Tuesday Reading: 1 Kings 8:22-24
Key Verse: 1 Kings 8:23,24
23 And he said, Jehovah, the God of Israel, there is no God like You, in Heaven above or on earth beneath, who keeps covenant and mercy with Your servants who walk before You with all their heart,
24 who have kept with Your servant David my father what You promised him. You also spoke with Your mouth, and have fulfilled with Your hand, as it is today.
Devotion:
As you read through the first few chapters of 1 Kings you get a good picture of all that Solomon continued to do after his father David died. We see how God blessed Him and how He continued to praise God but when it came to dedicating the temple for God Solomon seemed to leave no stone unturned. The amount of animals offered up for sacrifice is simply staggering when you try and add things up but all of that counted for little when he let his prayers come from his heart.
When we lift up our prayers to God it must not be because we have to but because we want to. It must not be words that are simply repeated but words that come from the heart. God wants us to be in a relationship with Him and not with words. Solomon’s words summed up what he had learned over the first years of his life and his reign; the summed up the relationship between God and the people of Israel. The words were a stark reminder that God knew that the Israelites would turn their backs on Him and that they knew that fact too. None of us like to believe that we should ever turn our backs on Christ but we will at some stage or another because we all have our weaknesses.
What God wants us to remember most of all though is not that we will be weak and give in to temptation, nor that we will give up and seek other things but the fact that whilst we remain firm in His grip, nothing and nobody can ever take us away from Him. Whilst we uphold His ways and His laws we remain strong and encouraged in His Word. Whilst we remain strong in His Word we don’t give in to other things. Be strong and be wise, uphold God’s Word so that you will not give in to the world around you...
Points to Ponder:
What makes you give in?
Are you relying on God’s strength through His Word?
