Text: Luke 6:37-49
Summary: When we are fully trained by Jesus, we will become just like Him. To act like Jesus, to speak like Jesus, to live like Jesus. Luke 6 lays a high standard. Loving an enemy is like entering the CrossFit championships. Let’s start with a beginner class – examining how we speak to those closest to us.
Luke 6
37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” 39 He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye. A Tree and Its Fruit 43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. Build Your House on the Rock 46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Father, we gather in this place as children of God. Jesus, you are our teacher. So we ask that you teach us today. We don’t want to just receive information in our brains. But we ask that you plant the good seed on good hearts today so it would bear much good fruit. Continue to expose the things in our hearts that should not be there as you birth your good heart in our hearts. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus Name, Amen
Luke 6
40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
The goal of the Christian life, the goal of every disciple of Jesus Christ, is that we will be fully trained so that we look, act, talk just like Jesus Christ. And why is Jesus out of all the teachers a qualified teacher? It says in v.39, He also told them a parable. Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? The reason why Jesus is fully qualified to lead us, to teach us, and to fully train us is because He alone is not blind. If you follow any other person, you’re following a blind person. And the result is already shown in this text. If you find a man, a woman, a spiritual leader, a pastor, a pastor’s wife, if you follow anybody else other than Jesus Christ, you will end up at the bottom of the pit. But Jesus alone is fully qualified because He sees perfectly. And He can lead us perfectly and He can train us perfectly.
Luke 6
46 Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.
So the issue is, once we identify who is our teacher, who alone can teach us, who can train us so that we can be just like Jesus Christ? It is not your pastor. It is not your mother. It is not your father even though they may be spiritual, godly people. Jesus alone is our teacher. And He says, why do you call me Lord and not do what I tell you? And then He says, everyone who comes to me and hears my words, and does them, then you are like that house that you dug deep and a foundation has been built on a solid rock.
And the word here is not rema. He’s not speaking a specialized word to an individual as he did to Moses at a burning bush. This is not a spoken word. This is logos, the written word. This is the written word that Jesus spoke 2000 years ago and it applies to all disciples of every generation.
And so, if you want to be fully trained, you have to listen to this word, because of course, we could generalize it. We could say, all scripture that is inspired by the Word of God, by the Spirit of God, we could say it’s all of Scripture is what Jesus is talking about. But I want to highlight it and I want to narrow it down. Jesus in this very first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, is laying out the path of every disciple. And He says, in particular, if you want to study anything in Scripture, study these words specifically.
And this Sermon on the Mount, if we’re talking about getting in shape, this is like the CrossFit championships. I don’t know if you have ever watched CrossFit but these people are incredible. They are able to lift huge amounts of weight, they have incredible endurance, they will run in a desert in the heat of the day, they will swim in the ocean, and they will lift weights, and they are the most well-rounded athletes I’ve ever seen. And it’s actually a fitting name. Jesus is also our CrossFit Champion. He is fit to die on a cross and so He wants to train us to be just like Jesus Christ. And the standard of the CrossFit Championship is listed here in Luke 6. And I want to read starting in v.27.
Luke 6
27 But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
If you can do these two verses, you’re already a contender to be the champion. If your heart is in a place, that an enemy does something horrible to you, and your response is not hatred back, not violence back, not judgment, not slander, not gossip, but you actually want to do good for this person who is your enemy. And instead of cursing them, because that’s so instinctive and so natural, instead of cursing, you’ll bless them. Much more than even blessing them through words that they can hear. You will secretly be praying for them. This is CrossFit Championship Contender level. And then it says in v.29.
Luke 6
29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
This is also CrossFit championship contender material. We may read this and say, Christians, we’re not doormats. We’re not pushovers. We shouldn’t let people walk all over us. And yet these verses say if somebody strikes you, you won’t strike him back. You will turn your cheek. You’re so not easily offended. If an enemy is treating you this unjustly, just because you’re a Christian, just because you acknowledge Jesus Christ, you get struck on one side, you turn, and that’s the type of person you are. You’re not offended. You’re not fazed, you’re not angered. You’re the kind of person that you could even let him strike you on the other side.
If someone steals from you, you’re not gripped by money. He steals and you say, it’s no big deal. Maybe that person really needed it. You’re not trying to sue that person and get every last penny back because you so desire money. No, you’re actually the kind of person, someone steals from you and you let it go. You don’t even think about it. You don’t even calculate what you lost, how much did that item cost and what did I lose? How many hours of work that I put in to buy that thing? You don’t calculate like that. You just give it away. You just genuinely give it away. Someone steals it, it’s okay. You’re not upset about it. You’re not offended. This is CrossFit Championship Contender heart.
