THINK TOGETHER.
What do you love about your family?
READ TOGETHER.
Luke 14:25-26. 25Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Jesus lived on Earth for over thirty years. He preached the good news and told us about God and the Kingdom for around three of those years. During those three years he said thousands of things, but none of them were as difficult to hear or understand as what we read today from Luke 14.
Hate your father and mother? Hate your wife and children, brothers and sisters? Hate yourself?
Right away you should be thinking that this doesn’t sound right. Didn’t Jesus teach us to love everyone? To Love God and love our neighbor? Doesn’t God tell us to honor our father and mother, not hate them?
Yes. The Bible teaches us to love each other, especially our families. So why does Jesus tell us to hate them here? What point is he trying to make?
One of the first things we have to understand is that back in Jesus day the words love and hate could be used to compare two things. Let’s say you have two phones, an old phone and a new phone. You might say, “I love my new phone.” You might even say, “I hate that old phone, it’s not nearly as nice.” In this example you would be using the words love and hate to show how the two phones compare to each other. The phone you “love” you will choose to use. You probably don’t actually hate the old phone. You don’t despise it and wish harm upon it. You simply see that the new phone is far better and worthy of being chosen.
This is the point Jesus is making – choose me! Find me more valuable than anyone else in your life. Even yourself.
And here’s the thing: as we choose Jesus as the most important person in our life, we will learn to love everyone else in our life far better. But if we choose to love anyone other than Jesus the most, including ourselves, we will likely end up truly hating others. Why? Because they will let us down eventually. They will fail us. But Jesus will never fail you. He’ll never let you down. That’s why loving him the most will help you to love others even more.
Because of Jesus we can love God the most.
With Jesus we can love others more and more.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Make J.O.Y. (Jesus. Others. You) signs together that you can hang in your rooms. Make sure to hang it where you will see it each day.
PRAY TOGETHER
Father, I tend to love myself the most, then others, then Jesus. Help me to reverse this order in my heart as I focus on how much you and Jesus love me. Amen.
TLICfamily 