Tuesday 4 Dec 2012

Tuesday Reading: Philippians 4:10-19

Key Verse: Philippians 4:17
17  Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account.

Devotion:
If there is one thing that is going to pull us down in life and in health it is being anxious about things. Now there are times that we do need to be careful and watch out for what we have that is ahead of us, but being over anxious will lead to more problems than it will solve. The apostle learned that he would have to go out and trust that God would bring in the support that he needed to continue on in his work for God. As a missionary doing God’s work, he was told by The Lord that he would have to go out and not worry about where the support was going to come from, but rather to trust God for that as he did God’s work.

But we do have to make sure that we are doing what God wills in our lives and not what we want otherwise we are being much like Jonah when he tried to run the other way from God’s work. Just because God has not spoken to us verbally does not mean that we can ignore what God is calling us to do. I guess that I got a bit too caught up in my own situations and lost focus on God’s will in my life recently; and the strain that it put on my life was quite extraordinary! I can imagine what Jonah must have felt like when he had so much happen to him over a few days when he ran the other way.

Again, just because we are not physically running the other way does not mean that we are obeying God’s will! We could go along and do things and make it look like we are obeying God, but unless we are focused on God’s work in our hearts, we may as well be running off in the other direction!

God also wants us to be cheerful about doing His Work. There is nothing I like better that to be able to teach young people about God – whether they think the same about me teaching them is not in question, it is whether I am listening to God in teaching them what he wants them to hear that could be questioned. That is why I spend more and more time in God’s Word nowadays – making sure that I understand just how important it is to give people the Gospel and to show them the hope that I have found through reading His Word. There may be no better gift than God’s Word!

Points to Ponder:
What do you like giving people?

Are you giving them what God wants you to give them?