Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 10 verses 17 through 20:
17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ 18He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’
Jesus sent the disciples out as lambs in the midst of wolves. They lived to tell about it. Even more, many wolves were converted. The disciples rejoiced.
But Jesus told them to rejoice not in their success, but in their salvation. For they were not to take pride in their success, but to take heart in their faithfulness.
We plant, and we water; but God causes the increase. Some saints flourish. Others are felled. Who is to say which was more faithful?
Today may bring us success many times more than we could have imagined. We may triumph. Or, today may kick us, square heeled, right in the teeth. We have to be prepared for either one, and not presume there's something so special about us that only success can find us.
I told a younger minister a while back, there was nothing like failure to help me see I really didn't believe in success anyways.
"For the race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
For time and chance happen to them all."
Success may come. Failure may come. We can build a great cathedral, or be given our walking papers. Either way, we rejoice in the one and only thing that really: our names are written in the Book of Life.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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