Please join our new Mentor 123 campaign starting this coming Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013!
What you need to do is to find two more people meeting once a week for three months, encouraging each others to have daily devotion - a daily intimate personal relationship with Jesus!
To create a momentum to this new yearly campaign I am going to start a new blog and podcast on that day. I will direct my two blogs and podcasts to that new site to have a 40 days BREAK.BUILD daily devotion. For a preliminary format please go to this site: http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/ .
You can see the layout and titles of all 40 days. Come on , let's get two more people to start a daily tasting of Jesus wonderful banquet specially prepared for us!
Today's Reading: Luke 20: 20-26
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link:
Please click this link to read Luke 20: 20-26
Bible Study
Today we come to the passage concerning with the priority of authority. Those people sent spies trying to make Jesus stepped into a trap naming the wrong authority.
N.T. Wright says:
In terms of the drama, the audience now supposes that Jesus is on the spot, about to be found out, when suddenly everything is reversed, and the accusers become the accused. He puts them of the defensive right away by asking them to produce one of the coins: what are they doing possessing such blasphemous objects? His key question, more probing than theirs in its implications, gets them to admit that it is indeed Caesar's coinage they have about their persons, with its haughty image of Tiberius Caesar himself, and the inscription that proclaims him son of God and much more besides.
Jesus double-edged command, which finishes the conversation, not only answers their own question, but throws back such a strong challenge that the whole drama is stood on its head. The accusers are not just accused, but convicted. On the one hand, there is a dark appropriateness about giving Caesar back his blasphemous coinage. Better get rid of the stuff.
But, on the other hand, the challenge to Jerusalem, the Temple, its rulers, and their hypocritical underlings, are all concentrated in the second half of the command; give God back what belongs to him. Jesus' own accusation against his contemporaries is that they have consistently failed to worship their true and living God, and to live as his people before the world...Put that right, and the question of Caesar will in the long run sort itself out.
Every thoughtful Christian must sooner or later face those questions, and when that happens we should at least get the priorities right. What does it mean today to give to God what belongs to him?
Priority is always the most difficult thing to deal with. How does this passage and N.T. Wright's thought inspire you about authority and priority?
Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: Get the priorities right!
We as Christians are often so confused of priorities and authorities. Why? Because there are so many "spies" like in Jesus time send from the Deceiver to confuse us. We say that Jesus is our Lord. But, if Jesus is really our Lord then we would be willing for Jesus to lord our lives. Not so, we have so many lords lording our lives and usually not Jesus! Money, power, physical needs ....etc. etc. It's time to get the priorities right before it's too late!