Saturday 25 Feb 2012

Saturday Reading: Romans 14:16-19

Key Verse: Romans 14:17
17  For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Devotion:
I wonder what the arguments were like about the food that was to be eaten or was not to be eaten; whether it would offend others or not and just what they would do about it. It must have been a big thing at the time because of the numerous passages where we find that the Apostles were trying to calm down the situation between the people who would and the people who would not. Nowadays there seem to be much more offensive things flying around – but then we could look at it from the same point of view as sin. A sin is a sin…

There is nothing that we eat or drink that will exclude us from God. How we handle what we eat and drink may well lead us into situations that are not at all good and certainly will not lift up Christ or glorify Him in any way whatsoever. Those are the things we should be thinking about to make sure that we do not go there in the first place. Neither would it be good for us nor good for our relationship with Christ if we were to run off and work against His will once again!

It is not the things of this world that we need to focus on in order to walk with Christ but rather the spiritual things laid down by Him that we need to focus on. If we focus on things of the world then that is where we will end up – deep in this world. But if we are spending more of our time with Christ and doing more spiritual things that will ultimately lift Christ up, then we are working towards the Glory in Heaven and not to the glory of this world. Christ did not come and do what He did so that we could tie ourselves in knots in this world. He came so that we could be freed from the trap that is sin in this world. He came to save us from that sin.

When we are doing all that is acceptable to God, then we have a surer walk with Him than those people around us who are purposely focused on the world instead. They may well get all the money and the praise of their peers, but they certainly are not looking at the praise that God is waiting on in the future. If they continue to ignore Him then they will have to face Him and be rejected of Him on that day of judgement; and not us. So let us step back from the world and allow the world to see that we live for Christ. Let us lift Him up and allowed them to see we are not ashamed. Let us stand firm and bring them closer so they too can see the Awesome love that Christ has for us instead of waiting for them to face His wrath in the end!

Points to Ponder:
Are you drawing others to Christ?

Or are you pushing a wedge between them and God?