Steven Furtick - Shutting the Door on Distraction (05/12/2017)
In Mark 5, Jesus raises Jairus's daughter from the dead after putting out the crowd and mourners, showing that shutting out distractions and focusing on what truly matters allows God's power to bring life and healing, even in urgent moments.
Shutting the Door on Distraction
Mark chapter 5. And I want to use the end of it. It records a sequence of events. But I want to use the end. In Mark chapter 5 verse 37. Let's go to 37. Jesus did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. Be careful who you hang around. Certain seasons in your life will call for restricted access. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion with people crying and wailing loudly. And he went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead, but asleep.” But they laughed at him. Here's our verse, the second section of verse 40. After he put them all out. Jesus did that? Jesus kicked people out of the room? He sure did. He did. He sure did. And after he had done that, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him, went in where the child was, took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up.” Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around. (She was twelve years old.) At this they were completely astonished. And he gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this and told them to give her something to eat.
Now, before he fixed her peanut butter and jelly and before he raised her from the dead, he did something that says he put them all out. I want to preach to you for a few moments. We're in this series about fighting back when distraction attacks, and I'm going to use as a subject today, Shutting the Door on Distraction. Shutting the door on distraction. All right. So find 10 people and tell them, shut it out. Shut it out. Shut it out. Whatever's going to keep you from paying attention to the preacher today, shut it out. It's time for the word. You may be seated. Thank you, worship team.
Learning from a Seminary Fight about Accessibility
Shut it out. One day in my seminary class on pastoral care, a fight broke out. Would you like to hear about this? A fight broke out. The classroom turned into a cage—a conversational cage, steel cage. Push. I'm using that as a metaphor because a fight broke out. Y'all are so difficult sometimes. The subject was how accessible should a pastor be? That was the subject. This was not a typical seminary classroom. It was called an extension program. That meant for people who couldn't go to seminary full time, we had to do it on Mondays and on weekends and J-terms and June, January, J-terms and had to go out there. But this was a Monday afternoon class, which meant you had different kinds of people in the class. You had some people like me who had no ministry experience to speak of. I had just started the church. You had some people in the class who had more ministry experience and were going back to get their education. So it was interesting. Anytime it would open up for discussion, you would get a plethora—fancy word—of opinions.
And they opened it up. The professor said, how accessible should a pastor be? In other words, should a pastor have an open-door policy that anybody can see the pastor at any time and for any reason? And so one of the young guys spoke up first. It's always the dumbest ones who are the loudest. You'll notice that if you live a little while. Young guy spoke up and said, well, my pastor is always available. He will interrupt his study. He will interrupt his prayer. If one person needs him, he's all about the people. We shouldn't be pastors if we don't care about people because we're in this for the people. If you don't love people, you can't be a pastor. So I think a pastor should always have an open-door policy all the time. And he went on and on about it. He was very vociferous. Did I use that right? He was like, it should always be open. The door should always be open. Pastors should love people. The door should always be open. That's what my pastor does.
An older gentleman who had been in ministry for a little while, who wasn't dealing in theories—because theories only become truths when tested by time. Could you put that on Pinterest, please? It's not on my notes anywhere, so you'll have to post it. Tag me. But this guy didn't say it as loud. He didn't say as much. But I heard him. I heard him more clearly. He said, might I suggest, young brother, that if we are always available to everyone, we will eventually have nothing to give anyone. And I was still forming my ideas about ministry, and I thought, I think he's right. I think he's right.
How Open Should Your Door Be in Life?
And I didn't come to talk about pastors and accessibility really. I'm using it to start a conversation with you about how open should your door be in your life? I think on one level or another, we're all kind of trying to decide how open should my door be to other people, to activities that I didn't plan for. How open should my door be? Should it be wide open all the time? Should I always be a 30-second responder to every text, even at the expense of my own grammar? Or should there be some times where I shut it down? Touch somebody and say, you got to shut it down sometimes. You do. You have to shut it down sometimes. You do. Because they're studying this, and they're finding out that we're giving so much accessibility that we're losing our attention. We are a world that has gained accessibility at the expense of attention.
