Challenging the Status Quo

Mark 3:1 - 11

God set rules in place for us to follow for our benefit. God established the idea of the Sabbath because man needs rest. We need to take time on a regular if not weekly basis to have fun, rest, and relax and enjoy all of the blessings the Lord has done in your life. Man had turned it and made it into work, placing fear in people and squeezing the love out of the relationship. The status quo was about religion rather than relationship.

People have great difficulty with the basic premise that we are all save by grace through faith. We have a need to make it be about us about what we can do. We want our own personal “righteousness” or goodness to be the thing that earns us a place in heaven but God made away that doesn’t depend upon us but on Him. In this part of the story the religious leaders had taken a commandment from God that what meant for our blessing and turned it into a backbreaking burden. Jesus spent much of his ministry straightening out this idea and emphasizing that. “truth sets us free”. Don’t get me wrong there are many things we should not do but they should not be a burden they should be a love choice. At times it would seem easier to lie than tell the truth, it would be easier to steal than pay the price but if we trust in God’s love for us we know living His way always gets us to where we need to go faster, with less burden, and greater fulfillment.

What things in your life have you made into a burden for yourself and others? If you have look to see if either you need and attitude adjustment to make it into a love task or whether it is a rule you are placing on yourself that God had never intended. Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Are you feeling like you are living an abundant life?