Tuesday 19 Aug 2014

August 19: Mark 2:1-7

Key Verse: Mark 2:7
“Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Devotion:
Sometimes the truth is right in our faces and we do not see it until something drastic happens. Sometimes it takes that unforeseen event to open up our eyes to what is actually happening or to the truth that is already in our lives. Many of the people around Jesus did not want to accept Him as the Messiah for whatever reason they had in their hearts. Jesus allowed the young man to be healed so that their eyes would be opened to a few things. What happened was not that the people fully accepted Christ as Messiah; what happened was they realised that only God should be able to do what Christ had just done.

And yet they still did not accept the truth that Christ is God. Why? I’m not entirely sure why they should not accept it because they had the knowledge that this could only be done by God and yet they would not accept Christ as God. Maybe their vision of what God should be was too big to be fulfilled by this human man standing in front of them.

We often look for the experience to try and make what we have read real in some way and that can be dangerous because we are looking for an experience to uphold the truth; what we should be doing is looking for the truth to uphold or explain the experience we have. God wants us to have a firm foundation upon which we can build a solid faith trusting in Him. That cannot come from an experience, but it may be the experience which opens up our eyes to the truth.

It will still take a certain amount of faith on our side to believe what we see or hear because we may not be able to explain what we see or hear. God is willing to open up our ears, eyes and hearts to the truth when we allow Him in to explain things to us; but we need to allow Him in to start with. Being brave enough to admit we have faults and to ask for help is very hard. Being willing to listen to the advice and act on it is where we come unstuck sometimes because we still want our own ways…

Points to Ponder:
Do you accept Christ as God?

Do you obey Christ as God?