Day 8
“He Crosses Over”
“So He got into a boat and crossed over, and came to His own city.”
Matthew 9:1
There is a chapter in the Bible that gives us one incredible picture after another of how Jesus lived out His purpose to “seek and save that which was lost.” This week, as we focus on praying for those people who are spiritually needy and whom God has placed in our lives, we’ll watch the Master touch lives in Matthew 9.
The first verse is a good place to start and it tells us where to start. In our own city. Now, Jesus was heading back to His own city because He’d just been run out of the city He’d come from. In fact, the whole city begged Him to leave because He was casting demons out of a man and into a herd of pigs, who then rushed headlong into the waters and drowned. Never mind that the man was set free. No, the pigs were dead, so Jesus had to leave. Funny how that works.
So He goes back to His own city, and the people begin to come to Him. One after another they come, and His ministry of healing, teaching and mentoring began moving forward.
Two years later, when Jesus gave His followers their marching orders, He told to first go to their own city. For some of us, that is hard. Home is where everyone knows us. In our own city, we are just so familiar to everyone that, well, we just can’t get the same results.
Many are the people who cherish a mission trip to the ends of the earth, but fail to first go to their own city. Every church wants a powerful missions emphasis, but it is difficult to plant and reap in our own city. Jesus said to go to our own city, and He Himself went, so that is where we begin.
Where is your own city? What is your Jerusalem?
Where is your neighborhood? Who are your family members? This is our home city. One of my old seminary professors wrote a book called, “Concentric Circles of Concern,” in which he very clearly argued that the closest people in our circle are the people we have the greatest influence over. It is there, he said, that we should be focusing.
He must be right. He agrees with Jesus.
Sometimes it is hard to get to your own city. Jesus had to get in a boat and cross over to get there, but when He did, the ministry times were especially powerful. What will it take for you and I to “cross over?”
Perhaps we need to cross over the street and meet our neighbors, as I had the opportunity to do last week. Maybe we need to cross over the hallway and talk to a co-worker. It could be that we should cross over family tradition and just get real with a lost relative. Increasingly, crossing over means to get over the race, language and cultural barriers, but cross over we must!
In Matthew 9, if Jesus had not crossed over, the paralytic would have died paralyzed, the tax collector would never have followed Him, and the synagogue official’s little girl would never have gotten up off her deathbed. So, cross over today.
Dear God, help me to be bold and courageous enough to cross over for the sake of the gospel. Show me my home turf, and let me take ownership over it for their souls' sake!
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