Herod was haunted

Matthew 14:1-2 / Mark 6:14-16 / Luke 9:7-9…

He had put John the Baptist to death, but now another man was going about and through his actions was laying claim to authority, proving it in both word and deed. People were thronging to this new man, and Herod knew he was in trouble. He knew he had wrongly imprisoned and killed John, so he thought that this was a manifestation of menace sent by God to torment him. 

Anything that threatens the comfortable status quo of our spirituality sets us on edge. Suddenly our personal power structure is in jeopardy, and we will be looking and listening for anything to relieve our haunted heart. People will come and tell you everything you want to hear, and if you don’t know God, or if you are currently turned away from Him in rebellion, you will naturally incline towards whatever it is that resonates with your rebellious soul.

People will use all sorts of amusement, medication, busyness and whatever else their mind can think of to try and avoid and abate their own torment. But you can’t kill a guilty conscience on your own. You have to let Jesus be Jesus, or you will suffer in superstition. Yes, you can harden yourself, but even the calcified conscience can be crushed open by the power of God. This new man must take over (Galatians 4:19 / Ephesians 4:17-24). When Jesus begins to ascend the throne, you had better abdicate or you will be a miserable shell of self-menace trapped in the haunted prison of your own heart. 

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

I tell you

Matthew 10:17-42…

Imagine what these disciples must have been thinking and feeling. There was certainly an air of anticipation, but there surely was also an air of apprehension. They were now going to be “out front” as it were, “without” Jesus in the way they were used to. How often it is that we fear leaving the comfortable confines of church and community, and striking out into the situations of other lives on behalf of Jesus.

This is especially so when we are reminded that many will not receive our message. Some will be excited, but some will be enraged (2 Thessalonians 3:2). Even some people who seem close to us might “throw us under the bus”. People will rise up against you because they are victims of the Enemy (2 Timothy 2:26), and the enemy wishes to cause them to rise against Jesus, who is the victor over you (2 Corinthians 5:14-19). Still, the Lord is with us (2 Thessalonians 3:3).

He tells them to prepare for the worst. Yet even when it seems like all is despair, there are still moments of deliverance (2 Corinthians 1:8-10). Even when faced with death, there is still final deliverance; and our final answer (1 Peter 3:15) will be made right (Daniel 3:16-18 / 2 Timothy 4:18). This is all part of being conformed to the image of our Master (Philippians 3:10).

Jesus has got us covered. His eye is on the sparrow, He knows our every move, our gains and losses. He is most intimately involved with those who are His. And we are the most precious thing to Him. Jesus came to deliver us from the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15), and our whole Christian lives are journeys where we are being delivered from fear and into faith. Jesus comforted them and He comforts us with these same truths (Hebrews 13:5-6).

There will be reward for those who lose their former lives for the sake of Jesus, and those who hear Him will be granted the ability to speak for Him, and to hear Him all the more. It is a glorious thing to know, that we would be able to declare the eternal truth about our eternal God and to be a member of the eternal family in our coming eternal home. This is the antidote to the terror of the temporary.

I tell you the truth.    

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

I send you

Matthew 10:1-16 / Mark 6:7-13 / Luke 9:1-6…

Now Jesus applies what He had said to them; they were going to be the answer to their own  prayers He asked them to pray about sending laborers into the harvest (Matthew 9:37-38).  He is applying this to you as well. You are to pray for laborers to be sent for the harvest, and be about laboring in the harvest too.

So now these disciples who have seen Jesus do all these wonderful things, but who have also seen Jesus be rejected, they are gathered by Him, empowered by Him, and sent out. They probably reasoned within themselves that they would not be able to do what He had called them to do. But if Jesus has the power, and is the power, then He has the power to give the power.  

You know yourself and your failures, flaws, fears, and frustrations, all too well. You know who Jesus is, too. You protest, saying, “I haven’t been given the powers they have”. Haven’t you? It is no real surprise that Jesus calls on you to do something extraordinary, although you wonder why He would choose you to do it. But you’re no different than the original disciples. Jesus has always been the master at turning weaknesses into strengths and making useless people useful.

It isn’t that Jesus is giving us all the power to physically raise the dead, but to be involved in raising the spiritually dead. He has given us the power to raise ourselves from out of the worldly dead and into the godly people we ought to be, to die to self (Mark 8:35 / John 12:26 / 1 Peter 4:1-12) and become people who can live for Christ (Philippians 1:21 / Galatians 2:20), win others to Christ (1 Corinthians 9:19-27 / James 5:19-20 / Proverbs 11:30 / Luke 5:10), and edify our brothers and sisters in Christ (Ephesians 5:18-21 / Romans 15:1-6).

That takes as much supernatural, Holy Spirit power as anything any other disciple has ever done. 

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©