Verse: Matthew 2:7-8
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
Devotion
Obviously Herod’s motives here are off. He’s lying. He doesn’t want to worship Jesus, he wants to kill him. As we read verses like this, how do we apply it to our lives? As I was praying and thinking about this, one idea that surfaced for me is that there have always been forces in this world trying to kill Jesus. Whether it was actually Jesus himself, or whether it was the truth about Jesus, or someone’s faith in Jesus. The enemy is always trying to kill Jesus. Here’s the question for us then: what in your life is trying “to kill your faith?”
When you look at your life, is there anything external (or internal) that threatens your faith? What do you do with that? How are you responding to that?
Maybe busy-ness is threatening your faith. Maybe you just don’t have time (this is a lie by the way) to be with Jesus on a regular basis, and so the schedule of your life, and the pace of your life, is threatening the health of your faith.
Maybe you have unresolved questions, or past hurt, that prompts you to keep Jesus at arm’s length. Instead of just staying in that place, maybe it’s time to lean in and find some healing? You probably know that in so doing, it will be hard, so it’s easier to just continue in this place of stasis, but what if that is threatening your faith?
Maybe the people you surround yourself with, or the content you consume online, or the ideology of this world threaten your faith. Maybe you find yourself attracted to ways of viewing the world that are unbiblical, and that is threatening your faith. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 tells us that, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (italics mine). Part of our “spiritual warfare” is learning the truth so we can defeat the lies that seem so true. Maybe God is calling you into a season of learning in order to combat some of the worldly ideology that is so attractive.
The point is, the enemy is still trying to kill Jesus. He’s trying to kill Jesus in your heart and in your life. He’s trying to destroy your faith. Do you see any areas where your faith is being threatened? If so, how can you respond? Just as Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt to protect Jesus, what will you do to protect your faith?
Author: Christian Dunn
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