Getting Sick
– by Kent Wagner

Advancing the Kingdom by Living for God and Loving People

I have something a little embarrassing to admit.  When I was in 7th grade I figured out that if I told my mom I was sick, she’d let me stay home from school.  So…  I of course stayed home ALOT.

I think I missed something like 40 days out of 90.  I’m not even sure that’s possible looking back, but I know it was a lot.  What did I do with all that time you ask?  I watched Days of our Lives of course, and I wasn’t about to miss what was going to happen in my stories ;).  On one of the days I was actually in school, my history teacher pulled me aside and said he knew I was missing a lot of school and knew I couldn’t be that sick.  He said to me, “Kent, all these other kids have been showing up and taking notes every day while you’ve sat at home and watched TV.  I’m going to flunk you unless you can get every page of notes copied before the end of this 9 weeks.”  He told me this with a week and a half to spare.

This was one of the first times in my life I can remember something being “up to me.”  Either I took responsibility or I failed, it was as simple as that.  I’ll never forget taking my buddy’s notebook home each night and spending hours copying every single word from his notebook to mine in order to just hopefully squeak by with more than a failing grade.

I’ve learned ALOT since those days about responsibility,      leadership, and how terrible of a show Days of Our Lives was 🙂 (not worth it).  The biggest thing I’ve learned is that as a leader, there are times when you have to make decisions that will affect the outcome – you have to make a choice and put in the time and effort to deliver on that choice.

I was recently reading about another teacher who was speaking to sick people.  I was reading from the historian Luke who was writing about this incident from Jesus’ life.  Jesus had been walking by this tax collector’s booth and saw a guy named Levi working the booth (his other name is Matthew and spoiler alert – he wrote the gospel of Matthew).  When Jesus saw Levi He called him to follow Him and Levi followed.  Luke proceeds to tell us that Levi got his buddies together and threw a party for Jesus.  That’s where we jump into the story.  The religious people have also gathered and they asked Jesus’ disciples this question, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

This question is a loaded question.  The question is, “why do you go to bars?”  The question is, “do you KNOW the kind of people you’re affiliating with?”  The question is meant to point out that somethings is wrong because there is no way a holy person would hang out with such unholy people…

And then Jesus speaks.  I love it when Jesus speaks.  He is able to say in a handful of words what would take me 30 minutes in a sermon to bumble through.  Listen to his response:

Luke 5:31 & 32 “Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Get this, Jesus wasn’t concerned with those who were on the bus, He was concerned with those who were being left behind.

You might not know this, but Jesus was even called a drunkard and a glutton because he spent so much time with the wrong crowd (Luke 7:34).  Jesus came BECAUSE of and TO reach your buddy who drinks too much, the mom in that one group who gossips and is a bit too mean.  He came for the messy, rough outsiders.  He came for the sick and sinful to call them to repentance.

As I read about this kind of sick it hit me, when I was a kid I was pretending to be sick but was well, these people pretend to be well but are really sick.

For me, this is what Advancing the Kingdom is all about.  It’s following the leadership of our King and bringing healing to the sick and broken.

I told you, I’ve learned that leadership demands decisiveness and the ability to make choices and follow through.  Our choice as a church is to lean into the mission of Jesus.  It is to reach the sick, the disenfranchised, the spiritually blind.  This is why we do what we do with our outreach to Stonecrest.  This is why we are doing events like “The Hangout” at Country Boy.  Because we want to reach the lost.  We want to see people come into the Kingdom!

So, what can you do?

I recently had a really good-hearted person tell me how they had a friend who went to another church that they wanted to get to come to Harmony.  Actually, I’ve heard this a lot since moving here a little over a year ago.  Here’s the deal, if you have friends that are struggling to grow in their relationship with Jesus at another church, I’d love to have them get involved in our mission.  But I need you to hear me clearly, I don’t want to be the church that grows by stealing people from other churches – that’s like being a health spa for the physically fit.  That’s not who we are.  Rather, we are a field hospital for those who have been wounded and are far from God.  We are rescuers not romper room attendants.

So, what can you do?  Start to invite your friends who are far from God – your circle of 8.  Start to Bless them (click here to listen to our 5 week series on how to use the BLESS Practices to share with your circle of friends and family).

You can invest in and invite your friends who are far from God.  Start being intentional about caring about those who far from God and praying for them.

My prayer for our church is as we continue to grow more and more in the likeness of Jesus that I’d start to hear more conversations that start with, “I was talking to my neighbor who doesn’t go to church about Jesus…”

When that becomes the norm, then we will know, we are a church that is getting the sick…

Serving Jesus,

Kent A Wagner

Kent A. Wagner

Back to Top Menu

Back to Top Menu