Thursday 16 Mar 2023

March 16: Luke 11:14-23

Key Verse: Luke 11:18
If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul.

Devotion:
I love the way Jesus was free to talk about many things and not just what sounded nice in a Christian environment… When you go off to do some sort of manual labour, do you expect to stay clean and not get tired, or do you expect to get dirty and be tired after the work? The same is going to happen with any work we do for Christ.

We could stay in a nice comfortable, clean and friendly environment where only Christians are and only good things happen, but how are we ever going to be able to reach out to people who are not yet Christians! If we stayed at home and ‘worked from home’ when we should be doing manual labour, we wouldn’t be much good! We have to go out into the world and get involved with things and people – some of that is going to be dirty work too!

This does not mean we should go and ‘play in the mud’ and bring all the mud home into our lives. We should be able to come home and freshen up in a clean place so we are ready for work on another day. This does not mean we are sinners just because we get dirty; if getting dirty is part of the job, would Christ have asked you to do it in the first place if He knew you would stay dirty?

Jesus made sure people knew He was not acting on behalf of anyone else other than God. Nothing He could do against all the evil could be anything other than God’s work. When we go with God to do our work in the world we will face people who accuse us because we dare to do things differently… remind them you are working for and with God!

Points to Ponder:
Do you shy away from work because it is not Christian?

Will you take Christ with you to work today?