Episodit

  • No Noise Offerings

    No Noise Offerings

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 65

    Today’s Reading: Luke 21

    When I begin to think about what Jesus can see, I am amazed. Consider these:

    • Jesus sees the past. In John 1, He tells Nathaniel the day he was under a fig tree.• Jesus sees the future. He prophesies in John 21 about Peter’s death.• Jesus sees into the heavenly realm and the spiritual battle that goes on when sickness is being conquered. He says in Luke 10 that He saw Satan falling like lightning as the disciples were doing their calling.• Jesus sees into the minds of people. In Mark 2 when the religious leaders are thinking that He cannot forgive sin and Jesus questions their thoughts.

    With all these amazing things that Jesus sees, would He be interested in the scribble on a church tithing envelope? I think He is interested, and He does look at what we give. Consider this opening story in Luke 21.

    He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them; for they all out of their surplus put into the offering; but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.” (Luke 21:1-4)

    We get worried too much about what the government can see and what they know about us that we forget something really important. That God is omniscient. And He knows everything that is going on in our lives.

    He sees it all. Omniscience is a theological word to describe one of the attributes of God. It means that He is all knowing. That He knows everything about you and me—not just what we do but why we do it.

    A few years ago, I was sitting in a meeting next to a very talented graphic designer for a major Christian organization. He told me, “When we are designing something, we always tell ourselves that when people do something, there is the good reason and there is the real reason. Our company always tries to figure out the real reason.”

    I was reading the story about the American industrialist, Henry Ford, who was asked to donate money for a new medical facility’s construction in Ireland:

    The billionaire pledged to donate $5,000. The next day in the newspaper, the headline read, “Henry Ford contributes $50,000 to the local hospital.” The irate Ford was on the phone immediately to complain to the fund-raiser that he had been misunderstood. The fund-raiser replied that they would print a retraction in the paper the following day the headline to read, “Henry Ford reduces his donation by $45,000 to the hospital.” Realizing the poor publicity that would result, the industrialist agreed to the $50,000 contribution.

    Real reason? Saving face.

    Jesus knows the real reason—all the time. This is Jesus’ last time in the temple before the crucifixion and His last message to the people. And His last message in the temple is on giving.

    Understand this about the offering time at church: He is not just there, He is watching. He knows not only who is giving but what they gave.

    He saw the woman drop in her two small copper coins. And the offering that caught His attention was a “no noise” offering.

    Let me explain. First remember this: she put in a lepta. It was less than a penny. It was the smallest currency in Palestine. Jesus has to be very close to see someone drop in two pennies. In fact, their nickname was “small change.”

    At that time the bigger donation of money, the heavier the money. Literally heavier. The heavier the cash, the louder it was.

    Why is loud important? So people could hear your offering make a sound and clap and cheer for you when it hit the brass offering buckets.

    The treasury where they placed their offerings consisted of thirteen brass treasure chests called trumpets because they were shaped like inverted horns, narrow at the top and enlarged at the bottom. The rich’s coins on the brass trumpets caused oohing and aahing.

    But then when a widow passed by and put in her thin ones, there was no noise from the trumpets. The widow received no noise from the trumpets, but she did get noise from God! Jesus stood up and cheered her offering.

    John Calvin got it right when he said that there is a message here for the poor and for the rich:

    To the poor: you can always give. Those in poverty can be greedy like anyone else. You don’t need stuff to be greedy. Yet this poor widow gave everything. I have watched just as much greed with little as I have with much.

    To the rich: amount is not the issue, sacrifice is. God can do great things with tiny offerings that are a big sacrifice. Don’t be deceived by amounts. They deceive us but not Jesus.

    What do you need to remember about giving?

    First, only one person that day saw correctly what this woman gave and He was the only one who mattered. Who knew that Jesus was going to be in the audience that day during the offering?

    If we knew Jesus was going to be at our church on Sunday, would our worship or our giving be any different?

    Well, here it is: Revelation 2:1 tells us that He is always in His church walking among us: “The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands."

    Also, what Jesus hears and sees is not what everyone else hears and sees. The people did not hear anything. Or if they did, they heard the clanging of the copper. But Jesus heard “all”—all that she had. She did not give copper, she gave it all. I wish we had the rest of the story.

    But I guarantee there is one. Because I know God, and He always responds to this kind of giving. This is one of those stories that, when I get to heaven, I want to find out about. “What happened to the widow who now had nothing in her possession after she gave all in the offering?”

    Guaranteed she has a story to tell. God will always give you a story when you give it all to Him.

  • Taking a Page From Jesus’ Method in Hostile Environments

    Taking a Page From Jesus’ Method in Hostile Environments

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 64

    Today’s Reading: Luke 20

    Not everyone who asks you a question wants an answer or wants the truth. Listen to one of the most profound questions ever asked. It was a question someone asked of Jesus, and the one who asked it never stopped to hear the answer: “Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’ And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews . . .” (John 18:38).

    Pilate asked the question and did not even give the One who is called “the truth” a moment to answer. I don’t know if he was really interested. Many times people ask questions, not for the answer, but to see what side you have taken. Their question is for exposure not for truth.

    In today’s reading, that is what Jesus faced three times. The religious were asking questions not to know the answer but to see what “side” He was on.

    Today in this hostile culture we are in, we face the same thing in our workplaces, college campuses, even the local coffee shops. Maybe we can take a page out of Jesus’ book, from His methods of dialoguing in a hostile environment.

    Let’s look at two of the three situations. Notice what was asked and then notice how Jesus responded:

    On one of the days while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted Him, and they spoke, saying to Him, “Tell us by what authority You are doing these things, or who is the one who gave You this authority?” Jesus answered and said to them, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell Me: Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” (Luke 20:1-4)

    They watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, in order that they might catch Him in some statement, so that they could deliver Him to the rule and the authority of the governor. They questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach correctly, and you are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But He detected their trickery and said to them, “Show Me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” (Luke 20:20-24)

    Jesus did the same thing with every ill-intentioned question. Remember, none of these religious people were asking Jesus to hear the answer but to discover what side He was on. Or as apologist Ravi Zacharias explains that every question comes with an assumption. That is why C. S. Lewis said, “Nothing is so self-defeating than a question that has not been fully understood.”

    Let’s take a page from Jesus. What did He do in each situation? Jesus asked questions to the questioner. He questioned the question. Many ask questions but never have been questioned themselves.

    I have seen preachers on television being asked these kinds of questions—from hosts on the Today show to Oprah to reporters on CNN and Fox News. Every time they are asked a question as Jesus was, they answer it and get in trouble. Instead of doing what Jesus did, some of these pastors wrongly assessed that these people wanted an answer, which wasn’t true. They wanted to know their side, so the attack could commence.

    Answer the question when people want an answer. Question the question when people want to fight.

    Jesus would not let them catch Him, but His questions put them on the defensive. One of the most explosive questions Christians are asked today: What is your view of same-sex marriage? Let’s take a page from Jesus: What question can we ask in return that would turn the tables?

    Maybe something like this: Do you believe in God? Do you think this is something important enough that He has something to say about it? Would you believe in God even if He contradicts what you think? So where would you find out what God thinks?

    Someone said, “Most people dismiss the Bible not because it contradicts itself but because it contradicts them.”

    The next time someone asks you a question, take a page out of Jesus’ playbook and ask a question in return.

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  • Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

    Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 63

    Today’s Reading: Luke 19

    Today’s reading contains the story of a crazy conversion of a rich man. But in order to get its full picture, we have to read something from the previous chapter about a crazy miracle healing of a blind man.

    Luke 18:35 says, “As Jesus was approaching Jericho . . .” (Remember Jericho, because we’ll come back to that.) “As Jesus was approaching Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging.” The blind man’s name is Bartimaeus. Everyone tells him not to ask Jesus to do anything for him, but he doesn’t listen to their admonitions and calls out to Jesus to be healed. And the last verse of chapter 18 says: “Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him, glorifying God” (verse 43).

