how does Jesus want me to listen to Him?

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Prayer: Lord Jesus, You were so pleased with this courageous woman who dared to listen to You. We want to please you like that too. So help us too to step over every obstacle, every attack, every fear that would ever stand between us and being a people who listen to Your voice. I pray for every person listening to this right now, that if there is any way in which they have become afraid to listen to Your voice, I pray that they would be like Mary today and come and sit at Your feet and dare to listen to You again. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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Content: In my book I tell the story of how I became, like Mary of Bethany, a girl who listens to Jesus. I had a lot to overcome to get to that point, a lot of fear, a lot of misconceptions. And, as I tell in the story in my book, there were enemies who tried really, really hard to scare me away from choosing the best portion, who tried really hard to take it from me. But there is also a Jesus who stands there to defend us and says, ‘You made the right choice to dare to listen to Me, to dare to try to hear My voice, and it will never be taken from you.’ And all we have to do is believe Him and dare to listen to Him again.

And so listening to Jesus became the most important part of my life, the thing I started to build my whole life on. So I’d like to share a few lessons I’ve personally experienced trying to figure out what does it look like for me to make that choice Mary made that made Jesus so happy.

First of all, I learned that I needed to let Jesus decide how He is going to speak to me. I describe in my book how I had friends all up and down the spectrum of what they believed about what listening to Jesus’ words today looks like. Some said that all the words Jesus will ever want to say to us have been recorded in the Bible, and so the ONLY way we can or should sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to His words is by listening to God speak through the Bible.

And certainly the words and works of Jesus on the earth were recorded in the Bible, like this very story of Mary in Bethany was, and the Holy Spirit does speak to us through them. The Bible also tells me the story I’m living in, the story of the One True God who created the world and then sent His Son to save it and then poured out His Spirit on all who believe in His Son. When I listen to Jesus by the Holy Spirit in my heart, I’m listening to That Jesus, the One who was born to a virgin, died for my sins, rose from the dead, went up to His Father’s right hand and poured out His Holy Spirit on us as recorded in the Bible. This is the story we are living in.

But I also had to learn that just reading the Bible alone and being proud of my book knowledge was not automatically the same thing as choosing the best portion, sitting at Jesus’ feet, and listening to Him. As I wrestled with the role of the written word and the role of the Holy Spirit, I had a Bible college teacher who was concerned about what I was telling her I believed. She slid open her desk drawer, pulled out a beautiful, colorful little ESV Bible that she kept there for personal use, lifted it into the air above her head and said, “Elizabeth, this book is not God, and God is not this book.” And I still remember that moment because I thought she was speaking blasphemy and that God might strike her with lightening from heaven as she stood there with that Bible lifted over her head, because she was trying to separate the Person of God from the book of the Bible, and while I knew that God was not a small leather bound book, if God could only ever be known, experienced, heard from or related to through that book, what was the difference? The most extreme “Bible-only” sources in my life said that if you claim to have any experience of God communicating with you or relating to you that does not come through the words contained in the Bible, or even if you feel like God is making one Bible verse jump out at you more than any other verse, you are adding to the scripture, and adding to the scripture is something God has cursed. I expected God’s curse to fall on my teacher that day for implying that God could be experienced in a way more than the Bible could be experienced. I shake my head over that memory now because now I understand that I was the one idolizing the Bible and making it equal with God Himself, but He didn’t strike me with lightening either. He was so gentle and so patient and so excited and eager for me to come sit like Mary at His feet and listen to what His Spirit had to say.

At the same time, I had friends on the other side of the spectrum, too. They would have emphasized the Biblical truth that the same Jesus who spoke in the Bible had given us His Holy Spirit to pull alongside us as the ‘parakletos’ (John 16:7)—and they believed the Holy Spirit pulls alongside us in such a way that He would speak to us in our minds and hearts constantly, ceaselessly, about every moment, every decision, every choice in our lives.

