Monday 11 Jun 2012

Monday Reading: John 15:9-10

Key Verse: John 15:10
10  If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

Devotion:
Loving someone is not always about doing what you can for that person or buying what you can to keep them happy – loving someone can be about reprimanding people for doing things wrong when you know they are. But it can also be about making sure that you do what they say or what they suggest. There are many times in our lives when we just don’t want to get out there and do the things that we want to rather than doing what other people want – loving someone can mean stepping back from what you want and doing what others want instead.

It does not mean that we should go ahead and do all manner of things just to please others – we need to know whether what they are suggesting is in God’s Will or against God’s will. We always need to find out what God’s will is in our lives so that we have a chance at getting to do what His will is and not breaking things as we normally do every day of our lives!

God continues to make sure that we do know what He wants in our lives through giving us His Word in many ways. He allows us to hear it through teaching and preaching. He allows us to simply read it too. We have so many ways in which we can hear or listen to His word and yet we also ignore so many more of those ways. All we need to do is to look at the world around us to find out just how much He is trying to teach and how much He actually loves us.

But one of the biggest ways in which we can not just listen to His Word but do His Word is through obeying His commandments. The Ten Commandments given to Moses are actually very simply to learn and yet so very hard for us to follow. Just obeying them is not going to get you to heaven though because it is our belief and trust in Jesus Christ that will make the difference. When Jesus said that we should obey His commandments it was not just the literal Ten Commandments but rather the whole lifestyle. What good is doing the right thing if we are not going to believe what we do is the right thing – that would be like not swearing when you are with Christian friends but swearing when you are with other friends. God wants us to obey His Word but to obey it through belief in Him and not just something we learn from a book.

Points to Ponder:
What things do you do in secret?

How much are you trying to hide from God?