Thursday, March 12th | Daily Devotion
- 10 hours ago
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“Yet another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my house.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” –Luke 9:61-62
TRANSCRIPTION:
Good morning. Grace and peace be unto all of you, my Father’s children on this incredible Thursday.
We have been pressing through this week on the theme of consistency and commitment — and today I want us to sit with a word straight from the mouth of Jesus, found in the Gospel of Luke, the ninth chapter.
As Luke’s ninth chapter draws to a close, we find Jesus in dialogue with his disciples, laying out what it truly costs to follow him — even beyond his death. And then comes this exchange that stops me every time. A man says to Jesus: “I will follow you, Lord — but let me first say farewell to those at my house.” And Jesus answers without hesitation: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
This is Jesus’ way of making the terms of commitment absolutely clear. To turn toward him requires a level of steadfastness that moves beyond the temptation to turn back. And yet, if we are honest, that temptation is one of the most natural things we experience. There are spaces and situations that God has delivered us from — and still, in moments of uncertainty or nostalgia, we are pulled to revisit them. Not necessarily to stay, but just for a moment. Just to reclaim something we left behind.
And God says: when you are committed to me, you cannot look back.
This lands with particular weight during a season of fasting. Some of what we have laid down over these weeks — some of those habits, those patterns, those daily rituals — God never intends for us to pick them back up. It may not mean you never return to social media at all, but perhaps the practice of reaching for your phone first thing every morning is something you leave behind for good. Maybe the volume of fried food you used to eat is not something you return to. Maybe the end-of-day conversations that drifted into gossip — you don’t go back to those either.
There are things God is delivering you from right now — not just for the duration of a fast, but for the fullness of the next season He is preparing you for. In order to be equipped for where He is taking you, there are some places that can no longer hold space in your life. And part of growing in commitment is learning to identify what those things are — and then having the courage to leave them there.
We often say it this way: better on tomorrow than I was on yesterday. But that kind of forward momentum requires that we stop letting a rear-view mirror pull our gaze back to what God has already moved us past. Commitment keeps your eyes focused forward.
So here is the question I leave with you this morning:
What is God calling you out of — that He desires for you never to return to?
Sit with that. Be blessed. Have an incredible Thursday — and I cannot wait to speak with you again tomorrow.