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We enjoyed each other's company over coffee, donuts and cookies before we sang, prayed and learned together. Even while the music is being rehearsed, our folks gather early to catch up on each other's lives and to strengthen the bonds of friendship. Jenn and Amma helped lead the singing and everyone's voices were raised to God in praise and thanksgiving.

In our time of sharing and praying, we rejoiced with Ken and Tammy as they shared their great news of buying a house. It was a true act of God and trust in His leading. We rejoiced at that great news. Others shared their struggles, family heartaches and other requests. We lifted them to the LORD and trusted He would provide in due course.

Our Scripture lesson was on Psalm 1 and that the blessed life is one in which people are immersed in the story of God and allow that story to become their identity and hope

We shared in the bread and the cup, recreating the the story of God's redemption of humanity by the body and blood of Jesus.

We departed full of hope and joy and will meet again on Sunday. I hope you will join us.

How many people will be saved? This is a significant question that has consumed philosophers and theologians with no shortage of opinions. In Sunday's passage, Jesus is confronted with the question by someone walking alongside him. The Jews had long believed that a small and faithful remnant group of people would be those for whom Messiah would come for and it seems that the question was tilted in that direction. The person wanted to know what kind of Messiah Jesus was based on the scope of those he came to save. Will it be a small subsection of the Hebrews, all of Israel or something else.

Jesus answers the specific question with his trademark non-answer. As Eugene Peterson puts it "mind your own business" and put effort into entering the kingdom of God, the narrow door. Jesus redirects the question to focus on each person doing what they can to enter into God's kingdom by the narrow way rather than worry about who is in and who is out. So what is the narrow way?

The narrow way is Jesus and his atoning death and life giving resurrection which all people are able to enter by faith. It is a humbling way, that requires people to come into new life on God's terms and forsake any claims to his kingdom based on kinship or religious observance. It is wide open to people from all walks of life, ethnicities and races but very specific and limited. Jesus concludes that anyone who tries to get in by any other means will be left out. The door will be shut at some point and the outside existence will be deeply grievous and full of angry rage.

For us, we should strive to not only enter the narrow way of Jesus but to walk in it with all our strength.

For more on this subject, check out Bible.org at Lesson 66: The Narrow Door (Luke 13:22-30) | Bible.org

Luke 13:10-17 drops us into Jesus' healing of a woman afflicted by some malady that caused her to live hunched over for 18 years. Eugene Peterson's translation ascribes her condition to severe arthritis and I can see that being the case. At odds with Jesus, is the ruler of the synagogue that Jesus was teaching at. This miracle freeing of the afflicted woman occurred on the Sabbath and the offended rabbi threw out the yellow penalty flag claiming that Jesus broke the law. Jesus shames him publicly because the ruler was a hypocrite, one who had no issue untying his ox or donkey on Sabbath to lead it water but had issue with another human being freed. So what gives?

The rabbi, who must have been serving in the synagogue for years, had never seen any supernatural demonstrations of the goodness and grace of God and suddenly this traveling preacher shows up and BAM, miracles! I think it is possible that the man's pride, envy and jealousy got the best of him and he reacted by crying foul. It's hard thing to serve faithfully and not see any gains or fruit of your labor and even harder when those tangible gains are given by someone else.

So how do we move past our own pride, envy and jealousy when others get to be used by God to make amazing Kingdom things happen?

1. Recognize that pride, envy and jealousy are our default sinful responses. Recognize that we all think we should be the ones to be used by God in publicly awesome ways. The deal is that God does not seem to think so. He chooses to do what he does through whomever he chooses. We need to confess and repent of our sinful responses
2. Join the party. Our responses to God's demonstrations of goodness, grace and love through other's should be met with holy high-fives, praise emoji's and worship. Let's be the kind of brothers and sisters in the LORD that are happy and excited about all the ways God is using people to bring about His goodness, mercy and love

This is one of the more challenging passages in the New Testament because it seems to be contrary to the mission of Jesus, to reconcile people to God. Jesus says here that he came to bring fire and division rather than peace and without proper context, this can be a jarring statement. It is vital to our understanding of Jesus' words to put them into the context in which he is speaking. Remember that this passage is part of his teaching on avoiding the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who prided themselves on strict adherence to the Torah but neglected the care of the poor and powerless. Jesus' teaching has emphasized a kingdom life that is joyfully and fearlessly dependent on God's grace and goodness versus human kinship and bloodlines.

With this in mind, Jesus tells a parable that condemns the "managers of God's house" for not caring for the "servants" who are doing the work of taking care of the Master's home. They don't feed or care for them rather they are lazy and drunk with power and the Master brings down harsh judgement on them for their failure. It is in this context that Jesus tells the hearers that he came bring the fire of judgment and division on them, disrupting the corrupt kinship of Israel's spiritual leadership.

In the OT, fire represented judgement, purification and the presence of God. Here Jesus' judgement on the Pharisees extends to all Christians who care for people in the church. We are all responsible to care for each other as if we were representing Jesus himself. Fire also represents God's work of purifying people to better represent him in the world. Jesus' "baptism" represents the grace of God that brings us into the family and household of God, but His Spirit baptizes us into a process of intense change, heat and pressure that will produce a new creation. We must submit to the fire of God's process. Finally, fire represents the Presence of God. God is not outside the fire rather he is the fire and is with us in all of our trials and circumstances, leading and providing all the way.

Every other week, Harvest has placed a Facebook Ad that invites people to share their prayer requests through FB Messenger. I've had the honor of praying for close to 50 people over the past few months and I've loved being able to be a part of what God is doing in the world. Of course, the skeptic might ask, "Does all that prayer work?"

I think the question is important, especially in a results-oriented, pragmatic culture. People want to know if prayer achieves its goals. The answer, is yes and maybe. Yes, it achieves its end in that prayer connects us with God and vocalizes our dependency on Him to provide what we cannot provide on our own. Jesus instructed us to ask God for our daily needs and that God always provides those provisions. So when we pray we are doing what He asked us to so that our faithful dependence on Him increases.

On the other hand, the exact results of praying for someone may be immediate and it may never be known. I cannot say if my prayers for someone's sobriety, marriage, housing or financial relief actually happen and for some this is troubling. I think that prayer is less pragmatism and more an exercise of dependence on God who knows what we need. So when I pray, even half-hearted or fully expectant, I am entrusting my situation to God who knows best how to help me.

How can we pray for you today?