Saturday Reading: Joel 3 9-11
Key Verse: Joel 3 10
10 Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.
Devotion:
There is coming a time when man will think that he is a whole lot better than he is; and no, I mean a whole lot more self-opinionated than he is already! We do like to think all manner of things about ourselves that are just not right. When man is under the influence of drink or drugs he gets even worse and there may be no holding him back. But the prophet talks about a time when he knows God’s power is going to be shown much more than it has already been done.
We can look at various times during the Old Testament when man has been shown the Awesome power of God from people being able to walk as the sea is parted to God wiping out large armies. In the case of wiping our armies, God would support and strengthen the army of Israel to defeat the enemy or would fight the fight before the Israelites got up. But in this case every person is going to join in the fight and not just the strong men in the army; the weak will gain courage to be strong to join in. But the prophet continues on to call on God to bring down His angels to fight the war instead.
It is God alone who has the right to judge the world and it is Him alone who will do so when the time is right. For us, we have the choice right now as to whether we continue to ignore God and try to live our own lives or whether we turn to Him and ask Him for His forgiveness before we go too far. We do not know the time when Christ is going to come back so we need to be ready before He does! That means being ready right now!
Do you really want to be caught up in the heat of the moment and follow the rest of the people into the pit of destruction? God has given us the truth through His Word, from the earliest history through the prophets to the account of what Christ has done on our behalf. This same truth tells us that Christ is going to be our Judge and that He alone is worthy of such a position. No matter how much of an effort man makes to gain all he can on earth, it is of no consequence when we face Christ in judgement.
Points to Ponder:
Do you think you can do it alone?
Do you really think the Omnipotent God will let you run wild?
Friday Reading: 1 Corinthians 4 1-4
Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 4 4
4 For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judges me is the Lord.
Devotion:
As servants of God we need to be faithful to Him. If we take up a paid position with any company they expect us to work faithfully for them and to make sure that we put in the time and effort to succeed in our position they have asked us to fill. When we come to God and offer ourselves as His humble servants we take on the position of a willing servant; one who is willing to do God’s bidding when required. The task that Jesus gave to the apostles was to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel. That same task is open to us and we should be willing to take up the position and fulfil it to the best of our ability.
We must not sit there and judge others for what we think they are not doing because that can only come from God. Instead we need to try our best to do what we can and to be willing to do it at all times. As I grow in The Lord I continue to try and do more for Him and reach out to more people daily. I believe God has given me the gift of being able to reach out to youth and engage them in learning about God. In trying to reach out to the youth in my area I have found many people who are more than willing to judge the work that I try to do, lots of people willing to say how it should be done, but very few people who come forward and join me in bringing the gospel into the lives of the young people around me.
I no longer try to justify what I do, nor do I try to find out why people don’t want to do what I do; I simply try to obey God’s Word and take the gospel out to others. I know that I will come up against all sorts of trial and many things that will be placed in front of me to slow me down or even stop me… but I know that God is with me because I am trying to obey His will in my life.
I know that I still have a lot to learn but I also know that The Holy Spirit takes me by the hand and leads me through the scriptures so that I can bring them forward to as many people as I can. I praise God that He gave me the skills to be able to work with computers so that I can reach out to many more people that I probably will never meet until we get to heaven! Don’t try to judge the work others do. Don’t try to judge the work that you do. Just be here and be a willing servant, listening to God to give you the tasks that He has for you to fulfil your lot for Him. Give God the glory!
Points to Ponder:
Do you think you are a good Christian?
Are you really listening to God’s will?
Thursday Reading: Proverbs 20 9
Key Verse: Proverbs 20 9
9 Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?
Devotion:
Our hearts are by our very nature, unclean. Our minds are grown and educated in a corrupt society. Our hearts are grown in amongst strange lust and affections. Not one part of us can be said to be clean or to have been cleaned by ourselves in any way. Every person has this same problem as us because we are all sinners. But, just like every other person on this earth, we do have a way of having a clean heart!
There are some things in our lives that stain terribly, be it red dust tainted by iron deposits, deep purple from various berries, green from plants or whatever. When we try to clean these stains away we find it is much harder than just cleaning our hands after playing in the dirt. But when we do have the right chemicals to work against those stains we can get things back to normal. When we bring sin into our lives we are playing with something that will stain our lives; if we want to be able to remove those stains from our lives we do have to have the right agent to counteract the stains. No matter how many chemicals or anything else we try, we will not be able to find anything that cleans our sins out of our lives others than Christ’s blood!
