Thursday 16 Oct 2014

October 16: Genesis 11:1-9

Key Verse: Genesis 11:4
Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’

Devotion:
It seems that no matter how we go about our lives, we are always going to be doing something wrong. God has given us these wonderful brains we have and they tend to work overtime when we least want them to. When they do work overtime we get caught up in thought of how we can do more or what else we can do; the focus then changes to ourselves instead of on God. That is exactly what was happening here in Shinar. The people were all working together and as they did they realised how much more they could do together. As they realised that their brains worked overtime and they because overly proud of what they could accomplish.

When that happens in our lives we should not be too surprised to find that God allows something to stop us from doing what we think we can by ourselves. God is not punishing us for doing things wrong but is rather trying to open our eyes to the fact that no matter how good we think we are, we still need God in our lives!

God not only created everything and knows everything, but He really does want to be able to care for us as well. We like to think that we can take care of ourselves, but in truth we cannot because of our own minds which tend to focus on other things instead of God. The more we open our minds to worldly ways the more we focus on those ways and not on God’s ways. Yes, God is a jealous God and He wants to know that we are focusing on Him otherwise we will get side-tracked and we will go astray from His ways.

We may want to believe that we can do so much more as a community but when we do focus on what we can do instead of what God does do in our lives, then we have failed God again. God has had to be rather harsh in our history to try and get us on the right path. We now have so much more information and so much more history that we are running out of excuses to do our own thing. Isn’t it time we did focus on God and allow Him to work in our lives?

Points to Ponder:
What strengths do you have?

Do you allow God to use them?