    Remember that the chapter divisions were placed in the Bible around the 13th century. I think this is a running story, so let’s connect the two stories and continue reading in Luke 19: “He entered Jericho . . .” (verse 1). Jesus was approaching Jericho and now He entered the city. Let’s keep reading:

    There was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way. When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly. When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Verses 2-10)

    The great American evangelist D. L. Moody wrote something interesting about these two stories:

    Pardon me, if I now draw a little on my imagination. Bartimaeus gets into Jericho [with Jesus], and he says, “I will go and see my wife, and tell her about it.” A young convert always wants to talk to his friends about salvation. Away he goes down to the street, and there he meets a man who passes him, goes on a few yards, and then turns round and says, “Bartimaeus, is that you?”

    “Yes.”

    “Well, I thought it was, but I could not believe my eyes. How have you got your sight?”

    “Oh, I just met Jesus of Nazareth outside the city, and asked Him to have mercy on me.”

    “Jesus of Nazareth! What, is He in this part of the country?”

    “Yes. He is right here in Jericho. . . ”

    “I should like to see Him,” says the man, and away he runs down the street; but he cannot catch a glimpse of Him, even though he stands on tiptoe, being little of stature, and on account of the great throng around Him. . . [So] he climbs up into a sycamore tree.

    “If I can get on to that branch, hanging right over the highway, He cannot pass without my getting a good look at Him.”

    That must have been a very strange sight to see the rich man climbing up a tree like a boy, and hiding among the leaves, where he thought nobody would see him, to get a glimpse of the passing stranger!

    He was small . . . there was a tree . . . and he was desperate. And when you are desperate, you will do whatever it takes to get what you want.

    A little boy told his father, “I want a new bike.”

    The father said, “In this house we pray and ask God for the things we want and need.”

    That night the little boy prayed, “Dear God, I need a new bike."

    The next morning the little boy woke up and ran to the garage, but he found no bike. The little boy prayed the same prayer for three nights with no results. On the fourth day, while playing at his Grandma’s house, he found a small statue of Mary. He carefully wrapped the statue in tissue paper and put the statue in a shoe box. That night he prayed, “Dear God, if you ever want to see your mother again . . .”

    Desperate times call for desperate measures, whether you are kidnapping Jesus’ mom or a rich guy climbing a tree.

    The key verse of the conversion is verse 5: “When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, ‘Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.’”

    These phrases are packed with power.

    He looked up

    Jesus noticed the man.

    There is a Shepherd bringing home His sheep. As they come in at night, He counts them all. I can see Jesus the Great Shepherd counting, “One, two . . .” When He gets to the last one, He has only counted 99. One is missing. He does not say, “I’ll let that one stay out to let him learn his lesson. I will see what happens by morning.” No, the Shepherd goes out and hunts the one that is lost and when He find it He lays it on his shoulder and carries it home.

    The sheep does not find the Shepherd; it’s the Shepherd who finds the sheep. It was the Shepherd who rejoiced, not the sheep.

    People talk of finding Christ, but really it’s the opposite. Jesus looked up and saw the man.

    He said, “Zaccheus”

    It looked as though Jesus was walking right by, but He stopped and said,“Zaccheus.”

    Zaccheus must have wondered, Who told Him my name?

    Ah! Jesus knew him. He always knew him. Sinner, Christ knows all about you. He knows your name.

    Hurry and come down, for today

    Proverbs 27:1 says, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you know not what a day may bring forth.” C. H. Spurgeon said it like this:

    If you were sick, would you send for your physician tomorrow? If your house were on fire, would you call “fire!” Tomorrow? If you were robbed in the street on your road home, would you cry “Stop! Thief!” Tomorrow? No. But man is foolish in the things that concern his soul. Unless divine and infinite love shall teach him to number his days, he will still go on boasting of tomorrows until his soul has been destroyed by them. The great mischief of most men is that they procrastinate. It is not that they resolve to be damned, but that they resolve to be saved tomorrow. It is not that they reject Christ forever, but that they reject Christ today. They might as well reject him forever, as they continue perpetually to reject him now . . . the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Oh, you that lingers, pull up the paving stones and hurl them at the devil’s head. He is ruining you; he is decoying you to your destruction.

    Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! Alas, tomorrow never comes! It is in no calendar except the almanac of fools.

    And finally, something crazy happened at this man’s conversion, which made it real: “Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much’” (verse 8).

    You know it’s a conversion when it reaches a person’s wallet. No offering was asked for. No money requested. When something happens in the heart, something happens on the outside.

    That’s Zaccheus. That’s Luke 19.

  • It Should Be Easy to Pick Out Who God Likes Best . . . or Maybe Not

    It Should Be Easy to Pick Out Who God Likes Best . . . or Maybe Not

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 62

    Today’s Reading: Luke 18

    In today’s reading, Jesus tells a story on prayer. But I think through the story, He wants us to pick the guy we think God likes best so He can teach us a lesson. Sometimes we assume that God likes who we like and what we like. It should be easy to pick out who God likes best:

    He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’

    “Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’”

    Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.” (Luke 18:9-14, MSG)

    The two guys were a Pharisee and a tax man. Really, it’s the story of the church guy and the street guy. The church guy basically says: “I haven’t done bad stuff and I have done all the good stuff.” The street guy says: “I have done all the bad stuff; I am a sinner.”

    They are both seemingly doing the same thing at the present—praying. But for prayer to be prayer, God has to hear it. Verse 11 (NASB) says, “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself.” God wasn’t listening. I love how Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard sums it up: “It is so much easier to become a Christian when you aren’t one than to become one when you assume you already are.”

    If my wife and I have a disagreement and I am in the wrong, I have two ways to try to fix it:

    The first way is that I do a lot of good things (self-righteously) for her. I give her gifts, do the dishes and laundry. I am being a good boy now. I am making myself acceptable to her. I keep doing stuff until the guilt is gone. That’s the first guy who prayed. He is trying to make himself right before God—to show how good and righteous he is. But the problem with this is that the offense is never addressed and fixed. It’s still on the account.

    Or I can pursue the second way. The atmosphere is thick. What needs to happen? I need to offer an apology. I ask her for forgiveness. Why do I want her forgiveness? Because it puts the relationship back in order. Happy home, good meals, good conversation. I want to be forgiven so things can be happy between us. Things can be set right because the thing that separated us is now addressed, and the relationship can be restored. Forgiveness is the way to remove the obstacles so we can talk with each other.

    The second way to find yourself back in relationship is by saying you are sorry. That is the heart of the gospel.

    The only way to become a Christian is to understand that forgiveness is the starting point, not good deeds.

    You are not raised into being right with God. You can’t make yourself likable to God. But you can come to God and say that you are sorry for the things you have done against Him.

    Two men went to the temple and both prayed. But they didn’t leave with the same thing. One left right with God. The other left in the same condition as when he walked in.

    I remember the story of a lawyer and a doctor sitting in the same church service and both heard the same message. The doctor made a decision to be born again that day. The lawyer did not. Like the Pharisee and the tax collector, one left with God and the other left exactly the same way. It took the lawyer three weeks to make that born-again decision of saying to God, “I’m sorry.” The lawyer said to the doctor, “How did you do it faster than me? I could have died and gone to hell.” The doctor said: “While I pleaded guilty, you were pleading your case."

    That’s Luke 18 and the two guys who prayed one day. I thought it would be easy to see who God liked best—but it’s the worst guy, because he asked for mercy.

  • Getting More Than You Asked For

    Getting More Than You Asked For

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 61

    Today's Reading: Luke 17

    My goal today is to put you in a special category, which not many are in. My goal is to move you to the 10 percent category, because if I can get you there, I can get you some extra help on what God has already done for you.

    How many want more miracles happening in their lives?

    They can have that. And it is as simple as saying, “Thank You, God.”

    Our 260 Journey leads us to Luke 17, where we read about an amazing miracle and then an even more amazing response. Someone got more than what they asked for.

