← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
The Critical Difference between Being Responsible for Others and Responsive to Them
00:20:47
This episode centers on a reflection from Mark 3 and the healing of the man with the shriveled hand. The main message is that Jesus—and by extension those led by the Holy Spirit—doesn’t simply notice human need, but responds to it with life, compassion, and action. JD Walt contrasts being “responsible for” others with being “responsive to” them, arguing that trying to carry everyone’s burdens leads to overwhelm and compassion fatigue, while Spirit-led responsiveness allows us to do what’s actually ours to do in the moment. The episode also emphasizes the idea that ordinary acts of love can have extraordinary, even lasting impact. Through prayer, a hymn, and a father-son duet, the hosts underscore that believers are not meant to carry the weight of the world alone; Jesus does that, and invites us to partner with him for a few people, one moment at a time. The closing takeaway is an encouragement to walk with the Master in daily attentiveness, trusting that small faithful responses c...
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Sower Nation. It's Tuesday, July 14th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt, and this is your wake up call. And yes, it's Tuesday and you know what that means. Tacos. Yep. It's gotta be somewhere in the offering. Today it's Taco Tuesday. First one of our Mark Pizza Challenge. We should have called it a Mark Taco Challenge. Maybe this time, but we're going with what we got. Remember, we're reading a chapter of Mark each day for 16 days. And today we're up to mark chapter three, I believe. So I'm hoping you'll read that before we begin to dive into it in the passage we're going to cover today. But before any of that, it's time for us to pray and to enter into the presence of the Lord by consecration. We're ready. You ready? Jesus is among us. He's here. He's with you. He's with me. He's drawing us together. And he's saying, come on in. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today's entry is entitled the Critical Difference Between Being Responsible for Others and Being Responsive to Them. Our text is Mark, chapter three. You're going to read the whole chapter? I'm going to comment on verses 1 6. Hear that reading? Now another time, Jesus went into the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him. On the Sabbath, Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, stand up in front of everyone. Then Jesus asked them, which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or. Or to do evil? To save life or to kill. But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. Wow. The word of the Lord. Now consider this. The Holy Spirit always brings life. Always. When the Holy Spirit inhabits a person, the person becomes a force for goodness and life. We see this in perfection through the life of Jesus. What does it look like when the Holy Spirit fills our Spirit? Jesus reveals this to us in complete perfection. No matter where Jesus goes, the Holy Spirit constantly alerts him to human need. In today's text, Jesus enters the synagogue and immediately notices the man with the withered hand. In fact, everywhere he goes, he notices people in need. Children have a hard time looking away from people in need. The older we get, though, the easier it is to block them out.
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Why?
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Because we feel burdened by the needs of others. And herein lies the problem. We make the mistake of thinking we are responsible for other people. And because we can't carry that burden, we protect ourselves from them. The easiest way to do this is to simply stop noticing them. But what if we stopped feeling responsible for other people in need and began to approach them with the simple question of how the Holy Spirit might want to be responsive to their need through us? Sometimes it's as simple as seeing them as a fellow broken human being and not just a human need. I don't know about you, but when it comes to helping other people, I feel extremely limited in my capacity in becoming a human being. God, who has no limitations, severely limited himself. Jesus was fully God, and yet he was a single person and thereby accordingly limited. He could only be in one place in one time, and he could only engage with a limited number of people each day as a single human being. He could not be present to the entire human race, but he could be profoundly responsive to the people he was with. And he was. It gets better. A single person on an ordinary Friday is lifted up on a single cross and buried in a single tomb and is raised from the dead and ascends into heaven. He sent the Holy Spirit, and as a result of this singular event, an unlimited number of people can receive the gift of salvation and eternal life. Something happens when we become profoundly present to another person. In the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, Human limitations become transcended by divine presence. The power of this not only blesses the recipient, but also the giver. And beyond that, the blessing extends to everyone who ever hears about it. Think about the impact these stories about Jesus are having on us 2,000 years later. People regularly write me and tell me stories along these lines about a person from their present or who has long since passed, who was responsive to them in a very human way that had a divine impact. Every time these stories are told, it's like the miracle happens all over again. This guy with the withered hand, he had no idea what would come of that day. I mean, Think about it. Even today and the things that could happen today. Ordinary, extraordinary, natural, supernatural. Just simple acts of love empowered by the Holy Spirit through you. They change everything for someone else. You have no idea what could come of today. That's why I'm so big on the Word today. It's today again. And Jesus is here again. And the Spirit is filling you again. And he's bringing into you the mind of Christ, the disposition of Jesus Christ himself, The. The mentality of heaven, searching to and fro across the earth, looking for someone to bless, to see, to help, to encourage. All we got to do is go with it. We're not responsible for other people, but we must become more and more and more responsive to them as Jesus leads us. All right, how about we sing a song today? We're going to sing our prayer. Let's just sing our prayer, and then in a minute, Dad's going to join me and we're gonna. We're gonna sing a hymn together.
