Hello everyone, welcome back! My name is Elise Brooklyn and this is Scattering Flowers, a podcast where we scatter flowers of faith.
Today is Friday, July 5th, and we will be reading Matthew 9, 9-13.
Follow along in your Bible if you have one.
Now, let’s read Matthew 9, 9-13.
As Jesus passed one from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office and said to him, Follow me.
And he rose and followed him.
And as he sat at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples.
And when the Pharisees saw this, he said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
But when he heard this, he said, Those who are well have no need of physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means.
I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteousness, but sinners.
I did a rock climbing while on vacation one year.
I really didn’t make it up that high.
I was kind of bummed that I didn’t get very far.
I started to give up and started going down.
The girl in charge yelled up to me, Don’t stop now, you still have time left on your timer.
So I kept going.
And guess what?
I made it a little higher than before.
I was about to give up.
Jesus knows that we can always do more than we think we can.
People didn’t think that Matthew could change, but he did.
He believed in Jesus and stopped stealing and became one of Jesus' twelve disciples.
And Matthew even got to write one of the books of the Bible.
That’s a really important job.
Let’s pray.
Father, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, dear Jesus, thank you that you are always ready to forgive us and give us another chance, just like you gave Matthew another chance.
We ask that you change our hearts and help us to put you first in everything that we do.
Amen.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Thank you so much for listening.
I’ll be back next week.
Scatter more flowers.
See ya!