December 9: Matthew 9:35-38
Key Verse: Matthew 9:38
Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.
Devotion:
One of the greatest problems we have is not having enough people who are willing to share their faith with others. Jesus highlighted the problem back then just as it is today, His response being we must ask God to send out more people willing to share the gospel message. The next chapter in Matthew starts off by saying Jesus called His disciples together and gave them authority to go out and do miracles just as He was.
And this leads us to another issue we seem to have in modern times: who now has the authority to drive out spirits and cure diseases nowadays? We are not told by written law who gives authority to anyone other than by the words written down by the disciples and told us here in these verses.
We should not judge people about their authority to do anything unless it goes against God’s words in our bibles, after all we know the Spirit enables us to have different gifts from God which we can do. There is not a chain of command here where we get elected things by church elders, but gifts given us from God.
One thing we do know is the disciples would fail in some cases because they wrote about that too. In these cases they brought the people to Jesus to ask why, to which Jesus replied they did not have enough faith or they did not pray… which leads us to be reminded we should ask everything through the name of Jesus. Take everything to God in prayer!
Points to Ponder:
Are you listening to God?
Are you continually asking God for support?