Monday 3 Oct 2022

October 3: Luke 10:25-37

Key Verse: Luke 10:29
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’

Devotion:
How do you choose which people you hang out with? How do you go about choosing friends? How do you go about meeting new friends? If we stick to only choosing to be friends with people which are related to the circle of friends you already have, or the circle of family you have, then your circle of friends is not likely to expand. The same can be said about our church… if we are not willing to go out and meet new people to invite into church, then our church numbers will continue to diminish as people pass on!

When Jesus was confronted by a “teacher of the law” this was referring to a person of the Jewish faith who would teach the Jews the scriptures and the rules as they had been taught to do by other teachers. This meant the circle of people the scriptures was reaching was not expanding other than by Jewish children being born!

Jesus wanted the teacher to open their eyes and see how limiting such an attitude was – how the Jewish church would not expand any faster than the Jewish population would expand. Jesus wanted the scripture to be made available to anyone whom was willing to learn from them, anyone who wanted to know more about God, be they Jew or not!

When Jesus said we should be disciples, He did not mean we should go into church and teach the church people about God! The vast majority of people in church services are there because they already have some sort of invested interest in God. Waiting for people to walk through the doors before teaching them about Christ is probably going to make the church expand at a lesser rate than the Jews at the time of this story. More people are likely to die than walk into church unless we go out and invite people in!

Points to Ponder:
How often do you go to church?

How often do you invite new people in to church?