You have to know something about the disease of leprosy to understand the magnitude of what Jesus did when a leprous man asked for healing. Leprosy made you an outcast. Yet when faced with a request for healing, Jesus reached out and touched this man to effect the healing. No one even got close to a leper in that day. But Jesus, without hesitation, reached out and touched him.
Jesus repeatedly made the point that meeting human need was vastly more important than maintaining religious ritual. Jesus' point was that the Law was not given to entrap men. Rather it was given to expose our need and then to point ment to God as the supplier to meet our need.
For awhile, Jesus went about preaching and demonstrating the love and power of God. There came a point in His ministry when He started focusing on a group of successors. We call them the Disciples.
In His teachings, Jesus heavily emplasized the matter of trusting God in circumstances. Jesus taught that truly trusting God removed fear from life. And that lesson is still true today. Trusting God removes fear. Have you reached that point in life?
Demons know who Jesus is. For you to say ""I know who Jesus is"" doesn't gain you anything. Even the demons know that. Yet they bow to Him and follow His commands. When it comes to obeying what Jesus says, the knowledge that you're doing less than the demons should be more than a little unsettling.
Being in the ministry is exhausting work. In being human, ministry involves a transfer of energy from one person to another. Jesus grew weary as He traveled and preached and ministered. If you're in ministry, it will happen to you, too. And if you're under a ministry, you need to be aware of this and always be in prayer, sustaining those who minister to you. True ministry is work and it makes you tired.
Jesus placed a high value on children and He gave them a place withing the Kingdom of God. The way Jesus treated children was not the norm for the culture of the day. While every family valued their children, those children had no real standing within the family or within society. Jesus treated them as real people of real worth. And He noted that God values them enough to assign protecting angels to them. Be careful when you deal with children. You're in the presence of God's mighty angels
If you want to serve one of the people valued the most in God's kingdom, serve children. That's an amazing concept, even in our culture today. Kids usually get the leftovers. The children are left to put up with whatever we adults want. They're actually disposable in some cases. But that's not what Jesus was like. He welcomed children to His presence. He wanted them to be with him. We have things upside down. We value adults, and they are valuable, but God focuses attention on those who also value the children.
What we have as human beings is not much when you compare it to God's infinite resources. We don't have much, really, but if we will give to God what little we have, He will make it much.
