August 22: Exodus 16 22-30
Key Verse: Exodus 16 26
Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none.
Devotion:
When God started to give the people the Manna in the desert it was something very different to what they expected or wanted; but it is exactly what they needed. God also made sure that He would not break His own rules by making them work on the Sabbath day but gave them enough on the sixth day for two days. They had to do their bit each day by collecting and even preparing the food, but on the Sabbath there was none to collect; those that had obeyed and collected enough the previous day still had to prepare food on the Sabbath but that was all.
God wants obedience from us, not questions and complaints about things not going the way we want. He prepares and supplies our needs as He knows best. We need to be able to obey what He has told us and live for Him. Yes it is hard when we are used to so much else and want to go back to our own old ways, but God wants us to be able to see that His ways are best even when we do not think so. I still find it hard to give up my own ways at times but every time I do I come out the other side seeing how much better it is to listen to Him and obey!
If we have slim picking it is because God knows that we do not need more than we are going to get; but we still have to do something. Don’t stop everything and expect God to do it all because He will supply what you need for you to obey. If we have an abundance and we see a need then we should use it to the fullest extent so that we can continue to obey God.
Being run down, let down, rejected and the like will not encourage us to follow and obey Christ. He knows this and that is why He will supply what we need for the job that he has given us. It may well be hard work gathering what He does open up for us, but it will be what we need. It may not be what we would like or think that we need, but it will actually be what we need. That may be the hardest thing to accept!
Points to Ponder:
Do you accept God’s decisions?
Do you praise Him for supplying your needs?
August 21: Mark 2 18-22
Key Verse: Mark 2 21
No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse.
Devotion:
If you wanted to fix something, would you use broken parts to fix it? And if you were called to fix something would you use matching parts or something new to make it look good? Two very different questions when you start to think about them but they relate to this question Jesus was asked. When we accept Christ into our lives we should be trying to live a changed life, one where the old ways should no longer fit and should look out of place. But equally we should not think that we can replace our ways with ways that will not fit in our lives.
That may sound a bit counter-intuitive but when we do change we need to keep our own selves, our own identity; not the wrong-doing identity, but the one that God gave us in the beginning. When we change our lives we want to be new people, but we cannot change into something that we are not! Jesus got some of the disciples from being fishermen to being fishers of men, but He did that because He knew what they were like on the inside and knew they would grow in their new lives. He did not change that part of them.
When we do have Christ in our lives we want to be able to live a life where we know Christ would not be shoved into a corner or dismayed that we are still evil in our ways. We want to be new creatures. We can be. But we must be the creatures that God has given us to be and not some made up thing that we think we can be. God knows our own minds are not up to the task of making a new life for ourselves so He stays with us and guides us all along the way – so long as we listen!
Don’t try and fit God’s ways into your current life either! God changes you so that you will be able to lead a new life with Him not stay in the old life and continue on in your own ways. Zacchaeus changed his ways, but he remained the same man with a very different outlook. If he tried to be a Christian and continued defrauding clients it would not have worked!
Points to Ponder:
Do you know what Christ has in store for you?
Are you willing to give Him control?
August 20: Luke 19 1-9
Key Verse: Luke 19 8
Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.”
Devotion:
When you get to know that you have done something wrong, how do you react? Many of us try to either pass the blame on to someone else or change the rules so that we look like we are not wrong. That is not what God is after in our lives. God wants us to be open and honest with Him and to admit that we have done things the wrong way. When we are able to admit to Him that we do things wrong we are then able to receive forgiveness when He gives it to us and to move forward in our lives. Hiding behind our wrong-doings is not going to help anyone other than Satan when it comes down to it because he is the one who will be able to abuse you through your guilt and shame.
Being able to be set free from that guilt and shame is what we should be aiming for so that we can start our new life with God and not fighting each step of the way. When Zacchaeus saw how wrong he was in doing what he was doing he repented and wanted to make a difference. It did not matter that every other tax collector could have been as corrupt as him and that the authorities turned a blind eye, it was the fact that he now knew his failings and admitted them. That is what turned his heart around and prompted him to promise to return all his ill-gained money.
Giving away all the riches you have is difficult when you have grown used to a lifestyle of riches, but if they have not been gained in a correct manner, the shame and guilt is still inside of you. That is because God has given us a conscience that allows us to know what is right and wrong even if we bend the rules and try to get our own ways.
Zacchaeus was willing to make a big difference and to change his own life, but he needed the kick-start in the beginning. When Jesus was willing to come to his house even though He knew Zacchaeus was in the wrong, it made a big difference. We need to stand by Jesus’ example and show other people we still care even when they are wrong.
Points to Ponder:
Do you turn your back on people who do wrong?
Are you willing to support someone?
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?
August 18: Mark 1 14-15
Key Verse: Mark 1 15
and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Devotion:
Jesus came to Galilee to continue and expand on the teaching that John had started in his own ministry. Jesus continued to fulfil what the prophets had said would happen and told people that this is exactly what was happening. Jesus was showing that the scriptures were to be believed because they had been written down for our believing. It is the Gospel message that will allow us to see that we need Christ as our Saviour and it is that same Gospel message that will strengthen us when we do start believing.
Part of that believing is the knowledge we find knowing that we have done wrong against God, admitting that we have done wrong and asking for forgiveness from Him. Christ has promised us that we will be forgiven if we ask, believing that He has accomplished what the scriptures told us about. Jesus did not just follow a sequence of words that were written down so that it could look like He did it all right; He came to expand on what was written so that we could understand what we had not understood before.
We can pick up our Bibles and read them and not understand what is going on because we cannot relate to the words yet. But when we do allow Christ into our lives He starts to give us an understanding that goes beyond the words written down and allows us to understand just how much he has done for us. The more that we understand the more that we can trust what is written down. The more that we relate what is written and what is in our lives the more we understand about having faith in the unseen.
Jesus wants us to have faith. Faith comes from understanding how much God has done in our lives and seeing that what is written down has actually happened. Just believing what someone else says is hard for us because we live in a corrupt world. But having an understanding in what has happened and being able to see the ancient scriptures being fulfilled gives us a confidence in the Gospel message. That is how our faith will grow, through understanding.
Points to Ponder:
Do you admit your faults?
Do you know God forgives?