Saturday 14 Apr 2012

Saturday Reading: Job 1:1

Key Verse: Job 1:1
1  There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.

Devotion:
The two people that stand out to be as being described as being perfect in our bibles are Job and Noah (Genesis 6:9). And when we read up on each of the men we do find that they did not do everything absolutely perfect and right, but rather that their hearts were set on being perfect. That was their spiritual aim, to walk perfectly with God, to be constantly looking to Him and depending on Him for their whole lives.

So when God tells us that we need to be perfect we should not give in and admit defeat before we start knowing that we cannot ever hope to be perfect like Christ was; but instead we should aim to make our lives more in line with what Christ would want. We should aim to please God at all times. We should aim to be faithful to Him and not the world. We should aim to glorify Him in and through everything that we do. That being said, we will never actually reach perfection, but that must never stop us from wanting to please God.

If God had thought for one second that we could be perfect, He would never have allowed His Son to come and die for us but would have demanded that we were perfect.  Instead, Christ willingly came to the cross in our stead so that we would be able to be presented as perfect to God even though we fall far short of the mark. His love for us went far beyond what we could ever hope for. But now that we know that love we should aim to lift Him up at every opportunity because it is the right thing to do.

Satan is going to try to throw many things in our paths just as he did for Job. He does that so that he can discourage us and try to stop us from aiming to be perfect for God. Because Christ has already died for our sins, we are able to be presented to God as perfect so long as we are willing to allow Jesus to stand up for us in our stead. That means that we need to believe in Jesus, what He has done for us and that He has already achieved that just because He first loved us. Once we go to Christ and ask for His forgiveness we will receive it as well as our perfect way to heaven; but then the task is just begun for us to reject evil and reject Satan’s ways and follow Christ’s path instead – that is where we continually need Christ’s strength.

Points to Ponder:
Are you rejecting the evil ways of this world?

Will you be presented perfect before God?