Do You Go After The One? - Daily Devotional March 2nd, 2010

Bible Reading - Exodus 12, Luke 15, Job 30, 1 Corinthians 16

Do You Go After The One?

In a culture that is primarily driven with popularity and fame it is hard to find people like those mentioned in Luke 15. People that would risk it all and leave everything behind to go after that one individual that needs help. To often times we are so glamorized by the crowd that we would rather have 99 people clapping at our outstanding sermons on a Sunday than go after that one that desperately needs Jesus.

Luke 15:1-6 says, "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying,'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' So he told them this parable: 'What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' repents than over ninety-nine Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who righteous persons who need no repentance". People were thinking bad thoughts about Jesus because He was not hanging out with the right crowd or the righteous crowd which shows me that many times our thinking can be off. In those days the people mentioned here were not the popular in crowd but yet Jesus was hanging out with them because they were in need, need of salvation. When Jesus responds to the people he does so in a parable about the sheep. He asks the question, "which one of you would not go after the one sheep which was lost"? The answer is, that they all would go after that sheep because it directly affected them.

Many times within the hierarchy of church we see leaders hanging out with certain crowds or a certain kind of person because of what they can get or how it looks for them. But all too often we do not see people leaving the popular crowd to go after the one that needs Jesus because of the effort it takes and because we like the applause of man rather than the praise of God. We may go after the one if it is within a ministry context and it brings notoriety to us or if we have been given a title and that is what my job requires. But to just leave the 99 to go after that one stray... now that is something that is rarely seen. This however is what Jesus was saying. He was saying look these 99 here are already ok and they are going to make it but that 1, that 1 stray needs me and whether or not it benefits me, whether or not it is popular for me to hang out with the tax collectors and sinner, I do not care - they need help! This is the heart of God and this needs to be the heart of the church.

This passage is challenging me today because I am that hierarchy, I am that church leader that finds myself hanging with the popular crowd because of the status it gives me or what I may get out of it. I am repenting today and I am re-thinking my purpose today in going after the one. The 99 is fun when they are clapping for you and cheering you on but one thing I have come to realize is that I can settle for the applause of man or the applause of heaven. Stay with the 99 and receive the applause of man, go after the one and receive the applause of heaven.

Do you go after the one?

Tomorrows Bible Reading - Exodus 13, Luke 16, Job 31, 2 Corinthians 1

Dream Big
Ben