On Whose Terms?
Luke 9:4,5 When you go into a house, stay there until it is time to leave. If the people in the town will not welcome you, go outside the town and shake the dust off your feet as a warning to them.
The desire to reshape God into an image that’s much easier for us to digest is one of the great temptations of this me-centred world in which we live. Indeed, there are things about God that even Christians yearn to ignore.
The thought of Jesus rejecting someone … well, it’s almost incomprehensible, isn’t it? Or is it?
Jesus sends His disciples out, two by two, on a missionary field trip. Some hands-on experience is, after all, a pretty normal part of ministry training. He tells them that they’re not to take any provisions with them … oh, and by the way, they’d need to find their own accommodation.
Luke 9:4,5 When you go into a house, stay there until it is time to leave. If the people in the town will not welcome you, go outside the town and shake the dust off your feet as a warning to them.
Now that doesn’t quite fit with the image of a gentle, loving Jesus, does it? Shake the dust off your feet … was a symbolic warning to those who’d rejected the Gospel, that one day too they would be rejected by God.
It’s funny how those who don’t even believe in God, or in a heaven or hell, find the notion of God consigning them to eternal hell and damnation deeply offensive.
It’s quite an odd response when you think about it, but then we live in a me-centred world. And in a world where we’re told that it’s “all about me”, it’s easy to start seeing God through that lens as well.
But let’s get this clear. Yes, He loves us. Yes, He’ll forgive us, but only if we put our trust in Jesus, His Son; only if we turn our lives around and back to Him.
Those are God’s terms. That’s it.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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Philip Crouch
The challenge for many of us, and me too, is not just to believe in Jesus but be willing and active in following Him. ...
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The challenge for many of us, and me too, is not just to believe in Jesus but be willing and active in following Him. By doing HIS will. Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, to His Father was “Not My will, but Your will be done”. Then He chose to die on the cross for us.