How often do we go through life and question if God is really interested in the things happening to us. We struggle through a family member dying or a divorce, or a injury or sickness, or something like that, and we want to ask God why are you doing this, or God why are you allowing this. Our problems are nothing new in the experience of man. The depression we feel as we are feeling left out of the plan for our own lives seems too great to bear. We ask Why?.
Living for Jesus is like dribbling a football, if your lucky the ball will bounce right back up to you. Maybe it will continue too for a time or two but eventually it will bounce off in some other direction that we weren't planning for it to go. Our lives are just the same, we travel along making plans for where we will go with this education or that training, and wherever we turn, something new could influence us to head off in a completely new direction. The direction we head in may be a good one or a bad one.
If we look in Matthew Chapter 11:2 we will see just the situation we are dreading happen to someone that we don’t think deserves it. In 11:2 we see John The Baptist in prison, being held by Herod The King of Galilee. John had heard of the works of Jesus the man he thought to be the Messiah. He had been held for some time and even though he had heard, even in prison about Jesus, he was beginning to doubt as he was not released from prison, even though he had come as a forerunner of the Messiah, Jesus. He had starved himself in fasting, had eaten only wild honey and locusts, had lived in the wilderness and never had a home as such. After all he had done for Jesus the Messiah, could he not be released from jail? Or was Jesus really the one that was the Messiah?
John had all these doubts and wanted to make sure Jesus remembered him and his struggle. So, John sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus, ‘Are you really the Messiah, or should we look for another?’. How often in our lives do we get so caught up in ourselves and our situations that we question our own beliefs?
Jesus simply said to the disciples to go and tell John what you have “seen” and heard, we see in verse 4. Jesus went on talking in verse 5&6, and said, “the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk,the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.”. The most important part is the last, to not be offended in Jesus.
As followers of Jesus, we are to expect troubles and trials and suffering, but whatever we have to face, we should never be offended by Jesus. The troubles of the world will come and then will go, and nothing in this world can have any lasting effect on us but the saving knowledge of Jesus. It is only through Jesus and our faith in Him that we will have eternal life. The world can have and destroy if it wants, this mortal body. Because my immortal soul will then be with Jesus in Heaven. The ultimate reward that is greater than anything we could ever receive here. That is where John the Baptist would be rewarded for his sacrifices for the Lord. Jesus went on to talk about John in 11:11&12, Jesus said that John the Baptist was a great man here on earth, but even the least important that was already in Heaven was greater than he would be here. No amount of praise by men could ever be equal to the praise that even the least worthy in Heaven would receive.
We might have to face trials and troubles or sicknesses here in this body, but the greatest praise will come when we are allowed to go to Heaven. There is no comparison here on earth. Whatever we have to go through, it will be for God’s glory in the end. Even the least of the people mentioned in the Bible, was alive, and lived their life so that we, as Christians, could read about them and learn from them the things which God would have us understand.
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