Daily Devotional – December 7, 2022

Daily Devotional – December 7, 2022
December 2, 2022 Lighthouse Network

Worship and Litany
Mark 10:32 – 45

“We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.”

Then James and John… came to him. “Teacher”, they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
Mark 10:33-35

Mark records three instances in which Jesus tries to prepare his disciples for his suffering and death.

In each of the three stories, the disciples miss Christ’s message. In the first, Peter declares it to be a blasphemous impossibility; in the second, the disciples just do not understand. The third time Jesus tries to prepare them, they immediately change the subject, and John and James ask to sit at his right and left in the kingdom.

Jesus’ carefully worded warning to help them face the most traumatic event in human history became to them a religious litany. They must have thought to themselves, You know, Jesus always makes that funny little speech about a cross. I don’t know what it means, but he seems to feel obligated to make it.

This is true of worship as well. We do not understand it, but we feel obligated to do it. For years when I took communion, it was about words and action instead of grace. I was baptized.

Water was poured on my head and the right words were said over me, but there was no regeneration. We turn the realities of the gospel into a litany that we do not even attempt to comprehend.

Never think for an instant that because you go through the motions of Religion you have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. It is only by coming to know him in his reality and coming to understand his words because of that relationship that we find salvation. Then the ritual becomes reality and meaning transforms boring traditions into eternal truth.

This is an excerpt from the book This Day with the Master by Dennis Kinslaw.
If you would like to buy this book please click here.

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