This is what compassion looks like | Luke 7 | Crossroads Daily

Hey, welcome to Crossroads Daily, I'm Justin, I'm Dani, I'm Miko, I'm Alex. Today we're looking at Luke 7 and the compassion of God. The story is Jesus approaches this town, Nain? Nain? I don't know. He encounters a funeral procession. There's a widow there who's burying her only son and having already lost her husband, she now faces overwhelming grief and an uncertain future. But Jesus sees her and he's moved with compassion. Before anyone asks for a miracle, he steps toward the coffin and speaks directly to the dead man. He says, young man, I say to you, arise. The son sits up and begins to speak and in a moment mourning turns to amazement. Jesus responds to death with compassion and power. You know, I always think about in stories like this, okay, I can, where I can learn is, what did Jesus' story show me about the character of God? Colossians 1 says he's the image of the invisible God, so the questions I have about God, I look to Jesus to answer and I can learn from his actions, but I also can learn from the people's responses to it to know, okay, how do they grieve? How do they encounter pain? What do they do with that? What's the conversation like? So taking all those two things, or the crowd that's there and the reactions we get to see in this Luke 7, what does this story teach you about the heart of Jesus and therefore the heart of God? Can I add another layer to that? Please. So I think about women back in those days, and she doesn't have a husband. She has lost her son. She's super vulnerable. That's right. Yeah. She's gonna be either cast outside of the city, she has nothing now, and so that adds that other layer of Jesus seeing her in that moment going, oh this isn't, this is grief, and on top of that your future is completely unstable and uncertain right now. She had lost everything. Yeah, complete uncertain future, and uncertain standing in your community and culture. Yes. And so what does Jesus' response to that show us about the heart of God? Yeah, I mean the compassion. What did it say? He acted on his compassion or something like that. Right, right. It was like there was an action. He's feeling this thing, and he's moving toward her. That's right. It says in verse 13, and when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and he said to her, do not weep. Those three words, even in that moment, do not weep. They make no sense.

Yeah. But he speaks with this supernatural compassion and power. Yeah. You ever been around somebody that in a moment where you're having a feeling or whatever, and they say something, maybe it's not do not weep, but they say something to you, and you immediately feel at peace? Mm-hmm. I bet you in that moment she had no idea why, and she was just like, oh, you're here. I'm just glad to be in your sphere right now. You know, I feel safe. I feel seen. I think about it, I mean this is, maybe it's an imperfect story depending on your relationship with your father figure or dad, but I can remember points as a kid where I was terrified. We were walking through the woods at night or whatever, and I'm like, something's gonna get me. Yeah. Yeah. But I could look up at my dad and see him. He's got no fear at all. He's just like confident, and I'm like, yeah, okay. Yeah. We're good. I'm next to somebody, and you, I imagine, I do not weep sounded like, wait a minute. Mm-hmm. Oh. Yeah. I can just breathe because this woman standing in front of me, who maybe she's heard stories about, is there with her, and he's saying, you know, there's great compassion. She saw something in his eyes that wasn't fear. It wasn't what everybody else around her was offering. Yeah. Yeah. I think it also shows that we can show up in that way with all of our tears, with all of our grief, with all of our, like, lack of hope, and Jesus wants to be there for us in that. It's not like, I'm feeling all these things. Let me, like, get myself together before, then I can go to Jesus. He wants to meet us in the lowest, the lowest possible place. He, like, goes to her in that lowest possible moment for her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, well, go ahead. I love how he came to her. Like, story about faith or obedience or it was, it just was Jesus being Jesus, you know what I'm saying? Like in this moment, this was just him being God. Like this, and this is how he, this is how he feels towards us. Like, I don't know, I, I just sit in this and I'm like, wow, like how many moments like have I experienced where like, I didn't have the words to pray. I didn't, I may not have even prayed. You know what I mean? Like I just, I had accepted this is what it was, but in your compassion, you produced in my life, maybe what I needed in that space. And as well as others, um, in other people's lives as well. And it just, it's like, okay, Lord, this is what compassion is supposed to look

