David Marvin at Ocean City Tabernacle

Powerful. Personal. Purposeful. — Three Things Jesus Wants You to Know About God

You Missed Something Extraordinary

Every so often a message at the Ocean City Tabernacle builds to a moment that was impossible to anticipate from the opening illustration. August 2nd was one of those mornings.

David Marvin — teaching pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church and leader of The Porch, the largest young adult ministry in America — opened with a story about the Hubble telescope and spent most of an hour walking through three encounters in Mark chapter 5. He was teaching about Jesus. He was teaching about focus.

And then, near the end, he told the room about his daughter Lahey Moon Marvin. She was born January 11, 2024. She lived 100 minutes.

The full service is on the Ocean City Tabernacle YouTube channel. This one will stay with you.

Who Is David Marvin?

David Marvin leads The Porch — the largest young adult ministry in America — a Tuesday night gathering that began in Dallas and now reaches thousands of young people across the country. He recently took on the additional role of teaching pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church, one of the largest and most influential churches in the nation. He is the author of We’re All Freaking Out and Why You Don’t Need To.

He arrived at the Ocean City Tabernacle for the very first time on August 2nd — got a ride on the Ferris wheel, walked the boards, fell a little bit in love with the place — and then stepped into the pulpit and preached one of the most emotionally layered messages this stage has seen all summer.

He is, in his own words, not great at many things. Teaching is the one thing. What the room witnessed was that one thing done exceptionally well — and anchored in a personal grief so raw and so honestly shared that the Tabernacle fell completely still.

The Hubble Telescope — When Blurry Becomes Clear

David Marvin opened with the story of the Hubble Space Telescope — $1.5 billion, 13 years to build, launched in 1990, and immediately sending back blurry images. The scientist responsible for calibrating the lenses had gotten the calculation wrong. NASA’s solution: create corrective contact lenses for the telescope. Astronauts flew up, attached them, and the images that came back were breathtaking.

“One of the things that Jesus in his ministry allowed was to bring who God is into focus. In Jesus’s day there was a lot of people with the Old Testament — they had information about God — but they couldn’t quite see with great clarity who he was. When Jesus showed up, it allowed them to bring into focus who God is.”

All of us, he said, come into any room with some version of a blurry picture of God. Mark chapter 5 brings three specific dimensions of that picture into sharp focus.

“All of us today came into the room with different perspectives on who God is, what he’s like. And to some degree all of us are off. But in understanding who Jesus is, more of who God is comes into focus.”

Jesus Is Powerful — The Man Nobody Could Chain

Mark 5 opens with the disciples arriving in Gentile territory, fresh off watching Jesus silence a storm. The first thing that greets them is a naked man running toward them from a graveyard — possessed by a legion, a word synonymous with 6,000 Roman soldiers. He couldn’t be restrained. He lived among tombs. He cut himself. He howled.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he sprinted toward him and fell at his feet — the demons begging not to be sent away. Jesus cast them out. The herd of 2,000 pigs plunged into the sea. The crowd found the man sitting at Jesus’s feet, fully clothed, perfectly sane.

Marvin drew the parallel plainly: “Maybe it’s sexual sin that’s been part of your story for a long time and part of you doesn’t fully believe Jesus really could set you free. I know this from my own story as somebody who grew up and battled with pornography for years and years — until experiencing real accountability and confession with somebody in my life, and Jesus began to bring freedom.” The Gerasene demoniac, he said, is not just a historical figure. He is a mirror.

“There is no force and nothing in this world that compares to the power that Jesus can unleash. This man, sitting fully clothed and in his right mind, experienced the God who wants to bring freedom — who can bring freedom — because Jesus is powerful.”

Jesus Is Personal — The Woman Who Just Wanted to Slip Away

As Jesus heads toward Jairus’s home, Mark stops the urgency of a dying girl to spend several verses on a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. She was ceremonially unclean. Barred from worship, marriage, community. She sneaks into the crowd, touches the hem of Jesus’s robe, and is immediately healed.

Jesus stops. “Who touched me?” His disciples are incredulous. The crowd is pressing against him from every direction. But Jesus stands firm — “I’m not going anywhere until I find out who.”

The woman, terrified, throws herself at his feet. And Jesus says the only thing he says to an adult woman in all four Gospels: “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”

“She wanted his power,” Marvin said. “He wanted to give her his attention. This woman just wanted healing and to get away. Jesus wanted more for her than she wanted for herself.” The word daughter, he noted, was not just a title of comfort — it was an adoption. No father figure had been advocating for this woman. Jesus made himself one. The first act God will perform in the new creation — wiping every tear from every eye (Revelation 21) — is an act of staggering intimacy. Jesus is not just a force. He is personal.

“She wanted his power. He wanted to give her his attention. Jesus is not just powerful — he is personal. And he wanted more for her than she wanted for herself.”

