When Should You Say No to Good Things? (Luke 5:12-26) | Daily Devotional & Bible Study

When Should You Say No to Good Things? Hearing God's Voice in Luke 5:12-26

The crowds were growing and people were still sick, and Jesus kept slipping away to pray anyway.

Today in our daily Bible study we're in the middle of Luke 5, looking at two men who were locked out and the way Jesus dealt with the barrier before He dealt with the symptom. Then we come to one quiet sentence that I can't get past: as the need increased, Jesus withdrew more, not less. If you are serving yourself into the ground because the need is right in front of you, this one is for you.

Links

We visit Luke's house in Rome on our Bible Study Live trip.

Bible Study Live is a small-group Bible study trip with Rachael Groll. Study Scripture where it happened in Rome, or slow down for a contemplative Bible study retreat in Maui. Dates and details at BibleStudyLive.org

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Questions we answer today

What did leprosy actually mean in that culture, and why did a priest decide it? Why did the man ask to be made clean instead of healed? Why did Jesus touch him before He said a word? Why did Jesus keep withdrawing to pray while people still needed Him? What do the friends who tore open a roof teach us about intercession?

Timestamps

• 00:00 Where we are in Luke 5
• 01:47 Reading Luke 5:12-26
• 03:38 Prayer
• 04:03 Two men, two barriers
• 05:30 What leprosy meant, and what it didn't
• 06:52 A ritual category, decided by a priest
• 07:42 Dressed for his own funeral
• 10:13 Why people believed it was judgment
• 11:36 Only two cures in the entire Old Testament
• 12:20 Full of leprosy, written by a physician
• 12:58 He broke the law to get to Jesus
• 13:20 Not a question of power, a question of will
• 13:45 He asked to be made clean, not healed
• 14:32 Jesus touched him first
• 15:14 The direction of the contamination reverses
• 16:52 Received first, changed second
• 17:29 The crowds grow
• 17:56 But He kept slipping away to pray
• 19:16 When the need scaled, so did the withdrawal
• 19:36 What I had to let go of
• 21:35 Everything public came out of what happened in private
• 22:24 When a ministry stops being God's ministry
• 23:50 The friends who tore open a roof
• 25:14 Gideon, Peter, and a boat in Kenya
• 27:55 Who was in the room, and why it matters tomorrow
• 29:00 Prayer

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