#friday devotions

In Luke 2, after a frantic search, Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple listening to the teachers, hearing the stories of their ancestors, discussing the reason that he and his family had trekked 80 miles from their hometown of Nazareth to the city of Jerusalem. The teachers were probably reflecting on the Passover, the great event when God heard the cry of his people and rescued them from an oppressive regime. They might have dipped into the story of the Exodus and the 40 year desert wanderings and discussed the ups and downs and trials and tribulations of the journey. From the posture of listening attentively, Jesus was able to ask insightful questions – questions that amazed the wise Jewish scholars.

I am currently part of a team and living in a township called Soshanguve in South Africa. Our neighbors have experienced a country engulfed in horrific segregation that gave the white citizens all the power. These same neighbors voted in 1994 in the first fully free democratic election. Since then, the country and its people have worked steadily to recover from the turbulent past. During our time here, we have discovered how important it is to tune in to the unfolding journey that the country has been on, to hear the stories of our neighbors who have experienced the many changes, to be attentive to the cries of those who are still oppressed, and to listen to the heartbeat of God for this place.

This posture of listening has helped us to appreciate the bigger picture and to better understand our friends in Soshanguve as they struggle with poor quality education, unemployment, a massive gap between rich and poor, and a variety of other difficult issues. Hearing their stories has helped us to love our neighbors better.

This kind of listening is critical in a cross-cultural setting like ours, but it is a deeply powerful part of following Jesus no matter where we live. Good listening allows us to ask questions like “What is God already doing here?” and “What is my role in it?” Good listening creates opportunities to express the love of God and to respond to need in ways that honor and bless. Good listening prepares us, just like young Jesus in the Temple, for a life of living out the good news of the Kingdom of God.

QUESTIONS FOR APPLICATION

Would you consider yourself a good listener? As you think about the people you will meet during the coming day, is there someone who might benefit from being listened to?

Do you have practices in your life that help you to listen for the leading of God? If so, what is God saying to you today? If not, experiment with taking a few minutes in silence to listen for God’s direction and inspiration.

Satan’s strategy is the same throughout the ages — to cast doubt on the faithfulness and goodness of God. Nowhere is our faith more tested than in seasons of loss. Loss is the site of much of Satan’s sifting, tempting us to doubt God’s goodness and question his ways.

I am in the enemy’s target right now. After 20 years of tolerating life with an unwelcome occupant — multiple sclerosis — my prognosis has shifted to a more progressive form. For the first ten years, I found this disease unpleasant, annoying, and sometimes scary but still manageable. The second ten years have been life-altering. I no longer teach or play piano, write music, or lead worship. I do not walk and seldom drive. Fatigue is my constant companion. These have been difficult losses to process. At times, I find myself living in the regret expressed in Ecclesiastes 7:10: “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.’”

But Jesus has prayed for me, that my faith might not fail. He has changed the question from “Why?” to “For what purpose?” The Savior’s prayer over Simon Peter was a prayer for his future calling. When his faith was restored, he would have the capacity to strengthen and encourage his brothers by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I see a similar pattern emerging for me. No longer able to walk, I am homebound most of the time, planted in my rocker with my laptop close at hand. This is my mission base as I send out notes, prayers, and scriptures over the web and expect God to speak through me in phone calls. Disability has not slowed the work of the Holy Spirit. He will use me, in my rocking chair, with the phone in reach and a computer on my lap.

QUESTIONS FOR APPLICATION

Do you have losses and limitations that “interrupt” your life and ministry?

How has the Lord helped you process this season?

Take a moment to thank Jesus for calling you and using you in his Kingdom plan, just the way you are.

I was 21 years old, a college student living a double life in which I served as a leader in our campus Christian fellowship and then partied through the weekends. In all of my wretchedness, I tried to push God away. I knew this moment with Emily and Herbert was a sacred one, and I wanted to hide.

About six years later, I found myself in Kenya in search of next steps.