And if you were on the other side, if you were so gripped by anger and you are striking people left and right. Wouldn’t you want someone to show you mercy? If you are so poor that just to survive, you have to steal and you are that person who’s a thief, wouldn’t you want someone to show you mercy? And Jesus is raising the bar. This is the kind of heart I want for every one of my disciples.
He says v.32, it gets even more challenging. He says if you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And so our standard of how we evaluate ourselves is that our friends think well of us. In the church, brothers and sisters, everyone thinks well of me. My parents think I’m great. My children think I’m great. And so to people around us, who are genuinely good to us and we’re good to them, we think, therefore, we’re a good person. Jesus says, even sinners act like this. Don’t pat yourself on the back because your friends think highly of you.
Instead, Jesus says, v.33, and if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to give back the same amount. And so now He also applies it to finances. If you get money because you think that person is going to pay me back, perhaps you’re gripped by money.
We may be generous toward family members and to friends, because we might not be calculating that they’re going to pay me back, but we are generous because we think it will come back around to me. That if I am in a jam because I was generous to all these different friends of mine and family members, so when I’m in a jam, they’re going to be generous back to me. And so we’re giving with some strings attached. We want something for it. And Jesus says, if that’s you, even sinners do the same. So why do you give yourself any credit?
Luke 6
35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
And so remember our story. When we were enemies of God, how did our Heavenly Father look upon us who are evil and ungrateful? He showed us mercy. And He wants to birth that kind of heart in all of us. So that when people rip us off, when people mistreat us, strike us on the cheek, when people slander us, ridicule us, mock us, they make us look bad, we are not the kind of person who gets so agitated, frustrated, and we store up these things in our heart. Instead, we’re the kind of person we let it all go. We’re not gripped by money. We’re not gripped by how people treat us. We’re going to show mercy because our Father has shown mercy to us.
Luke 6
37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
Before you’re quick to judge, before you’re quick to condemn, remember this principle that there is a boomerang effect. That if you judge people harshly, if you condemn people quickly, that will turn back on you. That is a spiritual principle. And so, from these verses, I hope our heart becomes more and more generous. More and more forgiving. More and more understanding of where people are. Because remember when we were in a worse spiritual state, and people judged us and people ridiculed us, how did we feel? We got angry, we got upset, we were in a bad place, so of course, that kind of heart comes out. But how did it feel that we’re on the receiving end of judgment and condemnation?
Jesus is saying, put yourself in the shoes of the other person. You don’t know their story. You don’t know what kind of family background they had. You don’t know what kind of hardship they’re going through right now. How much stress they’re under? Give them a little grace. Show them a little mercy. Father knows it all. And so He’s saying, you don’t know the whole story. And yet based on a small sliver of what you see and experience of that person, you will give a maximum pronouncement of judgment. And Jesus is saying, that is not the kind of heart I want for my disciple.
Then He says in v.41, why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye. And so when we assess other people, when we analyze people, when we pronounce judgment on people and condemn, because that’s what we’re doing, what we fail to understand is that that person has a little speck. So you’re seeing something and maybe what you’re seeing is partially true. You’re seeing something that’s actually there. Maybe you don’t know the whole story, but you’re seeing something.
But that speck is like a little splinter on a telephone pole and you have a telephone pole coming out of your eyes. And so if every one of us has big telephone poles coming out of our eyes, does God want us to focus on the other person’s speck or a splinter, while failing to address our own problem, which is orders of magnitude, more of an issue for us? And so every disciple, we’re not judging others. We should judge ourselves.
Such a hard lesson. Especially if you’re in leadership, we are trained to fix issues and judge people, and we think this is loving. We think this is what it means to train. No, the disciple of God, we are modeling what it means to look inwardly and see that there are many things in my own heart I need to deal with. I will try to help you on occasion. But first, if I don’t deal with this telephone pole issue, I will not be much help to you. And maybe I will identify the issue but I will address it with the wrong heart, with judgment and condemnation. And so even though you’re addressing something that’s maybe true, in the end, you’re going to ruin that person because you’ve done it with the wrong heart. And so before we judge, analyze, dissect, and condemn, let’s look inwardly at our own hearts. How does it look, in light of these verses?
Luke 6
42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.
Jesus is not saying that the only problem is you. No, everybody has a problem. And you’re seeing things that may be partially true. There are specks that you’re observing in other people, but He says first. And so when you’re praying, don’t pray about everybody else’s problem. Pray about your own problem. This is about priority in our prayers. What is prioritized is your own heart. As ministers, we think it’s a loving thing. We’re praying about all the needs of every person in the church. And isn’t that what God wants? No, Jesus is telling us clearly He wants your heart to be right, my heart to be right. Then, and only then, at the end of your prayer, you start praying for the specks of other people. But the vast majority of your time has been spent on dealing with the telephone pole problem of our own heart and our own vision.