And they've studied this distinctive feature of our age in depth, and it's pretty fascinating to learn about, but it all comes down to something that is a part of the passage that I read to you, and it's really a part of our lives. And it's all about, number one, how to discern the demands. Discern the demands. When something comes up on that screen, that's a cue for you that you want to write it down. That's what that is. That's saying, get out your pen and at least pretend to write something down.
So I thought, like, as a pastor, and really just as a person, because we all deal with this, I would give you just a snapshot of five minutes in the mind of a distracted pastor. Thursday, I was very brain dead. After teaching our staff all day, I knew that I needed to rest so I could come to you and be ready. Rest makes you ready. And so it becomes an important activity. And so I knew I need to rest a little bit. I knew I was drained. So I was doing that. It's pretty cool. I even spent a little time by the pool on a Thursday morning. Felt great. Felt great about it. Felt happy about it.
But then you know how it happens. Like, you start thinking about all the things you gotta do and I'm like, well, I can't rest too long. I had to get this sermon ready. I had to have something for the people. So I went in, started working on my sermon and then I got a link of something that I needed to watch and I needed to watch it. I had to watch it. And I don't want to go into all the detail why I had to watch it, but I had to watch it. It wasn't like a cat falling off of anything on YouTube. It was like something important I had to watch. It was a thing I had to watch.
A Personal Story of Daily Distractions
And so, like for you, it might be a conference call or something like that. You know those conference calls you always pretend to be on. That's my buddy. But I had to watch it. I'm watching it. And then the phone rang. And I remembered I didn't call that guy back last night. And he's an important guy. And I'm doing something with him soon. And I remembered I was supposed to call him back last night. I didn't call him back. And I texted him and said, whenever you're free today, give me a call. And I didn't know he would call me right at the same time on the same device that I was trying to watch the thing.
So it interrupted my stream of the thing that I had to watch, where I had started working on my sermon, but then I had to watch the thing. And so then when the phone rang, which is so annoying when your phone rings, how dare you interrupt my playlist by pretending to be a communication device? If I would have wanted something to ring, I would have bought a phone. That's funny right there, right? Come on, that's the good stuff. That's the premium stuff.
He called, I got to take this. Kids are loud. Went to the porch, was talking on the porch, and here comes Elijah. Following me out on the porch, middle of my conversation. He's trying to tell me something. And I'm doing that thing where you're like, uh-huh. Yeah, praise the Lord. So he leaves, he comes back. He comes back. When he comes back, he comes back with a piece of paper. I'm going to read you the note that he wrote. It wasn't from him. He scribed the note for Abby, our four-year-old. And so he scribed her note, and the note says this. Abby says, you are welcome to come to my tea party. But you don't have to. Let us know if or when you can come. That's my favorite. If or when. Let us know you'll make a reservation.
So I wrote him back. I said, I want to drink your stupid, lukewarm water out of your dirty cup, little girl. I'm like, no. I went to the tea party. Who could resist that? Sorry. It was so good, too, the tea party. It was so fun. They had a rocking chair for me. I had the biggest chair. All three of the kids were there. It was fantastic. It was like one of the best 15 minutes of my life. And I'm glad I didn't miss it, because my kids only get along that well about once every 18 months. So I can't miss this. I'm ashamed to admit I thought about Periscope and the tea party, but something about that felt unholy. Some things are just meant for the privacy and enjoyment. So we had tea.
What Really Counts as a Distraction?
