Smetimes the things we think—about God, about ourselves, about the way the world works—harm us and cause us to harm others. But the reverse of this is also true: right thinking can leads to righteous action. Renewed minds heal wounded hearts.
This month we’ll be walking through a new “The Bible Doesn’t Say That” worship series to help us expose some of the lies that we believe which ultimately prevent us from living the abundant life Jesus has offers us. This week, we kick off the series with this saying—don’t hate the player, hate the game.
I know this is not a saying that many of us would say in church or during a bible study. But—we tend to believe it, don’t we? We tend to believe that God understands and forgives us of the fact that, sometimes, we gotta do what we gotta do. After all, we’re not the powerful people who make the rules, right? We’re not the ones setting up the systems—though we do get to benefit from those systems.
We say this as a joke, as a way of excusing serious choices. Until Jesus invites himself in to call us out—like he did Zacchaeus, a man who found a way to live a very successful life in a very corrupt system. For Zacchaeus, meeting with Jesus for a meal did more than change his heart, it changed his life. And this new birth caused Zacchaeus to quit playing games and to get serious about justice.
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