Luke 6
43 For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
In v.43, when it’s talking about the good tree, bad fruit or bad tree, good fruit, He’s talking about kalós. We talked about that last week with the parable of the sower. Kalós means there’s an outward sign of something that’s noble inwardly. And when somebody sees, that inspires praise among people who observe a person who is like this good tree. It is kalós.
Bad fruit is a fruit that is overripe. And so if you have a banana that’s fully blackened, or if you have an apple that’s fully mushy and darkened on the inside, what do you do with that piece of fruit? You throw it away, it’s worthless to you. It’s rotten, right? Because that’s what it means to be bad fruit. It is worthless, and you just simply discard it.
So good fruit from a good tree, and a bad tree that leads to bad fruit. And then He also says, a good person versus an evil person. And the good person is the same thing we covered last week. It is agathos, meaning it is intrinsically good. And God alone is good. Which means that this goodness originates from the heart of God. If we are fully trained to be like Jesus Christ, who is our trainer, that means the Father is birthing the heart of His Son in our hearts. This is agathos. We cannot manufacture goodness because it originates from God.
There is no other source of goodness in the universe. And this good person, it says in v.45, out of his good treasure of his heart produces good. Good treasure is interesting. It means storehouse. Did you know if you’re a good person throughout your days, you are storing up good things in your storehouse, you’re treasuring them? You’re allowing these things to come into your heart, you’re holding them dear to your heart, things are being added to your heart. And that’s what comes out because you’re storing it there. A heart that is good produces good fruit because it’s stored up. You’ve stored up good things.
And the opposite is also true. An evil person is storing up evil things. And to kind of flesh out a little bit more of what it means to be good versus evil, evil is an interesting word here. It means somebody who is under incredible pressure and toil. It is laborious, it’s burdensome, his heart is pain ridden. It is full of annoyances. And is your heart storing up good things that come from God alone? Or are you storing up pains? Are you storing up your annoyances? Are you storing up labors and burdens?
You don’t release these toxins from your heart. You actually store them and you mull it over. What that person said to you, you turn that script in your head. And as you do that, you’re letting that toxin, that poison, go deeper and deeper, and you’re storing it up. And no wonder if you do this, your heart becomes evil and what is produced from your life and what comes out of your life. Because it says, for out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks.
As I said last Sunday, it’s really hard to know on the surface the state and the condition of your heart and mind. The heart is deceitful. So many things are hidden from view. We see the surface level things. We see the blatant sins. We see the addictions, the character flaws, but there are so many deeper things, the thoughts, the attitudes, the intention, the motives, which God sees everything.
So I want to give you one practical tip for you and me to know with a little more accuracy what is in our heart. You want to pay attention to your speech. Pay attention to your speech for out of the abundance of the heart, whatever is stored up there, the mouth speaks. If you’re storing annoyances from your spouse, from your children, from your boss, from a brother or sister in Christ, if you store these up, guaranteed it will come out. The annoyances, the harsh tone, it will come out.
That is a principle that cannot be broken. It is true. If you store up burdens and stresses and injuries that happened to you decades ago, you store it up, you don’t even know they’re there, but they’re there. It’s stored up. It’s deep. You’ve locked it away in a vault, somewhere in the basement of your heart. Sooner or later it will come out. Check your speech, you will see with shocking accuracy the state of your heart.
CrossFit Championship is how you speak before enemies. We know how Jesus was. We may say, He’s the Son of God. He’s at a level that none of us will ever reach. He can forgive while He’s hanging on a cross. And we might say, we don’t have to become like Him. And so we don’t even acknowledge that v.40 is there in the Bible, that Jesus, our trainer, wants to fully train us. The Master wants to make every one of His disciples ook, look, act, and talk just like Him.
And you look at the first deacon in the book of Acts, Stephen, and you see that even Stephen, a deacon, he’s not even an apostle, look at how he died. Saying, Father, forgive them. Breathing out the same forgiveness, coming out of the same heart that Jesus had, and he was such a young believer. He was fully trained. Just an amazing brother in Christ. I can’t wait to meet him. Amazing brother in Christ.
And so if that is CrossFit Championships, and let’s say we’re so far from Stephen. We’re so far from Jesus Christ. Because someone cuts us off on the freeway and we get angry. We know we’re so far, we can’t even imagine entering in the championship. We’re not even qualified. We don’t even pass the qualifying rounds. If that is advanced level CrossFit, I want to invite you, let’s start at the beginner level. How you speak to those closest to you. Let’s start at beginner CrossFit one on one, how we speak to our spouse. How we speak to our children, how we speak to our close friends, our roommates, our coworkers, our boss.
