Friday 19 Oct 2012

Friday Reading: 1 Peter 1:22-25

Key Verse: 1 Peter 1:22
22  Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:

Devotion:
If you take a cup to make yourself a cup of tea or coffee (or any other drink for that matter) do you look at the outside of the cup to make sure it is clean or at the inside of the cup before pouring anything into it? Normally if we can see that the inside is clean, we would expect the outside to be clean enough as well. Now take a few moments to think about how you are seen by others? Are you seen as someone who has a pure heart or someone who looks the part? I know that I no do not look the part – that is just something we begin to accept as we get older, but I do try to make sure that I am pure on the inside.

Whilst nobody else can see what is inside me, other than God, they will get a pretty good idea by simply watching me and seeing how I behave. No matter how hard we try to hide things on the inside, they always seem to pop their heads up at the most inopportune times so that we get found out whether we want to or not. Does this mean that God is there to try and trip us up all the time or to expose us? Far from it – we can manage that all by ourselves without any outside help!

All of the things that we bring into our lives, all of the things that we take in and all of the secret ways that we live will eventually make it to the surface because that is just so typically human! If we want to be pure in our living then we have to make sure that we start from the inside and let it shine through us. If we want that to be so then we definitely need Christ’s help!

Christ is the one who gave His life for us so that we can be cleaned from the inside out. He is the one who is willing to do the cleaning as long as we are willing to let Him in to do so. If we ask for someone to come and clean our house but never let them in the front door then we are not going to get a clean house, no matter how much we pay them! We need to make sure that we bring Christ into our lives so that He can help us to clean up the mess that we are in. Once we have a clean house inside, people on the outside will begin to see that we have changed and that we have something to look forward to every day – something that they can have too!

Points to Ponder:
What are you really like?

Have you allowed Christ into your life?