The 260 Journey

Day 57

Today’s Reading: Luke 13

There are more than 7 billion people on earth. Nearly sixty million of them will die this year. That is approximately 153,000 people dying every day, 6,400 people dying every hour, 107 people dying every minute, two people dying every second. Not a great thought to start your day.

Death is unavoidable and undeniable, and you will one day become one of these statistics. Statistics tell us that one out of one will die. I know that is hard to believe, but it is true.

We try to sanitize the topic of death. Years ago people would die in their homes; today they die in hospitals or nursing homes. We try to keep death far from us. We think out of sight is out of mind. We don’t even let our pets die; we put them to sleep.

We use nice phraseology to deal with death. We say, “He is no longer with us,” “She is resting,” or “He has passed away.” None of this changes the definiteness of death.

They now call funeral homes eternal management care centers. Funeral home directors don’t want to be called undertakers or morticians, they call themselves death managers. People don’t care about what you call death as long as they can avoid it.

The great American poet W. H. Auden said, “Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.” No matter what your picnic is, you still hear the thunder. People will try to avoid death and listening to that distant thunder through any means they can.

There is this crazy thing called "cryonics" in which scientists will put your legally-dead body after death in liquid nitrogen and hope one day through technology they will discover a way to wake the person up. The fee can be as high as $200,000 or more for whole body cryopreservation and $80,000 for a “neuro,” or head-only option.

There is something about our mortality and death we don’t want to talk about. You can take vitamins and drink green tea but we all will face death. You may live longer doing this stuff, but no one will know at your funeral whether you ate tofu or Twinkies.

Speaking about death is hard. But processing tragic death is even harder.

Jesus deals with this topic and how we are to process it in today’s reading. The opening scene of Luke 13 is intense. People come to Jesus with a tragic death story and then Jesus intensifies it:

Some of those present informed Jesus that Pilate had slaughtered some Galilean Jews while they were offering sacrifices at the temple, mixing their blood with the sacrifices they were offering.

Jesus turned and asked the crowd, “Do you believe that the slaughtered Galileans were the worst sinners of all the Galileans? No, they weren’t! So listen to me. Unless you all repent, you will perish as they did.” (Luke 13:1-3, TPT)

Jesus doesn’t stop there, but then tells more tragedy to make His point:

Or what about the eighteen who perished when the tower of Siloam fell upon them? Do you really think that they were more guilty than all of the others in Jerusalem? No, they weren’t. But unless you repent, you will all eternally perish, just as they did. (Luke 13:4-5, TPT)

“Why did these people die?” the people ask Jesus, and Jesus responds by telling them that they are asking the wrong question. Basically, He tells them, “There is a better question you should be asking, and here it is: why haven’t you died yet?”

Jesus essentially says, “Do you think they died because they were great sinners and deserved it? Of course not but keep this in mind all of you are going to perish one day, a great thing to do while you're breathing is to repent.”

Instead of processing why they died, we need to process if we are prepared to die.

Always remember, the Bible is not like a newspaper; it doesn’t have new stuff in it every day. It is always the same, because it’s the truth. And truth has no expiration date.

Jesus is telling us the issue is not why were these babies aborted, but why haven’t we been aborted. The issue is not why my friend died in a highway head-on collision with a drunk driver but why haven’t I? The issue is not figuring out if someone bad got cancer and deserved it, but why haven’t I?

The people were asking the wrong question. And too often we ask that same wrong question. That is the question Jesus is asking us to skip and to fast forward to something more important.

There are very few death scenes in the Bible because the Bible is concerned with how you live now. Consider this story:

A little girl whose baby brother had just died asked her mother where the baby had gone.

“To be with Jesus,” replied the mother. A few days later while talking to a friend, the mother said, “I am so grieved to have lost my baby.”

The little girl heard her, and remembering what her mother had told her, looked into her face and asked, “Mother, is a thing lost when you know where it is?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well then, how can the baby be lost when he has gone to be with Jesus?”

That’s the part you have to settle while you are alive. It’s not tragic if we know where they are. We have to settle on where we are going.

Until you are ready to deal with the question of your eternity then you are not prepared to deal with your death. Here is a way to explain it: Have you ever worked on a jigsaw puzzle? What do you do before you start putting pieces together? You start with the picture on the box in front of you. With the focus, you are able to make the crazy pieces make sense and as you connect them, you can see the big picture alongside the little pieces. If you don’t have the right box top in front of you while you are living, then life is confusing. The pieces don’t fit together.

