The Gospel of Luke

This devotional is written by Fiona. Fiona runs a theatre and in her free time can be found running, drinking coffee or trig point bagging. She's married to Graeme and helps run the Willesden Green Small Group.

At the start of this chapter we find Jesus among thousands of people, yet he immediately addresses his disciples pretty much ignoring the crowd around him, they are literally trampling on one another to see him! The disciples obviously needed to hear these words, they were the next leaders and needed to avoid the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The hypocrisy being, they were doing it all for show. Instead of fearing God they were fearing Man, and the judgement of others.
‘Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell'. Why worry about what others think, or the judgement of unbelievers when time on earth is so limited compared to an eternity with the Creator who loves and cares for you deeply.
I was always confused as a kid as to why people told me to ‘Fear the Lord' like the rest of the time you tell me how much he knows me and loves me and is protecting me. He forgave your sins but don't mess it up and ever do it again!! But as I've grown to know God, I've come to realise its more like respect. I Love to surf. And I love the ocean, but I have a respect for it as I know of the dangers and I've seen the amazing power it can produce. Like I wouldn't go for a surf in the middle of a massive storm. Scripture is full of examples of Fearing God as a good thing, Fearing God saves us from caving into our own sinful nature. Romans 3:18 says that our chief Sin is that we ‘Have no fear of God at all'

I work in theatre, an industry that really cares about fame. What you have matters. In an industry where salaries are notoriously low, a fixation on material means can feel like a really logical mindset.

Life is not defined by what you have but in our society and culture that can be a really tough truth to hold on to. It's so easy in our diligence to be honouring to family, or mindful of dependents to focus on creating safety for the future through financial means but Jesus offers a much safer security system.

The CEO of US based company Gravity Payments received notoriety recently for reducing his $1m annual salary to a new imposed $70k minimum for all staff, doubling some of his staffs salaries overnight so they could not worry about money but instead find fulfilment in other things. Dramatic impacts weren't just in workload productivity but the company has seen the number of babies being born skyrocket, employees getting fit for the first time in their lives and staff transformed by an ability to not worry about money.

I am fully aware that we don't all have bosses or situations that enable us to not worry about money but we do have something far greater than being an employee of Gravity Payments, an ability to trust that God has all the provisions we could ever need.

In times of real need in my life it has floored me the provision that God has had for me, far beyond anything I could have stored up.

What if in our mindfulness to create safety nets we were actually starving ourselves of the richness of God's provisions for us?

Lord, today I pray you would help us find the space to trust in you deeper than before, casting off our Self in order to recentre you in our lives.