A New Week; Get Up and Follow Me

Good Morning from the Bitterroot Valley;

I must start with an apology to my regular readers.  I was missing in action most of the last week.  Paying work took precedence over by blog devotionals.  It is hard for me to balance everything out with work and home life and chores.  Winter in construction is generally a slow time while summers become a frenzied rush to first catch up and then store up for the winter ahead.

The past week we have had temperatures close to 100 nearly every day, quite an adjustment from the 60’s only a couple of weeks ago!  This week promises to be cooler, in the 80’s, and the sun is about to poke its head over the horizon so enjoy the view and today’s devotional.

In opening the Bible this morning I came across Matthew 9:9-13

9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples.

11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

13But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

A few quick thoughts from a Regular Joe on these verses before I head out the door:

1. When God calls on us to do something, do we as Christians, get up and follow?
2. Are we as Christians meeting with “tax collectors and sinners” and sharing a message of love and salvation, or are we more comfortable in our “church family” never getting out loving the lost?
3. Are we judging and looking down on the “tax collectors and sinners” around us thinking that we are above them like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day?
4. Jesus did not come to call self-righteous Pharisees to follow him, but rather sinners, people who knew that they needed a Savior.

If you have accepted Christ as the Savior then remember the joy and freedom that you felt when the weight of the sin was lifted from you.  Can you think of someone who would like to experience that feeling also?

If you are not a follower of Christ Jesus, consider his message of love, hope and grace.

John 3:16-21

16“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

If you have been blessed in reading this share it with someone you meet today.

Regular Joe

Related articles

• The 5 Ways to have Relentless Radical Love (davidsbodytemple.wordpress.com)
• Learning from a Tax Collector: Four Bible Study Activities (bugsandstuff.wordpress.com)