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About the author: Mark Purvis and his wife Mary K have been members at ZPC for 4 years. They have 3 sons ages 10, 7 & 5 and a daughter age 4. They have attended the Kentucky Mission trip 3 times over the past 4 years. Mark and Mary K are both active within the Great Banquet Community. Mark is currently a Deacon and also enjoys volunteering with ZPCKids.

About this post: This blog post is part of a series of daily devotionals for Holy Week. To sign up to receive text notification of these posts, text zpc devo to 39970. We welcome your comments and questions each day.

John 13:18-30

Jesus Predicts His Betrayal
“I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfill this passage of Scripture: ‘He who shared my bread has turned against me.’

“I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am who I am. Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”

Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

For most of my adult life I wasn’t too interested in the whole “church/religion thing.” I didn’t want to give up my Sunday mornings to something that was hard to understand and accept. This is where my story was a little too similar to Judas’s story as we see in today’s scripture. Judas was doing all the right things. He was one of the chosen 12 disciples after all. But he was doing this for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain, for appearances. As for me, I was baptized when I was a baby; I accepted Jesus as my savior my junior year of high school when I was confirmed; I was a good person who helped people when they were in need. But, there wasn’t anything else! No prayers to God. No attending church willingly. No volunteering my time. No sharing of my talents. No giving of my treasure. Similar to Judas, I was living a very selfish, non Christ-centered life. 

Once my wife Mary K and I got married and we had our son Cooper things changed for the good. We knew that we wanted Cooper to have a good understanding of God but didn’t know the best way to do it. Luckily (or perhaps luck had nothing to do with it), we had very good people in our life who encouraged and challenged us to explore our feelings and our faith and invited us to worship with them. Being drawn into a Christ-following community has helped us to grow spiritually. Our focus now is to keep going and fight to not get complacent. You cannot grow spiritually by simply hanging out with godly people. To grow and develop spiritually, you must personally take in what Jesus offers. The biggest thing that Jesus offers my family is peace, knowing that no matter what happens he will always be there to help us. There have been some big changes in our household over the past year and I thank God almost everyday for guiding and helping us through this big transition.  

Activity

Before saying your next prayer, ask yourself this question. If God answered every prayer you pray, would it change anyone’s life other than your own?

Prayer

Dear Lord,

Thank you for always pursuing me. Thank you for always forgiving me no matter how much I sin against you. Please help me remember to do things in your name for the right reasons.

In your son’s precious name,

Amen

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