Based on the Love God Greatly Study, From the Beginning to Forever/w5d2
Read: Luke 9:12-27/SOAP; Luke 9:23-24
Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.
Luke 9:23-24 NET or NKJV
(For further reading: Matt. 5:1-20; Luke 9:10-11)
When my daughters went on mission trips with their youth group, their leader would gather the group together at the end of every day and ask them to share their highs and lows of the day. It was a good practice meant to teach them to look for and recount both the ways they had seen God in the day and the challenges that they had encountered. It became something we often emulated as a family, whether at school pick-up, the dinner table, or the end of the day. For me personally, it became something I tried to incorporate into my prayer time and/or journaling. I did it with my girls (and for myself) to try to capture the teachable moments of the day.
As I was reading today’s passage of our journey, From the Beginning to Forever, the notes I made in the columns of the journal became a fresh reminder of the high-low practice. On one side of the passage, I had listed out the challenges the disciples faced, such as:
- They believed they couldn’t or didn’t have the means to care for the crowd that remained when the day of teaching began to draw to a close.
- They based things on what they saw with their eyes and understood with their mind.
In contrast, on the other side of the passage, I had written the ways I saw Jesus respond/work, like:
- In response to the disciples wanting to send the crowd away, even after hearing their reasoning, and undoubtedly being tired Himself, He said: “Feed them.”
- I don’t know about you, but when I see Him at work, in the little things or the big, it is inspiration and hope and peace and strength to press on. So, it was also a high to see that He acted on what He knew was possible, for He knew the power of the Father and the power within Himself.
- However, perhaps the biggest high of the passage for me was Jesus seizing this teachable moment, not turning away from the crowd’s need for food or from the disciples’ need to learn from Him. He knew that they would benefit from knowing and seeing His love and power in action, and obviously wanted them to understand/know that:
- All things are possible with Him.
- They should/could trust in the Father and ask Him for His help and provision.
Friends, the example Jesus set and the things He taught were “characterized by love, service, and humility.1” So even though the world we live in has made life about our own wants and preferences, Jesus presented a clear message to the crowd: if they truly wanted to follow Him, they would have to turn from the world’s way of living and their own desires. As true disciples and followers of Christ, our lives should not be a reflection of the world, but instead, a reflection of God and His ways. In other words, we should live and love like Jesus. In other words, we must live counter-culturally to the world. As today’s journal entry points out, this won’t be easy, but it will be worth it
As the author of Hebrews wrote, let’s encourage one another daily to this end, so that none of us may become hardened by sin and turn away from God~(Hebrews 3:13).
The More We Know
There were two big takeaways from this for me…
- Jesus didn’t desire “groupies.” He wanted those who were truly/fully sold out to the cause of His mission—to seek and save the lost by spreading the Gospel message in word and deed.
- Jesus had slipped away for quiet solitude, but the crowd found Him ~ and He welcomed them, and taught them about the kingdom of God and healed the sick. (Meaning, I need to be ready to serve and respond with a good attitude even when my “time” is interrupted by the needs of others.)
- From the Beginning to Forever,151 ↩︎
Me From the Inside Out 