Now I want to just ask a question, because we've all been in a scenario. They're similar. Not the same exact demands, but similar. Which one of those things was the distraction? I mean, help me out, because I'm trying to figure out which one was the distraction. Because the phone call was something that needed to be done, and the sermon is something that you're expecting to hear. I mean, what would you do? I'm just asking a question. What would you do if this last song sang today, and we said the resurrected king, and they robbed the grave, and robbed it twice. And then they got the king, they resurrected as much as we can resurrect him. And then they come out with the podium, and put the thing down at the last part of the song, and then go off the stage. Then they finish the song, and they do the thing, and then they come out and say, Thanks for coming today. Pastor Stephen would have loved to have been here to preach for you. But he's actually at a tea party. He had other engagements. He is otherwise engaged.
I mean, it's like distraction is bad, and we're all fighting against distraction. But, you know, it's a weird thing, because half of my battle against distraction is trying to define what is the distraction in the situation. Because I have some people that are counting on me to preach, but I have a group of kids who want me at a tea party upstairs. And I know a lot of it is about timing and just getting priorities in order and stuff that can wait and all of that. But what I love about Jesus… And I'm wondering if I was going to actually talk about the Bible passage that I read you today. I'm going to talk about it, because Jesus was a master of discerning. And he had more demands than you. Three years to save the world. Only 33 years on this planet. And he got it all done.
Jesus Mastered Focus in the Crowd
And I want to see, not what did the young pastor say about how open the door should be, or even the older pastor, because that's just a philosophy. I want to see, how did Jesus do it? A lot of people have this misguided view of how a typical day in the life of Jesus went. That he must have been so holy because he was so alone all the time. If you really read and study about him, you'll see that every time he tried to get alone… This is why I used to think that Jesus might be more like a woman than a man. Because every time he tried to get alone, there was somebody at the door, at his heels, needing something from him. And that just reminded me of a lot of you who really do have this vision of like, oh, I could connect with God so much better if I could have like three days, and I could go to the mountains, and I could brew my own coffee, and then I could read Hebrews while I brew my own coffee. And it would be easy for me to plan my business if I could get away. I want to get away.
But the passage we just read was a product, not of what Christ did in the confines of solitary, but what he did in the crowd. Look at Mark 5, 21. It said, When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Jesus was very comfortable in crowds. We live crowded lives. Crowded lives. Crowded with information. Crowded with advertisement. We have crowded minds because we live crowded lives. We have crowded calendars. Not all the things that we even write down. Just the things that we know we've got to get done to get to the thing that we wrote down. Crowded, crowded, crowded. Life is crowded.
And a lot of us live under the illusion that one day, I'm going to slow it all down, and then I'm going to connect with God when my kids leave the house. And then I'm going to really start focusing then on the things that matter. But I came to announce that Christ wants to come to you in the crowd. In the crowd. That he wants to... Watch this word. It's an important word. He wants to connect with you in the crowded places of your life. Not just in the solitary moments, but in the crowded places. Christ is coming through the crowd, and he's making his way by boat, and he gets there, and he usually would teach by the lake because it provided an amphitheater-type effect for his voice to project. He didn't have one of these, so he had to make use of the natural elements. And so he built a PA system into the universe when he spoke the world into existence so the way that the water would reflect his voice to the people.
This is just a little background on why he was speaking by the lake. So they could hear it, so his voice could carry through the crowd. He set it up so they could hear him in the back. He set it up so they could hear him because they stretched for miles to come and see him. And so he set it up, and he set up life where if you'll draw near, even in a crowd, you'll hear his voice speaking to you.
Discerning the Demands in Life
So he's speaking, and he's teaching in a crowd. And then he gets distracted. Jesus. The epitome of a focused mission gets distracted by something that happens in the moment. Because it says that one of the synagogue leaders named Jairus came, and when he saw Jesus, fell at his feet. And he pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” Next verse really touches me. So Jesus went with him. Jesus left all those demands for one desperate dad. It's a beautiful picture of how the God of heaven will give all of his attention to one person who has come to the end of striving to fall at his feet and say, show me how to live. Show me what to do. I'm an important man, Jesus. But for this moment, there's something that my own importance can't do. And only you can do it. And I need you.
