Daily devotion – The need to share your story.
Mark 2: 13 Then He went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. 14 As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.
15 Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. 16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.
After Levi answered the call to follow Jesus, he invited Jesus to dinner at his house with all his friends. Luke tells us it was a great feast – Luke 5:29, and Mark tells us that ‘many’ were there at Levi’s dinner with Jesus.
The guests were tax collectors and sinners – sinners being a technical term for people who the Pharisees felt were inferior because they had no interest in scribal tradition.
The religious leaders asked why Jesus mixed with such people and ate with them.
The week of Helen and I giving our hearts to the Lord, we spent the following days, visiting all our family to tell them of our salvation in Jesus Christ. We just had to share our good news!
Jesus said in John 17:15 – “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.”
God does not save us then take us immediately home to be with Him in Heaven. He wants us to stay now and share the wonder of the Gospel with those who have not heard the good news. Levi did just that, his life was changed, he was a new man, and he had no hesitancy in inviting his work colleagues and friends over to hear of his new life and to meet Jesus.
I pray this week, that the wonder of your salvation, still burns brightly within you so much so that you continue to passionately tell people of your new life and invite them to meet Jesus as well.
You can tell if your salvation and your repentance before God has been real by the joy that fills your souls that drives you to have to share with others the glory and grace of God.