Matthew 9:9,10
As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” He told him, and Matthew got up and followed Him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples.
Christ called Matthew to be His, to leave His sins and the world behind and follow Him. But then look what Jesus does with that surrendered life; He uses that life to reach more people! In a way, Matthew is the door Christ used to enter into a fellowship meal with many tax collectors and sinners. Christ didn’t hold a tax collector convention, nor did He promote or condone their sin but He did meet them right where they were with the sole intention of saving their souls!
If Christ has saved you, then you too are a door He will use to reach those around you. He does not waste a thing, and He does want you to worry about how this will happen. We are just to be like Matthew and leave it all behind and follow Him. He will figure out the details.
So today as you meet with family, friends, and maybe even strangers, ask the Lord who it is He wants to reach through your obedient surrender today!
Matthew 9:12,13- On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
God bless! I love you all, but His love saves us and sends us to share Him with those around us! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!
Matthew 9:18
As Jesus was saying this, the leader of a synagogue came and knelt before Him. “My daughter has just died,” he said, “but you can bring her back to life again if you just come and lay your hand on her.”
Jairus doesn’t let the world determine reality and truth but rather the One who is reality and truth! The world’s reality and truth say that once a person dies, they are gone forever, but our God says that even the dead can live again! I love how Jairus acknowledges the state of his daughter and then follows it up with a huge statement of faith. In essence, he is saying yes, she is dead, but she doesn’t have to stay that way. Not because Jairus was some holier than thou man that deserved for this to happen but because that’s Who our God is! He is the Redeemer and raiser of the dead!
How often do we allow the world around us to determine truth or reality? Maybe we let what we know determine Who He is or what He is capable of? Either way, when we do this, we are wrong; we are missing the blessing and the miracle by trying to make God work in our ways and through our understanding. Imagine if Jairus would have just surrendered to the fact that his daughter was dead and not taken it to the Lord’s feet. She more than likely would have remained dead, and we wouldn’t be reading about her today. This is not to say that Jairus is anything more than a beautiful example to follow.
We, too, must not let “reality” tell us who God is; after all, how can the created thing tell the Creator who He is? Instead, let’s be like Jairus, acknowledge the situation, bring it to His feet, trust in Who He is and wait for His answer! We might see more mountains moved if we trusted more in the One who created them than the mountains themselves!
Matthew 17:19,20- Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
God bless! I love you all, but His love equips us for the journey ahead and paid for our sins behind! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!
Matthew 9:20-22
Just then, a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind Him and touched the edge of His cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch His cloak, I will be healed.” Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” He said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.
This passage is about Christ making someone who is unclean clean, but this morning, the Holy Spirit showed me something different about this verse, so here goes. This healing is different than some of the other healings Jesus had performed. In other healings, He forgave their sins first (which is the most important healing we can get) and then healed their physical ailments, but not here. Why? That truth, coupled with the fact that she believes and has faith in Him, tells me that she is a believer.
So, one way I see this story is that this is a believer who has already come to Christ but is still carrying around pain, a hurt, a wound, guilt, or shame from their past. She knows that He is her only hope of healing, so she fights through the crowds and touches His cloak. But the question is, would we do the same? Are we satisfied with salvation just at the end of our lives, or do we want to walk in His complete healing today? Are we willing to put ourselves out there in order to be made whole again?
This woman would have been a social outcast despised and scorned by almost everyone around her, but she didn’t care because no one and nothing was gonna keep her from Jesus! Can we say the same? Are we willing to let Him come into every part of our lives, or have we sectioned off the parts for the Lord and the parts we want to hang on to? I promise you that the Lord wants to heal that old wound, bind up that deep pain, and cover over that great shame and give you a completely new life in Him, one that is free from the past and filled with His Presence! Will you reach out and touch His cloak today?
Psalm 147:3 - He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Jeremiah 17:14 - Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed; save me, and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.
God bless! I love you all! Glory, Honor, and Praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our Healer, and the Holy Spirit who rests and refills those who belong to the Lord!
Matthew 9:29
Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you."
