Monday 18 Mar 2013

Monday Reading: Psalm 75:6-10

Key Verse: Psalm 75:8
8  For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.

Devotion:
How often we do forget that God is in charge of all things and that He has a plan which He has set in motion since before we were around. It is little wonder then that things continue to happen in much the same manner as they have done for so many years – because God is still requiring that His plan is acted out from the beginning through to the end. This cup signifies all that God has for us to endure, be it good like the fresh wine or pretty rough like the dregs at the bottom of an old wine, we still have this life to live.

Our lives are not going to be plain sailing just because we believe in God. They are not going to be without worry or strife just because we have said that we trust Christ at some stage in our lives. Our lives have to be lived according to what God has in store for us. If we run off in the other direction away from God then we may well be faced with a whole lot more garbage than we expect and we will certainly have a whole lot more than God had planned in our lives! So the answer must be to stick close to God so that we can get what He has planned in our lives and thus get the best for each one of us.

We need to trust in God and praise Him continually; that way we will be sure that we will hear when He requires something from us and we will be able to obey His Word in our lives. But if we are going to be too caught up in the world to listen to God then we will find that we get what the world deals to us instead of what God wants in our lives; that is going to be two very different lives!

God’s lot for each of us is that we trust and obey Him, that we believe on Jesus Christ His only begotten Son and that we live our lives according to His Word as shared to us by the Holy Spirit. That is what God has planned for us and He has planned so that we may have the best life according to His plan. That does mean He will allow us to enjoy ourselves as well because He wants us to be happy – being unhappy and rejected is not going to bring us closer to Him after all. Instead God continually encourages us to draw close to Him in our daily walk with Him.

Points to Ponder:
Do you concentrate on getting work done?

Are you concentrating on God’s work too?