Our Faith & God's Will

This is love for God: to obey his commands.  And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.  This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.        I John 5:3-4

Matthew Chapter 1 & 2

There was 400 years of silence between the old testament and the new testament, but why? I can't answer that question, but prior to reading Matthew I backed up and read the final book of the old testament, Malachi, just to see what God had to say before the silence. You have got to read it for yourself, but I will say that throughout Malachi, God seems to be railing about his disappointment with His people and rightly so, it seems to me that the people are simply following tradition for the sake of tradition and not offering sacrifices out of true reverence and love for God. Malachi 3:1 says “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. Talk about prophecy! What a lead into the new testament, the story of our Savior, Jesus Christ!

The first book of the new testament told by Matthew, a tax collector, generally not a person known for an honest and upstanding character, however, Jesus changes us all! Mary, Joseph, and the Magi all had something in common besides the connection to Jesus, and that was their immense faith in God and His will for their lives. These were all common people, yet their faith in what God said to them was anything but common. Think about it, Mary was told that she was with child through the Holy Spirit, an angel told Joseph to take Mary as his wife, to name the baby Jesus, to leave Bethlehem and go to Egypt, and to eventually go to Galilee, and the Magi followed a star in order to not only visit, but to bring gifts to the Christ Child. Do I listen to God this well? All the revelations or instructions that were spoken to them would be hard for anyone to wrap their mind around, yet they did exactly as God told them. What would happen if I did everything God told me to do? Well, first of all, I need to be more in tune with His voice before I can do all that He wants me to do. So many times I think that God needs me to do something, but I have come to realize that God does not need me, I need Him. Don't get me wrong, I know that He loves me and He wants me to be His, but He doesn't need me to do His work----basically if I don't do what He has called me to do, then He will ask someone else, I will be the one missing out, not God! What faith it must take to say alright God I know the world may think I am crazy, but I will do what you say!

I also found it interesting that Herod went to the chief priests and the teachers of the law to find out where the Messiah was to be born and they told him Bethlehem by referring to Micah 5:2. So wasn't it the chief priests that did not believe Jesus was the Messiah? They knew the prophecies of the old testament, they knew what it said about the coming Messiah, yet they were the main people against Jesus. Why, why didn't they see that He fulfilled each and every prophesy? Again, I am no theologian, but the simple answer to this in my opinion….Satan! Since the beginning, Satan has always done everything in his power to manipulate people in a way that pulls them away from God, and I hate to say this, but he is good at it. He works in such a sly and gradual way that people don't even realize what is happening to them. By using Herod as his instrument, Satan tried to have Jesus killed before he was even old enough to speak. We learn that Satan will do anything it takes to eliminate God's will, he showed this by killing all the boys under two in Bethlehem. How heart-wrenching that event must have been. What about God’s plan for my life? Am I allowing Satan to interfere in the plans that God has laid for me?

Allow? That is the key, see when we are children of God, we are covered by the blood of Jesus and Satan has no power over us unless we allow it. We have to stand on our faith in God, we have to read His word everyday, we have to proclaim that we are a child of the Most High God and that we will not allow anything else to interfere with our walk with Christ!