Luke 13-14
Observation: The examples of judgment are not meant to say every bad thing that happens is God judging people. I think they are meant to cause us to take the tragedies around us and cause us to recognize the frailty of life and our need to repent and believe in Jesus so that we have eternal life before it is too late.
Question: How can Jesus want me to hate my family? Obviously when Jesus gives this instruction, He is not contradicting other things He says about loving others. The answer then has to be that our love for Jesus as our priority must be so central that all other loves pale in comparison. At the same time, this will actually enable us to love others far better than we can on our own.
Application: The Kingdom of Heaven appears to be irrelevant at times, but Jesus promises He is doing a work that will grow large and will permeate everything. I need to trust what He is doing even when I can’t see it.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, I humble myself before You to serve You however You desire.
2 Comments
In these times of unstable building supply prices, many people are finding the price of projects they had planned, or even started have gone far beyond what they had anticipated. Jesus compares the parables of the man planning to build the tower and the king planning to go into battle to the Christian life. When we count the cost of truly following Jesus, we often find that it is much higher in terms of commitment than we first thought. What can we do? Quit, stay with the status quo and turn down the challenge, or push forward.
Even though I knew that Jesus doesn’t want us to hate our family, thank you for the clarification.