Grace

Romans 5:19-20

“For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners so also through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.  The law came along to multiply the trespass. But where sin multiplied grace multiplied even more.”

                In most every Christian church on any given Sunday morning you are going to hear that we are forgiven of our sins because of our faith that we place in Jesus Christ, and there is no possible way for us to work our way to God. But do we actually live that out in our daily lives?

                I was listening to a pastor a while back and he was talking about the fact that we have this idea in our minds that we have good spiritual days and we have bad spiritual days. But, if we are saved and kept by the grace of Jesus Christ at salvation, and when we get saved we are forgiven of our past, present and future sins, then does that really mean that we are going to have good or bad spiritual days? If once I am saved I am just as much a child of the King as I will be 30 years from now then how is there days when I am going to have good and bad days with him? I am I going to do things that let him down and make him want to turn me away from him? Probably so, and those are bad things and we should try to abstain from those types of things, but when we preach that once you get saved Jesus died for you sins past, present and future then do you think that we are going to do anything in our lives that is going to surprise God?

                The section of scripture ahead may seem like when you first read it that it is a passage that is just condoning going out and sinning all that you want because the grace of God has already covered your sins and the more that you sin the more that God’s grace will be shown. But if you continue reading to Romans 6 you will see that God says “Should we continue in sin so that grace may abound? Absolutely not! How can we who have died to sin continue to live in it?” So I don’t want you reading this devotion and thinking that our church is simply telling you that you should go out and sin, but what we are trying to teach you is that your sin does not change the fact that you are saved.  We are all going to struggle with sin in our lives, even after we get saved. Yes, we die to sin when we get saved, and that means that we don’t live in sin anymore, but we are human so we are occasionally going to fall into sin. We are not immune to failure at some level once we become saved. Some of us may struggle when we get saved of shaking off those old sin habits that we have lived in for so many years, whether it be lust, greed, self-righteousness, gossip, or whatever else it may be. But this still doesn’t change the fact that when we get saved we become a child of the all mighty God that created the universe.

                The amazing thing about the gospel, as one pastor put it, “is not that God loves sinners, but it is that God loves me.” Why would he say something like that? Because he knows how sinful he actually  is, just like you know how sinful you actually are.  I mean think about all the lustful, or greedy, selfish thoughts that go through you mind in a day, and think about how God still loves you in spite of that. And not to mention the deeds that we say are righteous that have to be forgiven. As Martin Luther said, “God doesn’t just save us for our bad deeds, but also from our damnable good deeds also.” As Isaiah says, “Our righteousness is like filthy rages”, and if that is the case then Martin Luther was right on the money because the things that we consider to be righteous usually have a hidden agenda behind them where we want to come out on top and look the best.

The Most Unlikely of Characters

Mark 15: 43

“Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin who was himself looking forward to the kingdom of God, cam and boldly went in to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.”

                Why would we say that Joseph is the most unlikely of characters? Well due to the way that the Bible describes him as being a prominent member of the Sanhedrin would defiantly qualify him as an unlikely character to be taking part in the burial of Jesus. But let’s back up and see why it is so unusual for him to be taking part with anything to do with Jesus.

                If we go back to Mark, chapter 14, when Jesus has been arrested after being betrayed by one of his own disciples, Judas, we see that he is taken in front of a group to be judged. This is the mock trial of Jesus. He is taken in front of the Sanhedrin, the group that Joseph of Arimathea was a part of, though it is unlikely he took part in this trial. But none the less he was a “prominent member of this group”. But when Jesus is taken in front of them they hold a fake trial to get Jesus to blasphemy God in some sort of way so that they can get the Roman officials to kill him, that way Jesus would be out of the way for Passover week. During this false trial Jesus does admit to being the Messiah by Mark’s account and even says that the members of the Sanhedrin will see the “Son of man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” This sentence will enrage the leader of the Sanhedrin, Caiaphas, so much that he will rip his clothes in half at the sound of it. So just to make the picture of the Sanhedrin a little more clearly, they were pretty much like the Jewish Supreme Court. They didn’t however possess the power to sentence anyone to death; that had to be done by a Roman official, they just needed the evidence they wanted. These people were not very big fans of Jesus and when you hear Sanhedrin you usually wouldn’t think of someone who cared enough about Jesus to be willing to take his dead body and burry it. But to that is exactly what Joseph of Arimathea did. He went to someone higher than himself, Pilate, the Roman official, and asked to have the body of Jesus, the man that the Sanhedrin’s and the people of Jerusalem had just shouted to be killed.