Eternity is confusing, and how to get to heaven is confusing.

You need the correct box top in front of you. The way not to see life and tragedy as confusing is to see it from an eternal perspective. It is to set the box top in front of you—to put the Bible and Jesus in front of you and define the little pieces with the big picture, God’s picture.

Day 56

Today’s Reading: Luke 12

A. W. Tozer, the famous Christian writer, said that there are seven ways to really know ourselves and know what our character is like. He called them rules for self discovery. They are:

1. What we want most

2. What we think about most

3. What we laugh at

4. What we do with our leisure time

5. The company we enjoy

6. Who and what we admire

7. How we use our money

How we use our money . . . Number 7 is a big one.

That’s where we land in today’s reading. Jesus tells a story in Luke 12 about someone we call the rich fool who messed up on number 7: He spent it on himself.

Remember, God entrusted us with His money not to hoard for ourselves but to make a difference. When we think bigger and not longer, when we think me and not others, we fail the test at number 7.

Calvin Coolidge, our thirtieth US president said it like this: “No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” This Luke 12 man missed that lesson. Let’s read the story and see where the number 7 part got really messed up.

[Jesus] told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:16-21)

The number one reason people get upset when money is mentioned in church is that they think it’s “my” money. (This was the rich fool’s issue.) They have mistaken themselves for God and think it’s theirs. But as famed missionary statesman, J. Oswald Sanders, reminds us, “The basic question is not how much of our money we should give to God, but how much of God’s money we should keep for ourselves.”

Wow. Ponder that. That’s a new way of thinking about the offering this Sunday.

God called this man a fool for one reason—because the man kept using one word over and over.

The rich fool said . . . my barns . . . my grain . . . my goods . . . my soul.

My, my, my, my.

Always remember, no one is an owner—we are stewards. It is not . . . my children . . . my health . . . my house . . . my life . . . my soul . . . my education . . . my business . . . my company . . . my future. Once you live a my, my, my, my life, you realize how short that kind of life is. There is no future in a my, my, my, my life.

God told the man, “You messed up.” Jesus said he had “treasure for himself” but he was not rich toward God. How do we become rich toward God? The answer to our greed is that we give your greed away—that’s how we become rich toward God. When we give our money away, we take a hammer to our stingy heart. As John Wesley famously said, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”

It’s impossible to be selfish and happy at the same time. Happiness comes from giving not getting. Mother Teresa said, “One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”

My, my, my, my is nobody to anybody.

It isn’t a sin to possess money, but it is a sin when what you possess possesses you. Is getting rich wrong? Of course not. In the Bible, many heroes of the faith, such as Abraham and David, were rich. Money can be a great vehicle for changing people’s lives. But if it is not used correctly, it can adversely change yours, just as it did this man in Luke 12.

The rich fool made three mistakes:

1. He mistook his body for his soul. His body had the stuff but his soul was starving.

2. He mistook time for eternity. He acted as if his future were in his own hands. His soul would be demanded of him that night; it was a word that was used when a debt or loan was due and it was payday.

3. He mistook himself for God. Six times the man used the pronoun I, and if you add the number of times he used the other personal pronouns, the total comes to eleven.

It’s all a matter of what you do with what God has given you.

Day 55

Today’s Reading: Luke 11

When it comes to giving a gift today, one of the most popular gifts, which doesn’t require much thought or effort, is a gift card.

According to the National Retail Federation, about 59 percent of shoppers will purchase a gift card for friends and family. According to estimates, the typical American home has an average of $300 in unused or “unredeemed” gift cards in their house right now. These cards are often misplaced, accidentally thrown out, or only partially redeemed. Over a period of seven years in America, $41 billion in gift cards went unused. Forty-one billion dollars! Unused!

Someone was given a gift and that person never cashed it in. I am one of those people. I have a lot of gift cards that I have not used. While that’s a terrible waste, there’s a worse thing we can do—and that’s when we do this to God’s gifts and leave them unused.

God is a good gift giver.

In fact, the greatest gift God has ever given to us is the gift of the Holy Spirit, but for too many of us we never tap into the gifts and the anointing and the power that comes from the Holy Spirit. And what makes it the most terrible is how easy it is to cash in on this gift.

That’s where we land today in our reading. Luke 11 is a great chapter on prayer. I want us to see an aspect of prayer in regards to the Holy Spirit that we often miss.

Let’s read together what Jesus said about prayer and the Holy Spirit:

Everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:10-13)

Two important thoughts from Jesus.

