Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard it, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.’” – Matthew 9:11-12

The religious leaders of His day were mystified and concerned that Jesus would share table fellowship with hardened sinners and traitors to God’s people. How could Jesus be holy and wise if He spent time with people so far from God???

Jesus makes clear that those people were His primary mission. Jesus came to reach those farthest from God to invite them into His Kingdom. Yes, Jesus preached to and taught those who thought they were spiritually mature and holy. However, He knew their pride and self-righteousness would always be an obstacle to their receiving God’s gift of grace. Blind to their problems, they saw no need for a solution. Therefore, Jesus concentrated His energy and attention on those farthest from God and most deeply aware of their guilt, sin, and shame.

Do you? As a follower of Jesus, are you more concerned with and devote more time and energy to those already in God’s Kingdom or those farthest from it? Jesus made His priorities clear throughout Scripture, yet most Christians today reverse those. We generally prefer investing our time, energy, and resources into those most like us and avoid engaging with those least like us. Yet they are who Jesus would invest in and who He’s calling each of us to invest in.

Consider how you invest your life for Jesus. Are you investing in those with little to no need of a physician or in those who are profoundly spiritually sick?

“Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.” – Acts 11:19-20

Praise God for the “some of them” who talked to “outsiders” about Jesus! Most of us are in the Kingdom today because of their efforts two thousand years ago. When the church scattered from Jerusalem in fear over persecution, most folks kept telling people who looked and sounded like them about Jesus. However, a handful decided to tell outsiders. They told people who spoke Greek and worshiped false gods. They told people living in a depraved and sinful culture very different from their own (but very much like ours). Their words changed the world!!!

At Antioch, Christianity stopped being a movement inside Judaism into becoming what Jesus had long before commanded His followers to make it – a global movement to bring people from every ethnic group, nationality, and language into reconciled relationship with God the Father through faith in Jesus the Son. This finally began to happen because some followers of Jesus started telling those who were “different” about Him.

We must do the same in our post-modern, post-Christian, post-Covid world. We must be willing to tell people of different faiths and different cultures about Lord Jesus, even though our culture tells us we shouldn’t. Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE life. NOBODY comes to the Father except through Him. All around you are people seeking the spiritual, desperate for the eternal, and wanting to know God. They just don’t know how unless you tell them!

If we love our neighbors, we must tell them about Jesus, especially if they look, sound, and act very different from us. Whether they’re from another country, another faith, or another way of living life, they need to hear about Jesus. More and more people in our communities have never heard about a God Who loves them so much He sent His Son to die for them on a cross. Most haven’t realized that the eternal meaning and purpose they’re starving for isn’t going to be found in themselves or the exciting opportunities of modern culture but in a person. Lord Jesus. Stop worrying about what you imagine people might know or think about Jesus. Tell them about the Jesus Who died for them and the life of transformed obedience to Him that awaits everyone who accepts God’s gracious invitation to eternal life in Christ!

“Another of the disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.’” – Matthew 8:21-22

To our western mind, these words of Jesus sound pretty harsh. However, this lukewarm disciple’s father hadn’t just died. If he had, the son would have been at home mourning for seven days in keeping with Jewish funeral customs. Rather, the man was in one of two situations. Either he was simply anticipating his father’s death sometime in the future (and perhaps an inheritance that would make following Jesus easier) or his father had died in recent months and, consistent with the customs of that time, been placed in a cave tomb for a year-long process of decomposition, at the end of which his bones would be collected for burial.

Either way, what the disciple is really saying is, “I’ll follow you when life gets better, less stressful, more organized, and more convenient.” Have you ever said that? Have you said it recently? Have you ever imagined doing great things for Jesus “when life slows down”? That’s the approach this man tries to take to discipleship and Jesus rejects it out of hand.

Jesus’ invitation to “Follow me” always means TODAY. Right now, when life feels out of control. There’s no better day to commit and follow Jesus with ALL your heart, soul, mind, and strength than TODAY. Don’t wait for life to slow down (it won’t). Don’t wait for a “better” time because there are no guarantees about the future. Don’t wait until you clean up your life and get organized – let Jesus do that while you’re following Him!

Earthly affairs certainly matter but not nearly so much as the blessing, joy, honor, privilege, purpose, and transformation we experience by living a fully-devoted, Kingdom-centered, Christ-following life today and every day. Stop imagining the future and start doing great things for Jesus now! Don’t wait, follow Jesus today!

“And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” – Matthew 8:2-3

As you reflect on this encounter, don’t just admire the power of Jesus to instantly heal a chronic and degenerative skin disease. Admire His tender love and mercy. To be a leper in those days was to be shunned as a permanent outcast. Lepers were forced to dress distinctively as a warning to others. They had to shout that they were unclean to anyone who got close to them. They couldn’t participate in the religious or social life of Israel. Work usually became impossible because nobody was allowed to work with them. Their disease became their identity and they couldn’t escape it.

It was likely that nobody had touched this man for years. To touch a leper was to become unclean and to risk becoming a leper yourself. It was against the Law. Imagine being so feared and despised that nobody would even touch you! Then Jesus touched this man. Jesus didn’t just choose to dramatically heal every aspect of this man’s broken life. He did so by touching him.

In that moment, Jesus validated that this despised outcast was still a human being. Jesus affirmed that he was still made in God’s image and still precious to His Creator. He was, in fact, worthy of being touched. When nobody else would touch him, Jesus gently stretched out His hand and touched Him. Jesus didn’t need to touch him to heal the man. He chose to touch Him, an act of compassion concerned not only with healing his body, but healing his spirit that felt so very unclean, unloved, and outcast. That’s your Savior! Meditate on His mercy, gentleness, love, and compassion because He’s Who we’re called to imitate today!

“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” – Matthew 7:26-27

Jesus was quite serious about everything He taught. We aren’t just meant to admire what He said, we’re meant to do it. Seriously. This is why His command to make disciples included teaching them to do everything He’d commanded. When we celebrate Jesus, proclaim Jesus, go to church and get charged up worshiping Jesus, but don’t actually DO what Jesus commanded us to do, we set ourselves up for disaster.

If you’re cheering for Jesus but not actually obeying Him, then He isn’t the Lord of your life. No matter how much you might “like” Jesus, if you aren’t trying to grow in your obedience to everything He said, including the hard parts about peacemaking, persecution, rooting out your temper, turning the other cheek, practicing authentic worship, letting go of your anxieties, freeing yourself from money’s dominance over your heart and mind, and so much more, then you’re in trouble! Why?

Because storms will come! Life on this earth invariably includes storms. They vary in size and duration, but everyone experiences storms. Setbacks, defeats, disasters, failures, illnesses, and griefs. If you haven’t rooted yourself in faithful obedience to Jesus, it means you’re still trying to manage and control everything yourself. You’re still operating in your strength and pursuing temporary priorities rather than living in Christ’s strength and pursuing His eternal priorities. When the storms come, you will get wiped out. Your faith may be wrecked if you believe you’re in Christ but are really rooted in yourself rather than in Him. Use times of fair weather to build a strong foundation of obedience to Christ, so that when the storm comes, your foundation will hold up and grow stronger!