Wednesday 15 Aug 2012

Wednesday Reading: John 11:47-53

Key Verse: John 11:48
48  If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

Devotion:
Whenever I spend time in God’s Word I always seem to find something that will make me think, something that will make me stop in my thoughts and wonder why these words have been included where they are… then I come back to my senses and remember that God is the one who is in control and He knows our needs at all times!

No matter how much the world will try to take Christ out of our lives and out of society, they will never succeed! When God promised that His Word would always remain throughout time, He did not mean “only when other people allowed it to happen” but that it would continue no matter what man did. Here we see the Pharisees communing to try to get rid of Jesus in some way hoping that their precious country would survive by their own hands instead!

Yes we can look back and see how they were mistaken in not believing that Jesus was and is the Messiah, but to them they were facing a real dilemma. They were faced with a man who was seemingly subverting their country and taking their own power and authority away from them. They even thought that the Roman authorities could take everything away because of this ‘man’ who was claiming to be their rightful leader; if the people had backed Jesus instead of the government they feared that the Romans would do so as well.

We often think of many things in our lives that we think that we need above all else. Money, unfortunately, is one of those things for most people and robs Christ of His rightful place in our lives. When God told us that He was to be first and foremost in our lives it was not just because He wanted to be the first but rather because He wanted us to understand His absolute love for us and to return that love through faith. God wants us to understand that His Word stands because His love remains. He wants us to understand that governments and principalities remain because of His love for us. He wants us to understand that this world stand because of His love for us. That love will not break down so we must know that nobody will be able to take away what God wants us to have!

Points to Ponder:
Do you continually ask God for help?

Are you trusting that God will answer?