Jesus loved to hang out with outcasts. Here’s a PALS 15 Minute Devotional on Mark 2:13-17 that will help your small group of students notice others around them who are hurting. This devo will challenge your small group to do something obvious and counter cultural in your school to impact kids who may feel alone or unliked…
P – PRIME the pump
- If you could choose one person who lived over a hundred years ago, to have lunch with who would it be?
- What is one question you’d like to ask them? What do you think their answer would be?
A – ALIGN with God’s heart
- Imagine being in your lunch room, seeing a table full of a group of kids you aren’t really friends with. How might it make them feel if you went over and asked to eat with them?
- How would that make you feel?
L – LEARN the meaning of the text
- Read Mark 2:13-17:
Jesus Loved Outcasts
Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’ (Mark 2:13-17)
- Just like today, people didn’t really like the tax man. Why do you think Levi was so eager to follow Jesus when he stopped by his tax booth and said to him, “Follow me”?
- Jesus went out of his way to have dinner with sinners and tax collectors that no one else liked or respected… Why do you think Jesus loved outcasts so much?
- What point do you think he might have been trying to make to the Pharisees who were afraid to socialize with them?
S – SERVE your friends
- Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Who are some of the kids in your school who “need a doctor”?
- What are their names so we can pray for them? ________________________
- What is something obvious and counter cultural you all as a group this week in your school to socialize with some kids who others don’t like?