OCTOBER 14

8 When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. ² And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”

³ Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Matthew 8:1- 3

Today’s blog is brief but hopefully to the point.

Yesterday I taught a lesson using todays key text. It was to a group of year 5 children who are aged between 9 and 10 years. Most of them are not from a Christian background so the challenge for me was to deliver this so that it could be understood.

After we had got over the fact that lepers were indeed real people and not like zombies portrayed in scary movies (the television has so much to answer for) we got into a discussion of how it must feel to be an outcast. I was pleased to discover that our generation of young minds still extol the virtues of sympathy, empathy and common kindness to mankind even though most of them live in a world dominated by hand held games and technology. Comments like ‘it must have been really scary and lonely,’ or ‘I wouldn’t like to have no friends’ were commonplace.

After exploring in detail the healing, I asked the critical question ‘how would you feel if Jesus healed you?’

“Amazing!” “Surprised” “Tired” “Grateful”

 

Indeed I was taught a lesson by my class yesterday.

Each and every day Jesus puts out His hand to touch us, all we have to do is reach to him and in turn we will feel amazing and eternally grateful. But remember it has to happen every day, starting with today.

The choice of music today was written in 1963 by Bill and Gloria Gaither, it is "He touched me". Click on the picture to listen.

       

     Housekeeping details for you

     The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.

     A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here