    While He was on the way to Jerusalem, He was passing between Samaria and Galilee. As He entered a village, ten leprous men who stood at a distance met Him; and they raised their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master have mercy on us!” When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they were going, they were cleansed. Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine—where are they? Was no one found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?” And He said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:11-19)

    Let’s read the last part from The Message: “One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful. He couldn’t thank him enough” (verses 15-16).

    One leper said, “thank you” and something happened: he got more than he asked for.

    Being grateful will separate you from the group. Not many people say thanks. From the cashier at Walgreens to the drive-through worker at Dairy Queen to the supervisor at work. The leper went from receiving healing to getting one more thing by just saying, “Thank You, Jesus.” Something happened physically and spiritually to him.

    Ten lepers were healed—nine went on their way (90 percent); one returned with thanksgiving (10 percent). Which group are you in?

    We are quick to pray but slow to praise. I want to help you get to that elite 10 percent. As we move you from the majority to the powerful minority, keep these words and phrases from our verses in mind:

    RealizedShouting gratitudeHealed and saved

    Realized

    The realization is the wake-up call. God deserves your gratitude. One day you realize that what you received is not by accident and not by your own doing.

    Jesus asked, “Where are the nine?” (MSG). God was asking what He already knew the answer to. He says about us: Where are the nine whom I have given life to, provision to, healing to, a house to, breath to, health to, a vacation to, a job to, a child to? Have they thanked everyone but Me today?

    In Life Together, theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Only he who gives thanks for little things receives big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.”

    If you want to be part of the 10 percent, wake up to the realization that God deserves your thanks.

    Shouting gratitude

    Go big with your thank yous. Author Gladys Bronwyn Stern said, “Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.” True gratitude is vocal and focused. Luke says that the leper was “glorifying God with a loud voice.” You realize not only who it came from, but you want others to know who the who is.

    Gratitude goes the extra mile. Consider what this leper did:

    He turned around.He came back.He shouted.He kneeled at His feet.

    Poet George Herbert says it best: “Thou who hast given so much to me, give me one more thing—a grateful heart!”

    Healed and saved

    “Thank You” gets God’s attention. And it makes God want to do more.

    The leper was “healed and saved.” Nine got healed on the outside; one got healed both on the outside and on the inside. One “thank you” got him a lot extra.

    Gratitude opens the door for you to get more than you asked for.

    As Steven Furtick once said: “You can’t be grateful for something you feel entitled to.” So let’s stop today and enter the elite 10 percent and thank God for all He has done.

  • Hell Is a Real Place

    Hell Is a Real Place

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 60

    Today’s Reading: Luke 16

    What if you could hear from someone who had died, and they could tell you what’s on the other side? That’s what a story in today’s reading is. It’s a story that will stop you in your tracks. It’s the story of eternity. It’s the story of what’s beyond. More specifically, it’s a story about hell, realized too late.

    There was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day. And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s table; besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.” And he said, “Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.” But Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” But he said, “No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!” But he said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:19-31)

    I have heard and read stories of people telling their beyond-death stories—some who visited heaven and some who visited hell. I’m not saying their stories aren’t true or false, we just don’t know. But we do know that this story is true because of who told it: Jesus, who always tells the truth. Jesus told this story different from a parable. Parables had no names of people, whereas this story did. And his name was Lazarus.

    Here is a big question: what is the length of every man’s life? Forever, everlasting. Once born, the existence of man becomes as everlasting as the existence of God. His length on earth may be seventy or eighty years, which the Bible calls a vapor (see James 4:14). But your departed friends still exist right now. Remember that the poor man died but so did the rich man.

    When the rich man and the poor man were born, they were both born without Christ; but when the rich man and the poor man died, Lazarus had Christ and the rich man had nothing. The rich man in fact had everything but God. The beggar had nothing but God.

    And once you enter eternity, your destiny is fixed and cannot be changed. It was too late for the rich man.

    I see some too lates here in this story.

    1. He saw heaven too late. He who never thirsts for God here will thirst for Him immediately after he dies. He who never longs for a savior on earth will long for one in hell. The rich man was contented without a savior in this life, but as soon as he was in hell, he realized his need and his first cry was, “I thirst.” But the problem was that he thirsted for heaven and water too late!

    2. He prayed too late. This was hell’s prayer meeting. The rich man not only saw what he never saw on earth, but his very first act in hell was to do what he never did on earth: he prayed . . . but he prayed too late because he prayed in hell.

    He got thirsty too late and prayed too late. And when he did pray, he prayed to the wrong person: “He cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in this flame’” (verse 24).

    He prayed to father Abraham. This prayer could never have been answered. Even if this prayer was offered up on earth, it could have never been answered. This is the only instance in Scripture of a man praying to a saint, and it bore no fruit and got no answer.

    If only this man could have felt the need on earth that he was feeling in hell and cried to Jesus on earth instead of Abraham in hell, God would have given him salvation. 

    Here’s what is scary about hell. The rich man had all five senses in hell.

    He opened his eyes: he recognized Lazarus when he lifted his eyes.

    He opened his mouth: he cried to Abraham.

    He knew what water was and craved a drop of it.

    He had feelings because he said he was being tormented.

    He knew what was tormenting him—flames.

    He remembered his father’s house and his brothers.

    There was no lapse of time between the rich man’s death and him being in the flames of hell. Just as the believer dies and is in the presence of the Lord, I believe that the sinner goes immediately into the flames of hell.

    Some think these are hard words to hear. It may be hard but it’s important. I think Billy Graham said it best: “If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.”

    As Thomas Hobbes once said, “Hell is truth seen too late.” If you are alive today, it’s not too late.

  • The Father Is More Prodigal Than the Son

    The Father Is More Prodigal Than the Son

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 59

    Today’s Reading: Luke 15

    Today’s reading contains one of the most incredible stories ever told. We call it the story of the prodigal son. Let’s read it together:

    [Jesus] said, “A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”’ So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate. (Luke 15:11-24)

    When it comes to the word father, some people cringe. Today that name can evoke all kinds of images—from absentee, abusive, uncaring, to never saying “I love you” or “I’m proud of you.” Jesus enters an environment in which He is about to redefine the image of father, just as it needs help today.

    In Middle Eastern culture, to ask for the inheritance while the father is still alive is to wish him dead. A traditional Middle Eastern father can only respond one way. He is expected to refuse and then drive the boy out of the house with verbal and physical blows.

    But something strange happens . . .

    The father’s granting the request makes clear that the character of the father in the parable is not modeled after a traditional Middle Eastern patriarch. Though in the previous two parables that Jesus tells—the shepherd in his search for the sheep and the woman in her search for the coin—the people do not do anything out of the ordinary beyond what anyone in their place would do. But the actions of the father in the third story are unique, marvelous, divine actions that have not been done by any earthly father in the past. On three different occasions the father in this parable clearly violates the traditional expectations of a Middle Eastern father. This is the first of them. An awareness of the redefinition of the word father takes place.

    You are about to see that the father is more prodigal than the son. I’ll explain shortly.

    In the parable the reader learns that the son “gathered all he had,” which the New English Bible rightly translates, he “turned the whole of his share into cash.”

    This is demonstrated by the fact that the prodigal completes all transactions in “not many days.” He just wants the money for the inheritance.

    The son got all that he wanted (gathered everything).

    He got to spend it on whatever he wanted (loose living).       

    He got to go where he wanted (distant country).

    And do it with whomever he wanted.

    And when it was all done, he ended up with nothing.

    You knew this when it came to pod eating. Can’t get lower than this.

    That’s when something happens to this boy. He comes to himself:

    When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger!” (Luke 15:17)

    Now enters the dad—the prodigal father. Did you catch what I called him? The focus is so much on the prodigal son when it should be on the prodigal father.

    What does prodigal mean? We think prodigal means sinful and that bad living is associated with it. But prodigal is a neutral word. You can attach it to any noun, and the noun determines if it’s positive or negative.

