{"id":9968,"date":"2021-11-15T06:37:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T12:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-luke-3\/"},"modified":"2021-10-26T15:23:21","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T20:23:21","slug":"devotional-on-luke-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-luke-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Luke"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_15756\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15756\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/photo-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/photo-3-1024x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"717\" class=\"size-large wp-image-15756\" srcset=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/photo-3-1024x765.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/photo-3-300x224.jpg 300w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/photo-3-768x573.jpg 768w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/photo-3-1536x1147.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/photo-3.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15756\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Park at Blaine, WA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One tough man <\/p>\n<p>Luke 3: The main character in this drama&#8230;will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you.<\/p>\n<p>John the Baptist storms onto the world stage as \u201cThunder in the desert.\u201d  This is one tough man.  He preaches a radical repentance.  He calls some of his congregation \u201csnakes\u201d and tells everyone to straighten out their lives.  When people begin to speculate that he might be the Messiah of God he points to the precious Lamb of God who\u2019s soon to be revealed.  John says that water baptism is the best he can offer.  The coming Messiah, he declares, will baptize with the fire of the Holy Spirit, changing people from the inside out.  John\u2019s approach to life change is to take a hard line against sin.  Those who claim a righteousness of their own he calls \u201csnakes.\u201d  It\u2019s a hard message, one intended to draw attention, and of course it\u2019s true.  However, John\u2019s message is of only limited value.  The tax collector who repents and commits himself to do the right thing is still the same person he was before.  The real need of his life will never be met in this manner.  The need is for him to be changed, transformed into a new person.  John\u2019s method creates skin deep believers.  Jesus\u2019 method creates saints of God.  Any time I\u2019m tempted to come down hard on people, challenging them to straighten up and fly right I need to remember that the finest, most anointed practitioner of that kind of preaching ever says that he\u2019s a mere stage hand compared to the real Star, Jesus.  His method isn\u2019t to \u201ctell it like it is.\u201d  Rather, it\u2019s to be a loving, humble servant of God and man. Lord, make me more like your Son, Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>Take Away: More than reformation people need transformation.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One tough man Luke 3: The main character in this drama&#8230;will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you. John the Baptist storms onto the world stage as \u201cThunder in the desert.\u201d This is one tough man. He preaches a radical repentance. He calls some of his congregation \u201csnakes\u201d and tells everyone [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1515,1428],"tags":[1229,1192,1235,1100],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9968"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9968"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15758,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9968\/revisions\/15758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}