So Jairus leaves all of his responsibilities at the synagogue because he's got a sick girl at home. And there will be times in your life where a demand will come upon you suddenly, involuntarily, where you'll have to leave the thing that seems more important. More people were counting on Jairus at work, but his little girl needed him at home in this season. And so he put everything aside because of the demand of desperation. And sometimes you've got to know when God is calling you to forsake something that was consuming your attention and say, no, this needs me now. Somebody else can run the synagogue for a few weeks. Somebody else can make money this year. I've got to be here now. I've got to be here now at the feet of Jesus or my girl might not make it.
You better watch out how you spend all those years where your kids are growing up, where they need a little attention from you to just look over them and check over them and make sure they're doing it right because you might be doing a good job with your responsibilities but failing where it really matters. Jairus had a sick girl at home, so he left all the people at the synagogue and Jesus said, well, Jairus, if you're willing to leave all those people at the synagogue in desperation for your daughter, I'll go with you and I'll leave all these people for one little girl. I really love that. I really wish you clap your hands and give God praise that he leaves the 99 to find the one.
Discern the demands. You could ask God this week. It would be a simple step but he would do this for you. God, help me discern the demands of my life. Help me see them for what they really are. Help me see what's really important because if I'm judging this, I'm thinking that the crowd's way more important than the one little girl but only you can show me what really matters. Otherwise, you'll define distraction in a way that will cause you to miss God's direction in your life and you'll skip the tea party to take the phone call and you can call them back but the next time you see your kids, they're going to be Lord of the Flies. At least in my house. Touch somebody, say go to the tea party, man. Go to the tea party. Just go.
Locate the Leaks in Your Life
And then if God can help us discern the demands, maybe he can help us number two, locate the leaks. Locate the leaks. It's very interesting when you begin to study. I don't know why I bring these notes up here with me. I never read from them. But I need to pull this up because it's kind of complicated. And I'm not a sociologist. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not an ornithologist. Proctologist. None of those things. But just some things I was reading this week. It talked about how what's really happening when we think we're multitasking. They've done enough study to tell us that the brain is not as capable as we think he is of switching between stuff all the time and the amount of efficiency that we lose when we multitask is remarkable.
They even say that it's like your brain is leaking going between function and function because your brain operates on different channels or something like that. You're going between the channels you try to cross them over. Yes, even you ladies. I know you think you're the multitasking masters of the universe. And I know you have to do it sometimes. I know you can't always do one thing at once. But I will say this. Even Jesus could only do one thing well at once. He had to leave one thing to do another because he could only do one thing well at once. Even Jesus had to harness the power of focus to leave the crowd and go to Jairus.
And so he did it. And while he's going okay, we've already got distraction number one is that a crowd met him on the other side. We've got distraction number two guy interrupts the church service and asks him to come home with him. But then it gets ridiculous and if you are in the position of strategically consulting Jesus how to make the mission happen in the next three years that you have in front of you, you certainly would advise this next move because he's moving now, he's on the move, he's going to an emergency. Would it qualify as an emergency that a 12-year-old girl is dying and you're the only one who has the hope of healing her? Would it? I think it qualifies as an emergency. So, it's code orange situation and Jesus is on the move and the entourage is trying to get him through the crowd quickly.
A large crowd followed and pressed around him, and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years and she had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had yet instead of getting better she grew worse. I read that description about the woman but it kind of reminded me of our society. We are hemorrhaging. Hemorrhaging. Going to all these different sources trying to get healed yet it's really not making our lives much better is it? Come on talk to me we are a whole lot more efficient than we have ever been we have life hacks and shortcuts and apps for everything but are we really that much wiser? I mean true wisdom the skill to live and put knowledge into practice do we really have that? Or are our lives leaking more than ever? We are leaking life is what's happening switching between stuff all the time we are leaking life that was the situation with this woman's body it's the situation with our minds we are leaking that's what was going on inside of her she was leaking she was broken inside and she could not hold what she needed to be whole. Leaking from the inside.
