28 Days: Day 24

SCRIPTURE

• Matthew 20:26-28 (NIV) ²⁶ Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ²⁷  and whoever wants to be first must be your slave-- ²⁸  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

OBSERVATION

 It is not wrong to desire great usefulness for God, but we need to remember that God’s picture of success is not the same picture that the world has.  Too often we want to do God’s work and but we want to frame it in a worldly mindset. 

UNDERSTANDING

This servant mentality just flies in the face of everything we know in our culture.  Think about the language that we use to be the greatest in our culture.  You’re to climb to the top.  You’ve got to climb the corporate ladder.  If you want to be great, you rise to greatness, but in the culture of the kingdom, Jesus flips it around.  He says, “You really want to be the greatest?  You descend to greatness, serve others!” 

LIFE APPLICATION

So are you here at Desert Streams to serve or to be served?  Are you here to really be a part of what God is doing in people’s lives every week, or is it sort of a spiritual consumer idea where you get in, you watch the message, and then you are on with life?  A disciple of Jesus is a servant. So where are you serving?  How are you washing the feet of those in the family at DSC?  Are you a consumer or a contributor?  If you are not being a servant today is as good a day as any to start, ask God to show you where you can use your time, talents, treasures and testimony to serve.

28 Days: Day 23

Remember to sign up to pray for an hour during our 70 Hour Prayer Time

SCRIPTURE

• Luke 5:10-11 (NIV) ¹⁰ and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men." ¹¹  So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

OBSERVATION

When Jesus calls He inducts us into the union of fishermen.  Now, some people might say, “Well, I don’t even know where to start.  What do I do?  How do I go fishing?”  The beauty of this is that even if you don’t know about fishing Jesus will equip you to be a great fisherman. 

UNDERSTANDING

There are two pointers we can glean from our reading today that can help us be great fishermen – here is all you need to know to be a great fisherman. 

First, go into the fishing trade with the decision to have unquestioning obedience to God.  Peter followed the advice given and threw the net on the other side, even though there was no sensible reason to do so, but the catch was great because of his obedience to the Master Fisherman. 

The second thing is that we need to fish with absolute abandonment.  Peter became a “fisher of men” because he abandoned everything and followed Jesus.   

LIFE APPLICATION

A disciple goes fishing.  A disciple makes disciples.  A disciple leaves everything to be like Him, follow Him, and do what He’s been doing.  Take some time today to commit to following Jesus with absolute abandonment and unquestioning obedience.

28 Days: Day 22

SCRIPTURE

• Mark 10:17-22
• Luke 9:23-25 (NIV) ²³ Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. ²⁴  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. ²⁵  What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?

OBSERVATION

The thing about being a disciple is that it will cost us.  There is a difference between being a believer and being a disciple...there are many believers today in the church – they confess that Jesus is God and have asked God to forgive them of their sins, but that is where they stop.  A disciple goes further – he/she has submitted themselves to God and given Him the right to tell them what to do, where to go and what to say.  In other words, they have allowed God to change them from the inside out.  That change does not come easy, it hurts, but it is worth it if we stick it out. 

Being a disciple costs us our time, it costs us surrendering our agenda and plans and being willing to follow Jesus’ agenda and plan for us.  Being a disciple is a covenant relationship not just good intention.  Understand that a covenant relationship is a binding contract that cannot be broken, and when we covenant with God to be His disciple we mean to see it through to the end. 

UNDERSTANDING

Sunday we talked about three responses to when God calls us to be about His business…

• Here I am, I am not going.
• Here I am, send someone else.
• Here I am, send me.

I believe that in order for us to live the surrendered life of the disciple who says, “Here I am, send me!” we must be pursuing God in such a way that we have ongoing encounters with Him in His presence.  Are you pursuing God?  A disciple pursues the Master. 

I also believe that when we recognize our sin and God’s holiness and come to realize how much He has showered His grace on us then we find our hearts changing from I have to give up my life to “I get to give up my life for the one who has given all for me!”

LIFE APPLICATION

Who are you?  Are you a believer or a disciple?  Obviously, God’s desire is for you to be a disciple.  Are you willing to pay the cost?

God I pray that your people will say yes to following you.  I pray that their answer will be yes before they even know the question.  God may they trust you in such a way that they discover your best is better than anything could ever imagine and think for themselves.