Editor’s Note: The AMI QT devotionals from Jan. 1-15 are provided by Pastor Ryun Chang (Ph.D.) who is the AMI Teaching Pastor. He and Insil have been married for 28+ years and they have three children: Christy (teacher), Joshua (grad student) and Justin (college freshman). They live in Philadelphia.
Devotional Thoughts for Today
Acts 1:14-5
They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said. . . .
Mark 3:20-1
Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
When I told my father, who was not even a churchgoer at the time, of my desire to enter the ministry, he was relieved, hoping that perhaps my partying days were over. On the other hand, the parents of my seminary roommate “Daniel,” who were good Christians by all accounts, weren’t happy when their MIT-attending son, whom they hoped would become a physician, told them the same. So to calm their displeasure, Daniel applied to several medical schools and prayed that none would accept him; God obliged, and that’s how he ended up in seminary.
Family disapproval on account of faith is something Jesus knew well during his time on earth. Jesus’ siblings thought that their carpenter brother had become crazy when he traded in his tool bag for sturdy sandals to begin the life as a wandering preacher. And when their brother started passing himself off as “the Son of God” (Mk. 3:11), the entire family intervened (“take charge of him”), probably to stave off further family embarrassment. Later, when Jesus had a following of people mesmerized by His teaching and miracles, “Jesus’ brothers said to him, ‘Leave Galilee and go to Judea. . . No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. . . . [S]how yourself to the world” (Jn. 7:3-4). Why were they so mean to him? John said, “For even his own brothers did not believe in him” (v. 5).
But these brothers, a few days removed from seeing Jesus ascend to heaven, were among the 120 who had gathered to pray in obedience to what He told them: “Wait for the gift my Father promised” (Acts 1:4). The reason for their turnaround? They saw the risen Lord, the One whom they knew had died. And they not only believed, but they would enter into ministry. Both James and Judas penned letters that were later included in the New Testament.
Daniel’s parents eventually came to support their son. In fact, they themselves became missionaries in later years. Fellow parents, remember that our children aren’t really ours. Pray that when they come of age, they will heed God’s will and not ours, so that they would go beyond desiring the things of this world, to desiring the things of God. Begin praying like that.
Prayer
God, it’s beyond belief to realize that I’ve been adopted into Your family through Christ. Of course, that doesn’t mean that my earthly family isn’t important. I pray for those in my family who still don’t know You. Embolden me to share the gospel so that they may believe in Christ for eternal life. Amen.
Bible Reading for Today: Genesis 7
Lunch Break Study
Read Mark 3:32-5: A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” 33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. 34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Jn. 19:25: Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
1 Tim. 5:8: Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Question to Consider
- Once we follow Christ after believing in Him, who becomes our new family?
- Does that relieve us from obligations to our earthly family?
- So, in effect, we are pulled in two opposite directions. Are you experiencing this tension right now?
Notes
- Jesus introduced a radical concept: our new family consists of fellow brothers and sister in Christ who seek to do God’s will in their lives. Several AMI churches call their small groups, “Family Group”; that’s very biblical.
- The fact that Jesus ensured that his earthly mother was cared for—asking John to do so—shows that we are not relieved from our family responsibilities. To neglect it is to be worse than an unbeliever.
- You have to figure out how to do both instead of favoring one against the other. For instance, when I had to be away from home due to ministry, particularly during the time of much violence in Mexico, I took measures to secure our house (many locks and chains, and much prayer). Another example of doing both is to invite lonesome people into our homes to celebrate Thanksgiving together with our own families.
Evening Reflection
For many of us, our unbelieving family members have been in that condition for such a long time that we’ve grown numb to it; some of us have even ceased praying for them. If you are like that, then why don’t you restart praying for them tonight? Remember, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).
This past December, I got to see an NBA game between San Antonio Spurs, a five-time champion, and Philadelphia 76ers, the league’s worst. Predictably, the game got of control fast and the Spurs won by 51 points!
Upon examining each roster, Jesus’ disciples would be more like the overmatched 76ers than the Spurs. It is said that, besides a handful of Philadelphia players with raw potential, the rest don’t belong in the league. And that’s who the disciples were. Being described by their detractors as “unschooled [and] ordinary” (Acts 4:5, 13) was merely scratching the surface. The disciples were initially divided not only from the rest of society but even among themselves. Simon belonged to a militant group called Zealots who violently opposed the Romans and those who worked for them, like tax collectors, among whom Matthew was one. The disciples’ favorite pastime was arguing about “who was the greatest” (Mk. 9:34); once, John and James sought to kill an inhospitable Samaritan (Lk. 9:51-5).
