You Are the Greatest

Matthew 11:11 The truth is that John the Baptist is greater than anyone who has ever come into this world.

Have you ever felt like a misfit? Like you just don’t belong? I spent pretty much all my childhood with that uneasy feeling. We want to feel comfortable in our skin. We want to know that we belong. But sometimes, that sense of security simply eludes us.

We tend to evaluate people and position them in our subconscious pecking order based on their status, how they look, how clever they are, what they have, where they live, how they treat us. We shouldn’t do that, we know, but all too often we do.

I mean, had you or I been alive back in Jesus’ day, where might we have positioned John the Baptist in that hierarchy?

He was really quite a strange one. He ate locusts and honey, wore a garment made of camel’s hair and preached fire and brimstone out in the wilderness – quite the oddity, a bit of a “weirdo” by any measure. And yet he was Jesus’ cousin and Jesus clearly thought very highly of him. Perhaps we should put him at the top of the heap, not at the bottom.

So, here’s Jesus’ upside-down view of the world. He says,

Matthew 11:11 The truth is that John the Baptist is greater than anyone who has ever come into this world.

Wow! That’s an amazing thing for the Son of God to say about a weirdo. But then, in His very next breath … well, this is the bit that really blows me away:

Matthew 11:11 But even the least important person in God’s kingdom is greater than John.

So perhaps the next time you’re feeling as though you’re a bit of an oddity, you don’t quite fit in, you don’t feel valued, my prayer is that Jesus’ words will ring in your heart.

Because in His eyes, we nobodies are greater than even the greatest. It’s a Jesus thing.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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