    It means to lavish, to go all out, extreme generosity. In the story the father is just as prodigal. This is the challenge for us who have prodigals. We must be just as prodigal as them. We have to be prodigal with grace, forgiveness, and love and lavish it on them.

    Then the father does something unusual—he runs. He is getting prodigal big time.

    Eastern gentlemen do not run in public. People of prominence did not and do not run in public.

    Why does the father run? To protect him against others. He does not want him meeting the city first; he wants his son to meet open arms first.

    Why does he run? To protect him from the comments of others. He is sending a signal to the community—a signal of forgiveness.

    And then it gets crazier. He starts giving the son really significant things. The first is to order the servants to dress the prodigal. He doesn’t tell his son to go and get cleaned up. Rather he instructs the servants to dress him with the best robe and sandals. “Quickly bring out best robe and put it on him” (verse 22). This can only mean, I don’t want anyone else to see him in these rags!

    The son never stops being a son while covered in mud. That’s an important message for you to remember. God loves you as you are—not as you should be. God loves you without caution, regret, boundary, limit, or breaking point. When the prodigal son comes back home, he doesn’t just get a ring, a robe, and shoes. The greatest thing he gets back is his father.

  • Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

    Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 58

    Today’s Reading: Luke 14

    You’ve been invited to a big party. Not just a party but God’s party. And it lasts a really long time . . . for eternity. In order to understand how this party works, Jesus told a parable. And what makes this parable amazing is when and where He told it.

    I come from a family in which dinner table talk was the norm. Dinner would last a long time not because eating took long but because the conversation did. And here in Luke 14, this dinner conversation started in verse 1 and ended at verse 24—and the topics were intense. The conversation started with healing and proceeded all the way to the big party.

    At our dinner table I learned the art of debate and how to defend your point of view over anything from politics to theology. Nothing was off limits. We are Italians, so the conversations would get loud and emotional, but always ended with dessert and coffee.

    This Luke 14 dinner conversation with Jesus didn’t end with cheesecake and coffee but did end with an intense talk about God’s final party in heaven and why people will miss it.

    In New Testament times, two invitations were usually given to a party or banquet. The first was given well in advance so that people could RSVP. Then when everything was ready for the party to begin, the host sent servants with a second invitation to tell everybody to “come, for everything is now ready.” You’d think that receiving such a wonderful invitation and news would cause people to stop whatever they were engaged in and go to the party, but that is not what Jesus said happened in this parable:

    He said to him, “A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’ And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.’” (Luke 14:16-24)

    This invitation came at a time that something would have to be interrupted . . . something great would have to be chosen over something good. We have to choose the lasting over the temporal, the great over the good if we want to go to the party.

    In the parable, Jesus said that some chose not to come because the party interfered with their business, possessions, and relationships. In each case the excuses were legitimate but not sufficient.

    Legitimate but not sufficient. The point is—if you miss God’s party, it isn’t because you were not invited. It’s because you chose to make other things a priority over responding to Him.

    The people who were invited all began to make excuses. The definition of excuse: that which makes (an offense or a crime) seem less serious or something used to justify a fault.

    There are countless websites for excuses for sleeping in class, sleeping at work, and missing school and work. The following are actual notes that parents wrote to schools so their children could be excused for their absence:

    • Please excuse Lisa for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot.

    • Dear school: Please excuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also 33.

    • Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.

    I heard about four college freshmen who hung out together and were always intent on having more fun than studying. These guys were always late to a certain class, because they knew the professor was a pushover. They had a multitude of excuses why their assignments weren’t finished on time or why they hadn’t shown up for class. When it came time for the final exam, they were late. About the time everyone else was finishing, they showed up giggling and told the professor their car had a flat tire, so they wanted to take a make-up test later.

    “No problem,” the professor said. “Have a seat in the four corners of the classroom. I’ll prepare a special final exam just for you guys, and I’ll make it easier—it will only have one question. And since you guys haven’t turned in all your assignments, I’ll give you another chance. If all four of you answer this question correctly, you’ll all get an ‘A,’ but if any of you miss it, you’ll fail the class.” He took a moment to write the question in four exam bluebooks.

    The four guys were grinning when he handed them their books, but their smiles disappeared when they opened the test. The single question on the final exam was, “Which tire was flat?”

    As the professor stood between them, they realized they were done for. They each tossed their exam books in the trashcan as they walked out. Their excuses had caught up to them!

    Jesus said that when the second invitation was sent, “they all alike began to make excuses” (verse 18).

    The first excuse: “I need to go and look at my new property.” The field would be there the next day. We make desires our needs. And when we do that, our desires start to control decisions, and this will always be a train wreck. The desire to be known, to be wanted, and to be loved. Our need is for God who will meet all our desires. We should have gone to the party.

    The second excuse was that he’d just bought five oxen. He had something new, and the novelty was exciting. Some people hear the call to serve God and be part of a church, and they want to—until something shiny and new excites them. They get a new friendship, a new hobby, a second home. God always plays second fiddle to them. That means we’re there unless something new invites our attention.

    Finally, the third excuse, that the man just got married. At times human affections can keep us from turning our love upon the Lord. This is not about putting marriage in a wrong priority. This is about being careful that we are not involved in relationships that keep us from making the right God decisions in our lives. That runs the gamut. I have watched affection make men and women compromise morals and standards, making unwise future decisions and marrying too fast without getting wisdom. Affection for people is important in second place. When people take the first priority over God choices, life is about to get real hard.

    When it was all said and done . . . desires, novelty, and affection took the place over a God invitation.

    God is throwing a big party and it’s going to happen really soon. I want to see you there—no excuses.

  • How to Face Tragic Death

    How to Face Tragic Death

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 57

    Today’s Reading: Luke 13

    There are more than 7 billion people on earth. Nearly sixty million of them will die this year. That is approximately 153,000 people dying every day, 6,400 people dying every hour, 107 people dying every minute, two people dying every second. Not a great thought to start your day.

    Death is unavoidable and undeniable, and you will one day become one of these statistics. Statistics tell us that one out of one will die. I know that is hard to believe, but it is true.

    We try to sanitize the topic of death. Years ago people would die in their homes; today they die in hospitals or nursing homes. We try to keep death far from us. We think out of sight is out of mind. We don’t even let our pets die; we put them to sleep.

    We use nice phraseology to deal with death. We say, “He is no longer with us,” “She is resting,” or “He has passed away.” None of this changes the definiteness of death.

    They now call funeral homes eternal management care centers. Funeral home directors don’t want to be called undertakers or morticians, they call themselves death managers. People don’t care about what you call death as long as they can avoid it. 

    The great American poet W. H. Auden said, “Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.” No matter what your picnic is, you still hear the thunder. People will try to avoid death and listening to that distant thunder through any means they can.

    There is this crazy thing called "cryonics" in which scientists will put your legally-dead body after death in liquid nitrogen and hope one day through technology they will discover a way to wake the person up. The fee can be as high as $200,000 or more for whole body cryopreservation and $80,000 for a “neuro,” or head-only option.

    There is something about our mortality and death we don’t want to talk about. You can take vitamins and drink green tea but we all will face death. You may live longer doing this stuff, but no one will know at your funeral whether you ate tofu or Twinkies. 

    Speaking about death is hard. But processing tragic death is even harder.

    Jesus deals with this topic and how we are to process it in today’s reading. The opening scene of Luke 13 is intense. People come to Jesus with a tragic death story and then Jesus intensifies it:

    Some of those present informed Jesus that Pilate had slaughtered some Galilean Jews while they were offering sacrifices at the temple, mixing their blood with the sacrifices they were offering.

    Jesus turned and asked the crowd, “Do you believe that the slaughtered Galileans were the worst sinners of all the Galileans? No, they weren’t! So listen to me. Unless you all repent, you will perish as they did.” (Luke 13:1-3, TPT)

    Jesus doesn’t stop there, but then tells more tragedy to make His point:

    Or what about the eighteen who perished when the tower of Siloam fell upon them? Do you really think that they were more guilty than all of the others in Jerusalem? No, they weren’t. But unless you repent, you will all eternally perish, just as they did. (Luke 13:4-5, TPT)

    “Why did these people die?” the people ask Jesus, and Jesus responds by telling them that they are asking the wrong question. Basically, He tells them, “There is a better question you should be asking, and here it is: why haven’t you died yet?”

