Father, thank You for the opportunity to do a little outside work. It’s a beautiful day and I was able to work on one of those tasks the allows me to see an immediate reward for my efforts. Thank You for the blessing!
Mark 9:38-41 (<<click to read the passage)
One of my struggles as a bus driver (and this is one that I’m pretty sure all bus drivers and teachers, too, have to deal with) is tattling! The scenarios all have different characters and “infractions” but they all go something like this, “Bus Driver, so-in-so is doing such-in-such which they shouldn’t be doing, and I, of course, have done that hundreds of times myself BUT I am wanting them to get in trouble so…!” And then quite often they will wrap it up with an “And I told them to stop.” It is constant and usually happens multiple times a day. And that is sort of like what takes place in today’s passage.
The Apostle John is one of our most beloved Biblical characters. He was a part of Jesus’ inner circle. He wrote the Gospel and three epistles (letters) which bear his name and each of them speaks extensively of love, Jesus’ love for us, our love for Him and our love for one another. But he was not always of that frame of mind. When he and his brother James were first chosen by Jesus to follow him as apostles, he nicknamed them “Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17).
We’ve all known a few sons (and daughters) of thunder – rowdy types who are a lot of action without a whole lot of thought. Early on after the group of them was not welcomed by a Samaritan village they said to Jesus, “Lord, should we call down fire from heaven to burn them up?” (Luke 9:51-56)
And now in verse 38, John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons, but we told him to stop because he wasn’t in our group.”
Yesterday, we spoke of emulating children – innocence, trust, faith are characteristics we want but while we want to hold on to those things there are also attributes of which we need to let go. We need to grow up, already! The Apostle Paul addressed it in 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NLT),
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.
And of course, that’s what the Apostle John did – he retained all the wonderful things and grew past all the selfish things. He followed closely in his Savior’s footsteps…and so should we.

May 22nd, 2019, Wed, 12:36 pm