Friday Reading: Galatians 1:10-12
Key Verse: Galatians 1:10
10 For now do I persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Devotion:
If anyone will tell you that teaching others about God is easy, then I would question whether they have actually grasped the enormity of the task in hand. Paul was a man who was top of the class as regards religion. He knew just about as much as he was able to learn about Judaism, but when he was faced with Christ’s teachings he quickly realised that mans knowledge counts to very little when compared with God. He quickly saw that what he had to teach was not just head knowledge about God but the truth about a relationship with Jesus Christ.
As we grow with friends and family, we learn about their likes and dislikes and can normally find ways of pleasing them. We do not go out of our way to upset friends and family, but sometimes we get things wrong and we do. When that does happen it can be a reasonably easy task of finding out what went wrong and putting it right; mostly because we have started off on the right foot and know about their likes and dislikes. But with God we have a problem... We started off on the wrong foot and we have been doing things wrong all the time. Turning round and suddenly trying to do it all right is a task that is impossible. As Christians we are taught to love our enemies and not to judge anyone; yet that is how we identified them as our enemies. It just seems impossible to do things right...
But then this is all based on the fact that we are human and that we are limited by human emotions and physical constraints. When we start a true relationship with Christ, He alone can give us the ability to change our lives in ways that we do not think possible. If we stop thinking about ourselves as people and start thinking of ourselves as children of God, then we can start to realise that through Him nothing is impossible. He has already laid down His life for us at the cross so that we can be freed from our trap that we built ourselves. He has already done so much that we cannot understand. Give up on the trying to understand why and give in to faith – trust in Him.
Points to Ponder:
Do you find it hard to teach without putting others down?
How much are you relying on God’s almighty power?