like amongst us. You know what I'm saying? Before the ask, you see it. You know what I mean? I see it. I know the fact that I'm aware of it and I have proximity to it. You know what I mean? This is how I show up in that space. You know what I mean? That's where my mind goes with this. Well, that's how we can be Jesus to each other. Exactly. Yeah. That's what this, that's what it models. So with hearing Jesus say, I'm the resurrection and the life, not in this story, but he said it in earlier this week when we were looking at that, I've never seen a dead loved one come back to life. I'm guessing you all haven't either in the ways that some of these stories have. I have seen my nephew Liam be born nine weeks early and the doctors say we really have no hope. And he had holes in his lungs and I saw him 12 weeks later go home with my brother and my sister-in-law and no scars on his lungs. I've seen things like that, but most often my prayers for healing and resurrection have come unanswered by my eyes. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Yeah. How has the Lord and his compassion showed up for you in loss where your story hasn't ended in? Oh my, we lost a friend named Steve Poston a year ago. Like it was shocking and sudden with cancer and we prayed for his healing. We prayed for him to live longer and he didn't. That's my most often experience and I would think for anybody else that's reading this story, that's our most often unanswered prayer or experience in our life. What do you do with that and how does the Lord's compassion translate to that moment? I could say still being in that space, honest with you Justin, where one of the things that's done that I recognize is it kind of lessens my faith in my prayers for others in that way because I haven't seen that if I'm honest. There have been times where you're standing up at the front for people to come and pray or for people to come up for prayer and I'm literally like just don't ask for prayer about healing or things like that. You know what I mean? I'll be praying about that ahead of time because I'm like, Lord, I don't want my lack of faith in this area to hinder what you may want to do for someone else. And I'll still pray with as much faith as I have, but if I'm honest, that's just an area where my faith just isn't as strong. Because of what you walked through recently with losing your brother, right? I won't even necessarily say it was with that one, not even necessarily with my brother because God was teaching me something different in that instance. But just I've never seen, I've never prayed for a healing and seen that, you know what I mean? I think when we see

Jehovah Rapha in scripture, is that the one for healing? It's like when you see these instances it's like this is him revealing his nature to them and then that's when that's made known to us and I just haven't seen that up close for me to have an intimate relationship with that aspect of God yet. So for me, that's one of those areas where, I don't know, it's something that I'm still just working through with God. Yeah. Thanks for the honesty. And I think that's hard. I feel like I've actually seen both where I've seen some really incredible healing stories that is unexplainable. It's only God who could have provided that healing. And then there's Steve who we prayed and prayed and prayed for and was not physically healed on this side of heaven. And I think I've seen the compassion of Jesus in both in different ways. And Steve's been fresh on my mind lately because of... About a year ago, and his wife moving back here, and I think about one of the last things that I heard him say before he died was, I think about like all of the...he grew up knowing Jesus and God, and he said, I think about all of the things that I've heard are true about God, and when I heard you are going to die, I had a choice. Am I going to believe all of those things or not? And he said, and I can say with 100% certainty that I know when I get to that moment where I am going to pass into death, that I'm going to meet Jesus. And I think about what that taught me in my faith, and that felt like the compassion of Jesus for me, in that of like, I'm teaching you something about faith through the faith of this man, and so even though he didn't receive physical healing, oh man, that probably has provided me so much healing and faith that I haven't even begun to unpack yet, and for so many other people too. Agreed. I remember my last conversation with him, remember my last conversation with my mother-in-law, who was amazing and was suffering for six years without healing, and those that I've seen pass slowly, who are faithful followers of Jesus, they have told me the stories of how God's compassion has met them in that moment. Steve, I remember in our last conversation, said, don't pray for me anymore. Pray for my wife and kids, because how God is meeting me right now, I can't wait to be with him. And not everyone has that. Like, my mom

passed away in the middle of the night suddenly. I talked to her at 9 30 p.m., she passed away at 2 a.m. out of nowhere, 60 years old, and I didn't get to see her pass slowly. I just had to deal with the pain, and I think after many losses in my life, when my mom passed, it was not a shaking of the fist, why God, where are you? It was a, would you just meet me here? I'm angry and I'm hurting, I don't know why she would pass like this, and I'm hurting. It wasn't why did you do this or anything like that. I think it is the moment what I've seen like in Steve or in Grammy, as some of you know, my mother-in-law was named, that was her name to all of us. What I've seen in them as they transition slowly, and God's compassion covered them, and they were having these moments with God in this next life, it is where, death is where I have to reconcile, do I actually believe in eternity or do I not? Do I only believe and trust in the temporary, or do I believe this is an end with a future? There's a book I just read that used that phrase, and it just landed on me like, that is what it is. There was a death in this book, and the guy said, one person said, it's an end, and the other person said, I think it's an end with a future though, and I think that's the compassion of Jesus when I encounter death, when I encounter loss, when I encounter unanswered prayers, when I don't understand how to pray for healing, when I've heard these stories of wild healing, I just go, do I believe in the temporary or the eternal, the natural or the supernatural? And there's been too many things that God has done in my life, too much goodness for me not to put my trust in the eternal. And so we walk the steps of those who've gone before us, who've suffered well, like Steve and others in our lives, that have said, no, hold on hope, because I am great. If my friend dying of cancer can hold on to hope for the next life, then who am I to say I won't? I'm clinging to hope just like him. That's the compassion that Jesus shows us, that's the compassion of God. Peace.