Teachings of Jesus 2: God Looks for You to Look to Him (He Searches the Earth to Strongly Help You When Your Heart Is Turned Toward Him!)



Get the book or e-book to go along with the study. We will be covering 18 teachings this summer by video. The book covers the teachings I am not able to make videos for, due to lack of time (I do have a "real" job too, by the way! I work on the special education team for our local school district.)  The book, however, has nearly all Jesus's teachings in Mark and into Matthew, and it is on sale at the time of this posting.  Get the book or e-book at Amazon by clicking HERE.

For a list of all free video teachings and transcripts in this series, go HERE.


HERE is the full video for Teaching 2 titled God Looks for You to Look at Him.  A written transcript is right below the video again, if you prefer reading through it.  Enjoy...and I would love to hear any feedback/discussion you have by commenting here, on facebook, or by sending me a message on facebook.



--------------Transcript -------------------------


Hello this is Sherry, and welcome back to Summer with the Teachings of Jesus.

If you have not seen the first video teaching, go ahead and go on back and see that one first and come back; because the first teaching lays the foundation for everything else we are going through this summer.

Some quick reminders – we are going through 18 teachings this summer. 18 hopefully very brief videos. They all come from this book He Called: 56 Daily Studies andReflections with the Words of Christ. This is my book. It is pretty comprehensive. This, as the title says, has 56 teachings. It starts in Mark and goes through all of the teachings, without skipping any. Then each day there is a passage to read; there is some information about the background of the passage, and then there are some practical applications at the end of each day. The purpose, remember – remember the illustration? [Showing the Bible and the section of the Bible that has the gospels printed on it.] The purpose of this study is to start us on our journey of knowing and mastering “this” [showing the gospels and how it is not that long of a section of the Bible.] The life and teachings of Jesus – mastering what he did, and what he taught, mastering what he wanted us to know.

If you remember from day one, I hope that you have done something to help yourself remember that "God is Near". We start re-training our brain to recognize that God is near, because the people who are walking with God, who are having spiritual breakthroughs, and who are growing closer to Him, are those who have mastered the skill, or the ability, to even remember frequently that He is near.

Today, if you have the book – we did Day 1 in our last teaching. Today we are skipping ahead to page 38, which is Day 5 if you have the ebook, it's Day 5. And I'm going to start; we are going to look today at one of Jesus' very first miracles. This is when he healed the leper. And I'm going to read – we are in Mark 1:40:

"And a leper came to Jesus, beseeching him, and falling on his knees before him, and saying” – listen carefully now to how and what he says – “' If you are willing, you can make me clean.' Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and he touched him; (he touched the leper), and he said, 'I am willing, be cleansed.' And immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.”

Then look at this –

“Jesus sternly warned him and immediately sent him away.” So Jesus is now warning the leper and telling him sternly, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go – show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony to them.”

But of course, the leper – he went out and began to proclaim it freely. And he began spreading the good news all around to such an extent that Jesus could no longer stay in the cities. He could no longer even publically enter into a city. But he had to stay out in unpopulated areas, but still all the people were coming to him from everywhere.


There are so many directions we could go with this teaching. But I want us to focus on two things. The first is this: God is near; however, when you see Jesus and the way he helped people and healed people – Jesus never strapped on his sandals and went out for the day and specifically went looking for people to heal (physically heal.) And that can be a little perplexing, because we wonder – if he had these abilities to heal – why didn't he just go out and offer healing to everybody?


Jesus provided these miracles and healing to people who came to him. See, Jesus was near – just as today in a spiritual sense God is near. And Jesus, when somebody came to him, and entered into Jesus' world, and said in a humble way, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” That is when Jesus healed. And I think this is important in our culture today, because I hear so many people today – typically unbelievers or skeptics, and they say, “Well, if God is real, why wouldn't he just do something majorly miraculous to let us all know that He is real.” Well first of all, God did do that through the resurrection of Christ! That is probably the most miraculous event that has happened throughout all of history! But the scriptures are clear, when you look at how Jesus intervened in people's lives, he never forced his way in. He never – like I said – he never went out looking for people to heal (physically). Instead, the Bible says that God is looking down for hearts that are turned up to Him, so that He can help them greatly. Now I'm saying that from memory and it is not word for word – but I will post the verse underneath here, when I finish the video. (The verse is 2 Chronicles 16:9 - “For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely his. The Hebrew word is hithchazzaq  and it means "to show himself strong", "to strongly support and supply" them.)

God is near, and He is waiting for us to come to Him, so he can help us immensely. So the first thing that we remember is that He is near, and then just like the leper – we don't just expect Him to help us or to heal us – we have to come to Him.

And then the second point is the way the leper asked for healing. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” I will tell you that is the prayer – that is the way a request is made – that allows the Holy Spirit to flow through, and to work. When you come to Jesus, not with a sense of entitlement. It is always when the person comes with a sense of humility and an understanding, that this man, Jesus – there is something very special and divine about him and I need to respect him for who he is. And I – I don't deserve anything; but if he is willing, he can do it. That type of attitude is rewarded by God. And we see that in all the physical examples of the people who approached Jesus in the New Testament.

The second thing I want to point out quickly – why wouldn't Jesus want the leper – why would he tell the leper sternly, “Don't tell anybody what happened here.” Here's why, and I had to research this – this was perplexing to me. I had to do a lot of reading on the background of this passage. And here is why. Jesus did not want people coming to him for the wrong reasons. His mission was not a mission of physical healing on this earth. His mission was to bring spiritual healing – to the people of Galilee and then to the whole world.

And I want to talk more but I promised to keep these short. So that is all for today. Let's put our two teachings together:

Remember that God is near – throughout the day. Do something to help yourself remember His nearness throughout the day.
And then come to Him. He's looking for you to look up to Him.

Bye for now. I will see you next – our next teachings we will be talking about how Jesus – we will be skipping ahead and talking about how Jesus talked about how the relationship is more important than religious tradition. See you next week – if you are watching this on Thursday, have a good weekend.




Get the book or e-book to go along with the study. We will be covering 18 teachings this summer by video. The book covers the teachings I am not able to make videos for, due to lack of time. The book, however, has nearly all Jesus's teachings in Mark and into Matthew, and it is on sale at the time of this posting.  Get the book or e-book at Amazon by clicking HERE.



For a list of all free video teachings and transcripts in this series, go HERE.