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INSIDE OUT

Affirm

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,

and in his word I put my hope.

My soul waits for the Lord

more than watchmen wait for the morning,

more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Psalm 130:5-6

TEXT

Mark 7:14-23
Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “All of you listen,” he said, “and try to understand. It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.”

Then Jesus went into a house to get away from the crowd, and his disciples asked him what he meant by the parable he had just used. “Don’t you understand either?” he asked. “Can’t you see that the food you put into your body cannot defile you? Food doesn’t go into your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer.” (By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.)

And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.” (NLT)

READ

“Moreover, he brushed aside finicky scruples about clean and unclean food by saying that what mattered was not what went into a man but what came out of a man—the lies, the hypocrisies, the lustful looks—all these came out of the man, came out from his heart, the real man, and defiled him. ‘This,’ he said, ‘making all meats clean’— and making all hypocrisy unclean. The reversal was one of the most important made in history and stamps Jesus as a supreme realist. I live among a people who have wasted time and energy and economic resources of millions of people through the centuries over this clean and unclean food business. Oh, that Christ had walked through India with these cleansing words upon his lips!”

-E. Stanley Jones

Declare

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,

to receive glory and honor and power,

for you created all things,

and by your will they were created and have their being.”

Revelation 4:11

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

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