Latest / The Daily Word / April 28 – Faith That Pursues Jesus
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night. Whenever you are joining us, welcome to the daily word podcast from Lake Shore Christian fellowship. My name is Corey Barnes. It's my privilege to pastor our Kataba campus. I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another daily word episode where we're going to be doing a devotion from the new Testament portion of our church Bible reading plan here on the show. Uh, today is April the 28th and our new Testament portion for reading was Matthew 15 in this chapter Jesus has been traveling around he's been teaching he's been healing folks he's been performing miracles and in verses 29 through 32 we see a little leg of that journey Reading out of the New King James Jesus departed from there skirted the Sea of Galilee and went up on the mountain and sat down there Then great multitudes came to him having with them lame blind, mute, maimed, many others, they laid them down at Jesus' feet, and He healed them. So the multitude marveled when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed made whole, the lame walking, the blind seeing, and they glorified the God of Israel. Now Jesus called His disciples to Himself and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with me three days and have had nothing to eat, and I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way. Now it's obvious why the multitudes came to Jesus. I mean, they were hurting. They had folks who were lame and blind and mute and maimed, injured in some way or born with some birth defect, whatever that may be, and many others with many other afflictions. And they came to this remote location on the side of a mountain to pursue the man that they had heard of. who was able to heal and restore people. And they came because they were desperate for him to minister to them. Now Jesus does in fact minister to them and folks get healed. But what I wanted us to notice is that after healing them, Jesus shares that these people have been following him and hadn't eaten for three days. Now when was the last time we were desperate enough for something that we would pursue it like that? I mean, many of us can't even get to a meal too late without getting hangry and we prioritize our schedules to make sure that doesn't happen. ⁓ So it's hard to traveling on foot for three days ⁓ with no food because were hungry for something else. ⁓ Now one thing I do know is that no matter how put together our lay one thing I do is ⁓ one day, one thing I do know is that no matter how put together our lives may appear from the outside, we are all holding things before the Lord that we need him to minister to. But are we hungry enough to pursue what he has for us, the way these people pursue Jesus, they left their homes, they climbed up the side of a mountain because they believe that Jesus would fix their problems. Do we believe that Jesus will fix ours? Now I want to be clear. I am not saying that we have to just start doing things to earn miracles, healings from Jesus. It's not like we have to earn enough gold stars to turn in a little worksheet to Jesus and him hand us a miracle out of the jar. No, it's not like that. But James does tell us over and over that faith without works is dead. So while I'm not saying we have to do works to earn anything from Jesus, I am saying that if we truly have faith, that Jesus is going to move in our lives, then true faith should inspire us to action, action to pursue Jesus and his ministry in our lives, even when that action costs us something. So what is an area in our lives that we need Jesus to move in? Do we have faith that Jesus will move? I mean, that's a good place to start is if you don't believe that he will, maybe we should start. Spending some time reading through the miracle test, is read this story read read throughout the gospel. See what Jesus did over and over and over again and recognize that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever like he hasn't changed. He still wants to do all the same things he did in the lives of those on earth. He wants to do those things in our lives. And once we make sure we do have faith, are we willing to take steps to act on it? Now we do need to have wisdom in these, in these things when we're putting action to our faith. So please, before you do anything drastic, come and talk to one of us pastors, run, run it by us, get some thoughts, get some opinions and help, help our, ⁓ we'll and we'll, we'll through the voice of experience help you to navigate some of those things. If they're, if they're big thoughts you have, but Regardless, are we willing to make sacrifices to pursue what we hope the Lord will do in our lives? Let's pray. Father, I just thank you for being with us. I thank you for speaking to us, for loving us, for ministering to us. In the name of Jesus, we proclaim that we believe that you will do exactly what you said you would do in your word. We thank you Lord, that there isn't a single area of our life that we hold before you that we are not trusting you to operate in. And we thank you that we can trust you. We thank you. We can put our faith in you. We love you and we're so thankful that you want to heal us. You want to restore us. You want to fix what's missing. what's broken. want to create new things in our life and restore broken things. You are good Jesus. I pray that you would help us to recognize where it is that you want us to have faith, the kind of faith that has action. May we be doers of the word and not hearers only Lord. And I pray that you would just walk with us, guide us and love us in the coming days in this area. We love you Jesus. We're so thankful. for you. Amen.