Tag: jesus

Luke 8:40-56

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            Today’s Gospel lesson is a classic story of Christ healing a chronically ill woman of her suffering, and raising a deal girl back to life.  This is Jesus the Healer and Miracle Worker doing what he does so well – bringing new life to people.  What these accounts have in common with all of the other chronicles of Christ’s miracles is that they occur with Jesus as the object of faith.  It isn’t about the level of people’s faith, but about where that faith is placed.  Faith itself means nothing if it isn’t in Jesus.  Only Jesus can do the miraculous of healing, transforming, and saving people.
 
            In each healing narrative, the person’s need and desperation (poverty of spirit) were the necessary first steps on the road of faith.  Faith always begins with the acknowledgment of need.  You and I need Jesus.  If Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, he will do it.  If Jesus came to change lives, he will accomplish it.  If Jesus is the living Lord of the church, he will hear your humble and heartfelt petition.  So, pray!
 
            Come to Jesus, and pray.  Pray without ceasing.  Pray for your children, your friends, your neighbors, and your co-workers.  Pray for healing, and pray for deliverance.  I know there are people and situations in which it seems there is no hope, or that nothing will ever be different.  But Jesus is trustworthy, and he always keeps true to his mission.  All who come to Jesus receive a changed life – and that is what I bank on.
 

 

            Surprising God, you do amazing things in people’s lives.  You specialize in the impossible.  Work in my life to make me holy and set apart for you, to be a conduit of blessing to others here on earth until Jesus comes again.  Amen.

Mark 7:24-30

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            Not much happens until something becomes urgent.  A doctor, a financial planner, or a preacher can tell us something until they are blue in the face.  But it won’t mean much without a sense of urgency that some sort of change must occur – that the way things currently exist isn’t going to cut it any longer.  When it comes to the Christian life, law and duty can only take us so far – we need the gospel of grace.
 
            Today’s Gospel lesson has a Gentile Canaanite woman (who is about as far from God as one can get in the ancient world) coming to Jesus with a keen sense of urgency.  She is not concerned about appearances or masking her pain; she cares about seeing her daughter healed of her terrible suffering from demonization.  The woman sees in Jesus the answer to her daughter’s problem.  She begged Jesus to act.  But Jesus puts her off.
 
            A superficial reading of this story might lead us to think that Jesus is either aloof or elitist.  But I think a better way of looking at Christ’s response of not immediately healing the daughter is looking at the episode through the lenses of patience and perseverance.  God is not some coin machine that we can drop in a dollar and get immediate change.  The Godhead is not some system to figure out in order to work the angles to get what we want.  Here’s what I believe the real point of the story is for us:  The woman had to go hard after Jesus, to keep going after him, and to exercise her faith muscle to its fullest extent.
 
            The woman looked for grace, kept going after God’s mercy, and was honored for her persistent faith.  We don’t need to write an essay to God in prayer about why he should answer us and try and convince him of our righteous cause – we just need to seek the mercy of God in Christ with determination.  Begging isn’t pretty and it isn’t comfortable.  But being poor in spirit is the only posture that Jesus is really concerned about recognizing.
 

 

            Gracious God, I beg you to bring healing, spiritual health, and relational wholeness to your church everywhere so that the name of Jesus is exalted in the world.  Amen.

John 1:14-18

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            This is an astounding passage of Scripture!  These are verses to not quickly read through; this is a theologically rich, lovingly beautiful, and missionally sensitive piece of Holy Scripture.  The high and holy God has chosen to come and show himself to us in the person of Jesus.  We know God through Christ.  We learn about what God is like through Jesus.  God has condescended to us, communicated to us through means we can understand and discern, through the Lord Jesus.  To capture this earth-shattering truth, here are just a few translations of verse fourteen:
 
The Word became
a human being
and lived here with us.
We saw his true glory,
the glory of the only Son
of the Father.
From him all the kindness
and all the truth of God
have come down to us. (Contemporary English Version)
 
The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish. (The Message)
 
            The sort of God that Christians worship and serve is an over-the-top gracious and generous God who has gone to the most incredible lengths possible to restore lost humanity.  Since God has bridged the great chasm between heaven and earth, the very least we can do is walk across the room and develop a new relationship with someone who needs Jesus.  God’s loving initiative can become our own motivation.  Sit and soak with this wonderful verse today and let it seep deep into your soul… and let it shape how you live your life.
 

 

            Gracious God, how can I say “thanks” for all you have done through your Son, the Lord Jesus?  Here is my life; do with it what you will.  Amen.

Revelation 21:5-14

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            “I am making everything new.”  This is the voice of the One seated on the throne.  In other words, this is God speaking.  This is only one of two places in the entire book of Revelation where God himself speaks directly and personally.  We are meant to take notice of the change in speaker so that we will pay special attention.
 
            The good news which is the marrow of Revelation’s message is that God’s business is making everything new.  It isn’t just something God does only at the end of time, but something that is already going on in this present age.  We are meant to understand that our contemporary experience is not merely a holding pattern until we reach heaven someday; rather, God is at work transforming lives, rooting-out systemic evil, establishing his will, and, well, making literally everything in his big world new.
 
            It is only human, at times, to lose hope and to wonder if things will ever be different.  But there is hope because God is patiently, mercifully, and lovingly restoring all things to their original Garden of Eden luster.  His words are true and can be trusted.  So, write it down and don’t forget it.  Put it in your journal and come back to it again and again.  “I am making everything new” is the Christian’s mantra in a time of uncertainty and of trial.
 

 

            Renewing God, your home is with your people.  Make your home with me and renovate my life in an extreme makeover so that I can dwell with you forever; through Jesus Christ, my Lord.  Amen.