Speaker: Bonnie Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him.  Mark 5:18 NLT

It could have been a scene out of a horror movie. The naked man lived alone in a graveyard. In fact, no one would even get near him. They had tried but he was so strong that when they chained him up, he snapped the chains, broke the irons and fled to the hills, crying out and cutting himself with sharp stones. Yes, cutting–just like the harm desperate people inflict on themselves today.  Do you realize that there’s nothing new in Satan’s playbook of despair? He still drives people to all types of self-harm and death every chance he gets.

But the man in our story (or rather the demons inside the man) saw Jesus from afar, and ran and fell at Jesus’ feet. No doubt, the crowd made way for this terrifying spectacle. “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!” Jesus said. And then the camera would pan for there wasn’t just one evil spirit tormenting the man. Or even two. “What is your name?” Jesus demanded an answer. “My name is Legion. For there are many of us in this man,” was the answer. It seems impossible to imagine, but there were enough demons to enter 2,000 pigs grazing nearby. “Send us into those pigs,” the spirits begged.  “Let us enter them.”  So Jesus gave them permission and off went the demons into the pigs. Down a steep hillside into a lake to their deaths went every single one of those pigs.  This account can be found in the Bible in Mark, chapter five.

A crowd soon gathered around Jesus. How would this man begin to piece any kind of a life back together? That’s what everyone in the town and countryside wanted to know. They found the man, clothed and in his right mind, sitting at Jesus’ feet. There was only one place that man wanted to be: at Jesus’ feet. When it came time for Jesus to leave, the man begged to go with Him!

If you have been freed from the sentence of death on your life, you too have reason to want to be with Jesus. Has He met needs in your life? Sustained you through sorrow? Given you grace when all of your strength was gone? Does gratitude make you long to be in Jesus’ presence?

“There is only one thing worth being concerned about,” Jesus himself said to a woman named Martha in the book of Luke. He was referring to what Martha’s sister, Mary was doing. Mary had ceased from all the things of life which need to be done and was sitting at the feet of Jesus.  When we stop and sit with Jesus, it implies that we have faith in Him, it implies submission of our time and selves to Him.  But it also implies discipleship, that we want Him to shape the way we live.  The man delivered from the legion of demons started his life all over by doing the only thing that Jesus says is worth being concerned about:  sitting at His feet.

Has Jesus worked in your life?   Do you need some work done?  Go sit at His feet today, to thank Him.  In fact, run to Him and surrender to the freeing work that He longs to do in your life. Jesus said, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.  My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (John 10:10 NLT).  And then, get up and tell someone how Jesus has changed you.  “Return home,” Jesus told the newly-freed man, “and tell how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him” (Luke 8:39 NIV).

Resource reading:  Luke 10:38-42