Your background
They answered and said to him, “Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.” John 7:52
Where did you come from and what is your background? Did you grow up in a wealthy home or was it average? Were you brought up in a Christian family or did you know very little about God? When you look back now, it doesn’t necessarily look like it has a lot to do with where you are in life at this point, but in reality, where you were born and how you were raised can be a determining factor in many of your life decisions and can define you as an adult if you let it.
In my case, I was raised in a Christian home. Actually, my dad was a pastor, so I was in church three times a week for the first 18 years of my life. God was very important in our home, and I learned at a young age to talk to Him and learn His Word. However, after I turned 18, it didn’t take long at all for my reputation to change and when I moved away from the people in that small town I grew up in, there was very little evidence of God on the outside of me. Then, people who knew me had no idea of where I had come from, and I didn’t talk about it much at all.
The verse today is about Jesus’ background and even though He lived a sinless life, He was judged by the area He was from. The Pharisees thought they knew His kind because of where His ministry began. They also knew what the scripture said about where the Messiah would be born. Because Jesus was born in one place, but grew up in another, those religious minded people did not want to acknowledge Him as their Lord.
His reputation as a Galilean was only one of the reasons, they used to discredit Him. But when it came to the scriptures, it just didn’t matter what anyone else believed. He was and is the Messiah and no matter what His reputation was with the chief priests, His relationship with God was what really mattered.
That is what is important for you today too. Your relationship with your Father is the only thing that matters. Sure, you want to be respected and live honestly and upright, but even if you fall short, your Father in heaven will be there to pick you up and get you back on track again. Don’t let where you have come from or what you have done in the past define who you are, just be who your loving Father in heaven designed you to be.
Today’s scripture reading: John 7:45-52
45 Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why have you not brought Him?”
46 The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this Man!”
47 Then the Pharisees answered them, “Are you also deceived?
48 Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in Him?
49 But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.”
50 Nicodemus (he who came to Jesus by night, being one of them) said to them,
51 “Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?”
52 They answered and said to him, “Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.”
53 And everyone went to his own house.
The Daily Dose 