No one extolled the virtue of city life better than erstwhile Harvard professor Harvey Cox, who argued in his seminal work Secular City (1965) that modern city life is preferable over rural (traditional) life. Cox liked that in the city, “relationships are founded on free selection and common interest,” giving people a “wider range of alternatives,” unlike in rural life, where relationships are preset and any newcomer was held in suspicion unless one knew “where they came from and whether their family was any good.” Undoubtedly, he would prefer Sex and the City over The Waltons, a popular TV show in the 1970s featuring a large rural family.
My uncle had always been a man of bravado but not that day: he spoke slowly in a low voice following a grueling surgery to treat his cancer. A man of substantial wealth, he was living at a nice condominium during the treatment, but it paled in comparison to his house, a mansion. In fact, I had stayed at this sprawling property the night before while in town. As I was leaving, my uncle said, “Whenever you are in town, please stay at my house; in fact, it’s open for any Lord’s servant; I want my house to be used for the Lord’s work.”
Most evangelicals probably no longer care what Rob Bell has to say after he questioned the existence of hell in Love Wins (and later declaring, “Smile, there is no hell” ), but at one time he had their ears. Calling evangelical theology, “Evacuation theology,” he said, “Figure out the ticket, say the right prayer, get the right formula, and then we’ll go somewhere else.” That, he said, was “lethal to Jesus, who endlessly speaks of the renewal of all things.”
In effect, Bell points out: “Don’t be so heavenly minded that you are of no earthly good”. In a symbolic manner, this is exactly what the men of Galilee gathered at the Mt. Olive were doing: “Looking intently up into the sky as [Jesus] was going.” You can hardly blame them for being glued to what was a spectacular scene, but they must have stared too long. The angels were dispatched and after tapping their heads, they said, “Why do you stand here looking into the sky?” Reading between the lines, you could almost hear the angels shout, “Stop staring and get to work.”
A recent Mexican Coca-Cola ad produced a storm of controversy because of its insensitivity toward indigenous people. The commercial begins with sad natives “mop[ing] around a hillside feeling rejected by society. Then a group of young white hipsters turn up to save them, with the aid of coolers full of Coke and a Christmas tree. . . . The indigenous people can only smile in wondering gratitude.”
Over the years, conservative Christians have rightfully called out liberal scholars for holding to a low view of Scripture that results in the denial of important Christian doctrines, such as Virgin birth and resurrection of Christ. But those who say they believe the Bible aren’t entirely guilt-free for doing the opposite. Despite being told, “Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Cor. 4:6), that is exactly what some do, especially regarding the time of Christ’s second coming. Even though Jesus disprivileged himself by choosing to be agnostic about it, and reminded the disciples, just before his ascension, that “it is not for [us] to know the times or dates the Father has set,” there has been no shortage of people who do just that: setting the date of his return.
A pastor’s worst nightmare is being told how ineffective his sermon is, and that’s what recently happened to a pastor to whom this college sophomore said, “I’ve gotten nothing out of your sermons.” To him, the problem lies squarely with the pastor’s alleged inability to preach or teach well; but that may not necessarily be the case.
Once, a theology professor and former academic dean of a Reformed seminary, who used attend my church, said to me, “There is no spiritual power in the seminaries.” So, there might be some truth to people jokingly mispronouncing “seminary” as “cemetery.” But behind the humor lies good reason: first, since the Bible is treated as a textbook to be studied in dry academic fashion, it begins to lose its luster as a sacred book “sent” from above; second, seminarians “forget” to pray while juggling a demanding course load, church responsibility and perhaps even a part-time job; third, some seminaries are so hell-bent on imposing their particular brand of systematic theology, that those students who believe it begin to disdain others who don’t. That’s being carnal, not spiritual (1 Cor. 3:1-4).
Atheist Sam Harris, in his book The End of Faith (2004), writes, “Religion preaches the truth of proposition for which it has no evidence. In fact… no evidence is even conceivable.” A demand for evidence before believing an extraordinary claim is fair, and Harris would find Christ’s disciples in agreement. After all, upon being told by some women that they saw the resurrected Christ, “they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Lk. 24:11). What they demanded was “proof” as Thomas said, “Unless I . . . put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it” (Jn. 20:25). And Luke the physician states that that’s exactly what they got: “Many convincing proofs that he was alive.”
However, unfortunately for us, what were empirical evidences (i.e., based on sensual experience) for the disciples are now nothing more than a historical narrative to us, and in the hands of skeptics like Harris, mere myth or fable. So then, what makes resurrection, a scientific impossibility, a plausible event to us without having to check out our brains at the door before entering the sanctuary?