Luke 4:38-44

 Luke 4:38-44

These seven verses are so filled with applications for our daily life that they could alone fill an entire volume. Notice how Peter's mother-in-law responds to being healed. Luke as a doctor describes a serious medical condition with a high fever often the precursor to death. The Lord heals the woman and notice that she immediately got up and began to serve.

What is our response to grace? Within much of Western Christianity there is a near complete absence of service. We act and often teach that once converted the new Christian is expected to do little more than attend worship, as if sitting and singing is service enough. Dare we say that we were saved to serve and not to sit? We do not need lessons on giftedness as much as lessons that the normal Christian life is serving. That is why being part of a faith community is so important; it gives us a place to be a part and it gives us a place to serve.

It appears from vss. 40-41 that Jesus served all night long and in the morning He went to pray. Serving is exhausting and that is why there must be the season of refreshing in prayer. Jesus didn't use this prayer as an escape from service nor was the exhaustion of service a reason not to pray.

Finally, notice that the people wanted to keep Jesus to themselves and a cozy little religion club. For the people there, comfort trumped the mission. That is often the case of the contemporary church. We are tempted to stay in our comfort zone, with Jesus doing for us what we want, enjoying the good things of church life and the sweet fellowship of our friends and forgetting and ignoring the lost world and the church's mission.

"Lord, help me never to too busy to pray or so praying that I never serve. AMEN"