This week I’m focusing on parables of joy. Now that it is so firmly entrenched in my mind that Father is a joyful person, reading these parables from that perspective is very good for my heart.
Part of this focus is on how Jesus uses parables to show the contrast between the good religious people who were hypocrites and the bad sinners like tax-collectors and prostitutes who were sincerely coming to Christ for salvation.
One parable was about two sons who were asked by their father to go work in the vineyard.[1] The first replied, “‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went”, and the second replied, “‘I go, sir,’ but did not go.”
The religious elite understood that, in the parable, it was the first son who did the father’s will. That, of course, represented the prostitutes and tax-collectors, something the hypocrites could not accept as true.
Today it is very clear to me that the description of someone saying to God, “‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went”, is just as characteristic of me as it was of the prostitutes and tax-collectors. It grieves me how many times I have felt the conviction of God to do something and it has taken me forever to get around to it. Fears argued against it; insecurities refused to submit; injustices demanded their day in court; all kinds of hurts and heartaches crowded around my heart so that I felt justified in not immediately getting into the boat, so to speak.
What’s the point? That justifying myself as a “good Christian” is a joy-stealer because it keeps me relying on my pitiful expressions of “trying”, while confessing myself as a sinner who keeps saying no to father humbles me under the mighty hand of my joyful Father who delights to change our minds so we join him in his work.
This morning I am blown away by God’s grace in this, and suddenly find myself feeling peace and joy. Strange how that works.
© 2019 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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