The unworthy

This comes from a devotional I delivered and October 10, 2023 for our Care Night groups.

I don’t know if anybody here watched the show The Chosen, but I couldn’t think of anything better to reference tonight than several of my favorite characters. But first let me introduce myself to you, for those of you who don’t know me. My name is Heather Hart, and in the winter of 2016 I was sitting in the same place many of you are tonight. In fact, I actually got into my car and started driving three weeks in a row before I would finally get the guts to walk into my first Divorce Care Group. It was scary. Because walking in meant it was really happening.

Since then God has really done a healing work in my life, and in 2018 I found myself back in your place attending an anxiety and depression group for women. For those of you who don’t know, God can heal anything and change anything. But He has continued to allowed me to wrestle with anxiety and depression since. But He carries me through those valleys a lot better than I could walk through them myself. 

So anyway, back to the Chosen. There are 3 characters I would like to reference tonight.

 In Matthew 8:1-4, scripture says:

When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. 2 A man with leprosy[a] came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

3 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. 4 Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

Jesus healed the Leper, the man that everyone avoided because of his uncleanness and unworthiness. This man simply asked for healing and Jesus gave it.

***I’m going to pause for about 30 seconds and let you consider how that scripture applies to your life right now. Can you relate to this character or somebody watching? How would you fit into this story? If you’d like to speak to God about this, go ahead and do so.***

In Matthew 9:9-13, scripture says:

9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus saw the need of Matthew the tax collector and his friends. Matthew had worldly riches, but he was spiritually depleated. They knew they were unworthy, but Jesus knew they needed his love.

***I’m going to pause for about 30 seconds and let you consider how that scripture applies to your life right now. Can you related to a character in this story? And if so how? If you’d like to speak to God about this, go ahead and do so.***

In John chapter 4:5-26, scripture says:

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of waterwelling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

And skipped down to verses 25, 

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Jesus chose to speak to the woman at the well and offer her salvation, she - one who would have been his enemy, was undoubtedly a social outcast, unworthy, and one who also lived in sin. 

***I’m going to pause for about 30 seconds and let you consider how that scripture applies to your life right now. If you’d like to speak to God about this, go ahead and do so.***

***Pray —Heavenly, Father,  We know that alone we are unworthy to sit in your presence, but we also know that the death and resurrection of your son Jesus gives us a free pass to worthiness, and we thank you. Many of us walk through these doors feeling like our lives, our stories don’t matter, but we know that in your eyes, it all matters because the stories are written by the one true creator, the sovereign Lord, the great tapestry weaver. Please wrap us in your loving arms tonight as we tackle the lies the enemy continues to pelt us with so that we can come out victorieous on the other side.  We love you. In Jesus name, Amen***