Luke 6:36-38

Jesus said to his disciples: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

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This is the type of passage that if a person truly decides to live by it for the rest of his life, he could become a saint: be merciful, don’t judge, don’t condemn, forgive, and give. Where most of us mess up is the execution. [...]

I couldn’t let Sunday’s gospel pass.  It’s been huge in my own personal spiritual development.
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If you don’t remember anything else from this message, remember this.  Christ looked the disciples in the eye and asked them who of them, by worrying, could add even a SINGLE MOMENT to their lives. He’s telling them (and us) that the whole process of worrying is absolutely useless in this life.  It accomplishes nothing.  Nothing.  NOTHING.  There are no benefits to it.
[...]

John 16:12-13a “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”
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these few words tell us a basic truth:  God is so far above us and so beyond our comprehension that we literally can’t handle the full scope of what He wants to teach us. 

Because we are fallen, and because we place so many hurdles between us and Him, we aren’t able to learn what he wants to teach.  We haven’t matured spiritually enough to understand it. 

I think of it as trying to teach calculus to a first grader. [...]

John 11:25-27

Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
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This is an exchange between Jesus and Martha, just prior to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  In it, Jesus tells Martha that “whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live….” 
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John 6:63: It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

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If I want to live a “life in the spirit,” I really need to understand that the flesh is of no avail. Time that I spend chasing matters of the flesh means NOTHING in the economy of God. I need to be fully aware of that in my mind, and I need to consider that as I make choices on how to spend my time. I live “in the world”, so there is no avoiding worldly matters, but what I can control is how much importance I put on them, and how much more important it is to follow Christ than to do any of those individual things. [...]

Are you building your house on rock or sand?
[...] Christ finishes the sermon by telling us that only those who do the will of the Father will enter heaven. He then tells us exactly what that means. If we hear “these words of mine” (ie, the Sermon on the Mount) and do not act on them, we are like fools who build their homes on sand. The house will collapse and be ruined. If we hear “these words of mine” and put them into practice, we have built our houses on the rock. The house will stand firm.

This is life and death stuff. Where do you go from here? [...]

Reflections on today’s gospel about Zacchaeus

Luke 19:1-10

He came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”
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I wish I knew more back story about Zacchaeus. He’s got success in the world, but he’s unsatisfied. He’s seen enough of what the world has to offer. He knows that his life is missing something. He wants more.[...]