Sin makes us sick over and over, yet we keep charging right back to the buffet—unlike food poisoning, which at least teaches us to stay away from the contaminated food. That’s the human struggle Jesus faces head-on when He teaches us to pray “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” in Matthew 6:13.
How can those who have known GodR17;s rescue still chase worldly compromise that looks so much like success? That is the exasperated cry of Isaiah 1:21 as the faithful city becomes a harlot—once full of justice, now only murderers, its silver turned to dross.
We crave freedom, but Bob Dylan was right when he sang, “You Gotta Serve Somebody.̶1; No matter how strong that craving, weR17;ll find ourselves serving either righteousness or unrighteousness.
Even after turning our lives over to Christ, we can still pray as though God were there to serve our wants and protect our plans. In Matthew 7, Jesus says, “Ask, seek, and knock,” raising a searching question for daily prayer: When we belong to Him, what should we be asking our Father to give?
How do we come before God when our prayers so easily become empty phrases, desperate demands, or distant formalities? In Matthew 6, Jesus says our Father knows what we need before we ask, then gives His disciples words for approaching Him: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Being in the right group, studying the right things, living a decent life—it feels like that ought to be enough. But in Acts 13, Paul announces to a synagogue full of people who had done exactly that: there are things the Law of Moses simply could not free you from, and being part of the in-group wonR17;t close that gap.
Paul left a wide path of destruction as he went city to city persecuting GodR17;s people, and yet in 1 Timothy 1:15, even as he names himself the foremost of sinners Jesus came to save, he can say that last part: Jesus came to save him. And He came to save us, too.
When weR17;re desperate for direction, we tend to reach for whatever voice sounds most confident, be it horoscopes, politicians or just about anyone who seems to know something we donR17;t. Deuteronomy 18 speaks to our searching, reminding us God has never left His people without a trustworthy voice to follow, and what He promised there points somewhere specific.
Comfort, institutional preservation, and tribal identity can crowd out obedience to GodR17;s call in our lives. Do we hear His call to reach those in need of His Grace and to live in the “risky repentance̶1; that involves?
Rather than seeking to be known as impressive or indispensable, Christians are called to be known as servants of Jesus. Every person is made in the image of God, and the only credential that truly matters on our “resume̶1; before Him is knowing Him.