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 Luke 18:18-30: The ministry of making sad.(please click here for todays passage)

It is good for us when Jesus makes us sad. It is for our benefit when He exposes our idols. Actually, Jesus wants to make people glad (23), but we experience sadness when we see that we need to dethrone a god and choose Christ, and we make the wrong choice. This ‘ruler…became very sad’ (23) when he realised that our Lord had forced the issue. He stood naked and exposed before Jesus, clinging to His wealth, but still wishing that he could have Jesus also.

It needs to be remembered that there were other wealthy people in the Bible who were not issued the same set of instructions regarding their goods. ‘Jesus does not tell everyone to sell their possessions. But he knew that love of possessions was preventing this young man from giving his life to God. Whenever we love anything more than God, we must give it up, we must ”sell it” Tom Hale: ‘The applied New Testament Commentary’, p.253.

‘The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be,

Help me to tear it from thy throne, and worship only thee.’

But when we sacrifice at Jesus’ command, we are never the losers (29, 30).Earlier today I read these words written by Dallas Willard in ‘The spirit of the disciplines’, p.175:

‘…how nourishing to our faith are the tokens of God’s care in response to our sacrifice. The cautious faith that never saws off the limb on which it is sitting never learns that unattached limbs may find strange, unaccountable ways of not falling.

Once while in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, my wife and I decided to give away what we had left after paying the bills at the first of the month. It was not much to give away, but we did it. And we told no one. How odd then that a twenty dollar bill was found pinned to the steering wheel of our car a week or so later! With hamburger at thirty-nine cents a pound, we lived like royalty until the next month, convinced we were enjoying the provisions of the King. With the discipline of sacrifice, we practice a different dimension of faith, and often we are surprised at its results.’

Prayer: Thank you Jesus that you will never let us down. Thank you too that in your great mercy and love, you put your finger on our idols so we may be rid of them.

 Luke 18:9-14: The lowest branches.(please click here for todays passage)

It is interesting and helpful to read this parable in a modern version of the Bible such as the ‘The Message’.

‘He told this story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people.’

We see that the Pharisee was a religious poser: ‘The Pharisee posed and prayed like this…’ His prayer was full of self-righteous self-congratulation. He was slapping himself very warmly on the back as he prayed and assumed that God shared his viewpoint.  He thought the Lord was very lucky to have him on His team.Watch out for the slightest hint of self-righteousness. If you allow it living space in your heart it will blind you to truth about yourself you really need to see. Ultimately it will keep you out of heaven. The New International Version says that he ‘prayed about himself’ (and the margin suggests that it could mean that he prayed ‘to’ himself). God wasn’t interested in such a self-interested prayer. It is humility that cuts ice in the realms above.

”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 yourself.”

It remains true – and it always will be – that ‘everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.’ (14; see James 4:10/1 Peter 5:6). Someone wrote that ‘in God’s garden, the branches that hang the lowest bear the most fruit.’

Without humility you will never face the fact you are a sinner; but it is imperative that you do if you are ever going to be made right with God.

 Luke 18:1-8: Never give in!(please click for todays passage)

Walter Wink said that ‘history belongs to the intercessors’. It truly does, and I think that is why the devil hates prayer so much. He knows full well the damage it will do to him and his kingdom, so he trains his big guns on it. ‘When we go to God by prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him, and therefore he opposeth us all he can.’ Richard Sibbes. That, for me, is the main reason why so many church prayer meetings are more than half empty.

Does your life line up with the teaching of Jesus in this wonderfully encouraging story? 

‘Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.’ (1).

‘Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit.’ (The Message).

Are you cultivating a heart which prays without ceasing? Have you given up praying for anyone or anything?

‘But how much of that persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?’ (The Message).

Prayer is one of Luke’s big themes. We have already seem something similar about praying in a wonderful passage (11:1-13). It’s been said that you can take all the teaching of Jesus about prayer and boil it down to one word: persistence (or perseverance).

Notice the widow ‘kept coming to him’ (3). The judge said she ‘keeps bothering me’… (5). God wants us to be like the widow in our praying, and to know that He is not like the unjust judge. As someone said, prayer is laying hold of God’s willingness, not overcoming His reluctance.

It is said that Winston Churchill stood before his old school and delivered the shortest message of his political career. He just said, ‘Never give in, never give in, never give in!’ Let such a spirit fuel your prayers, and don’t allow Satan to mug you.

Prayer: Lord, I want to pray exactly in the way you say I should. Help me to keep going. I don’t want the devil to fulfill his prayer-preventing agenda in me.