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Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me
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Amen. What a song to just get us ready for the field today. And it's one you can sing all day long on the field. It's just being recalled back to that attunement. Well, our journal prompts today. What would it mean for you to be less responsible for other people and more responsive to other people? I want you to reflect on that today. Remember, it's that sense of burden, of, like, I'm responsible for them, that often keeps us steering our way away from them because we know we can't meet that responsibility.
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We.
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We just feel overwhelmed by it. You've heard of the term compassion fatigue. It's just taking the weight of the world on your own shoulders. Well, here's the good news. Jesus doesn't have compassion fatigue. And he has a lot of agents in the world, like you, like me. And he can share the burden all around. That's why we. That's why the real game here is getting more agents activated, attuned, abiding in him. And he's. He. He. He is himself able now by the Spirit, to move through many witnesses, many agents. We just got to be one of them. We got to do what he has for us to do today, which isn't to be all things to all people. It's really to be something to a few of them today. And then we go out again tomorrow and the next day. It adds up profoundly. So that's about responsiveness because we're ultimately being responsive to Jesus, in us, through us, to them. Remember how I keep defining awakening? Awakening is the transformational journey of love from Jesus to a person through a person, to a person through a person, until every person has encountered him. That's what we're doing in this world, friends. That's what we're doing. That's why we're here. So you ready to sing? Me too. Okay, friends, we are. We're going to sing here on Taco Tuesday. Got dad with me. Isn't it great to have him back? I mean, the only thing for me better than my sense, better than feeling my being back myself, I love being back here with you is being here with him.
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I'm honored.
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I feel honored and getting to sing these songs with him. And so today, dad, we're just talking about on the wake up call, just about how Jesus, he just sees the person. He sees the person all the time. And he's always looking for how do I help them? How can I heal them, how can I encourage them? How can I bless them? And we're going to sing, tell them what we're going to sing today.
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Oh Master, let me walk with thee. That's an old song.
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See,
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1874.
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Old.
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Yep, that's how old it is.
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What's our number?
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It is page 596.
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596.
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Do they know this book?
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They tell them the book.
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It's called oh, Our Great Redeemer's Praise.
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Great Redeemer's Praise. That's our dad. Do you know that our, our little company seedbed made that hymnal?
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Is that right?
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Made it. And you said something a second ago. You said, I don't. Why don't we see people writing songs like these anymore?
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I know it.
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These are good songs.
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They're excellent.
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And there's a lot of good songs being written today. But I feel like we need to reach and re write more hymns even today.
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I know it. But we need to go through here before we forget these and sing them.
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That's right. We need to go through here and sing these before we forget them. That's why we're singing them every day.
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Yeah.
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And this one today. O Master, let me walk with Thee in lowly paths of service free. Tell me thy secret, Help me bear the strain of toil, the fret of care. And that's what the point of today's entry is about. It's like, you know, we don't have to be responsible for everybody and everybody's pain. We need to become responsive to that person's pain, that person's life, that person's need. It's not everybody can't carry it all. Jesus can. And he's saying, listen, I'm going to give you a couple today. I'm going to give you a few today. I'm going to give you just one today. But I want you to be ready to walk with me. I'm going to show you how to do it. Because guess what? I'm going to do it through you.
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That's right.
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You don't even have to do it by yourself.
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You can't go wrong.
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This is. This is our opportunity. Okay, you ready?
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Yeah.
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We'll sing all four verses.
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Oh Master, let me walk with thee in lowly path of service free Tell me thy secret Help me bear the strain of toil the fret of care Help me thus slow of heart to groove by some clear winged word of love Teach me the way worthy to stay and guide them in the homeward way Teach me thy patience sail with thee in clemens clearer CL in work that keeps faith sweet and strong and trust that triumph
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Last verse in hope
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that sends a shining ray far down the future Spreading way in peace that only I can strive with thee, O Master, let me live.
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Amen.
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That's good, isn't it?
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That's a hard one to beat.
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Well, that's what we're doing today. We're walking with the master. And that means we don't got to be in charge. It does. We're not carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders today. Jesus is.
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He is. And he is every day for him.
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Every day. And he's just like, can you walk with me today? Because I'll bring you in on something good.
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And that's what he's saying. You know, he's looking down on us right now in Gillette, Arkansas, and he says, well, I tell you what, they're doing their part.
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That's good. They're doing their part in Gillette.
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Hey, we might miss a note or two, but we get the title right.
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That's it.
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Well, everybody, thanks for joining us today. And this is joyful, what we get to do.
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It is. I enjoy this. I'll leave out of here humming these songs.
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That's good. So we're gonna. We're gonna put it to you now. And you know what? We also, we love to hear stories. We like to hear stories from the field. We like to hear Holy Spirit stories and.
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Right.
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Grace. Amazing grace stories. And I even like to hear stories that, like, didn't turn out like we thought they would. But Jesus is still working.
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That's right.
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So send us your stories. And we're gonna just sign off for now, but we're gonna go out on the fields with you today. And for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.
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And I'm David.
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Walt.
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And we'll see you on the field. We're going to see you on the field. We're looking for you. You look for us. We love you.
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Am.