It’s actually so easy to be good to people you only see on occasion, if you only show up on a Sunday. Jesus is calling out hypocrites here. Many people are simply hypocritical because on Sunday, everybody who sees them might say, oh, such a godly person. But they have no idea how they speak at home. Even our coworkers whom we only see on occasion, especially this year, we only see them through zoom. It is easy to be well received by coworkers because there are only certain segments of the day that we see them. But the people who know you best is the best gauge of the state of your heart.
I don’t know about you but when Jesus is showing up at my door, and He’s waking me up at five in the morning, saying it’s time to get your heart in shape. I just don’t want to answer the door sometimes. I want to hit the snooze button. I’m quite comfortable where I am. And I don’t want to go for the CrossFit Championship. Can I just stay at a 24-Hour fitness level? Zumba class? Can I just do something that overweight grandmothers can handle the pace of the class? Can I just do something easy, Jesus? Because deep down I don’t want to deal with my heart. I don’t want to deal with my heart.
When Jesus is taking you at five in the morning to run up the hills and it’s tiring and you want to give up, and He’s doing this because He’s training you, my reaction is, Jesus, I want to go back. Jesus, this is enough. I’ve gone far enough, I want to go back. When Jesus presents a difficult situation, my instinctive reaction is, I don’t need this. I don’t want this. I didn’t sign up for this. And we don’t realize that Jesus is training us. He’s bringing us into a difficult circumstance.
For instance, when the disciples are on the boat and the winds are hitting and Jesus is asleep, it was deliberate. It was training. It was exposing the level of faith that they had. At least they brought the issue to Jesus. So they pass the first portion of the test, but they didn’t trust that Jesus would take them through. And Jesus takes us through stormy seasons. We just want to be smooth sailing, sitting on a Hawaiian beach with a pina colada and just relaxing. We just want to relax. We don’t want to change. No wonder years can go by, decades can go by, we don’t realize that there is intense training ahead.
Because we don’t want to suffer, we don’t want to endure. We’re quite comfortable where we are. No wonder we don’t even realize Luke 6:40 is in the Bible. That the Master wants us to be fully trained to be just like Him. And training is difficult even in a physical sense. It is difficult. Who wants to wake up five in the morning and run up the hills? Nobody. But spiritually if you want to become like Jesus, you will have to go through some difficulty, some hardship, some suffering. And my reaction instinctively is, Jesus, can I just stay in my bed?
Jesus’s encouragement to all of us is to know the goal. The goal is CrossFit. The goal is for all of us to be champions. And so when He shows up at eight in the morning, He says it’s time to go running, it’s time to lift some weights. He wants us to get beyond bench pressing the bar, the 45-pound bar. He wants us to work up to two to 25 plates on either side. He wants us to work up to the kind of strength that He has, not just lifting the bar with no weights or a five-pound dumbbell. He’s trying to increase our strength and our capacity. He’s trying to train his disciples to become like Him.
And so one reaction is to flee, which is my reaction. When we should ask the Lord, okay, am I in this suffering because I made a mistake? Perhaps in that case, we have to learn the painful lesson. And then after we learn the lesson, He may release us from that and say, okay, I’m done with this, that might happen. But if Jesus led you there, and the first few months, you’re experiencing some turbulence and you want to quit, Jesus is saying, didn’t I lead you there? If I lead you there, there’s a purpose that you need to fulfill. If you don’t fulfill it, you’ll never go from intermediate class to the advanced level.
So Jesus wants to lead us step by step from intermediate to advanced, eventually contending for the championship of the Crossfit games. So the first thing is, if Jesus led you into a specific task or season, then go through it with Him. Go through it with Him. Don’t flee the other direction. Just remember, didn’t Jesus lead me to this? If He led me there, why do you quit? It’s like the storm hit the boat, and you want to go back the other direction and you don’t want to cross to the other side.
No, Jesus wants us to cross over. He wants us to get to the other side because that’s what it looks like to go from beginner to intermediate to advanced, you need to cross some things. You need to get to the other side of some things. So that’s one self-preservation mechanism we should just recognize. The tendency to quit difficult things, even if Jesus is the one leading you. So let’s not do that.