    Jesus essentially says, “Do you think they died because they were great sinners and deserved it? Of course not but keep this in mind all of you are going to perish one day, a great thing to do while you're breathing is to repent.”

    Instead of processing why they died, we need to process if we are prepared to die.

    Always remember, the Bible is not like a newspaper; it doesn’t have new stuff in it every day. It is always the same, because it’s the truth. And truth has no expiration date.

    Jesus is telling us the issue is not why were these babies aborted, but why haven’t we been aborted. The issue is not why my friend died in a highway head-on collision with a drunk driver but why haven’t I? The issue is not figuring out if someone bad got cancer and deserved it, but why haven’t I?

    The people were asking the wrong question. And too often we ask that same wrong question. That is the question Jesus is asking us to skip and to fast forward to something more important.

    There are very few death scenes in the Bible because the Bible is concerned with how you live now. Consider this story:

    A little girl whose baby brother had just died asked her mother where the baby had gone.

    “To be with Jesus,” replied the mother. A few days later while talking to a friend, the mother said, “I am so grieved to have lost my baby.”

    The little girl heard her, and remembering what her mother had told her, looked into her face and asked, “Mother, is a thing lost when you know where it is?”

    “No, of course not.”

    “Well then, how can the baby be lost when he has gone to be with Jesus?”

    That’s the part you have to settle while you are alive. It’s not tragic if we know where they are. We have to settle on where we are going.

    Until you are ready to deal with the question of your eternity then you are not prepared to deal with your death. Here is a way to explain it: Have you ever worked on a jigsaw puzzle? What do you do before you start putting pieces together? You start with the picture on the box in front of you. With the focus, you are able to make the crazy pieces make sense and as you connect them, you can see the big picture alongside the little pieces. If you don’t have the right box top in front of you while you are living, then life is confusing. The pieces don’t fit together.

    Eternity is confusing, and how to get to heaven is confusing.

    You need the correct box top in front of you. The way not to see life and tragedy as confusing is to see it from an eternal perspective. It is to set the box top in front of you—to put the Bible and Jesus in front of you and define the little pieces with the big picture, God’s picture.

  • My, My, My, My

    My, My, My, My

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 56

    Today’s Reading: Luke 12

    A. W. Tozer, the famous Christian writer, said that there are seven ways to really know ourselves and know what our character is like. He called them rules for self discovery. They are:

    1. What we want most

    2. What we think about most

    3. What we laugh at

    4. What we do with our leisure time

    5. The company we enjoy

    6. Who and what we admire

    7. How we use our money

    How we use our money . . . Number 7 is a big one.

    That’s where we land in today’s reading. Jesus tells a story in Luke 12 about someone we call the rich fool who messed up on number 7: He spent it on himself.

    Remember, God entrusted us with His money not to hoard for ourselves but to make a difference. When we think bigger and not longer, when we think me and not others, we fail the test at number 7.

    Calvin Coolidge, our thirtieth US president said it like this: “No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” This Luke 12 man missed that lesson. Let’s read the story and see where the number 7 part got really messed up.

    [Jesus] told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:16-21)

    The number one reason people get upset when money is mentioned in church is that they think it’s “my” money. (This was the rich fool’s issue.) They have mistaken themselves for God and think it’s theirs. But as famed missionary statesman, J. Oswald Sanders, reminds us, “The basic question is not how much of our money we should give to God, but how much of God’s money we should keep for ourselves.”

    Wow. Ponder that. That’s a new way of thinking about the offering this Sunday.

    God called this man a fool for one reason—because the man kept using one word over and over.

    The rich fool said . . . my barns . . . my grain . . . my goods . . . my soul.

    My, my, my, my.

    Always remember, no one is an owner—we are stewards. It is not . . . my children . . . my health . . . my house . . . my life . . . my soul . . . my education . . . my business . . . my company . . . my future. Once you live a my, my, my, my life, you realize how short that kind of life is. There is no future in a my, my, my, my life.

    God told the man, “You messed up.” Jesus said he had “treasure for himself” but he was not rich toward God. How do we become rich toward God? The answer to our greed is that we give your greed away—that’s how we become rich toward God. When we give our money away, we take a hammer to our stingy heart. As John Wesley famously said, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”

    It’s impossible to be selfish and happy at the same time. Happiness comes from giving not getting. Mother Teresa said, “One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”

    My, my, my, my is nobody to anybody.

    It isn’t a sin to possess money, but it is a sin when what you possess possesses you. Is getting rich wrong? Of course not. In the Bible, many heroes of the faith, such as Abraham and David, were rich. Money can be a great vehicle for changing people’s lives. But if it is not used correctly, it can adversely change yours, just as it did this man in Luke 12.

    The rich fool made three mistakes:

    1. He mistook his body for his soul. His body had the stuff but his soul was starving. 

    2. He mistook time for eternity. He acted as if his future were in his own hands. His soul would be demanded of him that night; it was a word that was used when a debt or loan was due and it was payday.

    3. He mistook himself for God. Six times the man used the pronoun I, and if you add the number of times he used the other personal pronouns, the total comes to eleven. 

    It’s all a matter of what you do with what God has given you.

  • I Am Not Going to Have Another Unused Gift

    I Am Not Going to Have Another Unused Gift

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 55

    Today’s Reading: Luke 11

    When it comes to giving a gift today, one of the most popular gifts, which doesn’t require much thought or effort, is a gift card.

    According to the National Retail Federation, about 59 percent of shoppers will purchase a gift card for friends and family. According to estimates, the typical American home has an average of $300 in unused or “unredeemed” gift cards in their house right now. These cards are often misplaced, accidentally thrown out, or only partially redeemed. Over a period of seven years in America, $41 billion in gift cards went unused. Forty-one billion dollars! Unused!

    Someone was given a gift and that person never cashed it in. I am one of those people. I have a lot of gift cards that I have not used. While that’s a terrible waste, there’s a worse thing we can do—and that’s when we do this to God’s gifts and leave them unused.

    God is a good gift giver.

    In fact, the greatest gift God has ever given to us is the gift of the Holy Spirit, but for too many of us we never tap into the gifts and the anointing and the power that comes from the Holy Spirit. And what makes it the most terrible is how easy it is to cash in on this gift.

    That’s where we land today in our reading. Luke 11 is a great chapter on prayer. I want us to see an aspect of prayer in regards to the Holy Spirit that we often miss.

    Let’s read together what Jesus said about prayer and the Holy Spirit:

    Everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:10-13)

    Two important thoughts from Jesus.

    First, notice that Jesus uses fish and eggs. This is deliberate. Why is that important? Jesus did not say, “What if a son asked a father for steak and shrimp” or “What if a son asked a dad for lamb chops.” Why? Those foods are luxury foods. They were not the everyday food for the common man. Fish and eggs are what everyone ate practically every day in that first-century geography. What Jesus was saying was that the Holy Spirit is not some luxury whom we need occasionally; the Holy Spirit is Someone we need every day. He is not a gift for Sundays; He is a gift for every day. We must not relegate Him to an occasional moment. You and I need the presence of the Holy Spirit with us every moment of every day.

    Second, Jesus reminds us how simple it is to cash in on God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Ready for this? “How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Ask. That’s it. Don’t let the religious tell you it’s more complicated.

    God gives a gift and makes that gift accessible. Why is the gift accessible? Because it isn’t a luxury but a necessity.

    It’s an everyday ask.

    Every day, ask God for you to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

    The last thing I want is to have another unused gift that is available but not enjoyed.

    Let’s start today. Fill me, God, with the Holy Spirit. Cashing in is as simple as asking.