                So what do we need to take away from this act by Joseph of Arimathea? Well first I think that it needs to be pointed out that sometimes the most unlikely of people that you think will get saved and have a relationship with Christ are the ones that serve him the most boldly. It took someone with guts to go and ask for the body of a hated man, especially someone who could have easily sentenced him to death for saying he was a part of what Jesus was about. That is why he is the most unlikely character, because everything in society was telling Joseph that he didn’t need to have anything to do with Jesus, but the Holy Spirit had opened his heart and it says that Joseph was “looking forward to the kingdom of God”. God was moving in this man’s life and I believe that his story is in here for a reason. We should take note that God can be moving in anyone’s heart, drawing them to himself.

                Second notice that Joseph was not like the rest of the disciples. He was a man of high regard.  He was a respected man in the community. The others were fisherman, tax collectors and zealots. To be honest the group that was closest to Jesus would have been considered the low lifes of Jesus’ day and time. But Joseph on the other hand would have had esteem and a little bit of power. Well why is this a big deal? Because it just promotes the fact that Jesus came for everyone even more.  Jesus is not just the Savior for the down and out, or the bottom feeders, but he is also the God of the highly qualified, high society and high ranking. As we look to this week leading up to Easter let’s be reminded that God may be working in the most unusual of people, we never know. And also, let us be conscious that Jesus came to die for everyone’s sins. The rich and poor, the nice and mean, and the slums of society and the leaders of society.

Praying in the Spirit

Ephesians 6:18

“With every prayer and request pray at all times in the Spirit and stay alert in this, with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.”

                I’m sure that with a title like “Praying in the Spirit” it will make this devotion look like we are fixing to learn about speaking in tongues or something like that, but I don’t believe that is exactly what this passage is teaching. Sorry to let you down. I believe that this passage and others like it, (Jude 20) are talking about something completely different.

                What exactly does it mean to pray in the Holy Spirt? Or in the Spirit? Well, my understanding of praying in the Spirit is simply praying in God’s will, and not our own.  Romans 8:26-27 says “In the same way the Spirit also joins to help in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit  Himself intercedes for us with unspoken groaning’s. And He who searches the hares knows the Spirits mind-set, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” This passage here tells us that when we pray the Holy Spirit actually prays for us. But why? Well, it’s actually quite simple. We don’t know what to pray for. 

                If you sit down and think about what you actually pray about during your daily prayer time and make a list of what you say I am betting that there is actually not that much of it where it is aimed at praising and worshipping God. I will take my own prayer life for example, and when I pray I start by praising God, but this only last a brief part of the prayer, then I ask for forgiveness of a short list of sins that comes to mind, because let’s be honest, I have no idea how many times I have sinned against God and if I named them all it would take a lot longer than the time I actually ask God to forgive me. Then the rest of the prayer is spent asking God for specific things. And these things aren’t necessarily bad things to be asking for, but at the end of the prayer it turns out looking like a Christmas list that ends with “in the name of Jesus”.

                I say all of this to emphasize the point that was mentioned above. We don’t know what to pray for. Why? Because we don’t know what the will of God is most of the time and that is why it takes praying in the Holy Spirit for us to truly pray to God the way that we need to. He knows what the will of God is and that is why it is important that he “intercedes” or in other words, “talks for us” or “translates” what we really say into something that is lining up with the will of God.

                This is a good things because sometime we ask for things in a very sincere way, but they are really not what is best for us. We may be asking for a raise at work or for some sort of blessing in our lives when God knows that all that will do is draw us further away from him. We are usually like kids at the grocery store who want to get everything we see and God has to be the mom who tells us “no, that’s not good for you and you don’t need that”. Because, like the kid at the store who wants to buy all the junk food and candy and go home and eat it, we pray and ask for junk that is not good for us and is going to hurt us.

