Tuesday 17 Dec 2013

Tuesday Reading: Luke 9:49-50

Key Verse: Luke 9:50
But Jesus said to him, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.”

Devotion:
There are times when we all have to admit that we are different! That does not mean that we work against each other or that we cannot work together or that we have such big differences that we can’t be working with the same God! When I first got to know Christ I was in a different country, had a very different outlook because I was a teenager, had very different friends and certainly had different churches to go to. But the greatest joy for me was getting to know God with other Christians.

We are certainly not all the same and we may well get on each other’s nerves sometime, but working with other Christians has got to be what we are all about. This statement has got to be qualified by reminding ourselves that a Christian is a believer in Christ, someone who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He came to earth as a man, lived as a man, died for our sins, rose from the grave, ascended into heaven and will one day come back for us just as He has promised. Just because one Christians wears jeans and another a full black suit does not make either of them a non-Christian!

When John and the other disciples saw someone else casting out devils, they probably got a bit worried that someone was trying to do something they should not do; this belief sounds like it stemmed from them not knowing this person and the fact that he was probably doing things differently. But the key here was that this person was casting the devils out in Christ’s name. This means that he believed that Christ was the one who was able to cast out the devils; just because he was not working with them did not mean that he was against them.

But let us not just accept everything that everyone does because we still do have this Gospel that God has given us and we still do need to believe Him above all else. Making up our own rules, no matter how good they sound, is not right and is not what Christ promotes. Jesus spent some time telling off the religious zealots for doing exactly that. Christmas should be a time when we can come together in the name of Christ and bring the truth back into people’s lives!

Points to Ponder:
Do you see yourself as different?

Are you focused on Christ?