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40 DAYS - Day 4 - 2.24.21

Love Goes the Distance
40 Days of Prayer, Scripture & Fasting - Day 4 – Wednesday, February 24th – Lori Ennis

Read Mark 3:20–35; and focus on 3:20–30 below
Remember to Pause | Read | Reflect | Listen |Pray | Journal |Practice | Encourage/Share |Fast


And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal. And when His own people heard about this, they came out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.” And so He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished! But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.”

“Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons and daughters of men, and whatever blasphemies they commit; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

In this passage, Jesus doesn’t seem to have much support in His work. His family thinks He’s a bit out of His mind, and the Pharisees thought he was doing his supernatural miracles with the power of the devil. Jesus took that opportunity to share that if He were genuinely doing the devil’s work, He’d not be exorcising the very demons the devil sent. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

In a time where you’d expect Jesus to be righteously angered at both family and the teachers of the law, He was not. Love is slow to anger, and instead of giving them the what-for they deserved for being so disrespectful and unsupportive, He simply spoke Truth. Love goes the distance even when it’s hard, and Truth always sets us free.

Prayer Focus – Pray for the Momentum Youth Ministry Leaders and Volunteers as they minister the Gospel to our 5th-7th grade students.

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