Wednesday 8 Aug 2018

August 8: 2 Corinthians 8:7-9

Key Verse: 2 Corinthians 8:8
I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others

Devotion:
You could read a book and then just put it aside, forgetting about what you have read; but God’s Word is a book that will encourage you to continue reading because it gives you a special insight into life with God which goes beyond any other book. The first book that I read cover to cover with eagerness was a book about how the first passenger aeroplanes to fly very high literally fell apart after a while in service – a bit of a strange book to be enthralled by you may think… But I read it through because that was a subject that I found very interesting. It was little wonder then when I found that I could go to university and continue on to learn about things like that, I did! After being interested in aeroplanes for a while, I wanted to know more about how to get a hunk of metal weighing almost 200 tonnes to carry another 200 tonnes and fly almost half way round the world! Staggering when you think of the numbers without mentioning the Boeing 747, an aeroplane which has been around almost 50 years now!

It does not take too much faith to step into a 747 and fly off on holiday… But would you have wanted to be the first to step into the plane before they actually flew it for the first time? Faith is something that needs encouragement to continue. If we started to see a lot of planes fall out of the sky, we would all stop flying! But because we see planes flying all round the world all the time, we have faith the next one we get on will continue to do fly safely.

Our faith needs encouragement; encouragement we can get readily through reading God’s Word and what we can build upon by doing God’s Will. When we exercise our faith by depending on God as He wants us to, we gain more and more confidence He will continue to look after us as He does do this. The more we depend, the more He does, the more our faith grows. We do this through our own eagerness to continue finding more that our God can do for us. We do this because we continue to find out just how awesome His love is for us! He is the one who came down from heaven to be as a mortal man so He could pay for my sins. I know I can depend on Him. I know He loves me. My faith makes me whole…

Points to Ponder:
Do you check out each chair before you sit on it?

Do you continue to test God before depending on Him?