                So praying in the Spirit is not praying in tongues or a special language, instead it is simply praying in the will of God. It is having our prayers line up with God’s will and what he knows is best for us and for this world. We have to realize that we only see the small portion of the picture but God sees the whole thing and knows what is best. His ways are not our ways, they are higher than ours thankfully. We simply need to trust God and when we come to our time of prayer we should pray that His will would be done and not ours, and that he would mold our hearts into seeing what his will is for us and for the people around us.

Tyler Mooring

John the Baptist Search

Matthew 11: 2-6

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent a message by his disciples ³ and asked Him, “Are You the One who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” Jesus replied to them, “Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind see, the lame walk, those with skin diseases are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are told the good news.  And if anyone is not offended because of Me, he is blessed.”

        We all at some point or another have questions about our faith. I believe that it is human nature that calls us to want to know absolutely every single answer there is out there about our faith. But, there are just some things that we will have to figure our when we see Jesus face to face. Luckily for us, the question that John the Baptist had was not one of those questions that we have to wait and find the answer out to.

        John had been the voice in the wilderness calling out, preparing the way for Jesus to come in and do His ministry. But, even he had his doubts when we pick things up here in Matthew 11, where John find himself in prison for doing what he believed he had been called to do. He had to find out for sure that Jesus was the Messiah that the people had been waiting for all of these years. And the answer that he got back was a resounding “YES, I am the Messiah”. Although when you first read it it may not seem as clear to you as Jesus just simply saying “Yes, it is me.” But that is what he is saying. Jesus tells John’s disciples to go back and to tell him what has been going on. “the blind see, the lame walk, those with skin disease are healed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised.” These are things that only God could do. He was showing that he had control over all of these things and could fix people’s physical ailments back to the way they were supposed to be.

        But lets concentrate on John for a minute. Like was mentioned earlier, he was the one that was chosen before the beginning of time to preach about Jesus coming. He had come out of the wilderness and had tons of people following him and being baptized because he preached that the kingdom of God was near. Now, he or all people, had the serious question of whether or not Jesus was really the one that was the Messiah. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but this makes John the Baptist, a man who seemed like the most secure man in his faith in the whole world, who to me seemed like a legend among men, all of a sudden look more like a real human being. Because let’s be honest, there has been times in all of our lives where we have questioned the Lordship of Jesus, and while it is reassuring in one way to see someone like John ask the same question, what is really reassuring is Jesus answer.

        There is no rebuke in it at all. In none of that passage above do you hear Jesus condemning John for even asking such a question. He didn’t bring up the fact that John was supposed to be the one who was preparing the way for Jesus and he should have known. No, he simply reassured him that Jesus was in fact the Messiah that had been promised for years to come.

        So be comforted in that when you have questions about God, He is not going to send a lightning bolt down to kill you, but he will gently remind you of what he has done in the past to prove that he is the Messiah and he will probably remind you what he has done in your personal life to remind you he is the Messiah. So go ahead, ask Jesus the hard questions. I promised that each and every time you will find assurance in his word that he is who he said he was.

Racial Reconciliation

Ephesians 2:11-15

So then, remember that at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh—called “the uncircumcised” by those called “the circumcised,” which is done in the flesh by human hands.  At that time you were without the Messiah, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah. For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. In His flesh, He made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations, so that He might create in Himself one new man from the two, resulting in peace.

                Things have seemingly gone back to normal in relation to the interaction between the African American community and the white community. But, in the past months the waters have not looked as calm as they do today. We had the situation with Michael Brown a few months back, and then we had the incident with Eric Garner in New York, and with these situations comes strife and enmity between the races. It really brings to light the fact that all of the work that seemed to be accomplished in the 1960’s in the Civil Rights Movement was not really accomplished. The racism and hatred from both sides seemed to swell up and explode all over the place. But the most disappointing thing about all of this, is the way that the church reacted to these situations.

