No one had the strength...

This week has been a little bit crazy. Dance is pretty intense right now, working on all of our recital pieces that need to get done. School is ridiculous too. I'm ready to graduate already. I have a rough draft of a research paper due tomorrow morning, and I'm only half finished with it, but of course I choose to procrastinate by writing a blog post instead. However, tonight's post will be short because I do need to finish it, and I'd also like to get some sleep tonight.
-taye


No one had the strength

This semester, one of my best friends and I have been helping out at our church's middle school ministry on Sunday nights. We eat, fellowship, have choir, and read the Word. Lately we have been digging into the gospel of Mark, and tonight we discussed the first twenty verses of Mark 5...here are a few amazing things that I got out of it.

"They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before Him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, 'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.' For He was saying to him, 'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!' And Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?' He replied, 'My name is Legion, for we are many.' And he begged Him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, 'Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.' So He gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea.


"The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged Him that he might be with Him. And He did not permit him but said to him, 'Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you.' And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled."
Mark 5:1-20 ESV

After reading the passage tonight, one of the middle school girls pointed out that God showed mercy--even to the demons. He is so incredibly merciful, that demons, who to me seem to be like Satan's minions, received mercy from God.

Also, at the end of verse four, it says that "no one had the strength to subdue him." No human possessed the strength to subdue the demon-possessed man, and yet God stepped in and so easily released the man of the demons. Not only did He free the man, but He drove the demons- who asked permission- to the pigs, who then killed themselves. This is such a wonderful example of God's amazing strength; and how even when our weak strength as humans fails, God's strength is so much greater and stronger than us.

Also, after our youth pastor emphasized that the man was living among the tombs--where the dead are, I realized that, when we are in a place where we are spiritually dead, living among the dead, and no where near life, that He does not just wait for us to get our act together, after all, the dead cannot raise themselves back to life! No, instead, God comes to the place where we are dead and cast out our death from us, bringing us to life again.