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<table style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff; DISPLAY: table" id="content_LETTER.BLOCK5" bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="TEXT-ALIGN: left; FONT-FAMILY: Times New Roman, Times; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt" rowspan="1" colspan="1" align="left"><span>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px">Mark 7:31-37<span> - "The Man Who Couldn't Hear"</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px">Mark 7:24-37 <span>- "You're a Treasure" by Leonard Sweet</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Mark 7<font size="4">,</font> the sermon title "The Man Who Couldn't Hear" </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>In ancient Greece
it was customary for peddlers who walked the streets with their wares to
cry out, "What do you lack?" The idea was to let people know they were
in the vicinity, and also rouse the curiosity of the people. Coming out
of their houses they would want to know what the peddler was selling. It
might be something they lacked and needed, or simply something they
desired.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>What do you lack?
We may have sight and hearing, but what do we lack? Take an honest
inventory of yourself. Have you found contentment? Are you close enough
to God to receive his guidance and strength? Have you secured peace of
heart and peace of mind, invaluable assets in life? Deciding what we
lack is the first step in securing it. Christ can fulfill our needs --
needs that are to some extent physical, but, more so, the deepest needs
of heart, mind, and soul.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>The man in Mark 7
lacked the physical ability to hear. But many of us lack the spiritual
ability to hear. We suffer a kind of a spiritual deafness. The
affliction of not listening to people, or, to put it another way, the
affliction of physically listening to people, yet failing to comprehend,
to understand, and come to grips with what they are saying, is a plague
upon the Church. For, you see, it is possible to listen to a person,
yet fail to really hear them...</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>The rest of this sermon can be obtained by joining <a __removedlink__603562674__href="http://www.sermons.com/signup" target="_blank">http://www.sermons.com/signup</a></span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>_______________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Mark <font size="4">7, </font>the sermon titled "You're a Treasure" by Leonard Sweet </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>"I want to be alone." </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>That was the famous
declaration made by the early Swedish film star and glamour girl Greta
Garbo (1905-1990). But it was that declaration that jinxed her search
for solitude. A vast cast of has-been, over-the-hill actors and
actresses struggled to stay in focus but swiftly faded out of the
limelight and into obscurity. But Garbo, by her very insistence on
alone-time, was hounded by media hangers-on until her death in 1990. To
get a picture of Greta Garbo remained a paparazzi "holy grail"
throughout her life.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>We are more alone
and less alone these days than ever before. Humans have always lived in
communities, in tribes, in families - for protection, for food, for
companionship, for love. In the twenty-first century urban living is the
norm, with large populations of people gathered around a
commercial/communal core. But even as we live lives more closely packed,
we are more solitary. Education and economics have made it possible for
more people to "make it" on their own. What for centuries had been the
culturally and economically determined "norm" - to marry and produce a
family in order to survive - is no longer viewed as a necessity. In
America, the new norm is singledom. Half of all adults are unmarried,
and 15% of those singles live by themselves. In Scandinavia it is
estimated that by 2020 half of all "households" will be occupied by only
one individual.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>But singledom does not mean we are alone...</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>The rest of this sermon can be obtained by joining <a __removedlink__603562674__href="http://www.sermons.com/signup" target="_blank">http://www.sermons.com/signup</a></span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>___________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Persistent Attention </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>In Keeping Pace,
Ernest Fitzgerald relayed the true story of a magazine company which
several years ago purchased a new computer. Its function was to compile
data and send out subscription notices to customers whose subscriptions
had lapsed. One day something went wrong with the machine, and before
the error was discovered (about a month later), a certain rancher in
Colorado had received 9,374 notices that his subscription had expired.
Someone in the magazine office posted the letter the company received
from him. Inside was a check for one year's subscription along with a
handwritten note saying: "I give up! Send me the magazine." He was won
over by their consistent, persistent attention. </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>That's what still
wins people over to Christ. It's the consistent witness we live before
them: the kindness and gentility that are consistently evident, the
willingness to listen without judging and to help without expecting
something in return, the smile that's always there, the warm hug or
handshake that we can count on, the friendship that doesn't blow hot and
cold, the faith that is evident in good times and other times, as well.
We articulate Christ's presence and power most effectively not with
eloquent words but rather with a steady, faithful Christian life that
others can see and believe in.<br>
<br>
Michael B. Brown, Be All That You Can Be, CSS Publishing Company</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>____________________________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>A Model of Faith</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>It may come as a
shock to most Christians today, but we would do better to use this woman
as a model of faith even more than the disciples. After all, we are
neither Jewish nor Galilean; we have no familial claim or geographical
claim to Jesus.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>While the woman
learns that the power of faith lies internally, the disciples learn that
faith can't be measured by proximity to Jesus. They are right next to
the Lord and yet they see the woman as a bother. They don't lead her to
Jesus or attempt to heal her daughter, her faith does that. They are too
blinded by their social and religious prejudice to offer miracles to
anyone.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Jesus words are
obviously not meant to cut down the woman (her compassion runs too deep
to care if she is insulted). The words of Christ are meant to reprimand
the disciples-and us-when our politics and religious agenda blind us to
compassion.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Which faith most
resembles mine? Am I like the cocksure disciples steeped in religious
and cultural prejudice, deeply self-assured of my proximity to Jesus?
Or, am I like the outcast woman of Lebanon, indentured by compassion and
uncaring of insults if I can just save one soul?</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Jerry Goebel, Even the Dogs</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span><br>
_____________________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
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