  • Helping People I Hate

    Helping People I Hate

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 54

    Today’s Reading: Luke 10

    A politician finds their opponent on the side of the road with their car broken down, do they stop and help her? If a die-hard Yankees fan sees a Boston Red Sox fan at a check-out at a local store and he is short money, does the Yankees fan help him?

    More serious: if a racial justice advocate sees an adversary standing at a stop light with a legitimate sign that says that person needs food or assistance, do they keep on driving?

    This is not crazy talk, this is Jesus talk. And this is exactly what happens in Luke 10 where we come to one of the most intriguing parables Jesus ever told.

    These crazy contrasts are what the story of the good Samaritan asks and answers. But instead of Democrats and Republicans or sports rivals, He uses two people groups who disdained each other:

    Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”

    He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”

    He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

    “Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”

    Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

    Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

    “A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’

    “What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

    “The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.

    Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10:25-37, MSG)

    This story is explosive because of the characters involved. The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other. And so Jesus asked the question: which of the men was a real neighbor?

    For me, I have been part of helping a lot of people in very needy inner cities. Let me confess . . . the ones I hate helping are ungrateful people.

    We bring them food, their response is, “That’s not enough” or “I don’t like that kind of meat” or “I wanted Sprite not Coke.” It’s frustrating enough to make me not want to help them, because I want to only help the people who say, “Thank you.”

    But Jesus does not give me that option. Jesus says, “You can’t pick and choose who you will help.”

    As Brennan Manning reminds us, “The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.” The apostle John puts it this way: “If anyone says ‘I love God,’ but keeps on hating his brother, he is a liar; for if he doesn’t love his brother who is right there in front of him, how can he love God whom he has never seen?” (1 John 4:20, TLB).

    What does that mean? It means that I love God as much as the person I dislike the most.

    In our story, we have an injured Jew, and no Jews help him. He is the victim of a crime. And two religious people pass by—a priest and a Levite—and they do nothing. And the one who finally does something is the Jew’s archenemy.

    The priest found an angle.

    The Levite avoided.

    The Samaritan s

  • “Jesus, You Promised and Now I Can’t—I Don’t Understand”

    “Jesus, You Promised and Now I Can’t—I Don’t Understand”

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 53

    Today’s Reading: Luke 9

    Can we have a promise from Jesus that doesn’t work for us? Can Jesus tell us what we are to do and then we can’t do it?

    That’s the situation we find in today’s reading. In Luke 9, we are filled with faith and expectation from the very first verses and then just forty verses later, we are overcome with failure in what we were told to do.

    “Jesus, You promised, and now I can’t. I don’t understand.” Let’s read so we see how both confusing and revelatory this is for us today:

    He called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing. (Luke 9:1-2)

    Sent out by Jesus and given power and authority over all the demons. This is an exciting day. Then it all goes south. What Jesus tells them to do, commissions and equips them to do doesn’t happen:

    A man from the crowd shouted, saying, “Teacher, I beg You to look at my son, for he is my only boy, and a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly screams, and it throws him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth; and only with difficulty does it leave him, mauling him as it leaves. I begged Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not.” (Luke 9:38-40)

    Verse 40 appears like an explosion.

    “I begged your disciples to cast it out, and they could not.”

    What?

    In verse 1, Jesus gives them authority over all demons. And by verse 40, they cannot get rid of one.

    What went wrong?

    In order to understand what happened, we have to understand what discipleship is all about. It’s hard to isolate the Luke 9 failure without adding a discipleship journey of seeing the demonic world crushed by the Kingdom of God. So let me give you the thirty-thousand-foot view of discipleship.

    Here are the three levels of discipleship:

    1. Watch me as I do it2. I help you as we do it3. I watch you as you do it

    Here are examples of each:

    1. Watch me as I do it

    Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out. (Luke 8:1-2)

    In Luke 9, Jesus commissions the Twelve to do what He has already been doing and what they have seen Him doing. Watch me as I do it. He doesn’t just tell them something, He shows them something.

    Notice the important phrase: the twelve were with Him.

    Discipleship is more presence than information. Discipleship is more with Him than heard Him. We think discipleship is to sit in a classroom or a Bible study and get information. Discipleship calls for a bodily presence from the discipler and not just information.

    Discipleship is leading by example. It is not telling people to do what you yourself have not and will not do. Jesus tells them to preach the kingdom and to cast out demons and He models it for them. Watch me as I do it.

    2. I help you as we do it

    Luke 9 is so important on the discipleship journey. Where the disciples fumble the ball on this, Jesus picks it up and delivers the boy. But more is happening.

    This is the tweaking stage. Luke 9 is the humility moment for them to realize, I’m called but I can’t get too far from the Teacher.

    These are teaching moments. Something both strange and familiar happens after the fumble. What they do next when they can’t cast it out is a learning moment for all: they get critical of others instead of examining themselves.

    A few verses later after their fai

  • Living a High-Def Life

    Living a High-Def Life

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 52

    Today's Reading: Luke 8

    A friend of mine said, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” Christianity is not something that works well with secrets.

    In fact, in today’s reading we come to an amazing chapter packed with teaching, healing, and miracles. Tucked away in this long chapter is one thing that Jesus taught that particularly stands out to me:

    Nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. (Luke 8:17)

    Or as The Message paraphrase puts it:

    We’re not keeping secrets; we’re telling them. We’re not hiding things; we’re bringing everything out into the open.

    Freedom happens when everything is out in the open.

    For us older folks . . . we remember growing up with television sets the size of a couch. A little white dot signified the television was warming up. We didn’t have cable; we called it “rabbit ears”—an antenna that sat on top of the set, and if you were tech savvy you put aluminum foil on the antenna to get “better” reception. And because there was no remote, just a loose knob to change channels, when the knob fell off and someone lost it—as always seemed to happen in my house—we had to change channels with pliers.

    Televisions have changed. Everything is HD, 4K. You can see everything. Every drop of sweat, every wrinkle in the skin, the spit coming out of a mouth— it’s all there in high definition.

    And in today’s reading, Jesus is challenging us to living a life in high def. Though it is not easy, it is the best way. Something liberates others when people go high def.

    Living in high def, we have no secrets. Why is living high def the right way? Because . . .

    • Secrets don’t work with God• Secrets always get exposed or get confessed (exposed by others or confessed by you)

    The bigger why is because sin grows in the dark. High def puts light on it and stunts its growth. When you put the light on something, you take the legs out from something growing bigger. You expose the lies that incubate in darkness.

    Let me challenge you with something: apologizers get exposed, confessors go high def. They tell the secrets before anyone else can. They build trust from vulnerability, not by portraying invincibility.

    I have learned this in my marriage and in any healthy relationship. When do I know there is growth in any relationship? When I confess my wrong before my spouse or friend confronts my wrong. I confess before I am confronted. I am convicted before they can get offended. That is a huge win and huge progress. This is putting light on secrets. This is living in hi def.

    Jesus warned us that all secrets are going to go public. As a Christian, I choose to make sure I have no secrets in my life, in my Christian walk, and in my marriage. It’s so much easier to be real than to pretend. It takes a lot of work pretending.

    I remember Jack Hayford, former pastor of Church on the Way saying, “The holier a man is, the more real he is.” I want to be a real Christian.

    A group of new Christians went high def and this is what happened: “Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done” (Acts 19:18, NIV).

    That’s high def, 4K. What did it do when they went honest?

    A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. . . . In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. (Acts 19:19-20, NIV)

    Transparency and confession do more than bring healing: they start a revolution. Openly confessed . . . affects a number of people in the occult to change.

    I’m too exhausted pretending. I don’t have that kind of energy to be impressive, but I do have just enough to be real. Do you?

  • What Do I Do With All These Tears?

    What Do I Do With All These Tears?

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 51

    Today's Reading: Luke 7

    Today we land on Luke 7. In the last story of the chapter (verses 36-50), Jesus is in a house with a number of religious people and a prostitute comes in and washes His feet with her hair. This is how pastor and author Chuck Swindoll explains it in a chapter titled “Jesus at His Best:”

    While families gather for dinner and close their door for the night, her workday begins. With saffron scarves and lavender veils, dangling earrings and a dab of perfume, she dresses herself for show. . . . [she] survives by her looks . . . and looks she’ll get. A leer. A scowl. A wink. A sneer. All sorts of looks, except one . . . love.

