January 29: Luke 5 4-7
Key Verse: Luke 5 5
But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.”
Devotion:
What would you do if you had just been working all night and someone turned round to you and asked you to do an extra hour? I think the answers would span anything from a rude response to a simple “yes” but I doubt too many people would be very pleased about being asked to do the extra work! God does not stick to the normal way of doing things because if we just kept on being normal we would not see that God is anything different from a normal person in charge. Instead God chooses His moments where the impact will be felt most of all.
Don’t be surprised if God calls you out in the middle of the night to care for someone. Don’t be surprised if God calls you out to talk to someone who has just shouted at you or even mistreated you. God knows what is best and He knows what has to be done, but He does not expect you to have to go off and do everything alone! God did not expect Adam to look after the Garden of Eden alone. God did not expect Noah to rebuild the world alone. Christ did not expect Simon to land all these fish alone.
But in many of these cases God does not give explicit instructions for us to team up with others and do something as a team. For Him to be able to convince a team of us together to do the same thing without us sitting down and teaming up first of all is something quite extraordinary. Instead God expects us to take the first steps in faith and then grow into the team that He requires… but it is a team of people willing to do the work!
Jesus did not fill up the boat because they were all hungry and despondent; instead He gave them the means to fill up the boat with the tools they had. God chose the time and He chose the team. People had to come together to work as a team after listening first of all. Listening with faith. Obeying with faith. Doing with obedience.
Points to Ponder:
Will you listen to God?
Will you do what God asks?
January 28: John 2 1-11
Key Verse: John 2 5
His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”
Devotion:
When Jesus was called upon by His mother to do something about the lack of wine at the wedding feast, it was not something that was happening every day but it was something she knew God would do. She had absolute faith in her son as the Son of God to do something to make sure the wedding feast would continue to be a celebration of the love between the two people being married.
Jesus did not have to do anything. He chose to do something and chose what to do as well. Jesus did not just make wine appear so everyone could have a great party. He chose to reveal Himself to a few servants and to His disciples. No big announcement was made other than this sentence to the servants to tell them to do whatever Jesus said had to be done. He chose to use the ordinary people of this world and the ordinary things of this world to bring forward something very special for all to enjoy.
Mary showed absolute faith in Jesus. The servants listened without question. The disciples stood in awe. What a fantastic picture of the way of Jesus ministry to different people in different ways. Our ministry to other people should not be to the chosen few that we think deserve it but to everyone around and in the way they need it. We don’t need to shout out the Gospel message in the streets for a person who is not going to be there; we need to share it where they are.
God has given us a task to take the Gospel out with us and share it to bring glory to God the Father through Jesus Christ. It is what we should do without question just like the servants did. Trust what God is telling you. Trust that it will be the right thing to do. Trust that God will get the glory, because He has said “do it!”
Points to Ponder:
Do you still make excuses?
Will you listen well?
January 27: Luke 5 36-39
Key Verse: Luke 5 39
And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’”
Devotion:
I find it interesting that Jesus brought up this parable about not mixing the new and the old together when the Scribes and Pharisees tried once again to trick Him into making a mistake. When we look at the way in which our churches change over time we should also be thinking of the effects of change in the people. We may want to cling on to the old ways, or want to bring in new ways and chuck out the old ways; but when we do we are not thinking about the deeper impact on the people that already are the church.
The church is the people together as one body worshiping God. If we cling to the old ways as described in the Old Testament then we have to live by those rules and accept them as they are. We are then guilty before God and need to rectify that through the ways described in the Old Testament. This just does not work when we know we have made so many other changes which we may want to keep…
If we are going to accept change in one part of the church then we have to accept the change will affect other parts and we have to live with those resulting changes. Just as the parable says that new wine cannot be placed in old wineskins, we realise that new ways in the church cannot hope to succeed in the old church establishment. Just as the new wine will burst the old, inflexible skins, the new ways will break the old church because it does not want change.
If we want change then we have to make sure we can grow with the changes and not leave out the parts we don’t want to change. Just as we look at the practical ways of the world in dealing with wineskins, we should also look at the practical ways of the church to find out how we can deal with change. God does not want us to stagnate or turn into introverts fearing change. God wants us to change but also to keep Him in the middle of our lives.
Points to Ponder:
Are you ready for change?
Will you change with God?
January 26: Hebrews 11 1-3
Key Verse: Hebrews 11 2
For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
Devotion:
Faith is a very big word for us to follow. It is what our lives depend, our spirits aspire to and our souls are destined for. Faith is the underpinning foundation of our being. You may be asking how this can be because faith is not such a big deal for you… It actually is. There are so many things that we trust in just by faith; so many aspects of life we don’t see or don’t understand, but we go along with them and trust they are true. That is faith.
So what about your faith in the unseen God? Are you struggling with aspects of your faith thinking that others around you have so much more than you do? Are they the ones reading this right now? Are they the ones seeking God through a devotion right now? No. You are! Your faith is a whole lot bigger than you realise!
The following verses in this chapter list the major instances of faith right from the beginning of time, listing them not as a comparison for you to live up to but as a reminder that faith is so very important in our lives. Don’t make the comparison between you and another person based on what you can see because you are sidestepping the whole concept of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for! Faith is based on hope not evidence.
I have faith that God is answering my prayers and as He does I see the evidence after the fact. I don’t wait for the evidence to see if I have faith or try to measure my faith by what is answered; I trust God to answer prayers and I leave them with Him. I trust God with the little and big things in my life and I leave them with Him. It is the things I try to take back and chance myself that I see fall apart, not the ones I keep hoping for in faithfulness.
Points to Ponder:
Do you measure your faith?
Will you leave it with God this time?
January 25: John 8 12-19
Key Verse: John 8 16
And yet if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent Me.
Devotion:
Jesus had to defend Himself over His own word! He had to tell the people who supposedly knew it all what the truth was! It is very easy to get trapped in our bibles and lose sight of God. That may be a bit of a shocking thing to say and no doubt people will have something to say about that, but take a look at how the church was going back then and even maybe look at some of the churches around you? The people had lost sight of the real relationship between them and God and had become very legalistic in their lives; that is not what God is about!
Jesus wants a personal relationship with each of us because that is the only way we will really get to know Him and to know His ways. If all we look at is the law then we may well become very law abiding people and lose sight of our relationship with Christ, just as the Pharisees had done back then. Yes God’s Word does tell us exactly what we need to know and it does describe how we need to be in a proper relationship with God… but we are human…
Our minds look for things that are not necessarily the best way forward but they look that way because our minds build up pictures of what life should be like. It is only when we step back and look at the whole picture that we may regain sight of the relationship with God we actually need to have. I am not saying that we should all put down our bibles and go it alone – certainly not. We need God’s Word to continue leading us into the relationship with Him, but we need to look at all of the bible and not just the parts we like the sound of.
We may read a passage from the Old Testament and wonder how God could ever let that happen or how God could ever ask people to do the things He did… we may never understand why He asked them to go and kill other people or wipe out other races, but we need to know all of this in order to bring understanding to the rest of the bible. We need to know that we don’t know it all and our faith will be called upon time and time again. We need to know Jesus is the way the truth and the life. But we need to be in a relationship with God, not in a book of rules and regulations.
Points to Ponder:
Do you ignore the law?
Do you fully trust Christ?