Faith is defined as complete trust or confidence in someone
or something. It’s not a wish or a dream, but a confidence and complete trust
in something. As I was reading today, this verse stuck out to me, and I
wondered what would happen if Jesus said this to us today. What if our faith
was the deciding factor in our lives? Would we be better off?
Yesterday, I did a little study on faith and here are a few
things I found.
Ephesians 2:8 says that we are saved by grace through faith.
Ephesians 6:16 says that faith will quench every attack from the evil one!
Your faith can save your whole family, as Hebrews 11:7 talks about Noah’s faith saving his family.
Matthew 17:20 says that you can change the entire world with a grain of faith!
2 Corinthians 5:7 and Romans 1:17 says the righteous will
live by faith
I feel like if we don’t live by faith, we will die without
it! Faith is not a feeling, but a powerful tool God has given us to change
lives and this world!!! Fear told Peter to stay in the boat, but faith told him
he to step out of it! Peter wanted to get closer to Jesus, and he couldn’t do
that by staying in the boat, and I feel like now more than ever, we are in the
boat and Jesus is telling us to come out to Him! The question is, will you take
that step out toward Him or stay safely in the boat away from Him? He loves you
either way. I don’t think Peter regretted stepping out of the boat, but I have
a feeling he would have regretted staying in it!!
Be vulnerable, Be loving, Be faithful, Be His, and most
importantly, Be more like Jesus each and every day!
I love you all, God bless, Glory to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit!!!!
Matthew 9:36-38
When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.”
Christ’s compassionate heart for the lost, the weak, the oppressed, the helpless, and the outcast is beautiful. His heart and all that it is filled with then leads Him to command His disciples (this includes us) to pray for more workers, but do we? Do we ask God to raise up more brothers and sisters to help carry the load and spread the good news? Or are we too inwardly focused to see the bigger picture?
God can raise people up out of nowhere; He can bring divine revelation if He so chooses, but oftentimes, He chooses to send people to preach to other people. So, when we pray for God to raise up others around us, we better be ready to go out and meet them right where they are and share with them the goodness of our God. Jesus ate with sinners, but He didn’t sin with them, and we are to follow in His footsteps.
Now, this calls for wisdom; we don’t throw ourselves in front of a moving truck and cry out, “Save me, Lord!” and expect Him to move at our command, but if He tells us to walk out into traffic, then we can do it with confidence knowing that He has us!
This analogy applies to our spiritual lives as well. Let me explain a little more. I was an addict before Christ set me free. If Christ calls me to go preaching in the dope houses, then to the dope houses, I will go. But if He doesn’t send me there and I just got on my own accord, how much confidence can I have in my success - both to stay sober in Him and share the word effectively?
We have to go where we are called, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be where we have been. Yes, the Lord uses everything in our past to prepare us for the future, but we still must be guarded and rely solely upon Him and, at the same time, be available to those around us. If we follow the path He lays out for us, we can be confident we will end up right where we are supposed to be! Jesus made Himself available to those who needed Him the most; do we?
Matthew 9:10-13- While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
God bless! I love you all, but His love is available even to the worse of us! Thank You, Lord! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!
Matthew 9:37
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is
plentiful but the workers are few."
Yesterday as I was working out, I was praying and thinking about how can I change the world. Then God hit me with, “You don’t have to change the whole world; just try to change someone’s whole world!”
See, I can’t save anyone, but I know the One who can! It’s not my job to fix or save anyone, but my job is to show them the One who can!! I feel like if each one of my brothers and sisters would just pick 1 person and invest in them – not monetarily but invest the important stuff – invest your knowledge and love of God, your time, your love, and your successes and failures, that’s where I think we can make a real difference for the Kingdom!!! If I can help one person come to know Jesus, then it’s worth it. That’s a 100% increase!! There used to be one; now there are two. We just doubled, and by the grace of God, maybe we can double from there as well!!
My point is that Jesus Himself said that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few!! Jesus has been hiring for 2000 years and you don’t have to pass a background check or have a college degree!! All you need is Jesus as your king, humility in your heart, and perseverance in your mind!!!! I encourage you to pray and ask God who He wants you to Invest in today!!
I love you all, God bless, and most importantly, glory to God!!!!!!!!!
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