Friday 24 Oct 2008

Friday Reading: Romans 15 1-7

Key Verse: Romans 15 6
6  so that with one mind and one mouth you may glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Devotion:
Have you ever thought why we were given a free will? I mean, why would a jealous God give us the free will to disobey or even ignore Him? The answer, quite surprisingly, is very simple. We were given liberty, not for our own pleasure, but for the glory of God... He did not give us freedom of choice so that we can have the time of our lives; He wants to give us the time of our lives because He loves us. He wants us to show others just how much He means to us. This is most convincingly done through us showing good will towards others; be it anything from saying hello through to supplying the needs of others.

It is not an accident that some are strong and others weak... How else would the strong be able to encourage the weak if they were not strong? We have made so many choices in our lives by the time we come to think about choices that we take them mostly for granted. Choices like whether we should believe in God are too often put off until we are so set in our ways that we do not want to change. We are not confronted with choices like that because our society is at such a point where we no longer find people doing things out of Christian love – hence we don’t get to hear about God’s love...

If we want to show love and kindness to another, we must not give in to their ways so that we can humour them; we need to expound to them the gospel way showing them how Christ’s love goes far and beyond that which is required of us. Christ did not live His life for His own enjoyment but rather to please His heavenly Father. Through doing that He was given a good life and was able to shed light into many people’s lives. We need to give a thought as to why Jesus would give His life over to God and appear to us as His servant. He did it because He wanted to show His love for us and to glorify God. He did it out of choice even though He had all power to do anything...

Points to Ponder:
Do you like doing things for friends?
 
How much do you glorify God with your life?