Messing Up. Plus, Jesus' Job Description.

I love it when the singers at my church make mistakes when they're leading praise and worship. It's not that I want them to be embarrassed or to be distracting, but I love how they immediately slip back into worship when they get back on track. And I love that the congregation makes a point to totally ignore mistakes and continue to worship with all their hearts. This happened tonight, and it actually helps me to enter more fully into worship. My church family is the coolest!

The message tonight dealt in part with Isaiah 61:1-2, the passage about the Messiah that Jesus reads in the temple and claims refers to Himself. The notes in the New American Standard Bible I was reading drew my attention to something that I never knew before. Part of verse 1 says: "...he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound..." Isn't that cool? Jesus came to bind up (in a first aid way) people who needed binding, and un-bind (from imprisonment) the ones who needed freeing. Reminds me of Matthew 16:19: "[Jesus said] I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Jesus was speaking to Peter, but He was also speaking to all of us. Now, I've heard it said that by "binding and loosing" Jesus was talking about what the rabbis did in telling people what they could and couldn't do, and that Peter would one day bring revelation to the people of God, but since Peter had just shown that he understood that Jesus was Messiah, wouldn't a reference to Jesus' Messsianic "job description" be just as valid of a reason for what He said? Jesus had come to set things right; to bind evil things, and to loose good things. He gave Peter (and gives us) that same charge. Think about what evil you are binding and what good you are loosing today!