Walking With Jesus: Good Teaching Has Authority

Walking With Jesus: A Study Through Mark
What follows is what I feel Jesus is teaching me as I read through the Gospel of Mark

Lesson 2: Good Teaching Has Authority (1:22, 27)


If you have a big zit on your face. Like its ready to pop and explode with puss, I am not the guy to tell you.
If you are passionate about the real-life existence of Harry Potter, I'm not gonna burst your bubble and tell you its a fictional character.
If you get me a giant chocolate cake for my birthday with nuts, there's no way on God's green earth, I'll tell you I hate nuts in my cake and that I prefer white on white. No way.


Why? Cause I'm too worried.


I don't want to upset people. I want to be peaceable. When I teach abstinence before marriage I teach a clause for people who've already gone over the line. When I tell people "forbidden" statements like "Don't get angry" I make sure to go into a nice long schpeel about how I understand though if you do. 


My friend John. He is exactly opposite. He guest speaker-taught for a High School youth night and he laid it on these kids the biblical foundation for sexual purity. and laid it on like a brick. it was powerful and it was given without apology and i'm sure at least 3 kids were offended and 10 felt extremely uncomfortable. and i thought to myself, "I want to BE YOU JOHN!"


John could teach with authority. Traditionally, I'm not sure I have. Someone else taught with authority too: Jesus.


Some people teach with a chalkboard. Some people teach with powerpoint or splitting kids into small groups or with tests. Jesus taught with no-apologies mandated words along with amazing and unnerving miracles. Jesus taught with miracles!!! (Mt 9:6). and Jesus taught with authority. so much so that in Mark 1:22, people remarked his church teaching with "amazement" because He taught with real authority (unlike the current pastors). In v. 27, after casting out a demon (so hardcore by the way) the audience is amazed and discuss among themselves, "what sort of new teaching is this? It has such authority that even evil spirits obey his orders!"


I read that stuff and I ask myself, "Does my teaching bear authority?" I try to be biblical yet graceful to people. I try to be convicting yet encouraging to people. I try to stern yet relate with my own struggles. I try to be this and that and ... eventually i think I've tried to be so many things in my sermons to students that the authority and sharp-edged truth (Heb 4:12) becomes dull and smoothed off. Almost like I've baby-proofed the corners of cabinets so that teenagers won't get hurt. 


really? 


I want to stop baby-proofing my sermons for teenagers
I want to stop worrying about who I offend with the gospel of Jesus Christ
I want to stop worrying about pleasing everyone so much that I miss the blessing and presence and  countenance of God himself. 


I've traded in authority for safety in my preaching and its killing any real ministry of the Holy Spirit in these students' lives. 


If my teaching wouldn't change my life if I were their age, it won't change their's. No more baby-proofing for my students.