Saturday 20 Apr 2013

Saturday Reading: Matthew 16:5-12

Key Verse: Matthew 16:6
6  Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

Devotion:
There are going to be times when God’s Word will not make sense to us the first time round and we have to be taught it again in order to understand it. We are not alone in this because there are echoes of this happening time and time again throughout history and recorded in our bibles. What we do when we do not understand is what is going to make or break us.

Now we can either try to figure things out by ourselves and make up our own ideas of what should be happening or what we want to happen. This could lead in the right direction, but based of our history it is probably not going to lead us there but rather into another pit or into a dead end. Or we could go back for more and ask for guidance from God who may supply that guidance directly or through people around us. The Ethiopian Eunuch received help from someone who God had placed in this path. The disciples had Jesus there to teach them – but even then they had to be taught again by the Holy Spirit later in order to fully understand what had happened.

Our thoughts are going to be about carnal things and we will focus on the world around us because that is where we live. When God tries to teach us by allowing things into our lives we may well take it the wrong way at first because we think in our own ways instead of focusing on God – this is all part of God trying to get us to recognise His ways instead of our own. So when we see God trying to teach us we have to stop and listen. Not stop and wait for Him to do something again but to stop and think about what He has already done and compare it to what He has done for others in the past.

Yes we are all unique and we need different things in our lives, but God’s ways have not changed. We change as the world around us changes and we have to move on in different ways applying God’s truth in those different situations. The same truth will continue to work because it is God’s truth; we may just have to teach others in a slightly different way in order for them to focus on that truth of old. That may mean that we think God is teaching us something different because things happen in a new way nowadays, but God’s Word has remained the same from the beginning of time whilst the world has grown up in an amazingly complex way.

Points to Ponder:
Do you seek the truth?

Are you seeking the world or God?