Monday 8 Jul 2013

Monday Reading: Philippians 2:14-16

Key Verse: Philippians 2:14
14  Do all things without murmurings and disputings:

Devotion:
Normally I would have put these verses with the previous devotion but instead I wanted to remind all of us that we have to obey God’s Word without complaining. When our parents ask us to clean up our room, we complain. When we are asked to do menial work, we complain. When we have to do the dirty work, we complain. But someone has to do it!

There are some pretty strange programs on TV that talk about the grubbiest jobs on earth; I think I have watched one or two and have been amazed at how the people who are asked to do those jobs get down and do them without complaining – well, at least some people do! When God gives us instructions He expects us to follow those instructions without complaining because when we are complaining we are saying that we are objecting to His Word! God is not going to ask anything of us that He knows we cannot do but instead gives us jobs that He knows we can do.

We may not like some of the jobs that He asks us to do, and we may not like some of the tasks that we should be doing. God wants us to be willing servants and He wants us to continue following His will and following His direction. He is the one who does know what is best for us so we should just be doing it without question! But God also wants us to question things to make sure that we know in our hearts that we are doing His will and that it is righteous.

God will not ask us to do anything unrighteous because that would be like Him asking us to sin – we should know by now that He does not enjoy sin at all. He wants us to turn our backs on sin just as Jesus did throughout His earthly ministry. He wants us to obey Him knowing that what He is asking is best for us. When we do follow God’s Word then we begin to give glory to Him as well as encouraging the people who have taught us that word because they too begin to see the profit of taking the Gospel into all the world – just as He asks us to do that. When we follow God’s ways we are bringing more glory to God than we realise because we lift up other servants who then lift up other servants and so we give a great big collective glory to our Heavenly Father!

Points to Ponder:
Do you feel good when a crowd cheers for you?

Are you joining in and glorifying God?