Wednesday 2 Jan 2013

Wednesday Reading: Mark 2:21-22

Key Verse: Mark 2:21
21  No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.

Devotion:
I love the simplicity of Christ’s words when He describes how we need to put aside our habits that we have built up and start afresh with God’s ways and His Word in our lives. When we come to know Christ we come from a very different world full of and abounding in sin; a world where we may have known good and righteous things but one where we went along with worldly ways instead of clinging to God’s ways. If we then took a single patch of God’s ways and tried to weave that into our sinful lives we would very quickly find out that our old sinful ways are what we still have…

God wants us to cast away the old ways and to start afresh with His ways being guided by His Word and the Holy Spirit. He gave us His law in the beginning showing man that keeping that law was a very difficult thing, impossible for us in fact. He then gave us His Son to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven once and for all after we found out that keeping sacrifices was just as hard for us. He then gave us the Holy Spirit to indwell us to guide us and to keep us from going back to our old ways. He has done all of this because He cares so much for us!

Why then do we cling to the old ways and cling to what we think we are safe within. God has promised that He will take care of us if we allow Him to. He has told us that we need to cast those heavy burdens onto His shoulders because He is able to bare them better than we can. He has done this all so that we can separate ourselves from the evil and from the temptations in this world. We just need to give Him control.

The Jews were stuck in the past, stuck in their ways, their ceremonies and their habits they had built up. Jesus was trying to open their eyes to all that they had embraced. When we get used to habit we like to think that they are actually good for us because it gives us an excuse to keep them in our lives. What we need to do is put them aside to give the Holy Spirit room to work in our lives. He wants to be able to guide us and help us, but we have to make sure that He has room to work in us!

Points to Ponder:
Are you stuck with habits?

Are you worried about giving God control?