    She is a prostitute. How many times has her heart ached to be wanted for more than one night? To be valued instead of evaluated? To be prized instead of priced? Her scarlet letter will never rub clean. This day though, she will meet what she’s hardly dared to hope for. For she will meet love. She will meet kindness. She will meet Jesus.

    Into this refined religious party comes a woman, a prostitute, unclean and out of place. She has taken a risk:

    Now one of the Pharisees was requesting Him to dine with him, and He entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner; and when she learned that He was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume. (Luke 7:36-38)

    The thirty years I ministered in Detroit, our church worked with many prostitutes. We saw the hurt and brokenness and longing to be whole again. They all wanted freedom but were afraid. Many were scared to leave the business because of retaliation by their pimp. That is this woman in Luke 7.

    While men were looking at her, I too want us to look at her. Let’s look at three parts of her body—for all the right reasons.

    1. Her Back

    The best seats at this kind of party were at the table and reserved for the host and his friends. This woman did not have a shot at getting near Jesus. While these kind of parties can have bystanders, they must stand with their backs against the wall as observers. This woman was one of them. Her back was on the wall. She must have thought about what happened earlier in her town, that a funeral was interrupted when Jesus resurrected the body. And now she is close to Him. If he raised someone from the dead, he must certainly be able to free her from her life and her choices. She has a decision to make: does she take her back off the wall and give Jesus a chance.

    She chooses well—she takes her back off the wall.

    2. Her Hair

    Today if we want to know if someone is married, we look at their left ring finger. This wasn’t the case in the first century. It was their hair. If a person’s hair was up, they were available. If their hair was let down, they were married, taken. Every prostitute had their hair up but on this day, she found her man and let down her hair so she could wash His feet with it. She became a taken woman.

    3. Her Eyes

    Or more specifically her tears. How much can a person really cry? Enough to wash Jesus’ feet? They say a good cry is 1 to 2 cc’s. This is not nearly enough to wash Jesus’ feet. But that is not what happened. She did not put her eyes on His feet, she broke open her tear bottle. In Strange Scriptures that Perplex the Western Mind, Barbara Bowen said that every person had in their possession a tear bottle and they would actually bottle their tears from painful situations. I saw these bottles when I went to Israel. Think ab

  • A Christian’s Retaliation Response

    A Christian’s Retaliation Response

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 50

    Today's Reading: Luke 6

    I know there is a lot of folklore that goes with the masterpiece of the Lord’s Supper painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. Whether this is true or not, I love this story I read recently about the painting.

    When Leonardo Da Vinci was working on this famous Last Supper painting, he became angry with one of his assistants, berating the man without mercy. After banishing his assistant from his studio, he went back to work. As an act of revenge, he used the person’s face who had offended him for the face of Judas.

    He continued his work until he tried to paint the face of Jesus, and he couldn’t do it. No matter how hard he tried, he was unable to paint Christ’s. So he stopped painting, went to his assistant and asked his forgiveness. Only when the man forgave him and they reconciled was Da Vinci able to return to the table of the Last Supper and paint Jesus.

    When Leonardo showed mercy and pardon to his assistant, Jesus became a lot clearer. This is where we land in today’s reading. Jesus becomes clearer to us and the world around us based on how we respond to people who hurt us or take advantage of us. In fact, when we read this chapter, we recognize that it’s about Christian retaliation.

    Listen to Jesus’ words from Luke’s Sermon on the Mount:

    I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. (Luke 6:27-31)

    Here is the Christian retaliation: Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who mistreat you. Notice I didn’t say to post about it on social media. We are to pray, not post.

    If a person hits you on one side, offer the other side. If they steal, give them something else they didn’t ask for. Give to everyone who asks of you and don’t demand back.

    This seems unnatural to do—and it is. It’s supernatural. This is where the face of Jesus shows up clearer for you, on you, and for others.

    A number of years ago, Dr. David H. Fink, a psychiatrist for the veterans’ administration, wrote a book titled, Release from Nervous Tension. In his book, he outlined his research into the causes of mental and emotional disturbances in people’s lives.

    From more than ten thousand case studies, he discovered a common trait among all his patients who suffered from severe tension. They were habitual fault-finders, constant critics of people and things around them. Those who were free from tension and anxiety were the least critical. His conclusions were that the habit of fault-finding is a prelude or mark of the nervous, or the mentally unbalanced. Those who wish to retain good emotional and mental health should learn to free themselves from a negative and critical attitude.

    Thank you, Dr. Fink, but Jesus already mapped this out for us two thousand years earlier in His Sermon on the Mount. Instead of Jesus coming from a case-study standpoint, He came from the Creator standpoint. He already knew what was best for the people He created. So Jesus said, “Here’s how you respond to the craziness of people’s actions and reactions . . . instead of being critical and negative, do the supernatural.”

    And here is the result: when we do that, we get what we give and we will get more of it.

    If we show love, we will get a lot more back.

    If we show mercy, we will get it overflowing back.

    If we show pardon, we will be forgiven many times over.

    Jesus was telling us to let someone off the hook today. You may “have them” and have a screenshot of a text they sent, f

  • I Want My Own Fish Story

    I Want My Own Fish Story

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 49

    Today's Reading: Luke 5

    I have a prayer I pray that a pastor friend from Alabama taught me. It goes like this: “Lord, the answer is yes even before You ask.”

    I want to be able to say yes to the Lord at all times. I want you to be able to do that too, so let me talk to you about fishing and your yes, Lord agreement.

    I don’t really fish. I have been fishing but I am by no means a fisherman nor do I enjoy it.

    You always hear of people telling their fish story where the fish seems to get bigger and bigger the more they tell it. In actuality they caught Nemo, but over time they hooked Jaws.

    Today’s reading shows us a great fish story. This one is Peter’s:

    Now it happened that while the crowd was pressing around Him and listening to the word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret; and He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake; but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. And He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the land. And He sat down and began teaching the people from the boat. When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered and said, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets.” When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break; so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For amazement had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken. (Luke 5:1-9)

    Don’t miss those first few words, because they are significant.

    Jesus saw two boats (verse 2).

    He got into one boat (verse 3).

    He saw two, He got into one. This leaves me with the question, had I been there, would it have been my boat He got into?

    Why is that important? It’s important because that’s the boat the miracle came from. That’s the boat that had the big fish story attached to it. That’s the boat that caught so many fish that the net broke.

    But something else happened. Verse 7 says when the fishermen saw that the net was breaking, “they signaled to their partners in the other boat.” That’s boat number 2 of the story—the boat that wasn’t chosen. Peter received the miracle; the other boat received the overflow.

    The other boat didn’t have Jesus preach from it.

    The other boat didn’t have Jesus challenge them to go out deeper.

    The other boat didn’t hear fishing commands from a carpenter.

    The other boat got to participate with the fish.

    The other boat did not get a fish story but they got to tell another man’s fish story.

    The more I thought about it, the more I realized . . .

    I want God to choose me.

    I want God to pick my boat.

    I want God to pick my family.

    I’m tired of telling other people’s fish stories. I’m tired of getting to experience other people’s obedience.

    It’s time for me to go out deeper.

    It’s time for me to hear from God for myself.

    It’s time for me to let the carpenter tell the experienced man, “You don’t know everything, do what I say.”

    It’s time for me to get my own fish story.

    Tired of secondhand fish stories? There are always two boats ready! It’s time for you to say, “Yes, Lord! Use my boat, Jesus!”

