Sunday 24 Nov 2013

Sunday Reading: Malachi 1:1-5

Key Verse: Malachi 1:2
“I have loved you,” says the Lord. “Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?’ Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” Says the Lord. “Yet Jacob I have loved;

Devotion:
There are so many things that we need to be thankful to the Lord for but far too often we forget about them and start asking God why He has not supplied us with the things that we want when the world goes wrong around us! We live in this world and things will go wrong; that is just a fact of life. If we build a chair with our own hands, some day that chair is going to break because it will get used. I can remember making things in woodwork classes in school and wondering if I would get to use them thinking that they may not even make it home!

When God makes things, He makes them properly! But when man comes along, we tend to break things properly! God made this world as a place where we could live and learn about Him with the goal of being able to praise and worship Him for all that He has done and all that He is. The evil one came along and corrupted us by giving us doubt and a sinful heart. That sinful heart has learned how to break the things God has made for us so that we then doubt that God has made things properly.

We come along, eventually, and see a corrupt world full of things going wrong and start asking God why He has not made things just the way that they should be; when in fact we should be looking at the broken world and trying to restore it back to Gods design so we can get the best out of it again. What God has already done for us since we broke things is actually pretty amazing! He has shown us love and mercy beyond what we deserve and has been continually encouraging us to pick up the pieces and put them back together again.

When we start to pick up the pieces, He then gathers more in His hands and gives them to us to make our task that much easier… But we must be the ones who start to pick up things first of all. When we show God that we want to get serious and put Him first in our world, He will show us what He has done and what He can do when we place our faith and trust in Him. It is us that are preventing our own selves from having a wonderful and fulfilling life with Christ and not Him; we separate ourselves from Him just because of our doubts…

Points to Ponder:
Do you trust your friends that stand by you?

Do you trust God who has always been here?