Key Thought

The Israelites in the wilderness may be the best example of it, but we all have a tendency to do it. We look back on the past, what we once had or did, with nostalgia and imagine it better than it was. The Israelites were slaves, but wanted to go back to Egypt because they imagined it as better than what they were facing in the wilderness. We often do the same thing in our walk of faith. The old life and its temptations lure us and invite us back. So often we succumb. The old religious way of thinking, one based on works righteousness and earning our own salvation, often seeps back into our Christian way of thinking, robbing us of its vitality. The lure of the familiar is powerful. It is also a deadly thief, robbing our new life in Christ of its grace, joy, and victory. Don't go back and mix some other form of religion you know with the radical call of Jesus!

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)

Comments on "The Lure of the Familiar":

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