The other thing is not so clear, you’re still in it, you’ll still go through it, but you shut down. That’s another self-preservation mechanism. Instead of dealing with issues like with spouses, parents with children, and I just want to stick to, this is just a beginner level. This is the training ground. Even in church leadership, the qualification is you lead your house well, you’re not a hypocrite who leads on Sundays well. No, you ask the spouse, you ask the children, how is this person at home? Are they fit to be a deacon? Are they fit to be an elder? Can this person be considered to be a pastor? You interview all the family members and you get the real truth of that person.
And so when we go through difficulties at home with our loved ones, there are certain patterns I think the Lord wants to break. Especially men, we are passive as part of our design, as part of our fallenness with what Adam fell in, and he fell because of passivity, and we didn’t lead, we didn’t protect. I’m identifying it in myself, there’s a tendency to shut down. Let’s say there are issues at home, I don’t want to deal with it. Let me just watch the NBA playoffs. Let me just get into my own space. Let me just not deal with this and we just shut down emotionally. That is the same thing as quitting.
You might think you’re still in it. You might think okay, I don’t want to be speaking out of the abundance of an evil heart so I will just not speak. No, that’s not enough. If your heart is storing of evil and you think, okay, I’m silent and therefore it’s not coming out and I’m not hurting other people, still, your silence is hurting people. You want to learn how to deal with things properly, you want to know how to communicate. If your spouse is nagging you and you’re dying 1000 paper cuts from the nagging of your spouse, Jesus wants to train you how to deal with it.
Pay attention to your speech, not just before the persecutor or the enemy. Pay attention to your speech at home. This goes for children towards parents, are you respectful? Do you go back and forth and argue? Do you show proper honor and respect? It’s for parents toward children. Is there forgiveness? Is there a softening of our tone even while disciplining? Towards spouse, is there a lot of mercy shown? If that person is under stress, we understand and we give them some space. But that’s not an excuse to leave them there. No, we have to learn to communicate even while we are stressed, even while we are burdened. Let’s break these patterns of quitting, shutting down, this male passivity. Let’s start dealing with these things.
We should recognize that our tendency is that we want to stay on the couch as potatoes, eating our potato chips, and never change and never get in shape. I pray that starting today, we now have something very practical and concrete. Every time you fail and something wrong comes out of your mouth, repent and ask for forgiveness. And if you do this, I think you will find you are not dealing with the specks of other people. You start to judge yourself and you will see there is just so much in a day that we need to repent of. Even the things that didn’t come out of what I thought about that person. The annoyance I felt towards that person. There’s just so much that if you start paying attention to your speech around the people who are closest to you, you will have plenty of things to repent of. Let’s pray.
Father, there are multiple ways you can deal with the children of God. If we are stubborn, if we’re blind, if we’re not holding on to Jesus, sometimes you may discipline us and it is painful. That is how you get our attention. That’s how you deal with issues that we’re not aware of. Father, if that is us, we submit under your fatherly discipline. And that makes us sons and daughters of God.
But if we’re not under discipline, the rest is all training by the Son of God Jesus Christ and He alone is qualified because He sees perfectly. He will not lead us into a pit. If we follow anybody else, we will end up in a pit, because that person is blind, the same way that we are blind. But Jesus, you see clearly. And you can lead us perfectly. Jesus, you’re starting the training of our heart and Lord, we’re starting at the beginner level. We’re not talking about loving enemies, that is championship contender level. We’re just dealing with how we speak and act toward our loved ones.
Are we patient? Do we show mercy? Are we good to those who are genuinely good to us? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Lord, we want to pay attention to our speech. Forgive us, so many things are coming out from a heart that is not good. The annoyances that we’re storing up is coming out. Lord, may we have a short term memory when it comes to annoyances. May we not harbor them. May we not keep on replaying these scripts. May we abandon and surrender them. May you heal us from them so that we don’t have to keep thinking about it.
Lord, we pray that even before our heart is sanctified, you tell us very clearly to exercise with our own free will, kind words, kind actions, good actions. We can do this, even while our heart is still under training. These are things we can do right now. Children can do this right now to parents. Parents can do this right now to children. We may fail but that’s a time to repent. But Lord, you want us to begin now in our speech and our actions. Spouses can do this with spouses.
Father, we thank you for sending Jesus Christ. And as we partake in the Lord’s Supper, we remember what you did for us. You died on Calvary. You shed your blood. Your body was broken and we remember your sacrifice. We pray that you meet us and show us one thing you want to address on this day, in this week, in this season. One thing you want us to address. I pray that we would walk out with at least one homework assignment that you gave us. One pattern that needs to be broken. One speech pattern that needs to change. We pray that we would repent and begin anew, starting today. As our speech changes, we pray that our hearts would also follow. And you will train us so that we can be fully like our Master Jesus Christ. Thank you. In Jesus Name, Amen
