As many of you know, we at Stone to Flesh believe that the primary way God speaks, heals, delivers, and transforms is through the Word of God prayed daily. We do it until the Holy Spirit does His work in us, until the Scriptures become the Living Word for us and in us. Lectio Divina restores spiritual vitality and increases hunger for union with God. Below is a fruit of one’s Lectio Divina but N O T Lectio Divina itself. If you want to experience Lectio as it was prayed for the first centuries in the Church, not as a method but as a mode of life, learn more HERE.

This is how Matthew starts describing Jesus sending out His Twelve, His small group, personal friends, hand-picked for the mission of extending His own presence.

Jesus GIVES them authority right from the get-go, but did you think how?

He did not pray, did not lay hands, did not give them certificates of finishing His rabbinic school, did not call His ministry team, and did not do 'impartation sessions'. Nope. He just sent them out of their 'rabbi-disciple' daily relationship that established close bonds on many levels, including spiritual and instructed them on what to do. His word, as being The Word Himself, by the power of speaking the words of instruction, empowered them.

Sending out is giving authority to those who stay close enough to Jesus.

You are sent out when you follow Jesus.

Verses 8-33: The whole chapter 10 of Matthew Jesus is giving His Apostles authority and instructions to deliver Good News: the life-giving message and powerful signs accompanied it. Here we have the last bit of it before they are sent out. The beginnings and the ends are the most important ones in speeches, that’s why I include those but, please, pray through all of them!

Gr. ‘Peace’ means wholeness.

Gr. word used for ‘sword’ here does not mean big fighting sword but a short knife, dagger, that was used on a daily basis, used for stubbing or to separate meat from fat and impurities when prepared for cooking. It is the same as used later in Hbr:

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Jesus is ending His instructions to His twelve Apostles, warning them of what’s coming:

(Paraphrasing and expanding the above passage) Do not imagine that I have come to earth to make your political and societal freedom an expectant status quo. My coming is not about that. My presence will rather separate those who will believe in me as the Messiah-Word-Logos from those who will not receive Me as such. Messiah-Word-Logos will deliver those who believe in Me from their sins. Those who will not believe, might reject me or go for a softer version, receiving Me on their conditions, under other various names and functions: Teacher, Good Man, Philosopher, Nice Guy, Prophet, Buddy. And that will be a big issue about which people will fight: if I, Word everlasting, have the power to free them; if I, Word everlasting, am the Son of God.

As the Living Word, Jesus’ presence will separate people according to their beliefs. He is a sign of contradiction and strife because He will cut into peoples’ hearts deep making them decide what to think, believe, and do about Him. It is not feasible to expect that the Apostles and disciples will be able to maintain agreement among people while preaching Good News. It will rather create inner conflict and strife in people's hearts because when the ego doesn’t die, our perception is clouded from the get-go and we can not see what is hidden. We must have pure hearts to see the salvation of Christ bringing peace that differs from the worldly UN statements and their troops being sent out to conflicted areas or from laws established by politics that impose rather than propose and resolve.

The real war happens in our hearts. Real peace has to start there, to mean anything.

Now you pray it and share what the Living Word said or did to and for you.

Jesus recalls here a passage that His hearers would recall from hearing Micah and remembering their own history:

“for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.”

That passage reminded Israelites when they were dishonoring and not trusting each other under the rule of King Ahaz. Ahaz, king of Judah (the southern kingdom), was so evil that he offered his own children as sacrificesdid. He did not head to Isaiah’s word to trust in God rather than in foreign allies when the threat of invasion from Israel (northern kingdom) and Syria came about. Ahaz called Assyrians (superpower) for help and that was the beginning of the Judah's occupation and annexation into Assyria. Ahaz himself bowed down to Assyrian gods and brought Babylonian modes of worship to Jerusalem by setting pagan altar in the heart of the Israeli temple.

This political and religious upheaval resulted in deep political and religious divisions between the tribes, class groups (rich and poor, religious leaders and worshippers), and between and within families. The command of one king with which all people had to struggle, left them with choices of following his orders and gaining some profits or separating them as faithful to the King of Kings. Reminds you of something? Every generation goes through similar motions, on some level.

When Jesus recalls this passage, the Apostles would probably be stunned, knowing how deep this can and will go and how long-lasting consequences will be. They are warned that following Jesus in words, actions and lifestyle is not gonna be ‘nice’ and without inner peace (shalom = wholeness), this will be impossible to continue because nothing long-lasting can be manifested on the outside if it is not manifested first on the inside.

They would also remember that after Ahaz, good King Hezekiah came who removed demonic altars, cleansed, repaired, and reconsecrated the temple and restored the proper worship on YHWH, gathered new priests. That memory would play in their imagination as well.

We read ‘against’ as ‘in opposition’, ‘on another side of the issue’, or in a similar way which is partially resembling the meaning. The word used here also means ‘in separation, after cutting’. As when the dagger mentioned in the previous verse (read part 1) would cut out through the meat.

