Wednesday 18 Jun 2008

Wednesday Reading: John 9:28-34
 
Key Verse: John 9:31
31  But we know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him.
 
Devotion:
I wonder what it would have been like for this man to have been blind from birth and then suddenly being able to see again after Jesus gave him his sight. It is not something that any of us could probably be able to imagine because we would either have continued with our sight, maybe have lost it after an accident, or would have never had our sight. And yet, even though everyone knew that this man was blind from birth and could quite clearly see now, they refused to accept the truth about Jesus.
 
The Pharisees were very strict on the Law as was given by God through Moses to them. But, because they were human, their own wants and desires were now blocking their minds from seeing the truth. Sadly, that is all too often what happens in our lives too. When we see something that we cannot explain, we try to look for a logical or scientific reason for it to happen rather than accepting that it is the will of God. When things happen in our lives we assume that there must be some shallow reason because we are human. We close off our minds to the depth and wisdom of our Very God!
 
When we are so caught up in our laws or beliefs, we block out everything else. When we take the law as everything, we could be blocking out the truth. These Pharisees were so caught up in the law that they could not accept the fact that Jesus was in fact the Messiah that they were waiting for. They did not want to believe it because that would mean that they would have to give up on their law which was making them so important! That is what we do as well. We take the law or some words and we make them so important in our lives that we block Christ out even though they should be upholding Christ! How could any person ever get to pray to God if He would not listen to sinners? How could we ever get to heaven if Christ had not fulfilled the law already? We need to pray that we can have our eyes opened to God’s will in our lives even though we seem to work against it all the time…
 
Points to Ponder:
What would you do if you could suddenly hear everyone’s thoughts?
 
How would you react if you could verbally hear God speaking?