Friday after the Fifth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on July 9, 2021 by under
Scripture: St. Luke 9:57-62 (NKJV)
9:57 Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.”
58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
59 Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”
But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”
60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”
61 And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”
62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Devotion
Satan uses good and noble emotions and ideas to turn people aside. He does so with the three disciples who approach Jesus in this reading. “Lord, let me first go and bury my father;” “let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” These can be good and noble sentiments, but when they turn one away from the path of faith they are traps and stumbling blocks of the devil.
One similarly troublesome place where Satan hides is in evangelism. Some people get so consumed with the urgency to evangelize that they allow it to pull them off the narrow path to heaven. Evangelism is not only good and godly, it is commanded by our Lord. But when we become so frightened for the future, so worried about not gaining young people, that we want to sacrifice right teaching and practice for the sake of evangelism, Satan is not far away. He is lurking in the obsession for growth and success, even if it is the growth and success of the Church. Satan tries to trick us in the area of evangelism because he knows we are vulnerable there. We get worried about what will become of our congregations if we don’t get new people. But we must trust that Jesus Christ has all things in His control. He will preserve us!
Prayer: O God, who hast prepared for them that love Thee such good things as pass man’s understanding, pour into our hearts such love toward Thee that we, loving Thee above all things, may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