Yes, it is a division but that which will happen after the Word-Dagger will cut away what does not belong to the wholeness of Christ.

King Ahaz is your ego, trying to succumb to the winds of times, to the privileges coming with compromises. The division within your heart meditating on the Scriptures will be as real as the division during Ahaz times. The crisis is needed to show you what you are against in yourself first, so you can cry for grace before you can go out and call others to the Kingdom of Peace. As Isaiah prophesied at the time of Ahaz that Immanuel, God with us, is coming, you can prophesy to your heart that Immanuel - God is already with you so you don't need to be afraid of invasion, you don't need to give in, you don't need to build altars to your idols (wounds, memories, desires) anymore. You can destroy that altar to which you sacrificed the fruit of your life and you can make the King take its rightful place in the temple of your heart. You can enter into freedom because Jesus-Word has the power to transform.

Now you pray this passage and share below what the Word-God shared with you:

Gr. phileo is an affectionate love

In light of the previous passage about Ahaz and his idolatrous actions, these words of Jesus make more sense to us and do not mess up with our modern mind any more:

(Paraphrasing) 'He who values their parents more than Me, will not be able to follow Me, because I need to be seated at the altar of your worship, and no one else'.

It does not mean that you have to dishonor, never visit, continually bring up what will obviously cause division due to various opinions etc. with your parents. It doesn’t mean that you need to abandon them when they live differently from what you have chosen as a Christian. It means that as much as you love, value, honored are grateful your parents, if you don’t have more of the same toward Jesus, than you will not bee able to resolve your call in life which has to come from a place of living free in submission to Christ.

It also means that good parents will teach their children to value Christ more than them, because they are just the same pilgrims on this earth. Once they see their children following Jesus and not their ideas, and especially their sins, or weaknesses or faults, it brings them joy.

(Paraphrasing) 'He who values their children more than Me, will not be able to follow Me, because I need to be seated at the altar of your heart.'

Your kids can become your idol, your supreme vision and center of life and that leads to children-latria (latria means 'worship, adoration' in Latin), worship of children. We live now in that age. We worship youthfulness above seeking wisdom. We ended with kids confused age and adults giving in to their whims to the point that the ‘order of love’ and love itself are totally misunderstood. What is called love now is Romanticism’s flair. True Love is not being loved. We replaced the understanding of the true value-based affections of the heart with treating every emotion as the Guru of Self. Our feelings, and the feelings of our kids, became our idols and we will do anything to reconcile any other sphere of our life and align them with those feelings rather than die and transform our disordered passions into God-centered affections.

It’s childish, not child-like. The West has an anxious attachment style toward their children and it shows. We live in an upside-down world. And the children are not the ones who made it happen. It is our fragmented, undisciplined, confused, chaotic Western lifestyle that collapsed into a black hole of anxiety. The opposite of anxiety is peace (read part 1).

How does this passage speak to you when you pray with it?

(Paraphrasing) Whoever finds his soul-life will miss on real life, and will perish; and whoever will cut off his fleshly and soulish soul-life for the reason of finding Me, will obtain real life. This can not happen without taking the force of life and power from your soul-life and submitting it to your spirit which is full of Life. The progress is excruciating. The freedom is exhilarating.

Ego can not love. Ego can be only dependent and wants an immediate reward. Ego says: love ME! And capriciously waits or plays games to get what it wants. Love says: I want to love you! And gives away and that is how it grows. No one can love purely. But we can move toward loving by crucifying those desires, sins, behaviors, and impulses, which support ego/ false SELF and do not free and heal real SELF.

Taking up the cross meant to carry a beam on which the criminal would be nailed. It was a public admission of guilt, ending with torturous death by suffocating unless merciful soldiers would break your legs so you would die quicker. Taking up the cross is seeing and admitting our guilt, tendencies, desires, and all crap we carry, knowing that the grace of God has the power to free my spirit from bondage.

Jesus says that putting your Ego to death is necessary violence in the Kingdom where everything is done according to the rule of Love. When we find life worth living for the earthly things, we die to the real Love. When we allow Ego to die, we start living for eternal things. We start seeing our value and then following Jesus becomes the desire of our hearts.

Die before you die so that you can start living now. St. Benedict’s cross has an inscription: “May the holy Cross be my light! The dragon never be my guide!” and "Begone, Satan! Tempt me not with your vanities! What you offer me is evil. Drink the poisoned cup yourself!"(Read part 1)

What do you receive when praying this Scripture?

To become one sent in Jesus’ name is a noble call. Others can receive as much of Christ as we carry Him within.

Everything we give, we have received. So, don’t brag. The fundamental matter is character. That’s why Jesus ends sending out the Apostles by reminding them of hard truths at the end when he started with easy things: authority given you in My name will heal and deliver people.

When Jesus was done talking, he send the apostles out and He want another way, to do the same. We have the saying that we are now the feet and hands of Jesus. But He Himself is also doing the work He started, on His own, without us. He draws people to himself in a mysterious way, without our help. And sometimes that just works better.

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