May 29: Psalms 37 1-8
Key Verse: Psalms 37 3
Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
Devotion:
One of the things we should not be doing is to look at all the people around us who do evil things or work against God and wonder if we could get involved with things like that and get away with them too! Yes there are people around who do seem to get away with many things but they have to face holy justice just as we do. God is continually watching over every single one of us with loving but holy and just eyes; He cannot ignore evil and the people who choose that path will have to face the judgement themselves and not be able to hide behind any hot-shot lawyer!
On the other hand, we have Christ Jesus who willingly came forward and volunteered to be our Advocate. The difference between Him and all the hot-shot lawyers is that He is holy and just as well; so when He says that He has paid for our sin debts already by giving His own life, we can rest assured that we no longer have to face His judgement against our evil… so long as we have asked Him in faith to forgive us of those sins already.
God asks us to trust in Him and to delight in Him because when we do so He is able to guide us better as we listen to His instruction. It is more difficult for anyone to give us instruction when we are not listening or when we are so involved with the things that others around us are doing. God not only wants us to trust but to obey as well. If we are bold enough to say to God that He should be able to use us, then we must listen more intently and submit to His ways and His Word. Committing your ways to the Lord will allow you to see how much He can change your life!
But when we ask things from God, we expect answers quickly! God may not want to give us those answers and those desires when we want them because the timing may not be perfect when we ask. God does make us wait for the right time and not for our own wants and desires. God is not going to break the rules just so that we can get our own way. God wants things to be righteous and for us to understand those righteous ways. If we are able to then He will be able to use us when the time is right and not just when we say that He should!
Points to Ponder:
Do you ask God for things?
Do you expect things in your own time or God’s time?
May 28: Psalms 20 1-9
Key Verse: Psalms 20 4
May He grant you according to your heart’s desire, and fulfil all your purpose.
Devotion:
We live in a world where people make promises and do not fulfil them. We live in a world where people say one thing and do another. We live in a world where we like to trust but know we cannot. But this is only because we have chosen to be like this, not that this is how God created us! God created us in His image and not in the image of Satan; we are the ones who choose to break promises, do strange things, break trusts and go our own ways. God continues to watch over us and instruct us in the ways of righteousness; we choose to turn the other way!
And yet His grace and mercy go beyond our bad choices and beyond our evil ways. His grace and mercy cover all of our unrighteousness when we bring them up before Him and ask for His forgiveness. God’s great love is enough to overcome our ways and even to turn us from those ways. But it is our choice to not allow that to happen!
There are many things in our lives that are not righteous and are not wholesome and somehow we allow those to take pre-eminence instead of allowing God to guide us in the righteous paths. There are many choices we make that would break friendships and break trusts with the people around us and yet God is willing to stand by and accept us back when we say that we are sorry. He is already waiting for us to make the decision to come back, gently guiding us back, encouraging us through our lives to walk with Him instead of against Him.
Why then do we turn to the unrighteous and unwholesome things instead? Temptation. Pride. Greed. Whatever we want to blame it on, each one of those things comes from a choice we make and not one that God has made for us. Bring God back into the forefront of your life. Bring God back into your heart. Bring that special love, joy and peace back into your life that God has been trying to cultivate for some time. Allow God to guide you in your decisions and stop trusting in man. Who am I that anyone should trust me? Trust in God and in His word. Lift up your prayers to the God that listens intently and answers according to your needs.
Points to Ponder:
Have you asked God into your life?
Are you trusting in Him?
May 27: Jonah 2 1-10
Key Verse: Jonah 2 9
But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.
Devotion:
This is one of those stories that we love to hear as children because Jonah lived inside a whale, or at least that is how I remembered it as a child. It is not until we get to read the story for ourselves that we get to see what happened and why God allowed things to go as far as they did. But one thing that we can always remember is that God was in control and that is it!
God prepared the big fish before Jonah had had time to run away; fish do not grow into monsters overnight, it was waiting patiently for the right time. When Jonah did get thrown overboard he came to inside the belly of the fish; quite how that is possible we will not get to hear until we get to meet him face to face. Quite how God has managed to get things to happen in my life are beyond me too, but I know it is God because without God those moments would not have been possible. I like the simile of a hurricane coming along and building a jumbo jet in a scrap yard because I know what it takes to build an aeroplane – it’s what I learned in university.
