The Gospels through the Summer, Day 66 What do we pray for ourselves? Read Luke 22. So often when speaking with people, or even praying with people, it’s interesting to hear what types of prayers they pray for themselves. When we think of praying for ourselves, often it’s about tests that are coming up or difficult situations or relationships with people. Sometimes it can be about money or about things we want. Here Jesus is telling the disciples that they need to pray for themselves, but what they should pray is that they would not fall into temptation. Do we pray that we will have greater obedience? Do we pray…

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 65 The world is still in a crazy place. Read Luke 21. In Jesus’s time, things were weird and people wondered about the end of the world. Fast forward to today’s time, and we find people are wondering about the exact same thing. With Covid having completely changed our lives in the last year and a half and now that we find things starting to shut down again, people continue in a state of fear. The one thing that Jesus says through this chapter as a reminder to everyone is that heaven and Earth will pass away, but his words will never pass away.…

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 64 Conflict and questions. Read Luke 20. As Jesus continues his ministry, he is faced with conflict and questions. So many of the leaders see him as challenging their authority and they fear the loss of power sho they are working to discredit Jesus. However, interestingly, Jesus is able to answer all their questions and gives them nothing they can use to accuse him. While we may struggle with how we would answer questions about our faith, Jesus doesn’t struggle at all. We can rely in him to help us answer the questions that we receive, regardless of whether the questioner is sincere or…

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 63 Praise Jesus for who he is. Read Luke 19. While this chapter covers a variety of things about Jesus, what we see throughout is people praising God for who he is. They didn’t even completely understand who he was and yet, they continue to praise him and lift up rejoicing to God. Do we understand who God really is? Do we recognize just how worthy of praise he is? The great thing is that we don’t have to understand just how worthy God is of praise, we can praise him anyway. We know that he’s worthy even if we don’t understand it all…

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 62 When was the last time we did the impossible? Read Luke 18. As Jesus continues to minister to the people, we see him do amazing and profound things. He also continues to teach them and one of the most often questions that Jesus is asked has to do with how to go to heaven. Jesus answers this question and the man who asked does not like the answer. The Bible says that he walked away sad. As Jesus is telling the disciples how people can be saved, he makes the statement that “what is impossible with man is possible with God.” We have…

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 60 How do we deal with what is most important to us? Read Luke 16. Much of this chapter discusses the way in which we view and use money. This story at the end of the chapter also is a reflection of what is most important to someone. Only after death did the rich man recognize that following God and being obedient to him was most important and now he’s desperate to pass that information on to his family. However, in this life, so many people already have so many things that are pointing them to God that if they don’t believe those things,…

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 59 Do we know our worth? Read Luke 15. Jesus shares several stories in this chapter to demonstrate our worth to God. We must come to the place of realizing that God is worthy and is above all. As a result, we come face to face with who we are. We are sinful and we need to understand our place compared to the Almighty God. Even as we see our sinfulness and depravity, we are pointed to the perfect Father who has created a path of forgiveness and cleansing for us. Confession. Are we coming to God in our sin and praising him and…

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 58 What do we seek for ourselves, glory or humility? Read Luke 14. Let’s be honest, we all have a tendency to seek out glory for ourselves. We are taught this and it is culturally acceptable and even expected to seek out the best for ourselves. However, Jesus is very specific that if we are seeking glory and honor then God will humble us. However, if we are seeking humility, then God will bring glory. What do we seek? Does humility dominate our life and are we seeking to point other people, not to us, but to God?

The Gospels through the Summer, Day 57 Freedom. Read Luke 13. This woman was in pain and Jesus freed her. He took her physically and he healed her. When we think about all that Jesus does for us and all that he wants to do for us and through us, we know that Jesus is the source of freedom. Even in the midst of the difficulties that we face, we know that Jesus’s freedom is actually a freedom that can be found in the middle of the most difficult and trying circumstances. Are we finding our peace and freedom in Christ? No matter our circumstances, we can come to Him…