The Woman Who Touched Jesus' Cloak
And so she comes to Jesus. And she has tried all these other things. And she gets his attention in a strange, unusual way, which I will show you in a moment. But first, I want you to think about where the leaks are in your life. They did a study in the 1970s that you would swear was done in 2015. Where they started finding out that the way your brain works is that information comes at a cost. The cost is called attention. So the only way to attain information is to consume it at the cost of your attention. You with me? Are you with me? You with me? So the information consumes the attention. Therefore, we are at a time where we have a wealth of information and a poverty of attention. That was the woman. That is us. She had a wealth of doctor's opinions. She had a wealth of treatment options. Yet she had a poverty of what she truly needed to have the connection that could heal her until this moment.
And in this moment, she presses her way. Now think about all the distractions that she would have had to overcome just to even get in the vicinity of Jesus. All of the people telling her to get off of her hands and knees. All of the people telling her, hey, there is an emergency in progress. Don't you see the flashing lights? Don't you see the sirens? Don't you see the escalades lining up? The president is on the move. Jairus' daughter is sick. Jairus' need is very important. Jairus' need is urgent. And what I can't get about the whole passage is she does something inappropriate. She does something impulsive. Yeah? She reaches out for God in a way that's superstitious, but it works. It works.
When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak because she thought, “If I can just touch his clothes, I'll be healed.” And immediately, the hemorrhaging came to an end. And immediately, the divine presence of Christ was able to locate the leak that none of the doctors could plug. And immediately, her search for her source was over, and her need was satisfied. Wow. I love the Bible. Come on, read the Bible. Read it this week. Read the Bible this week. Read it and put yourself in the situation, and think about how you're like this woman. And think about how you want to be more like Jesus. And think about what it must mean that this woman had her issue that had been incurable for over a decade. Stopped in a moment that the Savior became distracted with her desperation.
She felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. You know what freed her? Her focus. She was finally freed because she got the right focus. Man, there's something strong on me today to teach this. I taught it last night, and I told Holly, I said, I don't think I'll do it better than that, but you're pulling something out of me. Because I want to tell you something. Freedom comes from focus. Focus brings freedom. Focus on fear. You'll always be a prisoner. Focus on faith, and nothing in the world can keep you locked down. And this woman, when she got the right focus, she got set free. Come on, I believe God wants to set your focus free today.
You've been so focused on the wrong things. You've been so focused on the last 12 years. You've been so focused on the childhood you didn't get to experience. You've been so focused on the promotion you got passed over for. You've been so focused on what might happen. You've been so focused on what one person said. You've been so focused on the wrong thing. So you've been in chains. But not after today. Because there's a connection point in this church today. It's called the Spirit of God. If you plug into this, what the doctors couldn't do, what no other stream could bring, the Spirit of God can bring into your life in an instant. Make the connection. Touch seven people, say, make the connection. Come on. Let's hook up with something that has the power to heal. We're hooking up in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people, with all the wrong priorities. But I want to get hooked up today with something that can heal my life and make me whole.
Pursue the Pull of God's Power
Watch Jesus. And at once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd. Everybody say crowd. You're going to miss the best part, I'm telling you. I'm going to do better in a minute. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” A big crowd, and he noticed it's just like one person. He turned around. Remember, this is life or death. This is not a tea party upstairs. This is life or death. There's a crowd. You remember Michael Jackson back in the day when they used to show him, like, show up a place, and there would be like a mob scene. Do you remember this? It was, I mean... Please tell me you know who Michael Jackson is, Ruben. Jesus. I was about to lay hands on him. But he's in that kind of scene. Maybe you've seen it with a more current celebrity. You know, your Elvis Presley's. The heartthrobs of today. But they crowd around him.
