I was reading Matthew recently and as I arrived at the birth of Jesus, the motivation of the Magi who went to visit him in Bethlehem made me pause in consideration. Their unwavering faith in a prophesy proclaiming the birth of the Messiah and the star indicating the time of his arrival was incredible. Without ever seeing him, they packed expensive gifts for a long journey to meet the king of the Jews motivated only by faith. And their plan when they were to finally see him was not to expect anything from him, or to ask anything of him, but to simply worship him. It says in Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 and 2:
“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw the star in the east and have come to worship him.’”
When we seek God in prayer, most of the time we come to him with requests. But what if we adopted the attitude of the Magi? What if we came to him with the sole purpose of worshipping him? I’ll always encourage you to set aside time to pray to God, but next time, consider dedicating all of your prayer time worshipping him. There will be plenty of time to share your requests with him later. But I believe that every believer should consider the power of admiration. Consider Jesus’ response when he healed the ten lepers and only one came back to worship him. He is God and he created us to worship him. My question is, how are we doing on that front? Many of us worship him on Sunday, but what about the rest of the week? I’d like to challenge you, as well as myself, to try to make our prayers as much about worshipping God as we do requesting something of him. Jesus modeled it and as we can see in Matthew, the Magi did too. So what do you say we practice it as well with our hearts engaged and our love and adoration evident toward the one who saved our soul.
—-
When the Magi came to find Jesus lying in a manger, their primary intent was to worship him. What is your intent towards our Lord and Savior? How often do you truly worship him, love him and adore him? Just like a good earthly father loves to have his children lavish their love upon him, God, our heavenly Father loves it when we love and worship him in spirit and in truth. After all, the greatest command is for us to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. Are you doing that? I would challenge you to focus your heart upon him today; to pray with thanksgiving and uplifted hands; to lavish all of the love and adoration you can muster on him. He is worthy.