Prayer Prompt before reading LK 12:49-53: Come, Holy Spirit, teach me how to pray, interpret the Scriptures for me so that I may know the Truth about who God the Father is and God the Son so that I may know who I am.
“I HAVE COME TO SET THE EARTH ON FIRE” LK 12:49-53
Humbly submit your will to God (Thy Will be done) and consecrate yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Mary and Joseph.
Jesus uses powerful words today. “I have come to set the earth on fire” and “I did not come to bring peace but division.”
This is hard to understand. Don’t forget the power of fire in our physical and spiritual world. In our physical world, many forests and homes have been destroyed due to fire. In our spiritual world at Pentecost the fire of the Holy Spirit came down on our first followers, the disciples, and today us at Baptism and Confirmation to build something new by cooperating with the will of the Father.
This is the fire Jesus can’t wait to unleash on the world, a dysfunctional family in His eyes. The division He is speaking of is a world that once had no future. There is no hope in a fallen world, only dysfunction, and no direction or purpose.
I think of it as a burning field of weeds and brush that must be burned to create new growth so everything can come to live in it. Jesus came to bring the human family hope. He came to take away all of the dysfunction in us and give us a rightly ordered life and rightly ordered worship. He came to give us purpose and mission, to do the will of His Father.
Now, in this time and place, we have a decision to make. We can die to ourselves, our fallen human nature/flesh, worldly goods, and put on Christ to defeat the devil. It is extremely difficult to enter heaven because dying to ourselves and doing the Will of God is tough. It requires a lot of soul searching and wrestling with God.
It requires a friendship with God a.k.a. daily prayer and reading the Scriptures, reflecting, and writing a journal. It requires fasting and telling ourselves no. So, why do it? God wants us to be back with Him forever. He desires a friendship with His Creation. We discover who we were created to be which fills us up! The joy we receive from a rightly ordered life and more importantly spending the rest of our lives in the glory of God is so powerful it looks beyond the hardship.
Christ, too, saw this wonderful glory of heaven while on His journey through His Passion and Death. He knew well it would all be worth it. Do you believe? Are you ready to start fighting with your whole heart, soul, mind and will? Eternal life depends on it.
Today’s challenge: Look at the big picture and where your life fits into salvation history now. Reflect on the decisions you have made in the past and how they have formed you today to be who you are. Your future depends on your will and God’s grace. What do you need to change? Seek and you will find. Never give up. Believe.
Be a servant, be a saint today!
#Christian YODO (You Only Die Once; we will live again!)
Sacrifice joyfully for another today!
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