MONDAY: OPEN YOUR EYES & LOOK
KEY PASSAGE
Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
I encourage you to read the full story in John 4:1-44
DEVOTIONAL
Our key passage lands right in the middle of a beautiful story about Jesus in His going. (Remember, going isn’t always going someplace far. It is often “as you go” about your day). As Jesus walked through Samaria, a nearby town that people adamantly avoided, He stopped for a drink of water. He met a woman who adamantly avoided people and asked her for a drink.
During their encounter— as many true encounters with Jesus go— this woman was radically transformed. So much so that when she went back to her town, many people came to know the gospel and love of God solely because of her transformation.
When the disciples caught up to Jesus, they offered Him food. He ought to be hungry from His long day traveling through the dishonorable town. But Jesus’ rejected the food saying:
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (v. 34).
Jesus equates doing the will of God to two things:
He equates the will of God with His own purpose. The food God gave Jesus is to do what God asks. Jesus fully accepted to “eat,” or complete, whatever God tasked Him with.
He equates the satisfaction of acting in obedience to the will of God to the satisfaction of feeling full from a delicious meal.
Then Jesus says the following: “Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest” (v. 35). The disciples were uncomfortable in Samaria. This whole trip was inconvenient. They didn’t want to interact with the people or be seen there. But if Jesus had the same mindset as the disciples, an entire town would’ve missed the chance to receive the gospel and love of God. We have to open our eyes and look. There are opportunities everywhere to spread God’s love.
CHALLENGE
If you currently see your life with God through the lens of obligation, take a break from whatever you feel obligated to do. Ask God for an outpouring of His love into your life. Give Him time and space to do this for you.
If you are living out of God’s love for you but are struggling to love someone, tell God why that person is hard to love. Then ask God to reframe the way you see them, no longer from a worldly point of view, but as someone who could be or who is a new creation is Christ Jesus.