“I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.” – Matthew 12:6

The religious leaders of the day genuinely struggled to understand and appreciate Jesus. On the one hand they knew that obviously something very unusual and special was happening. On the other hand…He was so very different from what they expected. He turned many of their traditions, habits, and rules upside down. He revealed flaws in their priorities and ways of thinking. Their priority was on doing things they way they always had, on the rules and policies of the religious institutions of the day, on good and predictable religious practice. Jesus said that their priority should have been on the Son of God in their midst, the Kingdom of God He inaugurated, the care for people created in God’s image, and the message of God’s redemption for all the nations, all in perfect alignment with Scripture. Ultimately they hated and crucified Him for it.

Unfortunately, if we aren’t careful, we too can lose sight of the One greater than the temple! As followers of Jesus it can be easier and more appealing to stick with the places, routines, rituals, and ministries we know and the priorities we choose than to truly follow Jesus wherever He might lead. Jesus would often lead us out of the church building and into places full of people who don’t know Him. He would turn our priorities, traditions, habits, standards, and rules upside down, all in perfect alignment with Scripture. And it’s quite easy and natural for us to resist this leading because it’s terribly uncomfortable, uncertain, and unpredictable. Yet Christ is in it.

We must always remember that the institutions, processes, buildings, schedules, traditions, and styles of our churches are far less important than Jesus Christ. We must be about Jesus and the business of Jesus before we are about the church and the business of the church because something greater is here!

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” – Matthew 11:29

Are you weary deep in your soul? Has the daily grind of life or the wild sprint through the holidays left you gasping for breath or looking for meaning and purpose in your life? Would you like to find true, deep, genuine, and lasting rest for your soul? There’s only one way – to yoke yourself to Jesus.

This sounds crazy – after all, the image Jesus presents is of a farm animal connected to another to do work side-by-side. How can work bring rest? It turns out that’s how we actually find rest in this crazy, frenetic world in which we live! But not just any work…

Our souls don’t find rest by doing nothing, that just leaves them feeling more weary and insignificant. They don’t find rest by throwing ourselves into whatever our current enthusiasm is, that just leaves them more exhausted eventually. We find rest when we truly commit to serving with Jesus, to walk alongside Him that we find rest. Our souls find rest because when we labor with Jesus: serving in the ministry of His Kingdom, investing in the spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible study, worshiping Him, sharing Him with others, then He carries the load.

Yes, we’re called to work with Jesus. We’re called to be in ministry and on mission. We’re called to serve in the local church. We’re invited and called to do the most important work in the world – the work of seeking and saving the lost, of making disciples, of introducing the faith and teaching believers to yoke themselves to Jesus as well. But when we do these things, Jesus does the hard work and His Spirit gives our weary souls rest.

We find rest as we live and work within the will and pleasure of God. We find rest as we fan the Holy Spirit into flame in our lives and walk in the Spirit each day. We find rest as we discover work that has real and eternal meaning, purpose, and value. The question we must now ask is are we serious about wanting to experience true rest???

“I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.”
– Psalm 9:1

One of the best ways to start your day and orient it upward toward God rather than downward into the stresses, anxieties, and frustrations of the world is to do what David says here. Make time each morning to give thanks and remember God’s work.

Give thanks, real thanks, to God for all He’s done in your life. You can give thanks for the creation and order of the universe. You can give thanks for your salvation and relationship with Jesus Christ. You can give thanks for family, friends, employment, home, freedom, literacy, or health – anything and everything that blesses you, because God is the source of all good things. You can give thanks for God’s faithful presence and sustaining strength when you literally have nothing else to be thankful for. Give thanks. With your whole heart.

Then remind yourself of some of God’s great and miraculous works. These could be the times He’s intervened to change your life suddenly and miraculously. Or these could be the great stories of the Bible when God has acted in history: Creation, the Exodus, King David, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the birth and growth of the church in Acts, and so much more. There are so many wonderful stories to bring to mind and in the process be encouraged by God’s faithfulness and absolute power over this world.

This doesn’t have to take more than a few minutes (though the longer the better). You can do this in your favorite prayer chair at home or even do it while stuck in traffic on the way to work. But make this a habit and align your day to the heart and activity of God.

“Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” – Matthew 9:13

Thank you, Jesus!!! You came for us! We’re all sinners and none of us are righteous by our own efforts (despite what we may think sometimes). Jesus came for us and through His death and resurrection He makes us righteous by God’s grace through faith in Christ alone.

We who follow Jesus must remember this truth well. Our greatest responsibility is to likewise call “sinners” – those who don’t know Jesus. We must be extending the mercy and love of God to those who are most vulnerable, confused, and spiritually lost. We must be investing our time and resources in those most unlike us.

We must never let our preferences and passion for religious practice fill our minds and hearts to a greater extent than the needs of those outside the church to learn about Jesus. We must have a greater heart (evidenced by money spent, time invested, emotion expressed, and energy expended) for the eternal fate of those outside Christ than we do for the spiritual comfort and well-being of those already in the family of God. This turns traditional church life upside down, but it’s why Jesus came and we must be about His business!

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” – Matthew 7:24-25

Storms and floods, both literal and figurative, will come in your life. We’ll all experience seasons of pain, loss, stress, sorrow, suffering, deprivation, and difficulty. For some these may be relatively brief. For others they may be extraordinarily intense and last for years. The question for each of us is upon what will we build our lives?

We all build our lives on something – it could be money, power, pleasure, status, comfort, safety, security, talent, hard-work, discipline, career, family, or faith. Will the foundation of our lives withstand the disasters that inevitably come? When we listen AND obey the teachings of Christ, we build our lives upon the rock that cannot be shaken. When we truly follow Christ, the storms will still come, but we’ll have all we need to endure.

When we build upon faith and obedience to our suffering Savior, we build on the infinite strength and ongoing presence of a Savior who withstood every temptation, suffered unimaginably, yet triumphed over all the forces of evil and death. In hearing and doing the word of Christ we build our lives on the wisdom and promise that Jesus Christ is with us all the days until He returns or we pass away into His visible presence. Upon what is your life built?