I actually was in a situation like that last year. It wasn't me they were chasing. It was somebody that I was with. And it was crazy. I'd never seen anything like it before in my life. And it's crazy. And so I could kind of... People were shaking the car we were in. The car was shaking. It was crazy. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. I'd never experienced anything like that in my life. And Jesus experienced it all the time. And so it's kind of normal for him. And we are trying to get to him, trying to get to him, and they're pushing him, and they're pushing him around, and pushing him around, and all of a sudden he stops and asks the disciples, who did that? Verse 31, really? His disciples asked. Are you so serious right now? You want us to find out who touched you. A better question would be, who didn't touch you?
Jesus stops the procession that can save a girl's life to try to locate one life that was leaking, that needs to be made whole. Because he realized power had gone out from him. You see? It went out from him. Hold that. It went out from him. When it went out, he turned around. When it went out, he turned around in the crowd and said, who touched my clothes? The disciples said, it's going to be impossible for us to ascertain that, sir. We suggest that you keep moving in full direction toward Jairus' house. This is a woman. Jairus is a man. Jairus is a leader. This woman is bankrupt. She cannot contribute to your ministry. She has nothing to give. She is not a person of influence. In order to impact the world, we're going to have to infiltrate the key cultural centers, starting with the Jewish synagogues. And Jairus has a position which is helpful to us. And perhaps if we can do this for him, let's get this show on the road.
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. And then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet. And trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” It's so good. Not for Jairus. It's good for the woman. But while all this was going on, and everybody saw such a touching scene of a compassionate rabbi who was able to be stopped in his tracks by the desperation of one woman. It says that while all this was going on, some people came from the house of Jairus the synagogue leader and said, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher anymore?”
See the thing about life is that while we're trying to get one thing to live, it's always at the expense of something else. And this is what's hard about living. It's what's hard about focus. Like, I need to make some money right now, babe. And I would love to be around more. But I need to do this for us. For our future. For our family. Because I'm looking out and I'm trying to see where our kids are going to want to go to school. And if you're not going to homeschool them for college, I've got to get this money while I can. But while I was out earning to provide for you, your emotional state was unattended. And so now, I don't know how to keep it all alive at one time. That's the struggle of it. That's the problem with distraction is I can't decide which one is a distraction. I want to have a tea party. I need to make this phone call. I've got a couple thousand people coming to hear me preach. What do I do? Which one should I let die?
Jesus Chose the Pull Over the Push
And what he did made no sense because they teach you from a business standpoint. You've got to know the difference between what's urgent and what's important. And that's typically good advice. It's very practical advice. It's meaning that, you know, the text that came from them that is their emergency because they didn't plan properly shouldn't derail your whole day. Just because they didn't plan in time doesn't mean you've got to shut down your scheduled activities that are priorities in order to deal with somebody else's dysfunctional planning. Wow. That's $99 business seminar. But then, if you take this situation into account, that's out the window.
Because, okay, who's more important? Jairus or the woman? It's not a trick question. It would be Jairus. Jairus is more important. Which one is more urgent? A woman who's been able to live for 12 years with the condition or a daughter who might die at any moment? She's a little girl. The woman's already lived a little while. The girl should get the chance to live a little while. The kid's always more important. Always save the kid first. And Jesus did what wasn't as urgent and what wasn't as important.
Okay, here's what you do. Pursue the pull. Jesus is in a crowd being pushed down the street. Jesus is in a crowd being pushed along the way. Jesus is in a crowd. Everybody is pushing, but one woman pulled. Life is always pushing you in many directions. People pushing you to be this and pushing you to do that and buy me and eat me and tweet me and sell me and watch me and stream me and check me and respond to me and Snapchat me and dub me. And God wants to give you the ability in a world that is crowded with people and priorities that will push you in every direction to perceive the pull of his power that he's trying to release out of your life.
