Don’t Kill the Messenger

Discussion Questions 

1. Read Jeremiah 26:1-15; you can find it here. Then read the devotional below, “Don’t Kill the Messenger.” 

2. What is your typical response to stressful news? Do you prefer to ignore it, or fight it, or study it, or something else? 

3. Have you ever been tasked with delivering bad news to someone? How did they respond, and how did you experience their response? 

4. When has new information disrupted your assumptions? When has God nudged and needled you to find fresh perspective? 

Devotional 

As soon as Jeremiah finished telling all the people everything the Lord had commanded him to say, the priests, the prophets and all the people seized him and said, “You must die! Why do you prophesy in the Lord’s name that this house will be like Shiloh and this city will be desolate and deserted?” - Jeremiah 26:8-9 (NIV) 
 
I subscribe to a daily message about my Enneagram personality type. I’m a nine, which, as my inbox informed me recently, means I tend to seek harmony and avoid discord. 
 
It’s true. When something stresses me out, my inclination is to ignore it. I let that ugly email fester unanswered. I pretend I don’t hear that strange sound the car has started to make. And God help the person who dares to disturb my manufactured peace with the truth. 
 
It’s hard to be the bearer of bad news. Sometimes deadly. Ask Jeremiah, who repeats the words God whispers into his ear and is threatened with a death sentence. 
 
In my better moments, I recognize that the anger I feel at having my peace disturbed is directly related to the truth I recognize in the message I don’t want to hear. When I feel moved to shout, “You must die!” at even the smallest provocation of my peace, it’s a sure sign that there is a powerful reality I am trying to deny. 
 
Prayer 
Sacred Disturbance, destroy the false harmony of my chosen ignorance. Give me the courage to kneel before the truth.