In this day & age of visual success, the pressure to succeed can feel suffocating. My mom used to warn me not to have champagne taste on a beer budget 😂 It’s so easy to fall into the trap of fancy things & fake security. Everything might look amazing on the outside, but on the inside, it might feel like a house of cards ready to fall!
What if I told you that you don’t have to hold it all together? In fact, how might your heart rejoice & grip soften if I told you there is Someone who came specifically for people who not only miss the mark, but KNOW they can’t hit it on their own?
That’s what Jesus did.
The Pharisees followed Him wherever He went-not to learn-but to see how they could trap Him.
Over
& over
& over again, they came at Him like a machine gun with accusations.
And His response ALWAYS silenced them in their tracks. He could’ve blasted them out of the water at any point, but He was patient, perhaps with the hope that their hearts might soften?
The Gospel offends the proud, but is a sweet smell of salvation to the humble. Time & again Jesus sat with “sinners & tax collectors”. The very word sinner means to miss the mark!
Whether we admit it or not, we are ALL in desperate need of a physician who can heal our hearts! Jesus tells the proud Pharisees, “I have come to call NOT those who THINK they are righteous, but those who KNOW they are sinners.”
At one point, a man is in need of healing, but it’s the Sabbath. Can’t you see the stoic Pharisees salivating to see if Jesus would break the Law. The point of breaking was upon them, but it wasn’t about the Law, it was about relationship. Jesus saw their hard hearts & was moved to grief by their refusal to not know their own sin…
Mark 2:15 tells how, “There were many people of this kind among Jesus’s followers.”
What kind? The sinner kind that know they cannot meet the mark without Him.
As I read about the people who left everything to follow Jesus, I don’t picture white knuckling, pulling up bootstraps or striving. I see a humble following & restful reliance on The One Who calls & goes before.
He IS The Way, you know? He will make a way that meets the eternal mark & all we need do is humbly follow.
LEVITICUS 4:1-5:19
MARK 2:13-3:6
PSALM 36:1-12
PROVERBS 10:1-2
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