Wednesday 4 Sep 2013

Wednesday Reading: Hosea 13:1-4

Key Verse: Hosea 13:4
4  Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.

Devotion:
As with so many of the people in the Old testament we see Ephraim fearing the Lord for some time and God keeping him going; but as soon as he turned his back on God then he dies. We may look at all these examples and say that it deserved them right or that they should have seen it coming. But we have our bibles, all the scriptures written down in a single bound copy for easy reference; they had to rely on scrolls and word of mouth. If they did not get fed daily by someone who cared about them then they may well have found it very difficult to keep going with God because of the temptations of the world.

We should count ourselves so lucky that we do have our bibles and that we can pick them up at any time and get fed directly from God! And yet we still fall into the trap of taking a few days off which turns into a few weeks and before we know it we have fallen away from God too! We have so many warning of all the things that can go wrong that we should be able to see it all coming long before we go that far – but we still don’t.

The evil one is very canny and he will continue to draw us deeper into temptations, deeper into sinful ways and further away from God for as long as he can. We need to take a firm stance and stand on the word of God continually. I marvel at some who are able to spend so much time in God’s Word when I know that I have to make time. I try to get up in the morning and give my first hours to God so that I can start my day firmly in His grip, but there are so many distractions around us. If we think that there are too many distractions for children, then we need to open our eyes to the amount of distractions that we have as adults!

God is good! There is only one God! There is only one way of salvation. God’s Word is unique… and we can carry on with all sorts of truths; but unless we are willing to spend time in that truth then we are always going to fall short because we will always give in to the ways of the world instead of knowing what God wants from us.

Points to Ponder:
Do you start you day with a good breakfast?

Is that food or God’s Word?