It's a Great Day to be Alive

DDG, Unit 25,  Session 1, Day 2 - Matthew 13:10-17


Well, I don't necessarily agree with Travis Tritt about what that looks like, but it truly is a great day to be alive. Go back and read verses 16-17 again. Moses wanted to hear what Jesus would teach. So did Abraham, David, Elijah. Heck, even John the Baptist wanted to hear it. I know people sometimes get frustrated with this passage. It somehow seems unfair that Jesus should teach and not make his meaning clear. Well, beyond fulfilling prophecy, I don't really know what that was all about. This I do know. We came along after that, and Jesus wants us to understand. We are servants of a Kingdom, with a capital "K." He is in control He stands before the Father who created it all, and rules over it all. How are we processing that into our thinking and feeling? What distracts us from the Kingdom and its work. Are we trusting people to accomplish the things only God can accomplish? More importantly, are we giving allegiance to people that belongs to God?

We are not to be in the dark about what God wants from us. We cannot stand in the dark and be light to the world around us. We have Jesus' words and the teaching of the Apostles.We also have the Holy Spirit to bring those words to life for us and within us. I pray that you will have seeing eyes and hearing ears today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for submitting your comment. Comments are freely permitted to disagree with what I write, but it is my blog and I reserve the right to decide what is, and is not, appropriate. Foul language and spam will not be posted.

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves."                           Matthew 10:16 (NASB)     Pastors generally are a decent group of people who have difficult jobs working with people who are hurting and needy. It breeds a certain special kind of compassion. It also sometimes leaves them open to the occasional scam artist. We generally have the tools to keep ourselves out of trouble with people coming in person (thank you church boards), but it seems like once or twice each year, we get an email from some pastor or another on our district warning us that their email has been hacked and not to respond to requests for financial assistance. Most pastors are not noted for their tech savvy.     As a pastor and an IT professional, I always cringe a little when those emails come. Many of our pastors have the "innocent as doves" part down (med...
Read more

The Man Who is God (Matthew 9:1-8) 21 February 2023

  On any given day, you will find people on social media who will proudly proclaim “Jesus never said he was God.” You will hear several different kinds of people with different motivations who make the claim. There is the ill-informed atheist who shouldn’t really care what Jesus did or didn’t claim, since he doesn’t believe in God in the first place. The exvangelical who has “deconstructed” his faith to the point that it is difficult to put back together again. Then there is the Muslim who believes Jesus was a prophet and, as such, could not claim deity. While it is true that Jesus didn’t go around proclaiming Himself to be God with skin on, there are numerous places where he made claims where he equated himself with God, whom he often identified as “Father.” Today’s passage includes one of these. Explanation In this short passage, Jesus arrives in Nazareth (his own city) and encounters a paralytic who had been brought to him. He is moved by the faith of this group, but says ...
Read more

Miracle Baby – Jesus the Christ

 Luke 1:34-38 (ESV) And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.   Explanation It is easy to become too familiar with certain Bible stories, and the stories around Jesus’ conception and birth certainly rank in that category. In this passage, Mary isn’t just finding she’s going to have a baby under the most unusual circumstances. God is going to fulfill His greatest prophecy. Israel’s messiah is to be born. She, of course, is confused about the mechanics of the promise, as...
Read more