Saturday Reading: Ephesians 4:29-32
Key Verse: Ephesians 4:30
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed until the day of redemption.
Devotion:
When I look back on my life I see so many cases of me giving in and following the worldly ways when I was young. What is it that makes us think as teenagers that we are able to withstand everything that the world can throw at us not knowing just how much we do give in and go with the flow? What makes us think that we are able to stand up to the devil and all his henchmen when we are just boys and girls?
Hindsight is always the best sight! We can all look back and see the times when we have given in and allowed bad things into our lives and even the times when we have encouraged them too; but how many things can you remember that you can look back on and say “that is the time when I stood up and asked God to help me fight!” Too many times we ignore where our true strength does come from and we try to rely on what we have inside us. Let us never try to fool ourselves into thinking that we are man enough to stand up to anything.
The only one we are fooling when we give in to the ways of the world is ourselves. God can see straight through us and He will not miss a single thing that goes on in our lives. When we accept Christ as our Saviour we are inviting the Holy Spirit to come and stay with us permanently. In other words we have God as our guest forever more. If we then turn round and act the fool we are effectively ignoring the Holy Spirit and even embarrassing Him through what we do. Do you really think God is going to be happy with us when we do that? God is with us because He loves us; showing a bit of love and respect back is not a hard task if we do truly rely on Him to encourage us!
Points to Ponder:
Do you mess with others?
Do you mess with God?