20-Mar-2024 – Your Faith Needs Overcoming Distractions and Holding Firm in God’s Word
Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. -Luke 8:12-13
These verses are part of a very familiar portion that teaches us through various grounds and how they reflect the heart of a believer or life of believer. But today our focus is about faith as our theme for this month as given by God is “faith”.
To understand this portion from a faith perspective, we need to remember an important verse.
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. -Romans 10:17
Now Luke 8:12 talks about how our faith is hindered at a very basic level and Luke 8:13 talks about how our faith is defeated over the course of time.
We being believers, we have a regular word fellowship even if it is not daily at least weekly in the church or some prayer groups. Because our Lord is loving and living God, he knows our situations. So, He sends His word to us some or other way.
The first type of hindrance tries to prevent us believing or putting faith in the word which we hear in our situations. Why? If we hear and believe, we will be saved. That means, when we hear the word sent by God, and believe it in our situation and put our faith in it, we will receive the help, way and break-through in our situations. The devil does not want us to do that.
The second type of hindrance tries to prevent us continuing in our faith by throwing distractions and makes us off-track. Here also, the intention of the devil is the same, he does not want us to be saved or in other words, he does not want us to receive the word of God, help of God or the support of God in our situations.
In this second type, our faith is hindered by various distractions. As we are in living in this world and our flesh is prone to fall, devil uses many devices to distract us. Few of them are fleshly desires by suddenly popping some alluring image or video or text before you. Once your flesh connects to any of these, the path is like slippery path and you will fall in it.
Some other examples in this category are sudden disputes for no reason at home or work place, emotional traps to bind you in some not an important of a scenario but to block you to continue in your faith. Friends, news, social media, money and many other things helps devil to use against us to keep us away from God.
The principle is simple but profound which devil also knows clearly that’s why he tries all his means to keep us away from the word of God or to exercise our faith in the word. The principle is “if you hear the word sent by God in your situation, and believe in your situation that the word was sent by God, you will be saved. That means your situation will change for good”.
Your faith is the medium to receive from God and that’s why devil targets your faith. As God taught us today about the plans of devil. Let’s be vigilant and resist him so that we can stand strong in our faith.
Prayer
Dear loving heavenly Father, thank you for your love and grace. Thank you for always observing us and sending your word in our needy times. Today you helped us by highlighting how the word you sent is hindered lest we be saved through it. Our negligence and allowing all the filth of the world to manipulate us is a vulnerability we opened in our lives. Forgive us and help us to be careful at least from now onwards, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!
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