Daily Reading: Luke 4:14-21
Returning from a mission which manifested the power of the Holy Spirit operating in miracles and authoritative teaching, Jesus attended the synagogue in Nazareth and laid out His understanding of the mission God the Father had sent Him on by reading from Isaiah 61:1-2. Luke records the words He read as follows:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ (Luke 4:18-19)
This was Jesus’ Spirit-anointed mission from God the Father. As followers of Jesus, He has filled us with the Holy Spirit and has issued us with the call of John 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” This implies that we have not received the Holy Spirit only to radically impact our own lives with new life in abundance, but that the Holy Spirit anoints us also for the purpose of improving the physical lives of the poor, liberating others from bondage and oppression of every kind, healing the blindness of hearts and minds trapped in the poverty cycle and seeing no way out. The Holy Spirit ministers the Kingdom of God to us and then He aims to minister the Kingdom of God through us, in physical miracles, in spiritual salvation from the power of sin and death, and also in social and societal miracles of transformation and new life. We are transformed and anointed to bring about Kingdom transformation.
God of Saving Justice, may my life more adequately express and establish Your generous justice on the earth as it is in heaven Amen.
Dave's Diary 