Wednesday 12 Dec 2012

Wednesday Reading: 1 Kings 18:21-39

Key Verse: 1 Kings 18:21
21  And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.

Devotion:
This is one of my favourite stories from the Old Testament not only because it shows the awesome power of our God but also because of the illustration that when we do place our full faith and trust in God, He delivers! Now this is not to say that if we ask God to prove that He exists that He will send fire and brimstone down to prove He is there! That would be abusing His trust and tempting God into doing something that is not going to glorify His position as God.

Elijah was surrounded by people who were trying to glorify a god that did not exist. He knew that he was in absolutely no danger from anything other than the people around Him; after all Baal was nothing but a figment of their imaginations. There are a few times when men have realised that Baal is not a god and have called upon him to prove himself or look to others to prove that Baal is a god. Each time he has obviously not been able to prove himself but even with that physical proof men have chosen to continue believing in him many times.

People have this built-in scepticism whereby they will not believe something that is right in front of their faces just because they don’t want to; or they continue believing in things because they want to. How else would all the conspiracy theories live for so long in this world? But when the priests that upheld the name of Baal tried to prove his existence they showed just how far they were willing to go to make their belief a reality – or at least try to. They so wanted their god to be true because it would mean that they would be the ones in power and the ones in control; it really had nothing to do with Baal being a god but everything to do with them being able to boast about their own positions!

You see, our greed kicks in a makes us do some pretty extraordinary things to try and glorify ourselves in some manner. This has nothing to do with Christianity or God and everything to do with pride and greed instead! God does not want us to be mixed up with our own pride and greed because He knows that that is exactly what Satan is using to tempt us away from living our lives with Him. How else can Satan fill our lives with so much garbage that we crowd out our one true God?

Points to Ponder:
What do you really seek?

Are you upholding your pride or God?