Have you ever gone to one of those cleaning services that guarantee to remove various stains? They are making a promise to you that they will remove the stain and if they fail at that promise they will give you some sort of reward or refund. But when we read the promise that Christ gives us we find something quite unique. His promise is that He will cleanse our hearts and there is no reason to offer any sort of recompense for failing to do so; His promise is a promise and failure is not an option!
Christ will wash every speck of those stains from our hearts and souls and present us to God as perfect, without sin stains. That does not mean that we no longer will sin, because just like clean clothes we face a dirty environment and we will once again be corrupted by the sin around us. But what it does mean is that when we are presented before God we will not have any sin stains left from our lives because Christ has taken them away. What a Saviour!
Points to Ponder:
Do you feel clean after playing in mud?
Do you feel good being amongst sinners?
Wednesday Reading: Psalms 51 7-15
Key Verse: Psalms 51 10
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Devotion:
There is nothing that will get you down more than sin. When we invite sin into our lives or hang on to it we continue to be dragged down into what can only be described as a pit of despair. Does that sound over-dramatic? Well it will only be when you try it out for yourself that you find out the truth about sin. Just as David found out the hard way, we too will find out the hard way; sin brought into your life will never be able to be covered up because it corrupts from the inside out.
Sin does not just get you a bit dirty like mud does; instead it eats at your soul from the inside and breaks you down without you realising it. David probably thought that he was on top of the world after being with what he thought was the most beautiful of women, but what he found out was that he was being eaten up from the inside especially after the prophet Nathan told him of his sin. It was at that moment that he realised that God knew everything and the feeling that was breaking his heart was the guilt of the sin he had invited into his life!
We can look at all that Christ has done for us and know that we will have forgiveness when we ask it from our hearts. This is what David was realising as well; our creator God is the one who forgives us and the only thing keeping us away from that forgiveness is the sin that we hang on to. David knew he had to release the sin by admitting it before God. His immediate fear was that God was not going to forgive him, but the more that he looked at what God had done for us all from the beginning of time, the more he realised that God has been trying to get us to ask for forgiveness because He wants to forgive us!
We are the ones who hang on to our sin and we refuse to bring it before God; but by trying to hide our sin we are saying that God is not able to forgive us. There is nothing God cannot do and there is no sin God cannot forgive. He is the only one who can separate us totally from our sin debt, but we are the ones who have to admit to our sin in the beginning. We need to let go of our sins by bringing them before God and humbly and honesty admitting to them. Christ wants that joy of salvation to fill our souls and the only way we can get that joy is to allow Him to get rid of our sin doom and gloom by giving it to Him to take away from us.
Points to Ponder:
Do you try to hide your sin?
Do you not trust God totally?
Tuesday Reading: Matthew 5 33-36
Key Verse: Matthew 5 34
34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:
Devotion:
Have you ever thought about what you are doing when you swear on your life? This life that you are using, that you are saying that you could give up just to prove a point belongs to our Creator! It is not ours to dish out and throw around otherwise we bring God into our oath and when we do that we have to be perfect… which we are not!
When Jesus confronted people with what He said it was to make sure that we listen to the perfect will of God as well as realising that all that He does is perfect. No matter how good we think we are there is nothing that we shall ever be able to do that is perfect – but when Christ is behind us and guiding us then we have a hope that goes beyond our abilities. It is not that Christ will make sure that we are perfect but rather that He will take away our sins and present us to His Father as if we were perfect. We are the ones who have the choice as to whether we come to Him and ask for forgiveness or whether we go our own way and make our own plans.
We cannot change ourselves but have to wait on God to change us from the inside out. We grow because God has deemed it so. We get old because we live in time, which God has created for us. We make mistakes because we have this sin nature which we have inherited from Adam as we continue to grow older. Christ died for us so that we may have redemption from our sin debt that we owe but we have to make that conscious choice to admit our faults to our Redeemer and ask for forgiveness. He is willing and Just to forgive us of those sins because He knows us from the inside out.
So rather than taking the Lord’s name in vain, using vain swearing, using vain oaths, telling lies and the other things we fall short on, try to make a difference by standing up for God at all times, depending on Him more than normal, trusting Him every step of the way and making a difference in other people’s lives instead of focusing on our own.
Points to Ponder:
How do you upset God?
Are you really glorifying God?