  • Satan Quotes the Bible

    Satan Quotes the Bible

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 48

    Today's Reading: Luke 4

    In today’s reading we actually get to read one of the most amazing chapters of a different book—Psalm 91. Psalm 91 starts off with these familiar words:

    He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust!” (Verses 1-2)

    And then Psalm 91 ends with these powerful words from God:

    He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and let him see My salvation. (Verses 15-16)

    It is an entire psalm of God’s protection on His children. Sandwiched in between these verses is specific protection from God’s angels, His army:

    He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. They will bear you up in their hands, that you do not strike your foot against a stone. (Verses 11-12)

    We find this psalm quoted in Luke 4, but what makes this crazy is the one who quotes it. Ready for this? Satan, the devil himself quotes the Bible—to Jesus, God Himself.

    As we read today, Jesus is in the wilderness with the devil and He is fighting against the three temptations Satan throws at Him by quoting Scripture. Three times Jesus says, “It is written” to the devil. For the second temptation, Satan takes Jesus to the top of the temple and tempts Jesus to jump off the pinnacle and then complicates the temptation by quoting Psalm 91:

    The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Verses 9-11, NIV)

    A crazy temptation gets muddied when the devil quotes the Bible, which makes it seem justified. Satan says, “It is written” just as Jesus said it. The devil knows the Bible and that the devil quotes and uses and manipulates it is a very scary thought.

    People don’t realize that nothing is off limits for Satan. His attacks are not always to tempt us with obvious things, like porn, alcohol, or drugs. He can use the Bible to try to get people to do things in the name of God, without God being anywhere near it.

    Just because you have a Bible verse to back up your thoughts and actions may not mean that verse came from God. Could the devil have spoken a Verse to you?

    He did to Jesus. Listen closely. How do you think cults get started. With just one verse that Satan manipulates and tempts people to believe. Where do cults get their beginning? With a Satanic interpretation of a Bible verse. Satan’s interpretation of Psalm 91 was that God wanted Jesus to jump off the highest point of the temple to show that God wouldn’t let Him fall, that His angels would catch Him. Nothing could be more of an abuse to a passage of Scripture than what Satan told Jesus.

    He tried to get Jesus to do something based upon an isolated Scripture that wasn’t interpreted in light of the whole Bible.

    Did you get that? It is not that the Bible is in contradiction, it is that our interpretations contradict the Bible. And the misinterpretation comes when we define a verse without understanding its context, when we define a verse isolated from the entire Bible’s intent.

    Some years ago I was sitting with a young man in a Detroit diner who was convinced that Billy Graham and I were both going to hell if we were not baptized with a certain formula that his group said we had to be baptized with. For him salvation was built on a baptism formula instead of on the blood shed at Calvary. His religious group took a Bible passage and instead of adding all the other verse

  • John the Baptist’s Water Baptism Instructional Class

    John the Baptist’s Water Baptism Instructional Class

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 47

    Today's Reading: Luke 3

    Today I want to take you to a water baptism class. I believe that water baptism displays the difference between the casual Christian and a serious follower of Jesus, because it is clear in the Bible that it is a next step after being born again. As Max Lucado says, “Baptism separates the tire kickers from the car buyers.”

    Water Baptism does not mark an arrival but a beginning. Let me tell you four things that are important about water baptism:

    1. It’s Scriptural

    Water baptism was Jesus’ idea not the church’s. In Matthew 28:19-20, we read that Jesus connected water baptism to discipleship. Water baptism is done when a person is born again. You never read of an unbaptized believer anywhere in the Bible. Water baptism is done after second birth, not the first birth. There is not one single verse in the Bible that says you become a Christian when your body touches the water.

    2. Historically, It’s Public

    You are going public with your faith. When you get water baptized, you get advertised. It is a public declaration to show everyone whom you are following. You will see places in Scripture that say, “There was much water.”

    They would do this outside in a lake or a river. Wherever it took place, it was for everyone to see what had happened to that person. The same is true for you. The city, your family, your coworkers, heaven, and hell now know you have taken the second step of discipleship with your walk with Jesus.

    3. It’s Symbolic

    When we get married, we say, “With this ring, I thee wed.” Though we make that statement, we know that putting the ring on the finger is not what makes us married. The same is true with water baptism. There is no magic water. It’s not the water that does anything; it is our step of obedience that is the big deal. To make it anything more than a symbol is dangerous, it’s like worshiping our wedding bands.

    To cling to a symbol is what many try to do, though. And they miss what God is trying to show us. What is the symbol? It is a symbol of death, burial, and resurrection.

    4. Practically, It’s a Next Obedience Step

    Can we go to heaven dry and unbaptized? Of course we can. Anyone who says differently forgot a story about a thief on the cross who did not have the time or the tank to be baptized (see Luke 23:39-43).

    You express love by obedience. Love is not just a feeling. Love is a controlling passion to do something for the one we love. The apostle John told us, “If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you” (John 14:15, MSG).

    What makes Luke 3 crazy is how different John the Baptist’s baptismal class is:

    [John] began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:7-9)

    I don’t know if I would start my water baptism class with calling the people “snakes.” My class would start off with something like this, “I am so glad you are here.”

    After John called them snakes, he told them that an axe was resting on the root of their hearts waiting to chop it down if they have not repented and fruit has not come from their lives.

    It’s incredible what happens next: the people ask, “What shall we do?”

    They got it!

    I remember Leonard Ravenhill once telling me that when God is moving with repentance, we don’t have to tell people what to

  • Losing Jesus

    Losing Jesus

    · The 260 Journey

    Day 46

    Today’s Reading: Luke 2

    One of my favorite quotes about moms comes from the old 1960s’ comedian Milton Berle: “If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”

    With all a mother has to do, it is no surprise when a child gets accidentally left behind in the rush and frenzy of trying to get someplace. Have you ever done that? My wife and I have . . . or should I say, I have. I think each of my children have called me while I was driving in my car to tell me I left them at church.

    Have you ever lost a child in a store? In our family when I was growing up, we had a special whistle that my mom had. When we were lost we just listened for that whistle. Every mother has experienced losing a child at one time or another. Don’t be discouraged; even the best mother ever messed up. Ready for this? Mary, the mother of Jesus, lost Him.

    That’s our study today as we dive into Luke 2.

    It can be embarrassing to lose a child. But what if your child is Jesus—and you lost Him? Then it’s cataclysmic. Let’s read the story:

    Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when He became twelve, they went up there according to the custom of the Feast; and as they were returning, after spending the full number of days, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. But His parents were unaware of it, but supposed Him to be in the caravan, and went a day’s journey; and they began looking for Him among their relatives and acquaintances. When they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem looking for Him. Then, after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. When they saw Him, they were astonished; and His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You treated us this way? Behold, Your father and I have been anxiously looking for You.” And He said to them, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” (Luke 2:41-49)

    I love Mary and think she is an amazing woman. This story tells me why Mary could not be sinless, though. You can’t be sinless and lose God.

    Let’s get a couple of lessons from our story. Mary and Joseph made two big mistakes in this situation:

    1. They supposed Him to be in the caravan;

    2. They looked for Him among their relatives.

    Let’s consider the first mistake: they assumed Jesus was there without checking. They “supposed Him to be in the caravan.” How many times have we supposed something? We suppose because we are in a church that Jesus is there; or we suppose because someone says they are saved that Jesus is there in their heart. We can’t suppose anything. The question is: “Is He there or is He not there?” How do I know if Jesus is with you? Because wherever Jesus is, change happens. Not change on your weekend when you come to church, but an everyday change!

    How long has your journey gone on and you have not stopped even to ask yourself, Is Jesus with me? Or how long has it been until you realized that Jesus is not there with you? Thank God it took Mary and Joseph only a day to figure out that He wasn’t with them; many go on for years.

    Their second mistake was that they assumed, If He is with the family, He is with me.

    This is really dangerous. They looked for Him among their relatives, but they looked in the wrong place. We do that too. We look for Jesus in a church, a denomination, even on a day of the week. How often have we even thought, My mom is religious, so I am religious too. Your mom may have Jesus, but that doesn’t mean you do. The place you look for Jesus is in your own heart. God only comes where we invite Him into our lives. He is not there auto

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