Saturday Reading: Matthew 19:16-22
Key Verse: Matthew 19:21
21 Jesus said to him, If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven. And come, follow Me.
Devotion:
One of the hardest things to do as a young child is to give up your favourite toy. As you grow older and (hopefully) wiser, you would think that giving up your favourite thing should be a whole lot easier – but if truth be told we still find it hard. The problem is that our favourite things become so much a part of our lives that we just don’t want to let them go. Whilst it may be easy to let someone else drive your car or let someone else use your mobile phone, the things that begin to matter to us are sometimes not simple physical devices but ways of life.
We get into doing things that we should probably not be doing and with that we begin to squeeze God out of our lives in preference to having to give up on what we now like doing. When Jesus was warning this man about the things in his life that were holding him back, Jesus knew exactly what to aim at. We lose focus on the important things and begin to leave them behind.
Now is the time to bring your life back together, to make your primary focus God Himself and to aim at nothing less. The inverse to this is also true in that we should strive to find the things that will please God and bring them back into our lives. If we compare anything to Christ we should have no problem knowing what is most important. It is not a case of giving things up because you have been told that they are wrong or waiting until someone says that is right. It is a case of wanting to follow God’s will because that is what is in your heart.
Points to Ponder:
What is your heart focused on?
Is God in your heart?