Huh...Help...Hooray!

Day 4! Matthew 8&9.

Huh? What did He say?

Man what happened to prosperity? Jesus apparently didn't know how to get people to follow Him, like we do today! If only He could have looked ahead 2000 years, He would have been able to speak a much clearer relevant message to the scribe and the disciple in Chapter 8:19-22..."Foxes have dens in which to sleep, and the birds have nests. But the Son of Man has no place to lay His head." Did Jesus really just tell the scribe that He was homeless? Certainly Jesus can not be implying that to follow Him may mean that the Scribe wouldn't even be guaranteed the most basic of daily comforts? 

Then Jesus gets really bold as a disciples says, "Lord, first let me return home and bury my father." And Jesus told him, "Follow me now. Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead." Is Jesus saying that following Him could mean that our family is no longer the main priority of our existence? 

What? For many that could be quite a shock! That doesn't exactly line up with some of the reasons we are encouraged to follow Jesus. I am glad that we are only at the beginning of these 4 books! There is plenty of time for Jesus to soften up with His demands for His followers! Keep reading!

HELP!

8:25- I love this text! It's encouraging to find out that I am not the only idiot with short term memory loss to follow Jesus. Think about all the we have read so far, and the disciples saw it all first hand, the miracles, the power of Jesus, how awesome that must have been. With that in mind look what happens the first time they face danger. They freak out like a bunch of Jr. high girls at a haunted house! They start yelling we are going to die. I love it. I am encouraged that I am not the only person who can in one moment be marveling at the awesomeness of God and in an instance lack any faith that things will work out!

Matthew 9

verse 11. We see Jesus ruffling the feathers of the Pharisees. The Pharisees see Jesus hanging out with sinners and question why He would associate with them. We know that the Pharisees would continue to struggle with this. I can't help but be curious how much of this was rooted in pride. I mean after all they were the good church people. They had devoted their life to the church shouldn't Jesus be rewarding them? Shouldn't He be spending His time with them in the temple. Surely this is not the Messiah because He is associating with people we have forbidden in our temples! If Jesus were to come in the form of a man today, where would we find Him?

HOORAY!! 

We see a genuine response to meeting the Savior in  verse 31. Jesus has just healed two blind men, and has told them not to tell anyone. "But when the men left, they told everyone in the area they met what had happened." These men illustrated that when you encounter Christ nothing is the same and you can't help but telling everyone about your encounter. We will see this again and again. You don't find anyone who had an encounter and went ssh, that's personal! It changed their lives and they talked about it!

When Jesus saw the crowds He had compassion on them! They seemed like lost sheep without a shepherd. Jesus was moved with compassion to act! He wants us to do the same, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send more workers into His harvest field." What would the impact be if we stopped simply praying for God to motivate and send other people and instead asked Him to fill OUR hearts with compassion and said send ME?