luke on Following Jesus

T. S. Eliot once described the current human endeavor as that of finding a system of order so perfect that we will not have to be good. The way of Jesus tells us, by contrast, that any number of syste...

Behold the Lightener of the stars  On the crest of the clouds,  And the choralists of the sky Lauding Him.  Coming down with acclaim  From the Father above,  Harp and Lyre of song  Sounding to Him.  C...

Many of us may have wondered what types of prayers Jesus would have prayed during his time on planet earth. In his book Praying with the Church , Scot McKnight notes that Jesus and his disciples,...

Leader: Lord God, you call us but we do not always hear. Sometimes your word comes to us in unexpected ways. Sometimes we mistake your voice for something else. Sometimes we just don’t want to listen....

Introduction Jesus is the deliverer of Israel (1:54–55, 69–75, 77–79) Jesus states his mission in Luke 4:16-19: to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives and the oppressed. The word ...

Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us.  …Civility is a different matter, though. I can treat ...

While I was born much too late to be the legal property of a person in America, I have been the recipient of racism. When a classmate called me a racial epithet in my first year of college, I was deva...

Jesus needed, not once, but again and again at each stage of his mission and each crisis in his living and dying, a freshly confirmed knowledge of his own identity.

Gracious God, we desire to follow when you call. We long to live according to the ways of Jesus, yet we find ourselves stumbling. Forgive us for the times we have ignored your call to follow you in th...

Introduction Jesus is the deliverer of Israel (1:54–55, 69–75, 77–79) Jesus states his mission in Luke 4:16-19: to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives and the oppressed. The word J...

The Paradox of Lent | AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Broader Context of Philippians Paul is concerned that Judaizers (those that require Christians to...

A group of fourth-graders at a Christian school was given an assignment to draw what they would like to do if Jesus spent a day with them. After working diligently on their pictures, one little girl a...

Jesus cared that they were scared It was their fear that drew Him near He heard their cry He saw  that they were terrified So He came close He walked beside He got in He didn’t pass by And He sai...

Take up your cross and follow Jesus the Messiah, who suffered and died that we might share in his resurrection life and have no shame when he comes again in the glory of his Father. Amen.

Following always involves a coming down, a humbling of oneself and a serving of others. Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan theologian, captured this condescension of God in his sermon "The Excellency ...

Heavenly Father, we confess that our trust in you wavers and that we are fickle in our reliance.  We see you provide great things where we see little possibility; but when storms come in life, we quic...

Leader: Today, we declare what we know and believe about God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the words of a special creed, known as the Christmas Creed. People: I believe in God, the Fat...

Reflection We all are aware of cultures that have a hierarchy—a pecking order. The elite and the hoi polloi. The acceptable and the unacceptable. In such cultures, the hierarchy determines the role. ...

But it wasn’t just his new message that made Jesus irresistible. It was Jesus himself. People who were nothing like him liked him. And Jesus liked people who were nothing like him. Jesus invited unbel...

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . ...

What I’ve come to realize is if I really want to “meet Jesus,” then I have to get a lot closer to the people He created. All of them, not just some of them.