                The verse that is above is written by Paul to a church trying to get them to see what I believe we all need to see and be reminded of today. It says that we were all once far off from Christ and excluded from Israel. I believe that the idea that Christianity is an American religion that has belonged to us for thousands of years has crept in and given us a sense of superiority, but if we read that, we should take note that we were all far away from God. But, the good news is that by the blood of the Messiah, He tore down the wall that was separating us. (And by us I not only mean African Americans and whites, but also racial tension between American and Iranians, or any other type of racism or ethnic superiority that exist.) And by His death he ‘made both groups one’. Jesus made one “new man”. This is an amazing act that God has done. In the context of the letter it just narrows it down to Jew and Gentile but what is really taking place here is much wider than that. God has broken down the dividing wall between every country, language, people group, and nation. We are all one people. I am no longer just an American, but I am first and foremost a CHRISTIAN American. I am God’s child.

                And the most radical thing takes place when we join the family of God. We now have more in common with the Christian in Russia than we do with our best friend who is not a Christian and grew up in the same neighborhood as us. I am universally connect to people all over the planet because of what Christ did by tearing down the wall that was dividing up people. And so that affect should take place here in America, in the Church! We should weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn in the church, no matter what their color or ethnicity is. That is what we are called to do.

                A pastor out of Texas that I listen to a lot had a really good illustration about connecting with each other, within the church, across racial lines in times of tragedy, and what we shouldn’t do. He said, “IF you fail to baby prof your house and your infant/toddler wonders over and sticks a paper clip into an outlet and get electrocuted it would not be right for me to show up at your house and tell you “well you should have done this or done that, and here are some links to how to baby prof your house”. No, the first thing you would expect me to do is to mourn with you in your lose.” I thought it was an excellent illustration about how we usually handle things across racial barriers now. We are called to connect with our brother and sister in Christ in their situation. I fall so tremendously short in this category myself but that is still not an excuse to skip over the situation. We as a church are called to love one another.

Love your Enemies

Matthew 5:43-45

“You have heard it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father in heaven. For he causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.”

                With all that has gone on in just the past week with the killings of 21 Egyptian Christians and 45 Iranians by ISIS, along with three Muslims killed in Chapel Hill this verse keeps coming back into my mind. Hate and vengeance seem to be in full supply these days and people want to repay evil with evil, and to be completely honest I have had times in the past week where I have felt hatred towards the people who are causing so much harm and fighting in our world today. I have wanted to love my neighbor but keep hating my enemy, but that is not what God has called us to.

                The words above that are the center of our devotion were spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and he was no stranger to persecution or hatred. If you will remember that He was killed for a crime he didn’t commit by people that he came to preach the Gospel to. And even before that there are situations where Jesus was run out of towns by people because they disagreed with what he had to say. And even growing up under the rule of the Roman Empire during this time, people like Jesus knew what it was like to have people push you around and tell you what to do and literally have your enemy living next to you. But how do we take what Jesus said so many years ago about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you and put them into action today? Surely Jesus was not talking about us praying and loving members of ISIS. Yes, I full heartedly believe that is exactly the kind of people that he was talking about.

                During a discussion in Sunday school this past week we talked about how it seems like good things and happen to bad people, or how bad people seem to prosper. And interesting Psalm was brought up during the discussion and it is Psalm 73 (I encourage you to read it), it is written by a man named Asaph and he had the same type of question, why do good things seem to happen to bad people? Or why to the wicked seem to prosper? A question that I am sure has passed through our minds as we watch terrorist mutilate people and seemingly nothing being done about it. But Asaph comes to and interesting point in his quest for an answer. It says in Psalm 73:16-18 “When I tried to understand all this it seemed hopeless until I entered God’s sanctuary. Then I understood their destiny. Indeed you put them in slippery places; You make them fall into ruin.” Asaph looked down the road and saw that a day was coming when God would vindicate all the wrong that these people had done. And that is what he is going to do to all the people who are terrorizing Christians now and even people who are far off from Him. While we want to see justice served I don’t think we should rejoice in people going to hell, at least which is what I think that Jesus is trying to tell us in Matthew.

Sinful Boredom

Galatians 1:6

“I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from Him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-“

                In our country today there seems to be this high population of nominal Christians who just put on the name tag of Christianity but in real life they really want nothing to do with it. They don’t want anything to with God’s word, and reading it and studying it. They don’t want anything to do with repentance and recognizing there is sin in their lives. And in some case these are people who are filling our church pews on Sunday mornings.

