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Happy 93rd birthday, grandma ❤❤❤


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⭐‼️Luke 6:46 brings up the controversial relationship between salvation and good works. Some present this conundrum as a choice between Paul's salvation by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9) and James' note that faith without works is "dead" (James 2:17). This question is often mis-stated as, "How much do we need to obey Jesus in order to be saved?" The truth is that obedience is not what saves—rather, salvation produces obedience. Judging "how much" obedience accurately reflects salvation is the difficult part... The sequence is God's grace, our faith, our repentance, our works, all of which are powered and led by the Holy Spirit. In the simplest terms, "repentance" means a person agreeing that Jesus is right and they are wrong—and that they don't want to live like that anymore. Works are our obedience to Christ. Both are nebulous, ever-growing responses to salvation, but they are always present. If there is no repentance and no works—no obedience—then there was no faith and no grace.
...Jesus makes the distinction for the crowd: do they call Him "Lord" because He heals them or because they want to base their lives on His words?  

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After Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, He was hungry. "Fasting" does not require that a person have no food, at all, for the entire period. Given that Jesus was in the wilderness, however, scholars speculate He might have gone entirely without food and only taken in water. His body would have been aching to eat something. Satan's first temptation to Jesus is designed to exploit His human, physical appetite. He challenges Jesus to turn rocks into loafs of bread if He is the Son of God.

Satan knew Jesus was God's Son, and so did Jesus. The point of the temptation—and that remark—is to goad Jesus into acting independently of God the Father. Satan's goal is to cause Jesus to sin through exercising His own will instead of the Father's. Jesus understood clearly that the Father meant for Him to endure temptations in His physically weakened condition.

Jesus resists each temptation while quoting from Deuteronomy, tying His own experience of 40 days in the wilderness to Israel's experience of the 40 years after their escape from Egypt. Here, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 8. In that passage, Moses is addressing the Israelites just as they are preparing to go finally enter the Promised Land of Israel:

"You shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD" (Deuteronomy 8:2–3).

Jesus tells Satan in no uncertain terms that He will live on obedience to the Father's word before giving into His appetite for food.


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The other judgment will be of those who are Christians. This is sometimes called the judgment seat of Christ, or the "Bema seat." There, Jesus will examine each believer's words and works and determine what rewards will be given or withheld in eternity (2 Corinthians 5:10). That judgment does not determine eternal destiny, nor can a believer lose their salvation there (John 10:28).

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Jesus tells the disciples that this type of demon can only be exorcised through prayer (Mark 9:29). More directly, He seems to criticize their lack of faith (Mark 9:19).
We risk this same decrease in power and effectiveness when we stop relying on God. In the beginning stages, when we have more faith and enthusiasm than ability and knowledge, God has the freedom to do great things through us. Later, we tend to take credit for the successes. It's often then that God removes His power to remind us how reliant on Him we really are.

It's chilling for us to realize that if we do not live in faith of God, we can be lumped together with false teachers who reject Jesus. God does invite us into His work, but not because He needs our own skill or power. We need faith in His power and direction, and we need to be in prayer (Mark 9:29). An effective prayer life reminds us how much we need Him, acknowledges His work around us, and keeps us open to His guidance.

The tenor of the demon's response to Jesus is normal, if the violence is unique. The demons... seem impelled to approach Jesus and react in a way that shows they know His power and authority and that He is their enemy. Where Peter, James, and John are afraid when they see a glimpse of Jesus' deity, the demons respond with hate. Most demons, upon seeing Jesus, are victim to a compulsion to declare who He is. This demon appears to make the boy mute because it is mute, and expresses its rage in more physical ways. Ironically, as the demon acts out in the face of Jesus' authority and deity, the father interprets the violent display as evidence that Jesus can't control it.

⭐God does not promise physical healing today, but if He chooses to heal, He is not constrained by the duration of the condition. He is willing to heal our hearts no matter how long ago or how enduring the abuse, trauma, or sin has been.

Although seizures can be dangerous, there is no conscious will that directs them to occur in intentionally dangerous situations. Demons, on the other hand, delight in harming God's creation.