Everybody else was pushing toward Jesus, but when something pulled from Jesus, have you ever felt the pull of the Spirit of God? I believe this because in my life, of all the things I could have done with my life, God pulled on me to start this church. God pulled on me to preach the gospel. I'm sure I could have gotten distracted with other things, and maybe you think I couldn't have been good at anything else. I don't know. Maybe you're right. But all I can tell you is, something was pulling me from a young age. That's what separated the woman from the crowd. It's the pull of God. The pull in the midst of a pushy life.
Jesus always refused to be pushed into anything. He would not be pushed to the coronation before the crucifixion. He would not be pushed to be a king before he suffered as a criminal. He would not be pushed, but he could not resist the pull. The pull. The pull. All the demands of life are impossible to categorize or anticipate. Some of the moments that are the most meaningful will come on the porch when you've got a sermon to prepare and a conversation to have. But when you feel that pull, pursue that. Not what Peter and James and John think you should do next.
The Latin word for distraction is pulled apart. The word for attention in Latin is reach toward. So Jesus being pulled didn't allow it to pull him apart. But he reached toward the revelation of what God had called him to do next. Well, the Spirit of God is in this place right now. I know how to sense him when he's here. Listen, he's pulling on somebody. He's pulling on somebody. He's pulling on you in an area in your life. He's pulling on you to send a text to somebody who's been on your mind. They pull on you sometimes. Sometimes you say, I don't even know why they're on your mind. It's the pull. There's something that's in you that needs to come out of you. It's the pull.
And so Jesus gets distracted. I almost called this message, when divinity gets distracted. Jesus, God in the flesh, stops what's most important and stops what he perceives to be most urgent. Why? Because his orders came from the top down. If you ever study cognitive attention theory, there's bottom-up attention and there's top-down attention. Bottom-up attention is when a jackhammer starts outside of your office. And it consumes all that space and it's all you can think about. Top-down attention is when you take control of what you're going to focus on. That's in science. But in the Scripture, we take it to mean a whole different thing. It's that we get our marching orders from the top down. Not what we think is important. Not what we deem to matter. We're not smart enough.
So the demand is pulling from the bottom. But the command came from the top. And when I take my orders from the top down, I flow in the power of an almighty God. Come on, give him praise if you know he's unlimited. I said give him praise if you know he's unlimited.
Dismiss the Drama and Focus on Destiny
What about the girl? Well, what enabled Jesus to go through his life with focus? And what can enable you in the same way? Is that he had complete confidence in God's plan over his own priorities. So, they say, hey, you missed that one. You blew that. You really got it out of whack this time. That girl's dead. Jesus hears it. He overhears it. From the bottom up, everybody's talking about it's over. It's over. Bottom up. But from the top down. Everybody say top down. Top down. From the top down. I take my orders from the top down. I get my perspective from the top down. It's a top down approach to life.
Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don't be afraid; just believe.” And he didn't let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. Select group, can't have any distractions right now. I'm focused on this little girl. And when they came to the home of the synagogue leader, they got there eventually. Seemed like it was a little late, but they got there. This is called productive procrastination. Where Jesus set it aside for a minute. Where he didn't show up at Lazarus' home when Lazarus was sick. But he showed up after he had died, so that he could produce a new level of faith. Not by healing him, but by raising him from the dead. So Jesus waited, and then he went.
He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. They went in one moment. This is how I know that they were professionals. From crying to laughing. You don't do that when you're really grieving. So I wanted to give you as a final point in the sermon. Dismiss the drama. Dismiss the drama. Now, I don't have time to preach this like I really, really want to, like I really feel it. I don't have time to go into all of it. But all I can tell you is there comes a time when the voices that are talking to you are no longer helpful, and you have to shut the door on distraction to open the door to destiny. Wow, I just said something. When you shut the door on doubt, it opens the door to destiny. Come on, I see an open door right now. I see an open door right now. The door is open. The King is here. The healing power of God is flowing through this place. Flowing to your campus. Flowing to your business. Flowing to your home. Flowing to your ministry. Flowing to your marriage. Don't miss it. Press through. Shut the door on the doubters. Dismiss the drama and connect with the divine, the Spirit of God.