"Amazed and Astonished"

There are but a very few times in the New Testament when it refers to Jesus being "blown away." One time is found in Mark 6. Jesus was in His home town and some of the people were amazed at Jesus' teachings. Others remarked that he was a homeboy from around the way! He was no better than anyone else. Mark tells us that Jesus was AMAZED by their LACK of faith! Their faith was so pathetic that Jesus couldn't hardly believe it!

I was reading in Matthew 8 and I was challenged! It's the story of Jesus and the centurion. The Roman Centurion comes to Jesus on behalf of a servant. That's pretty amazing to start out with, because 1st off Jews and Gentiles were kinda like oil and water, 2nd according to history slaves weren't too hard to come by in Roman times...especially to a man such as this one!

The part that is even more amazing is this non-Jews response to Jesus when He agrees to go with him to heal the man. The centurion responds "Lord, I don't deserve to have you come under my roof...just say the word and my servant will be healed." Matthew writes that when Jesus heard this he was ASTONISHED! Can you imagine astonishing the creating of the world?! The One and Only Almighty God in flesh and bone?! The man's faith "knocked Jesus' on his heals!"

Yesterday in the youth class we studied John 14. Jesus tells His follows that they will do "greater things". We were perplexed at those words, but we came up with these conclusions. We will do greater, b/c miracles were physical and when we share the gospel we are doing spiritual good. We also noted that Jesus was God and we are but man...God's power is shown even greater through us perhaps! We left the class with the challenge to study and grow in God's word and not let challenging texts make us give up or just go with whatever comes to mind 1st. Please continue to pray for the church as we stretch and grow in the word!