Lost and Found – Part 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

I want to open the Bible along with you and take a little time with God, together right now. God wants to speak to us, and when our hearts are listening, He always does. He loves to speak to us through the Bible. It’s His revelation of His own heart to us, and it’s full of His perspective on life.

I want to talk this week on the theme of lost and found.

And I want to read from Luke chapter 15, just the first two verses today. It says:

Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Jesus to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them.

Well, what was so wrong with Jesus spending time with tax collectors and sinners? Well, the Pharisees and the scribes didn’t like it because their view of religion was that religious people, good people, godly people, shouldn’t spend time with sinful people.

And yet here was Jesus spending all this time with the tax collectors and the sinners. And you know when it says that all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Jesus to listen to Him. That says something about the kind of person that Jesus was, doesn’t it?

And the fact is we also should be the kind of person that sinful people like to spend time with. We should not be the kind of person that when they talk to each other, they say, oh, stay away from him, stay away from her. He’ll just condemn you. He’ll just reject you. No. These people were drawn to Jesus. They wanted to listen to what He had to say. They knew He spoke the truth. He didn’t mince His words. They knew that some of what He said would be uncomfortable, but they also knew that they didn’t go away from their time with Him feeling like dirt. What they got from Jesus was not condemnation and rejection but loving truth and warmth, hospitality. He ate with them.

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God wants people to get that from you too.

Do you know that God has purposely placed you in relationship with people who need Him, and He wants you to love them and care for them and show them hospitality and also in the midst of it to speak the truth in love, not condemning and rejecting but loving and sharing. That’s the kind of person Jesus was, and He wants to reveal Himself that way through you to other people.

People who are a long way from Him, people whose lives are not what they need to be, people who expect to be rejected and condemned. And will be surprised by love and acceptance and respect.

That’s what they need to find in you, and God wants to use you in people’s lives like that today. Whose life has He put you in? How can you show them that kind of love and acceptance while still speaking the truth and pointing them to God?

I’m John North.