Key Thought

Jesus' point is clear. Don't try to limit God's new life in Christ. Don't try to contain it with your old religious categories. Don't try to dilute it with your old religious practices. Jesus brings something new. Celebrate it. Enjoy its blessings. Be challenged by its demands and rejoice in its promises. But don't ever try to simply attach it to what you had before. The call of Christ is new, fresh, and all encompassing. Begin each day with fresh eyes and new ears with the expectation that the Lord will do something you have never seen or expected. You won't feel safe. It won't be predictable. But, it will be marvelous!

Today's Prayer

Today's Verses in Context

After this Jesus went out and saw a tax collector sitting at his place for collecting taxes. His name was Levi. Jesus said to him, "Follow me!" Levi got up, left everything, and followed Jesus. Then Levi gave a big dinner for Jesus. The dinner was at Levi's house. At the table there were many tax collectors and some other people too. But the Pharisees and those men that taught the law for the Pharisees began to complain to the followers of Jesus, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and other bad people?" Jesus answered them, "Healthy people don't need a doctor. It is the sick people that need a doctor. I have not come to ask good people to change. I have come to ask bad people to change their hearts and lives!" They said to Jesus, "John's followers often fast and pray, the same as the followers of the Pharisees. But your followers eat and drink all the time." Jesus said to them, {"When there is a wedding}, you cannot make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is still with them. But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them. Then his friends will fast." Jesus told them this story: "No person takes cloth off a new coat to cover a hole on an old coat. Why? Because he ruins the new coat, and the cloth from the new coat will not be the same as the old cloth. People never pour new wine into old wine bags. Why? Because the new wine will break the bags, and the wine will spill out and the wine bags will be ruined. People always put new wine into new wine bags. No person that drinks old wine wants new wine. Why? Because he says, 'The old wine is fine.'"

— Luke 5:27-39 (ERV)

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