Devotionals

A Different Word for a Different Season

by Terry Barlow
05/07/14
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Jesus asks his disciples in Luke 22 if they had ever lacked anything when he sent them out without money bags, or knapsacks, or sandals, and they replied that they had not. But now the season is changing and his instructions differ from the previous ones. Instructions in different seasons can even seem contradictory. Now they will in fact need money bags, knapsacks and even a sword. Yes, they were hearing him right, it was worth selling even their garments to be able to buy a sword. So when the situation soon arose in the garden when soldiers sought to arrest him for trumped up charges, it was natural for his disciples to ask if they should strike with their newly acquired swords. Trouble was, though, they didn't wait for his answer, at least one didn't, and proceeded to take off a servant's ear. THEN Jesus answered that they should permit even the injustice of his arrest. But not only did he answer but he patiently and compassionately healed the servant's ear. We, too, when we jump the gun and run ahead of the Lord, may be taking away the hearing ability of some other soon-to-be servant of the Great High Priest, taking away his or her ability to hear the message we proclaim because of conduct that doesn't match the proclamation. Some even go so far as to say that Jesus must do more to clean up our messes than we ever do to promote his kingdom, and it may be true. But thank God He is present in our doings and misdoings and has the patient power to put right whatever is amiss and a mess.   We know him and are going to know Him even better and make Him known if we simply allow it to happen. We will have to work very hard for it NOT to happen. Yes, we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but we will have to work much harder for it not to happen, as one dear brother said recently, than we will in seeing it come to fulfillment. We would have to expend more energy in resisting His Spirit than we would in simply trusting Him and yielding to His Spirit.  As Peter put it, holy men of God were "carried along" in the Spirit as they spoke and recorded God's inspired words, carried along as in a river.   It takes a lot more energy and tension to cut off someone's ear than it does to heal it, or fill it with embodied truth, or  be still and know that He is God and He is in charge no matter what. I understand that devout Jews were not to come within six feet of a leper, but on a windy day a rabbi was not to come within 100 feet of one. But when the "wind" of the Holy Spirit blew it carried the Rabbi of Rabbis not a hundred feet away but right into direct physical contact with lepers and other social outcasts, and that healing contact is what changed their lives forever!