Jesus Is Purposeful — Talitha Koum

While Jesus is still speaking to the woman, messengers arrive: Jairus’s daughter is dead. Don’t trouble the teacher anymore.

Jesus turns to Jairus: “Don’t be afraid. Just have faith.” He takes Peter, James, and John, enters the house, sends out the wailing crowd that laughs at him, goes into the room with the parents, gets down on the ground, takes the girl’s hand, and says two words: “Talitha koum.” Little girl, rise.

She stood up immediately and walked around.

“Third thing the disciples saw on full display: Jesus is not just powerful, not just personal — Jesus is purposeful. Jairus wanted his daughter healed before any of this took place. And Jesus wanted him to see firsthand a miracle he hadn’t performed yet — a resurrection — to showcase that he’s not just powerful over the natural and the spiritual, but over life itself.”

“Don’t be afraid. Just have faith. Talitha koum — little girl, rise.”

Lahey Moon — 100 Minutes

David Marvin paused before his final section and told the room he hadn’t shared what came next in the earlier service.

He has three children at home: Crew, ten; Monroe, eight; Bear, four. And they had a fourth. Her name was Lahey Moon Marvin. Born January 11, 2024. She lived 100 minutes.

“I remember distinctly the moment of watching her go from my wife’s hands, at her last breath, into Jesus’s.”

He and his wife had known early in the pregnancy that apart from a miracle, they wouldn’t have long with her. They prayed the prayer of Mark 5 over and over. “The same God who said ‘Talitha koum’ to Jairus’s daughter — we would say to our little one, ‘Little girl, rise.’ We begged. We fasted.” The outcome that Jairus received was not the outcome they received.

For months after she died, every time he stood up to preach, he had a panic attack — something he’d never experienced in years of ministry. “God, you took our daughter and now you’re taking the one thing I know how to do?” But looking back, he said, he could see what God was doing: growing their dependence. Teaching them to say — even if you take that, you’re enough.

“The same one who said ‘little girl, rise’ to Jairus’s daughter said it to ours. Just not on this side of eternity. And there was a moment where she — in the hands of Jesus — is more alive than her parents have ever been.”

“The pain you’re walking through is not pointless. God is working and will work all things together for good. And if it’s not good, it’s not because he’s not good. It’s because he’s not done.”

The Band at Texas A&M — What It Looks Like From Above

Marvin closed with an image from a Texas A&M football game where he’d been given field-level seats. At halftime, the band came out. From ground level, it looked like total chaos — tubas heading toward trombones, trumpets crossing from the wrong direction. Random, stressful, about to collide.

Then he looked up at the jumbotron. From the aerial view, every movement that appeared chaotic on the ground was part of a deliberate, beautiful design. They were spelling something. Creating something. Every step had purpose — invisible from where he was standing.

“The scriptures say that same experience — in a much more profound, much more real, much more significant way — will be a part of all of our stories. Every tear. Every hardship. Every loss. One day, everything that looks so chaotic at the ground level, you’re going to see from above. And you’re going to see that he wasn’t absent in the pain. He was working all of it.”

“One day you’re going to see from above what looks so chaotic at the ground level — and you’ll see there was purpose, reason, design. He wasn’t absent in the pain. He was working all of it. Our God is powerful. He’s personal. And he is purposeful.”

A Closing Word — and a Room That Responded

David Marvin closed in prayer — asking God to give the room the same thing Jesus asked of Jairus at the worst moment of his life: the ability to trust.

419 — the husband-and-wife worship duo from Delaware — closed the service with an original song called Believe for You, written for friends walking through dark seasons. Its final verse was sung from the voice of Jesus himself: “No matter the fear, no matter the doubt — in my name I will believe for you.” It was the perfect finish to a morning that had earned it.

Tom Sherf reminded the congregation that Jenny Owens would be at the Tabernacle the following Sunday — with a free concert. But the people filing out that morning were still quiet in the way that only happens when a message has actually reached them.

The God of Mark 5 is still the same God. Powerful enough to cast out a legion. Personal enough to stop in a crowd for one unnamed woman. Purposeful enough to let a little girl wait just long enough to raise her from the dead. And purposeful enough to be weaving your story — even the parts that look like chaos from the ground — into something that will one day make perfect sense from above.

The full service is available on the Ocean City Tabernacle YouTube channel. Watch it and share it with someone whose faith needs reinforcement today.

Watch the Full Service — Ocean City Tabernacle on YouTube

If you missed David Marvin’s message in person, the full service is available now on the Ocean City Tabernacle’s official YouTube channel. Watch it, share it, and come back next Sunday.

Watch David Marvin: “Powerful. Personal. Purposeful.” — youtube.com/@OceanCityTabernacle

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Ocean City Tabernacle • 550 Wesley Ave, Ocean City, NJ 08226 • octabernacle.org

A family ministry center where the Gospel of Jesus Christ is central — every Sunday, all summer long.