NOT WITHOUT HONOUR EXCEPT IN HIS OWN HOME

Text: Luke 4: 22-30

These words comes directly from Jesus lips in verse 24 "a prophet is not without honour except in his own hometown". This simply means that a prophet is not accepted but rather treated with contempt in the land of his birth. This is because of the common heritage and histories being shared. The familiarity, and often the camaraderie being shared tends to downplay the reality of the greatness God might have placed in any life among his peers.

It takes the grace of God upon a person to truly recognize a family member or a friend as a great man of God or prophet. Having known such persons when they were ordinary people like us, we tend to continue to see them in the same light no matter what honour God may have placed on them. This is natural. In the case of Jesus however, the people were indignant. As a result, they could gain nothing from him.

In our walk with God, this familiarity syndrome can also affect us. We could become too familiar with our pastors and leaders. Sadly, we also become familiar with God and his principles.

Questioning God's express commands and trying to wiggle our ways around it makes it more and more difficult for us to receive any meaningful thing from him. Our breakthroughs are delayed because we got tired of listening and obeying. We got tired of upholding our spiritual principles. We say like the Israelites they are "line upon lines...precepts upon precepts". But the good news is that it is in doing those things that we've always done when we first came to know Christ; in being eager to obey both the bible and our leaders that our blessings lie. 

May God help us to decide today to shun any manner of shabby treatment to his laid down precepts and commands. May he also grant us the humility to repent and renew our zeal towards his service and his word in Jesus name. Amen