Sunday 15 Dec 2013

Sunday Reading: Acts 11:15-18

Key Verse: Acts 11:18
When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.”

Devotion:
As we read through our bibles we very quickly should realise that God chose the people of Israel for a reason; He wanted to set them apart from the rest of the world to be as an example. That went further in making sure people would come to see them as different and to know that God was looking out for them. One of the big things during Jesus’ ministry was that The Holy Spirit came to dwell with the apostles and those Jews that believed.

Now we are being shown that after Christ accomplished what had to be done, He fulfilled His promise to the rest of the world by making sure that The Holy Spirit came to dwell with the gentile as well. This was a huge step forward for the rest of us to know that Christ loved all of us and His word came to life. When Jesus stated that ‘whosoever’ believed, He meant every single one of us who placed our faith and trust in Christ and not just the Jews anymore.

This outward demonstration of Christ and His love for every single one of us was something very special that we all needed to know! Once again Christ fulfilling the word from the prophets is as important to us as the air we breathe because it is the fulfilment of God’s Word to us all; God’s promises coming to light!

But it is not just a statement whereby we can all be saved just because of the love that Christ has for us; this is the beginning to show us that we do need to repent of our sins before anything happens. God may love us more than we can realise and God may well uphold us, but unless we are willing to accept His love, accept that we are sinners and move forward trusting Christ, then we have issues all along. It is through God’s grace that we are saved and nothing we can do; but we must follow Christ’s commandment by bringing our sins before Him to start with.

Points to Ponder:
Do you say sorry when you do things wrong?

Do you say sorry to God?