But I didn’t get clarity for myself on what to believe about that until I came to the realization that Jesus is Lord and so Jesus as my Lord gets to decide how He wants to talk to me. I don’t get to choose the way I think He should communicate, He does. He knows best. And I told Him I committed to obey Him as my Lord whenever He got through to me that He was trying to tell me something, whether He did it through the Bible or His voice in my head or His people in my life or His nudge in my spirit or even any dreams, angels, visions or more dramatic ways He wants to speak. If I knew it was Him, I would obey. I didn’t do a very good job of perfect obedience by any means, but that decision, Jesus is Lord, even over how my Lord speaks, not my feelings, not my desires, not my fears, not my understanding of the Bible, not what I want to be true, but the real living Lord Jesus of the Bible however He chooses to communicate, brought clarity to my confusion and enabled me to start hearing Him and receiving all that He had been wanting to give me.

Secondly I learned the hard way that the enemy is afraid of the lifestyle of listening to Jesus that Jesus called “the best portion,” and since Jesus said it won’t be taken from us, the only way the enemy can try to get us away from it is by tempting us to get scared and stop choosing it. He tempts us with the thoughts of “God won’t speak to you, or maybe everybody else can hear God except you.” He tempts us with, ‘If you listen to God speak to you personally He’ll tell you to go to China, He’ll tell you to go to Africa, He’ll tell you to go to India, He’ll tell you to walk down the street naked or give your kids up for adoption or whatever you’ll find terrifying, God will say that!’ He tempts us with thoughts of “look at all the mess these other people made who were wrong but they thought they were hearing from God, it’s not worth the risk.” He tempts us with thoughts of “what will other people think if you try to listen to God speaking to you and obey Him, and even worse, what will other people think if you’re wrong?” When we do make a mistake or get confused or hear wrong or seem to have heard wrong, he tempts us with, ‘now you can never hear God again. You can’t even ask God what He wants to say to comfort you or help you about that mistake you just made, because you hear God wrong about EVERYTHING.’ And when we do hear God speak to us, the enemy loves to sit there saying, ‘that probably wasn’t God. that was probably just you, probably just you, probably just you.’ After all, the very first words out of his mouth in his first appearance in the Bible were ‘did God really say?’ Anything to mess up the relationship where God really did say and we really do obey and we all live happily ever after. I am so glad that Jesus squashed that thing! (Genesis 3:16) His head is flat as a pancake now, why do we listen to him anymore?

Because Jesus was sitting in Mary’s living room talking whether Mary came in and listened to Him or not. But if she did come in and listen, Jesus would never let anyone or anything drag her away. And if she did let herself get tempted away, all she had to do was come back and listen again. And Jesus is speaking now, whether or not we are listening, and if we dare to just step over the squashed snake and listen to whatever Jesus wants to say to us, we will hear Him. And if we get scared away, all we have to do is repent and listen again. And if we make a mistake, we can come back to Jesus whose blood washes away all mistakes and listen again. Just listen again. Just listen again.

If there is any reason right now that you are afraid to listen to Jesus, I recommend with my whole heart that you ask Him about it. That you tell Him the truth about what you are really afraid of and tell Him the truth about why, and then ask Him what He wants you to know about that. Submit to Him about how He will speak to you. Trust Him about what your life will look like if you become a disciple who listens to Him and does whatever He says. Mary had no regrets that she listened to Jesus, even though her life had plenty of surprising and painful plot twists, as we’ll see later on. I have no regrets that I listened to Jesus. If you get down on your knees at the feet of Jesus in your heart and say “Lord, what do You want to say to me about how You want to communicate with me? What do You want me to know and what do You want me to do? If you get through to me, I will listen and obey You,” you will experience your best possible life. Jesus is the answer. Let’s start asking Him the questions.

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Question: Today I invite you like Mary of Bethany to just come to Jesus and listen. Imagine stepping into a room where Jesus is sitting and teaching, laying your head down on His knee, looking up at Him adoringly, and listen. What is He saying? And I invite you to approach the Bible that way too, whenever you read it, imagine coming like Mary to sit at His feet and listen and ask “what is Jesus talking about? What is He saying? Who was He talking to when I walked in and started listening and what was He saying to them, and what can I learn about Him from it, and then, when He looks up at me and sees that I’m here too, what is He saying about it to me?”