Daily Reading: 6-29-16
Matthew 10:16-25 New Living Translation (NLT)
The other day I was studying an official scientific research chart of the top twenty-one causes of death in the USA in 2016 (six months). Abortion is the number one cause of death at 501,325. Murder by gun was the twenty-first entry at 5,276. I noticed most of the categories in between these two were actually deaths caused by some type of disease: addictions and physical afflictions that overtake our human bodies. As I looked at the list of words and numbers and prayed because my heart was so grieved with the facts, the Holy Spirit reminded me that everything on the list was a result of the spiritual disease and death that is connected to the world that chose to experience the knowledge of good and evil.
In our passage today, Jesus sends his disciples out into the world, but tells them they will be protected by the Holy Spirit against the spiritual disease of evil. The disciples are to be wise of the world’s infectious environment, yet innocent and untainted from the spiritual disease of evil that invades human nature and causes humans to choose to act in opposition to God (Love). Christ’s disciples will always experience hardship because we live in the world, but we are to remain devoted to Love at all cost.