Favor Flavor

First of all, my family did our Throwdown tonight at dinner. Wesley, my oldest, was excited and reminded us to do it at dinner...I'm glad they want to do it and it isn't just initiated by Steph or I. We did the parable of the Pearl of Great Price. It was a simple Throwdown...but it is always great to hear my boys explain the parables to me...isn't that what it's all about? They realized that the pearl of video games may sometimes take precendence of their time with God...well, "sometimes" may be an understatement.

One more item to note is that I love my Small Group!!! We are getting ready to start "Storying the Gospel"! I encourage everyone to read, Truth that Sticks; How to Communicate Velcro Truth in a Teflon World by Avery T Willis Jr, Mark Snowden: I know that we will be blogging about our Small Group's experience in this great way to bring the Bible to life! More to come....

I have been praying over Luke 4: 16-20 this week...in particular over some missionary friends of mine. While I was driving around Greenback, TN yesterday...work....I got to the part where it states..."to proclaim the year of God's favor!" I felt like the Lord say, "Ask me what that looks like!" SO...."What does that look like?"

Well, obviously it is all the things that preceedes that part of the scripture...Eyes of the blind open, the poor have the gospel preached to them, freedom to the captives, the oppressed are free! But that is what it looks like for everyone else, those who we have opportunity to minister...But what does it look like for us?

We have to go no further than vs's 28-29: The year of God's favor started like this...

28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Wow...the year of God's favor started off with...persecution. Now, this is hard for us to realize because the biggest persecution we usually feel is from somebody from the ACLU telling O'Reiley how my son can't pray at Public School....please. But when I pray for my missionary friends and they are in the middle of poverty and godlessness...it makes sense. Stories of imprisonment and trials are common.

So the Flavor of Favor is...Death in us, Life in them. This was the flavor of the month...from the beginning. How do we do this in comfortable America? Well, that is a flavor for you to taste....no one can taste it for you.