I visited the home of a recovered alcoholic, Mary. She went through rehab and found herself again, in the arms of Jesus. We sat together in the dim light of that mud house. She recounted how her first thought when she would wake up each morning used to be about a drink instead of her children. She told me how she got sober and wanted to share God’s love with her neighbors.

In that holy space, she thanked me for coming and asked me to close our time in prayer.

But God, who am I to pray with this woman? My scars do not compare to hers.

She was a sinner turned saint. I was an ordinary twenty-something who had only known a comfortable California life. This was an entirely different world where I had no tools or experience to rely on. No formal training, no seminary degree. I was the fisherman, not the rabbi.

Simon Peter tells Jesus to go away from him because he is a sinful man. Here is the brutal truth: I have been Simon Peter in this moment, over and over. I am a sinful person with dark parts in my heart. I am no biblical scholar, and sometimes I can barely call myself a missionary.

Yet Jesus still invites me, like he did in San Francisco with Herbert and in Kenya with Mary. He invites me into his beautiful work, regardless of my weaknesses and imperfections.

When Emily and I prayed together for Herbert, it was an act of acknowledgement of his humanity and dignity. When I prayed with Mary, it was an act of sealing her restoration and healing.

I cast my nets into the deep water and was astonished by the catch. My messy and clumsy and fumbling efforts, turned into something extraordinary through the redemptive power of Jesus.

QUESTIONS FOR APPLICATION

What are some of the things you use to disqualify yourself from saying “Yes” to Jesus’ invitation to leave everything and follow him? Bring these before him in prayer.

How does Jesus respond to, or even dispel, your “disqualifications”?

Jesus tells Simon Peter that he will fish for people. What does this currently look like in your own life? Could you be casting your nets deeper or wider?

Jesus was at a wedding. In those days, weddings were feasts lasting seven to ten days, and all Jews understood that the Messianic age would be inaugurated with a great banquet, like that of a wedding (Isaiah 25:6-8). John hints to his Jewish readers that Jesus is inaugurating the Messianic age and the coming of the Kingdom of God.

To run out of food or wine for your guests would bring shame on the host family. John, however, uses this problem and the exchange between Mary and Jesus to point to a greater reality: “Woman … My hour has not yet come.” Mary is not simply asking Jesus to run to the supermarket. She is prodding him to get on with his Messianic mission. Jesus’ use of the word “woman” reminds us of the first woman, Eve, and the promise that her offspring would one day “crush the ancient serpent’s head” (Genesis 3:15). Jesus knows perfectly well that his mother, the second Eve, knows who he is and is confronting him, the second Adam, with her desire to drink of the “new wine of the Kingdom”.

Jesus turns ceremonial water into wine. The empty stone jars were normally filled with ceremonial water, used to cleanse people of their uncleanliness under Jewish law. In asking the servants to “fill the jars to the brim with water”, John is again using the scenario as a metaphor for Jesus’ ability to fulfill the requirements of the law, not through ceremonial washing but by way of his blood, the alternative cleansing agent of the new covenant.

What does all of this mean for us? It means that Jesus’ most important miracle is the inauguration of a new age of abundant banqueting with God (symbolized by a wedding); an age where the deceiver, Eve’s old enemy, is crushed under our Savior’s feet; an age where blood-bought cleanliness and freedom triumphs over the keeping of religious laws (symbolized by turning ceremonial water into wine).

We are no longer under law but grace. Jesus came to serve by inaugurating the greatest miracle of all: a banquet-ready, triumphant, blood-bought Bride who stands clean before her Father.

QUESTIONS FOR APPLICATION

If God were to have a banquet with you sitting next to him as his honored guest, what would you want to say to him? What would you ask him? Write down what you would say, and listen for God’s response.

If you were to toast one of the other guests (another follower of Jesus), who would it be and what would you say about them? Write a note of encouragement to someone in your faith community letting them know how they have impacted you.

Since God has invited you to the greatest banquet of all, who can you invite to your home for a meal who has not yet experienced the miracle of being a part of God’s family?