Worthy

By Pat

As part of a recent morning devotion, I read Luke 7:1-10. This is the story about the Roman officer, called a centurion, who had a highly valued servant who was gravely ill. The centurion sent some elders to Jesus in hopes of Jesus healing the servant. Now, the theme of this particular story is usually that of the centurion's great faith by sending someone else to plead his case, and knowing that Jesus didn't have to come in person to provide healing. His faith was strong, and Jesus, impressed with his great faith, healed the servant. But when I read it, something else popped out at me.

Verse 4 tells us that the elders approached Jesus and earnestly pleaded, "This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." They made sure Jesus knew the centurion was a good man, worthy of a "favor," a blessing. But don't we all think like that sometimes? Our mindset is sometimes that the more good works we perform, the more worthy we are to have our prayers answered our way, and favors granted. This, however, is not the case. Regardless of who or what we are and what we've done, God loves us equally and, by virtue of that great love and mercy, we are not required to keep tabs of our good deeds in order to receive a blessing from God. We don't need to remind God how good we are, or have others remind Him on our behalf, for He already knows our good and our bad and He treats us as we treat our children; equally and fairly.

"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:6-9)

Pat is a good friend who is passionate about her faith and her family. She works from home supporting a family business, and loves to read, write and garden when she can, and spends every spare moment with her grandkids.