Freedom For Today

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Luke 22 before reading the devotional below.

I write down many of my prayers. Sometimes God writes back. Sometimes I think God writes back but it’s just me. How can I tell the difference? I line it up with Scripture.

Not too long ago I wrote down these words, feeling prompted by the Holy Spirit in response to a prayer I had written: “What you fear is bad news is sometimes the best news of all. The painful road is the most rewarding.” And I have no trouble believing that the Spirit spoke that to me because it is a summary of the life of Jesus and especially Luke 22.

When one of your closest friends gets inhabited by a demon, you are about to get arrested and killed, you’re sweating blood from over-praying, and another one of your closest friends is about to deny he ever knew you, it’s a pretty bad-news day. Just awful. Jesus somehow kept his head on straight to walk into the worst of situations in order to save us. He looked at bad news differently than we often do. He saw it as the gateway to the victory that would fulfill his mission.

Here’s your freedom for today: your circumstances do not reflect the progress of your spiritual battle. Sometimes bad news is the best news. When God is up to something, Satan is ready to disrupt it. But he cannot win if we keep our focus on our mission. What is your mission today? What is one way you can look past your circumstance to see that God is making progress as he fights the battle for you?

Write down a prayer today and see if God writes back. If you think he says something, write down the verse or verses in the Bible that support the words you wrote.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Luke 21 before viewing the video devotional. 

Here’s your freedom for today: the Holy Spirit continues to speak. How will you respond? Watch today’s video for insight into understanding prophetic warnings.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Luke 20 before reading the devotional below.

We are on our way to wrapping up our Luke series, and next we’ll hit some highlights from the book of Acts to take a look at what freedom looked like in the early church. Here in Luke 20, we see another series of debates between Jesus and the religious leaders.

As I read this chapter, I found myself bristling at the debate-style conversation that Jesus engages in. Sure, it’s fun when he puts the know-it-all’s in their place, but I recoil a little bit from the tone. It feels too harsh to me. I reminded myself of the fact that the Bible was not written in English and tone can be very hard to interpret in a story from another language, culture and historical time period. What was Jesus’ actual tone of voice like in these moments? How might I have reacted to him if he had talked in person directly to me?

Here’s your freedom for today: Jesus gives you what you need. The religious leaders were already engaging in theological debates, and Jesus joins right in. He meets them where they are and engages in intellectual arguments that would speak to them. To the crowd of onlookers, he tells stories of the underdog becoming the hero. They love him because for the first time, they matter. To women Jesus is inviting and gentle — a few times putting the men in their place for their negative treatment of women. Jesus knows how to talk to you, and through Scripture and his Spirit he will approach you with love and sensitivity to who he made you to be.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Luke 19 before reading the devotional below. 

Being a type-A, smart, overachieving conservative Christian child can be spiritually dangerous. Reading Luke 19 in such a state is practically guaranteed to make you overwork on your spiritual life. I heard various versions of “to whom much is given much is required” or “to those who use well what they are given, even more will be given. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away” (seen in this chapter, verse 26). Anyone else walk away from that with a gigantic amount of pressure to perform for God?

From everything else I know about God, I think I must be doing it wrong. Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light. We live under grace not the law. He fights our battles for us. Jesus set us free so we could live free lives. Surely carrying around an expectation of myself that I have to keep overachieving for God because I had a great head start in life seems like a misinterpretation. So what are these verses talking about?

Re-read verse 11. I notice a few things. First, Jesus was talking to a crowd of people, not an individual. Second, his purpose in telling his story was to correct their wrong ideas about how this coming kingdom thing was going to go down. He’s the nobleman in this scenario, and he’s about to head out of town. He’s leaving these people in charge of his stuff, and he wants to come back with more. Since Jesus told his disciples that they would become fishers of men, it seems like people are his currency. So he’s letting his crowd of followers know that when he leaves them, he wants them to go make the crowd bigger. Don’t sit on what you know about me, go multiply it by spreading the word.

Here’s your freedom for today: you are not the savior of the world. Jesus is. And you alone are not tasked with the job of evangelizing. We as the body of Christ are assigned this task. We’ve been given something great. And all we have to do is share. We’ve covered that theme before… All God wants us to do is share our most valuable thing with someone else. Deep breaths. I think I can do that.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Luke 18 before reading the devotional below.

Have you ever been annoyed by someone who just won’t leave you alone? Have you ever thanked God that you are not like someone else? Have you ever been mortified by your children’s behavior in public? Have you ever felt like you’ve been doing pretty good following God but you also really love all your stuff? Have you ever “shushed” a friend who was getting a little too loud in a crowd?

The Bible is full of stories of people just like me. And if I want to understand who Jesus really is, and if I want to be set free by him, I need to pay attention to what he says to people like me. His character comes through in this chapter and he gives us a blueprint for how to become like him. One story after another, Jesus reveals the character of God.

God is eternally patient and willing to deliver justice. We can’t possibly bother him too much on that. God lifts up those who thank him for his grace, not for making them better than someone else. Jesus embraces children even in their rowdiness. God extends his heart to the poor in ways that he invites us to imitate. And Jesus responds to the too-loud-for-the-crowd kinds of people.

Here’s your freedom for today: you can’t reach the end of God’s patience with you. Whether you are feeling high and mighty or whether your are publicly embarrassed, Jesus reaches out for an embrace. He is ready to lead you out of your own pride and selfishness, and he’s also right there when you need to know that it’s okay to be you even if that seems humiliating in the moment. You cannot be embarrassed in front of God because he accepts you as you are. All you need to do is sit in his presence.