To non-Christians today it may seem intolerable, impossible even, that anyone could put a rabbi from 2,000 years ago before their own family (vs 34–36)! But then ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ (John 1:5). That light now shines from you, showing the darkness for what it is! How does your family respond to your faith? A comfort and challenge to Christians is that relatives can be won over ‘when they see the purity and reverence of your lives’ (1 Peter 3:1,2). You might be the first of many generations to be blessed by God in this way, and the power of blessing beats cursing every time (vs 40–42)!

Is taking up our cross impacting the world (vs 37–39)? If not, is it because of our joyless focus on the sacrifices involved? Bill Johnson suggests that we need to follow Jesus beyond the self-denial of Calvary: ‘we must follow him all the way – to a lifestyle empowered by the resurrection!’* How could you live more in the victory of the risen Christ? 

*Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth, Destiny Image, Inc, 2003, p165 

‘Trust and obey, / for there’s no other way / to be happy in Jesus, / but to trust and obey.’¹ What makes it difficult to obey God?

There are more challenging words from Jesus today. We are to love him more than our own parents. He is not asking us to love them less than we do, but is addressing issues of obedience: nothing, not even our parents, should stop us from what God is calling us to do. Tensions between parents and offspring would have been a very real problem for the first believers. Christianity was a new faith and many parents must have been very distressed when family members left their traditional faith. Most of the first Christians were Jews and the fifth commandment to ‘honour your father and your mother’² would have presented them with a particular dilemma: should they obey parents who wanted them to abandon their newfound faith, or follow Christ? Jesus, however, clearly thought obedience to God trumped obedience to parents.

Even today people are still rejected by their families for turning to Christ. However, for most of us the pressure not to follow God’s will for our lives takes a more subtle form: when their faith sets children on a different path to the norm, families may express concerns about, for instance, wasting a good education, having an insecure financial future or moving too far away from home. Even Christian parents can find themselves doing this. Subtle pressures not to do God’s will can be rooted in damaging comments family members have made over the years too, such as ‘you’ll never amount to much’. If we still believe words like these rather than trusting in God’s view of us, this can hold us back from doing his will. Have we experienced any of these more subtle pressures not to follow God’s leading in our lives and how have we responded to these?   

Pray for those around the world who have been rejected by their families because of their decision to follow Christ. Release International and Open Doors websites have details.

¹ John H Sammis, ‘Trust and Obey’, 1887  ² Exod 20:12