January 22, 2026

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John.” (Matthew 3.13)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Yesterday we considered Luke’s gospel narrative which established a pattern for Jesus’ life as a man of Israel after God’s own heart. You can certainly take that two ways. I did.

Jesus was a man after “God’s own heart.” The phrase “after someone’s own heart” mean that there are similarities in the things the two people like and dislike. Such similarities develop a bond of friendship and more. And while there will always be differences of opinions in some areas, it is the truth which they share together that defines who they are individually and together. Generally, those “likes” are not worldly bound, though they will be many similarities between them. Instead, such affection as to be “after someone’s heart” rises up out of the heart, mind and spirit of a person. The deeper agreement is what truly creates the blending of lives until one barely seems different from the other. Their actions and their words are as one regardless of the circumstances and resources. Merriam Webster Dictionary adds this “The use of the phrase can be attributed to the words found in the King James Bible printed in the seventeenth century. However, by the nineteenth century with the Age of Enlightenment putting greater emphasis on knowledge rather than affectations, the phrase became known more as a cliche’. The rise of independence and being one’s own person with a differing identity and personality took precedence.” Jesus was indeed “after God’s own heart.” He derived His life from the relationship He had with God in spirit and in truth. What Jesus would do and did with His life was to demonstrate before all the world the principal benefit of “being one with God as one of the people of God.”

Jesus was a man “after” God’s own heart. To say it this way is to cast the focus of attention on the pursuits of one’s life which are defining and important. Those pursuits reveal the nature and character of one’s own heart, mind and spirit. Jesus was “given” to God. Mary and Joseph presented Jesus, according to the Law and custom of Israel, in the Temple. They did provide the appropriate “substitutionary” offer of a pair of doves or pigeons. Jesus was to be consecrated into the service of God. However, He was not surrendered into the service of the Temple. Instead, Jesus pursued His growth into spiritual manhood by learning about God as every other child did. He studied the word of God in the Law and the Prophets. He participated in Bar Mitzvah as every other Jewish boy in order to be a man (just as the girls participated in their Bat Mitzvah to transition in the eyes of the community of faith from a girl into a young woman.) Ultimately, we know that He went to His cousin John, also at the age of 30, to be baptized as an anointing into a ministry “after John’s own heart” we might say. It was followed by forty days in the wilderness (just as Jesus was presented in the Temple forty days after His birth). There He pursued the will and word of God, was sorely tested but never relented and was blessed with the ministry of angels to begin His ministry. To His dying breath, Jesus was a man seeking God’s heart offering Himself in obedience and in sacrifice.

The question for each of us, mighty ones of God, is “whose heart are we after”? Who will we follow and pursue as the true love of our lives. Who will we pattern ourselves after? Our earthly fathers or our heavenly Father? Will we seek to be known as a person of the world? Will we seek to be known as a person of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven? Luke makes it perfectly clear that the message is, for Jesus, a pursuit of God and His righteousness. We talked perfectly in the ways of the Lord and found great blessing in the midst of trouble. His greatest blessing was two-fold: everlasting life with God and showing the world He loved “the way, the truth and the life.” That sounds like solid advice. It is not a cliche’. Let us be those “after God’s own heart.”

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.