                It seems like we have become bored with God and what He has to say to us, and that is a very dangerous place to be. Because what starts to happen when we stop listening to what God has to say? We start listening to what everyone else has to say. And what happens when people who are in our churches start to live this way? The church loses the power to reach people outside because it’s members are no longer living Holy lives that follow Christ. We see that is the case in the Galatian church. They had let people come in and fill their minds with something besides the true Gospel. I think that we are letting the same thing happen to us, except we are letting people come in we are just getting bored with God.

                I want to point out two reasons why people get bored with God during this devotion and try to get you to be aware of these things. The first reason is I believe that people have forgotten what God sacrificed for us in the Gospel. I think that we have sat in church pews on Sunday mornings, thinking about what is for lunch or what football game is coming on, that we have totally stopped listening to the Gospel. We have slummed down to this spot where we believe that we are saved now so we no longer need to be reminded of our sins or the fact that Jesus died for them. I would say that it is the complete opposite. Because you have been saved you should be wanting to know more and more about the Gospel and specifically how you can better share it with other people. You have become bored because instead of getting in the fight to further the kingdom of God you are sitting on the sidelines thinking that it is everyone else’s job. As Christians we should be amazed by the Gospel every time that we hear and we realize that we one were dead, doomed for hell, but God loved us so much that he was willing to die for us so that we wouldn’t have to face that terrible destiny that we all deserve.

                The second reason I thing that we have gotten bored with God is that we have forgotten that He is coming back again. If you think about your day to day life, how often do you think about Jesus coming back? Probably very rarely if ever. We have forgotten that he is going to split the sky open one day and come back to get us. We have gotten so caught up in taking our kids here or there, or meeting this deadline at work, or whatever it may be that we have totally missed the fact that we are only here on this earth for a little while. The things that you do here, while they do hold importance, they are nowhere near as important as your relationship with God. The thought of Christ coming back again should bring joy and excitement to the true Christian and cause us to want to celebrate our salvation and want to tell other people that they can enjoy it too. But somehow we have gotten too afraid we may look weird or offend someone by stating that we believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven that we have lost vision for the awesomeness of the Gospel, and of the fact that we don’t serve a God that has made us and left us here to ourselves, no, we serve a God that is going to come back and judge the quick and the dead with true justice one day, so we best be ready for it.

                If you feel like you have gotten bored with God and your relationship with him has just become simple repetition and depth of love for God or other people, then let me encourage you to pray and ask for forgiveness for not being serious enough about your relationship with God. Jump into your Bible and study it, don’t just read over it and say that you are done with it. Look into it and see what it is trying to say. See where Jesus can be found at in every scripture. And pray like you are talking to you best friend. Be open and honest with God. If you are struggling with something tell him and ask for his help, he already knows anyways. Thank him for the salvation that you have and ask him to show you on a daily basis how amazing it is that he would come and save us.

Parable of the Hidden Treasure

Matthew 13:44

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure, buried in a field that a man found and reburied. Then in his joy he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field.”

                A lot of the time I believe we can let the Gospel affect us to a certain degree, and then we make it stop when it starts to reach certain areas. If we look at the short parable above we see that the man found a treasure, and it doesn’t say that he just went back to that spot on Sundays to look at it and enjoy it. It doesn’t say that he just took the really really good things that he want, that fit in with his lifestyle, and left the rest. No, it says that he left every single thing he had, he literally sold everything so that he could buy the field that the treasure was buried in.

                Just from the text alone we can see that the treasure is meant to be the “kingdom of heaven”, and what I believe the text is trying to get across here is that when we come into contact with the Kingdom of Heaven, it should change us forever. Like I mentioned before, I believe that we as Christians can come into contact with the Gospel, and only let it go as far as we want. We profess Christ to be our Lord and Savior at church, but we don’t want Him to mess with the things that we do on Friday and Saturday nights. Or we don’t want him to change the way we act at work, or how we treat people. We become pretty successful at sectioning off our lives to the parts we want God to be a part of, and the sections that we don’t want Him to be a part of.

