So many things in our lives can block and clutter our relationship with God. In Luke 8:26-39, we hear the story of a man from a town called Gerasene and how Jesus freed the man from possession by demons. Today’s demons might be best understood as those things that prevent us from being the people God has created us to be. We are told that the man from Gerasene had been possessed many times. We don’t know what afflicted him, but we know that whatever it was, this affliction had cut him off from his community.
In our lives today, many demons cut us off from community, including broken relationships, a lack of basic needs, addiction and mental illness, just to name a few. So, what does Jesus do when he looks at the man who is possessed? He calls out the demons by name. This is the same love God has for us. Jesus calls us, too, by name. And Jesus calls out of us, by name, all that would separate us from God and from one another. That includes my own obsession with collecting things.
This message is excerpted from “False idols” by Kristen Glass Perez in the January/February 2017 Gather magazine.
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