Monday 25 Feb 2013

Monday Reading: 1 John 2:1-4

Key Verse: 1 John 2:3
3  And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.

Devotion:
Even though God is in charge of this world and has ultimate power and control over everything, He continues to give us a lot of free will and free choice. Unless we are willing to remember God and remember what Christ has done for us, then we may well allow the world to control us rather than allowing God to have that control. That is when we will find that we walk directly away from God instead of walking with Him.

When we allow Christ into our lives we need to think about what we are actually doing; we are not just saying to Christ that we now believe in Him but we are inviting Him into our lives – personally inviting Him in! How many of us would invite a person into our home and then treat them as horribly as we can? I would rather treat someone with love and respect when I invite them into my home so that they will be more willing to come back again and enjoy being with me.

That is one thing that I struggle with in modern society… As Christians we need to show others the love and respect that Christ wants us to show them and that must mean inviting them into our lives with an open heart and without worldly restrictions. We should not restrict ourselves to worldly limits because the love of Christ is certainly not from this world – the world is in opposition to Christ. We see people leaving Christ out of things just because they don’t want to upset someone by saying that Christ is important to them… Well either He is important to you or He is not. If He is important to you, then people need to know that and people need to see that.

Anyone can be religious, go to church, give to the poor, say they love God, and pray out loud on street corners; but if they do not live that life in their hearts and allow others to share in that life in their hearts then they are just going through the motions and not actually keeping God’s commandments! We may be able to fool some people some of the time, but we will never fool God because He sees directly into our hearts and knows our inner thoughts. We need to show others what those thoughts are by acting in a Godly manner by using Jesus as our example. Jesus did not give in to the world but depended on God to protect Him as He went forward with God’s love as His purpose.

Points to Ponder:
Are you scared to show people Christian love?

Are you depending on God to allow you to love others?