Many people become disillusioned with the church or Christianity because of what they see in other people. Sometimes professing Christians act like fearful, powerless hypocrites, or non-Christians barrage beliefs they don't understand with critical editorials. Those who reject Christ cannot be experts on Him. And those who follow Christ are growing more like Him; we are not perfect representatives. To know what Christianity is all about, we need to look to Jesus. Our faith should be in God, not others.

The father has a hard time believing Jesus can save his boy when His disciples can't, the scribes don't believe Jesus' power comes from God, and the disciples' limited faith isn't directed at God where it should be. Like in Nazareth, the collective lack of faith threatens to prevent the miracle. Jesus isn't saying that we can accomplish anything we want if we have enough faith... True faith doesn't presume that God will do what we want, but that God can do what He wants... If the scribes have been reiterating their accusation that Jesus' power comes from Satan, then Jesus is telling the father to choose whom he believes—Jesus or the scribes.

Jesus has just told a desperate father that his son can be healed if he believes. In a display of beautiful vulnerability, the father submits what faith he has alongside his doubt and fear. He is our example of someone who understands God wants all of us, not just the holiness... or the bold confidence... or the adoration... He also wants the limitations... the terrible miscalculations... and whatever else we have to give, good or bad.

The man may not have an advanced education in the power and faithfulness of God, but he knows what it is to be a father. As he would do anything he can for his son, he trusts that Jesus will do what He can for both his son and his own faith. He may not understand Jesus' power and authority, but he trusts Jesus' heart is like that of a loving father.

⭐This may be the only time Jesus expels a demon and demands that it not return. He has made it clear that a person who is freed from a demon can expect the demon to reappear with other spirits. The only permanent cure is for the person released from demonic possession is to accept the Holy Spirit.

The reaction of the demon to Jesus' authority is normal... convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him"... The legion of demons caused such violence they destroyed a herd of pigs... they came out with a loud cry... Since this demon is mute, he expresses his rage physically.
Demons are former angels who rebelled against God. They rejected their duty to glorify God and followed Satan in his quest to seek his own worship. They are not our friends. The power they offer is meant to destroy us. They have no power or authority over God, but they can take away from His worship by tricking, leading astray, and attacking people. The violence they exhibit when leaving a person shows that they are malevolent to the end.

⭐Modern culture has a talent for sexualizing innocence, and making touch taboo is part of this. Christians should be mindful and careful about touch, but it may be that we have rejected it too much.

Faith and prayer are closely related. The more faith in God we have, the more we realize how much we need Him. Even if we have faith that He will work all things together for good, real faith keeps its eyes on the One in whom the faith is placed, not the situation in which the Faithful One acts. That attention is partially expressed as prayer... Prayer and faith are completely entwined. It is faith that drives us to talk to God, to tell Him our needs, and to express to Him how we rely on Him. Many wonder why we should pray at all if God knows everything we need. That's a selfish view of prayer, as if it is only to compel God to give us what we want. It is often noted that prayer doesn't change God, it changes us. Especially in cases like this, where Jesus' followers are expected to act with the power of God, we need prayer to maintain and strengthen our relationship with God. This emphasis on prayer shows that faith only works in the context of a relationship with God. We can't make a single decision to follow Him and then forever enjoy the benefits of His empowerment. We don't have the capacity to hold that much strength, like some kind of spiritual capacitor. We must be renewed every day.

They have asked Him privately, away from the crowds, why they could not cast the demon out. Jesus responds to them directly, but relatively kindly in this verse. At the heart of their failure was their "little faith." They either did not trust the power previously given them by Jesus or they did not believe such power could be exercised through them. Perhaps they saw this specific case as too difficult. That they could perform miracles using Christ's power, at all, was an astounding reality. Jesus reveals here that the key to that power is faith in Him. Part of the lesson here is the potency of genuine faith... with even a sliver of faith in His power and authority, nothing will be impossible for them.
This is an important and powerful lesson for the disciples. These men will eventually come to perform impossible-seeming miracles as they represent Jesus for the remainder of their lives on earth. The power to do so will never come from their own ability or goodness or status. It will always come through their special endowment, enabled by their faith in Jesus.

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