Luke 10:1-7
If we are to make disciples as Jesus commands, it makes perfect sense that we take a leaf out of his book. That’s because his discipleship approach/model contains cross-generational truths which can be applied to our context and one of those truths we see in the Gospels has to do with how Jesus related to and focused his ministry on three different groups of people:
· Crowds: these were people whom Jesus reached out through preaching and healing. They either gathered spontaneously or at Jesus’ instigation. For Jesus, this was a way of planting seeds in order to influence as many people as possible (Luke 8:4-18)
· Seekers: From the crowds, we have seekers who were open to Jesus and/or who sought him out.
· Disciples: From the seekers came disciples, those who chose to obey Jesus’ call to follow him.
While Jesus intentionally reached out to all of them, while he didn’t ignore the ‘crowd’, while Jesus loved all, he seemed to prioritise and spend more time interacting with seekers and his disciples than he did with large crowds. In Luke 9 & 10, when Jesus sent his disciples out on his mission, one of his instructions to them was to pray and look for people who were spiritually open to them and their message. When they meet such people, the disciples were to say, “Peace” to them and remain with them to connect and plant the gospel before moving on to the next town. This is where the term, ‘Person or People of Peace’ comes from. You could say they are seekers.
In last week’s sermon, Ashleigh described a person of peace as someone who likes you, listens to you and serves you (we don’t have to be hard and fast about this by the way). In other words, you have an affinity with them. They gel with you. And this affinity can be formed over a very short period of time. In other words, these are people God is already at work in preparing them to hear and receive the good news and they are not even aware of it. They can be found in every neighbourhood, in places of work, study and play. And God is inviting us to join Him in what He’s doing in their lives.
We are to love and serve everybody but we are to pray and ask God to lead us to, not everyone and anyone but a person of peace. That was Jesus’ MO. He began his day with the expectation that God had prepared people for him to meet. There are ‘Peter’s (John 1:40-42), ‘Samaritan women’ (John 4), Ethiopian officials (Acts 8:26-40), Cornelius’s (Acts 10), Zacchaeus’s (Luke 19:1-10) whom God is very eager to introduce you to! Allow God to open your eyes (John 4:35).
Following Jesus,
Mark
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