First, notice that Jesus uses fish and eggs. This is deliberate. Why is that important? Jesus did not say, “What if a son asked a father for steak and shrimp” or “What if a son asked a dad for lamb chops.” Why? Those foods are luxury foods. They were not the everyday food for the common man. Fish and eggs are what everyone ate practically every day in that first-century geography. What Jesus was saying was that the Holy Spirit is not some luxury whom we need occasionally; the Holy Spirit is Someone we need every day. He is not a gift for Sundays; He is a gift for every day. We must not relegate Him to an occasional moment. You and I need the presence of the Holy Spirit with us every moment of every day.

Second, Jesus reminds us how simple it is to cash in on God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Ready for this? “How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Ask. That’s it. Don’t let the religious tell you it’s more complicated.

God gives a gift and makes that gift accessible. Why is the gift accessible? Because it isn’t a luxury but a necessity.

It’s an everyday ask.

Every day, ask God for you to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The last thing I want is to have another unused gift that is available but not enjoyed.

Let’s start today. Fill me, God, with the Holy Spirit. Cashing in is as simple as asking.

Day 54

Today’s Reading: Luke 10

A politician finds their opponent on the side of the road with their car broken down, do they stop and help her? If a die-hard Yankees fan sees a Boston Red Sox fan at a check-out at a local store and he is short money, does the Yankees fan help him?

More serious: if a racial justice advocate sees an adversary standing at a stop light with a legitimate sign that says that person needs food or assistance, do they keep on driving?

This is not crazy talk, this is Jesus talk. And this is exactly what happens in Luke 10 where we come to one of the most intriguing parables Jesus ever told.

These crazy contrasts are what the story of the good Samaritan asks and answers. But instead of Democrats and Republicans or sports rivals, He uses two people groups who disdained each other:

Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”

He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”

He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

“Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”

Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

“A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’

“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.

Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10:25-37, MSG)

This story is explosive because of the characters involved. The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other. And so Jesus asked the question: which of the men was a real neighbor?

For me, I have been part of helping a lot of people in very needy inner cities. Let me confess . . . the ones I hate helping are ungrateful people.

We bring them food, their response is, “That’s not enough” or “I don’t like that kind of meat” or “I wanted Sprite not Coke.” It’s frustrating enough to make me not want to help them, because I want to only help the people who say, “Thank you.”

But Jesus does not give me that option. Jesus says, “You can’t pick and choose who you will help.”

As Brennan Manning reminds us, “The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.” The apostle John puts it this way: “If anyone says ‘I love God,’ but keeps on hating his brother, he is a liar; for if he doesn’t love his brother who is right there in front of him, how can he love God whom he has never seen?” (1 John 4:20, TLB).

What does that mean? It means that I love God as much as the person I dislike the most.

In our story, we have an injured Jew, and no Jews help him. He is the victim of a crime. And two religious people pass by—a priest and a Levite—and they do nothing. And the one who finally does something is the Jew’s archenemy.

The priest found an angle.

The Levite avoided.

The Samaritan saw someone, felt something, and acted.

That’s called compassion.

Jesus isn’t separating the men from the boys, Jesus is separating the real Christian from the merely religious.

We take three philosophies from the good Samaritan story:

1. The robber’s philosophy was, What you have is mine, and I will take it.

2. The priest and Levite had the philosophy, What is mine is mine, and I will keep it.

3. The Samaritan’s philosophy was, What is mine is yours, and I will share it.

In 1973 two researchers at Princeton, John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson, told a group of theology students that they were to go across campus to deliver a sermon on the topic of the Good Samaritan. As part of the research, some of these students were told that they were late and needed to hurry up. Along their route across campus, Darley and Baston had hired an actor to play the role of a victim who was coughing and suffering. They discovered that 90 percent of the “late” Princeton Theology Seminary students ignored the needs of the suffering person in their hurry to get across campus.

“Indeed,” the study reports, “on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way!”

The lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” is not answered. Instead, Jesus answers the larger question, “To whom must I become a neighbor?” The answer: anyone in need.

The Good Samaritan has lived in memory for centuries without a name. I think that is because any name can be inserted. It’s not, “Well, that’s Mother Teresa.” It’s left open for you to insert a name.

In one of his sermons, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I imagine that the first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But by the very nature of his concern, the Good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”

Are you willing to insert your name in the blank of the story?

Do you want to know how to be a good Samaritan?