                But that isn’t the picture that we see in this one verse parable. We see that the man who found the treasure was willing to give up everything he had ever accumulated in his life to buy this field that the treasure was in. But why? Why would you give up everything that you have worked your entire life for to have a treasure in a field? Well, the obvious answer would be because the treasure in the field is worth more than whatever it is you have been working so hard at your whole life. But in today’s world we would rather for the story to say, “and he took the treasure home, and kept living his life the same way, except he had more money now.”, but that’s not the way that it goes. This treasure has affect the WHOLE life of this man.

                Well now this has me begging the question, what kind of treasure is it? How do we find something so awesome that we are willing to give up our whole life for it? Well this treasure is a life whose identity is found in Jesus Christ. We find this treasure when we realize that we are meant for something more than just this earth and the time we spend here. C.S. Lewis said ““If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”  We have to realize that we were made for a different world. This is not our home. We were made to have a perfect relationship with God and that will only happen when we are reunited with Him. And the way that we find this treasure is by recognizing that we are sinners, and that God cannot look upon sin, but He was gracious enough to provide a way for us to be free of sin, and that is through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

                Once we find this treasure it should affect our whole lives. Not just the part that is in church on Sundays, or Wednesdays, but the whole of it. It should affect the way that you treat your husband or wife. I should affect the way that you talk to the co-worker that you don’t get along with. It should affect the way that you interact with your parents, whether you’re young or old. It should affect every single aspect of your life.

The Good Samaritan

Luke 10:25-37

“But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him and when he saw the man he had compassion.”

                Luke’s gospel is the only one that holds the parable of the Good Samaritan, but it is still a crucial parable that teaches a large lesson on loving your neighbor. The scene is set by a lawyer who stands up and tries to trap Jesus with some questions, most notably “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” To which Jesus ask the man what the Old Testament law says about what a person must do to inherit eternal life. The man correctly answers to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus commends the man for answering correctly and tells him to do these things and he will be good to go. But the lawyer is not satisfied with that and ask Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

                Now here is where we find our friction and our parable. To summarize the parable as best as I know how, Jesus tells the man a story. In the story a certain man is traveling down a road and is robbed and beaten nearly to death and left there. First a priest comes by and goes to the other side of the road, then a Levite (these men assist the priest), but he also passed by on the other side of the road. Next a Samaritan comes by, and to a Jewish crowd this would have been the last person in the world they wanted to hear about. Samaritans were considered outcast and half-breads and Jews wanted nothing to do with them. They hated them so much that if they had to travel to a certain place and Samaria was on the way, they would alter their path around Samaria instead of walking through it. But ironically the Samaritan, the last person they would expect to help the man, actually helps him. Jesus ask the lawyer which of the three were the man’s neighbor, and the man says “the one who had mercy on him”, and he was right.

                 Let’s look at the lawyer. He was only asking these question and playing this game because he wanted to justify himself and say that he had already loved God and loved people, he wasn’t expecting to actually be challenged by Jesus. A lot of the time when we ourselves have questions about something we are doing in life, like whether it is a sin or not, or if we are doing something correctly, we are really just going to scripture to justify ourselves. Sometimes people do this when they get into arguments. They use the word of God to justify something they are doing, but that is not the way the word is meant to be used. And a lot of the time we may think that we have certain things figured out, like this lawyer thought that he had loving your neighbor down pat, but in all actuality he had no love for the Samaritans.

                I think that miss using scripture is the side note to these verses and this story, what I believe is the really strong point in all of this is answering and living out the question, “who is my neighbor?” With all that has gone around the world we may find ourselves asking this question. With terrorist attacking on almost a daily basis all around the world, and with tension lines being drawn between certain groups (such as race relations lately), who will we as Christians claim to be our neighbor? Will it just be our American brother or sister that bleeds red, white and blue? Will it be just the people of our own ethnicity because that’s how the world wants us to divide? Or will us as Christians stand up and say that we will not let the actions of the few around the world dictate who we will love. In fact, we will stand up and love the unlovable, and the hated in the name of Christ, who loved us when we were so unlovable and deep in sin. When we wanted nothing to do with Him, He loved us to the point of dying for our sins, and raising again.

                Let us stand with the example that the Good Samaritan has set and say that there is no limit to the places where we will show our love to people around this world, because Christ has loved us.