5×5×5 Bible Plan
Read: Matthew 14
Meditation: Matthew 14:13-14
“As soon as Jesus heard the news [of John’s death], he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone. But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns. Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (Matthew 14:13-14)
Shift Your Focus… Karl Menninger, founder of the famed psychiatric clinic in Topeka, Kansas that bears his name, was once asked, “What would you do if you thought you were going crazy?” Without even having to think about it, he said, “I’d go out and find someone less fortunate to serve.”
There is just something therapeutic about serving somebody else—especially if they are worse off than you. When you are going through your own hardship, whatever that may be—sickness, loss, disappointment, depression—God’s therapy is to find those who cannot help themselves, who cannot pay back your kindness, and minister God’s love to them.
That is not to deny or avoid your own hurt. Not at all! To love, serve, and bless the less fortunate is to activate a spiritual law that we find in Acts 20:35, “And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
Jesus said it another way in Luke 6:38, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
In other words, when you are the conduit of God’s love and grace, and when heaven’s generosity is being poured through you to those in need, on the way through you, that flood of love, grace and generosity will leave the Divine touch in your own life.
Jesus is practicing his own preaching here in Matthew 14. His cousin, John the Baptist, had just been beheaded by Herod. When Jesus heard the news, he was deeply affected, as any human being would be. He felt tremendous sorrow and grief over the loss of a loved one. And he did what most of us would do: He got away from the crowd to spend some time alone and pour out his grief.
But Jesus didn’t stay there long. He didn’t succumb to self-pity; he didn’t retreat into isolation; he didn’t get paralyzed by grief. He found other people who were hurting for different reasons than his own, and out of compassion for them, he began to minister to their needs.
Jesus was setting a pattern for us, don’t you think? Not to minimize the hurt and grief that we experience from loss, discouragement and disappointment, but to turn it into a productive force that initiates God’s healing therapy in our own lives by becoming the conduit of Divine love and grace to hurting people.
Perhaps you are licking your wounds today from the loss of something dear and near to your heart—maybe even the death of a loved one. If that is the case, try doing what Jesus did. See the needs of other hurting people around you and love them.
You probably won’t feel like doing it, but do it anyway. It won’t take away your own pain, but it will unleash God’s healing therapy for you. And at the end of the day, you will find that your journey through grief will be a lot healthier and a whole lot more productive.
“By compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.” ~Sir Thomas Browne
I cannot tell you how very much I needed this today! The lies I have been tempted to believe recently is, “you’re too much of a mess. your marriage is still too much of a mess. you’re not bouncing back like you used to be able to do. you don’t have the energy anymore. you’re getting too old…” And so on.
But none of that is true! If I’m at that place, continuing on in what God has placed in me, and gifted and graced me in, (which seems to be loving others, encouraging, listening/counseling, teaching, speaking the truth in love), that is EXACTLY what I am to do, correct? Move forward in those things as He presents them, with the people HE wants to touch through me…Correct?
I want to thank you, Pastor Ray, for HOW I came to your blog just yesterday. The Lord was SO good…I was doing a search via the words “collected tears bottle”, and clicked on your 3/13/2009 “Tears in a Bottle” blog! I was so moved, and reassured once again about how God collects ALL of our tears, each one, and preserves them in HIS bottle and writes them in His book. I needed that for a friend whose son suddenly died. I needed that verse again for myself. I needed your understanding words that expanded upon Ps 56:8. And now today, I absolutely needed your encouragement (admonition to me!:-) to get back up, keep being about the Lord’s business as He desires through me. And keep flying. (that has a special meaning for me, and am writing that for my own edification mainly!)
Thank You, dear Father, for leading me by Your sweet Holy Spirit to this blog! YOU KNOW the steps and path thatI take and that You have for me, and I thank and praise YOU! Yes, Pastor Ray, Soli Deo Gloria!
Keep moving forward! At the end of the day, that’s what the Christian does–for what is the alternative. Giving God your trust, especially when it is hard, particularly when God doesn’t make sense, for sure, when He seems distant, silent and uncaring–is the greatest, most treasured gift you can give back to God.
Blessed thanks for your reply, Pastor Ray! And encouragement to keep moving forward, persevering! Glory to God for the ministry of His Holy Spirit from one saint to another!
I can’t run away, fold, pretend, try to hide, ignore, rationalize. feel good/better just to feel better, perform out of this…I just need to be about HIS business, trusting and thriving on and in His love. For what else is there?! As James 1 says, to REMAIN UNDER the pressure of the trial, humbling myself, obeying the Lord, learn of Him so that it can produce what He desires. As James MacDonald spoke to me in a message just last night, “So that the EXCELLENCY of GOD can be displayed in/through your life!”