Do you want to know how to put your name in the blank?

First, keep your eyes open on your daily journeys. People need help everywhere. Jesus told the man and tells us, “Go and do the same.”

Second, you can’t be a Samaritan without the oil, time, and money. I see help coming three ways: oil for the wound; time to help; money for the hotel.

It costs to be a good Samaritan.

It costs to do God’s will.

It’s a cost . . . but it’s worth it.

Day 53

Today’s Reading: Luke 9

Can we have a promise from Jesus that doesn’t work for us? Can Jesus tell us what we are to do and then we can’t do it?

That’s the situation we find in today’s reading. In Luke 9, we are filled with faith and expectation from the very first verses and then just forty verses later, we are overcome with failure in what we were told to do.

“Jesus, You promised, and now I can’t. I don’t understand.” Let’s read so we see how both confusing and revelatory this is for us today:

He called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing. (Luke 9:1-2)

Sent out by Jesus and given power and authority over all the demons. This is an exciting day. Then it all goes south. What Jesus tells them to do, commissions and equips them to do doesn’t happen:

A man from the crowd shouted, saying, “Teacher, I beg You to look at my son, for he is my only boy, and a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly screams, and it throws him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth; and only with difficulty does it leave him, mauling him as it leaves. I begged Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not.” (Luke 9:38-40)

Verse 40 appears like an explosion.

“I begged your disciples to cast it out, and they could not.”

What?

In verse 1, Jesus gives them authority over all demons. And by verse 40, they cannot get rid of one.

What went wrong?

In order to understand what happened, we have to understand what discipleship is all about. It’s hard to isolate the Luke 9 failure without adding a discipleship journey of seeing the demonic world crushed by the Kingdom of God. So let me give you the thirty-thousand-foot view of discipleship.

Here are the three levels of discipleship:

1. Watch me as I do it
2. I help you as we do it
3. I watch you as you do it

Here are examples of each:

1. Watch me as I do it

Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out. (Luke 8:1-2)

In Luke 9, Jesus commissions the Twelve to do what He has already been doing and what they have seen Him doing. Watch me as I do it. He doesn’t just tell them something, He shows them something.

Notice the important phrase: the twelve were with Him.

Discipleship is more presence than information. Discipleship is more with Him than heard Him. We think discipleship is to sit in a classroom or a Bible study and get information. Discipleship calls for a bodily presence from the discipler and not just information.

Discipleship is leading by example. It is not telling people to do what you yourself have not and will not do. Jesus tells them to preach the kingdom and to cast out demons and He models it for them. Watch me as I do it.

2. I help you as we do it

Luke 9 is so important on the discipleship journey. Where the disciples fumble the ball on this, Jesus picks it up and delivers the boy. But more is happening.

This is the tweaking stage. Luke 9 is the humility moment for them to realize, I’m called but I can’t get too far from the Teacher.

These are teaching moments. Something both strange and familiar happens after the fumble. What they do next when they can’t cast it out is a learning moment for all: they get critical of others instead of examining themselves.

A few verses later after their failure, they see others casting out demons with success and the Twelve don’t like that. Jesus is about to help them. Here we see two crazy verses thrown into the narrative, but these verses are so important to discipleship:

John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name; and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow along with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not hinder him; for he who is not against you is for you.” (Luke 9:49-50)

These other guys are successful but the disciples aren’t. Therefore, their thinking goes, Let’s prevent them. Let’s get critical of their success because that is supposed to be us.

This is an ego deal. A pride moment.

We’re much closer to Jesus then they are, so why do they cast out demons? So ridiculous.

Jesus is teaching them two things. He is helping them as they do it together. First, we must celebrate kingdom success in others and stop criticizing because they don’t follow along with our certain group. And second, we must question ourselves and not others when we face failure. Something the disciples don’t do here. They look at and get angry with others getting the job done. Jesus needs to help them.

3. I watch you as you do it and celebrate

We’re moving into tomorrow’s reading, but look let’s look at Luke 10:

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.”

At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit.

(Luke 10:17-21)

Jesus is so joyful that His disciples are getting it. It says that, “He rejoiced greatly.” The word actually means that He jumped up and gushed out with excitement.

I believe that Jesus still gets happy when we do what we were intended to do for Him.

Don’t isolate a failing moment on your journey. These are just parts of the journey, not the whole. As Abraham Lincoln said: “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

Always remember: failure isn’t final until you quit. Luke 9 is real failure but not final. It’s just part of your discipleship journey.