God’s knowledge goes far beyond what man can and does understand and yet we have libraries of information written by scientists proclaiming all of what man has done, and yet we only have one collection of books proclaiming what God has done. But that does not stop God from continuing to work in our lives and continuing to show us the same grace that He showed Jonah. When we are ready to turn away from our sin and repent, just as Jonah had done, then God is ready and waiting to turn our lives around and to use whatever miracle He deems necessary to make that U-turn for us.
I cannot imagine how difficult it is to give up on drugs or cigarettes or anything like that because I have always ended up being violently ill when trying anything; I guess God knows I am not strong enough to give up so He will not let me start! But I do know what it is like to turn away from sin, and even to give in to it, because I have been there as well. But with God’s grace, I was forgiven. With God’s strength I was able to turn around. With God’s guidance, I can continue walking roughly in the right direction.
Points to Ponder:
Do you walk off where you want?
Will you listen to God’s instruction?
May 26: Isaiah 55 1-7
Key Verse: Isaiah 55 6
Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.
Devotion:
Studying your bible will allow you to find out so much more about how God has ordered this world and how He is in control of everything. We may think that this world is just chaos and that nobody is in control anymore, but when you see what is happening behind the scenes in all walks of life we begin to see that there are those that are in control. The governments of various countries may seem totally out of control, but after a bit of studying you can see who the figure are that are making or forcing change behind the scenes.
This is not to say that man is in control of everything because the more that man tries to take on the more he realises that there is too much and he has to allow some things to fall and break. If we try to take on too much ourselves we too find it distressing and we allow things to fall and break. But when we study what God is doing in this world we get a very different picture. We get to see that He is ordering things and making sure things happen in certain ways; but man comes along and breaks things because he wants his own way!
God has declared many times that He is here and He is waiting for us to call on His name; but we continue to ignore Him thinking that we do actually know what is best for us. I have learned the hard way that I must rely on God because my own ways and my own heart do tend to get me into trouble. I know that God is in control and I know that He is looking after me; I just find it hard to hear Him when so many people are shouting their own things.
Take time to step back from the buzz of the world and allow God to remind you of a few things. Take time to step back from your own wants and desires and allow God to show you what is important. Take time to shut the world off and open the doors for Christ to work. We have our bibles and we have The Holy Spirit. Together they are a formidable force; but we have to choose to allow them to work in our lives!
Points to Ponder:
Do you read your bible?
Do you allow God to lead you?
May 25: Revelation 22 12-17
Key Verse: Revelation 22 17
And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.
Devotion:
I find one of the easiest things to show others is grace; I find one of the hardest things to show others can also be grace! Grace can be described in many ways in the English language but in order to find a deeper meaning we have to look at the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ because it is that grace that extends further than any other and that grace that we need to accept in our lives too.
Yes, that also means that we have to accept grace. One thing I have learned over the past few months is that we need to share in each other’s lives more than we do in modern society. When we insulate ourselves from others, from the world and from the people we don’t want to mix with, we insulate ourselves from finding more about grace, especially the grace of Christ. Yes it is very hard to extend grace to some but without that grace being extended to them they have yet another barrier to block them from receiving Christ into their lives as well.
Despite all we have done against Christ He is still willing to show us grace and mercy from the very beginning, right through to the very end of everything. It is those who follow Christ’s ways and God’s commandments that will receive the blessings if we are to take all the verses we are told about in some churches, but it is the people who accept Christ that find the true blessings. Christ came into this world to save the sinners and not to kill them off.
It is all those things that we may have done in our lives that will allow us to see the grace and mercy of our Lord and Saviour. The fact that we break multiple commandments and yet He is still willing to forgive us for what we have done. As long as we see that He is here to help us and not to fight against us, we will be able to accept that grace and share it with others. It is not a case of how much grace we can use up but how much we can share amongst the people that need it most; never forgetting that we do need some ourselves!
Points to Ponder:
How do you define grace?
Do you share grace?