Friday Reading: 1 Peter 5:5-7
Key Verse: 1 Peter 5:6
6 Therefore be humbled under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time,
Devotion:
How many times have you parents told you that you should listen to them because they know more than you? Well, these words were written not for children to understand that they need to obey their parents but rather that we, all members of the church, need to be subject to our leaders in the church. The head of our church is Christ and He has appointed people to stand over us, lead us and teach us; as long as that is what they are doing and they do it in God’s name and with His blessing then we should be following them. Standing up and making sure that you have a position in church just because you want to be heard is not the way that God teaches us to live.
We may have learned that we need to come humbly before God and we may well give Him the honour and glory that we can, but are we treating His people that way that we should? There are various ways in which we can aim to please God and one of those ways is through treating others with respect. God does not want each of us to try to build an empire but rather that we should all live together serving Him in unison. He gives us church leaders so that we can be guided by them. Our church leaders seek to be servants and not to reign over us so we should seek to be servants and not to reign over other people.
As church members we should not hold ourselves above those who are not. Just because they do not yet know Christ does not mean that they should not know Him. We need to reach out to them as humble servants and show them that Christ was willing to do this for them and we intend to do this as well. We will get our reward from God when it counts and when it is due; we should not be seeking every opportunity to receive recognition and reward whilst we are still here on earth – our more sure reward awaits us in heaven.
Points to Ponder:
How do you think others look at you?
Are you serving Christ’s people?
