Tuesday Reading: Isaiah 58:5-8
Key Verse: Isaiah 58:7
7 Is it not to break your bread to the hungry, and that you should bring home the wandering poor? When will you see the naked and cover him; and you will not hide yourself from your own flesh?
Devotion:
To many people nowadays a day of fasting is something that has been all but lost over time. It is not a day to sit around and eat nothing to try and make you feel better. It is not a day to dress down in rags to allow others to see that you are fasting. It is nothing to do with the way that others see, hear or really anything whatsoever about you. A day of fasting is you, willing to acknowledge your sins, set aside the world and bring them in humbleness and sorrow before your God! If you are in any way promoting the putting away of that sin, then you are promoting the cause and not lift up God!
So many prophets saw this happening over and over again, that the people would make a show of fasting so that others could see them doing it. The act of fasting had become a show of what you can do rather than the people each expressing their heart-felt sorrow that they had sinned against God. If we want to be able to do that then we have to do what God would want us to do and not what we would want to do. Yes, God would have us to acknowledge our sins and to come to Him in sorrow, but if we do want to be able to repent, then let us do it in a manner that is also pleasing to Him.
Let us praise Him and lift Him up instead of bringing the world down in our sorrow. Let us set aside the world in favour of our God and His ways. Let us help His people by lifting them up instead of putting His people aside. God wants each of us to be able to live a good life but He is not going to simply swap good works for a good life. God will reward good works but that should not be our focus. Our focus should be on Him and with that should come helping His people as a natural consequence. When others see that we lift Him up and just happen to be able to help them as a consequence then they shall look to Him rather than looking to what we do.
Points to Ponder:
Do you expect people to thank you?
Are you looking to God to say thank you to you?
