Friday Reading: Psalms 45 17
Key Verse: Psalms 45 17
17 I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.
Devotion:
What do you do with the Gospel? What do you do with your bible? Are you one of the people who faithfully turn up for church every week and get to go to all the services that are held at your church and maybe even go to mid-week studies as well? But what do you actually do with all this information that you are being taught? Do you apply it to your life? Or do you just mark it down as another job done?
God has made sure that we do have His Word made available to us so that we can learn more about Him. He also gives us people around us who are willing to teach us and explain the Gospel to us. He gives us the Holy Spirit who is trying to teach us as we read His Word. God has done so much for us to allow us to hear the truth; but unless we take that truth in and apply it to our lives it is like trying to plant seeds in concrete!
God wants every generation to get to hear the Gospel and that means that there must be people willing to take that Gospel and give it to other generations. Now whilst we all like to be able to share the gospel with the people in our churches, if we are not reaching out to others outside of the church then we are only preaching to the already converted. God wants us to make a difference by reaching out to those people who do not get to hear the Gospel because they do not yet come to church! And it does not just mean going over to our friends’ houses and reminding them that we are Christians and trying to invite them to church…
God has given us the task of taking His Gospel out to everyone. God has asked us to put aside our fears, put aside our inhibitions, put aside our discrimination and prejudices, and go out there to tell the people that need to know! That may well mean upsetting others by approaching people who they think are outside the church or not what we should be encouraging. Jesus was no stranger to reaching out to people who everyone else was rejecting. He has shown us the way to reach out to others. Are you ready?
Points to Ponder:
Who do you share good news with?
Who do you share God with?
Thursday Reading: Acts 4 8-12
Key Verse: Acts 4 12
12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Devotion:
When people will not open their eyes to the power of Christ they see nothing in all that God has done in this world. They become fools and act as if they were ignorant of all that is possible through Christ. Why do they become this way? Because they don’t want to accept what is possible and would rather believe in their own lies than trust in God; after all, that would mean that they would have to accept all that God has given us in His Word.
When the Apostles were given the power to heal people the religious leaders got worried because they could see their power being eroded right before their eyes. How sad it is that people should lift up their own accomplishments instead of what God can do. We are nothing and can do nothing but for the grace of God – why should we expect to gain any praise whatsoever for what we can do then? Peter was under no delusion that he was able to do things anymore because He knew Christ and what was possible through Him. The miracles that they did were not of their own by given to them from God.
It was not Peter’s own learning that was giving Him the words to speak to the religious leaders because they were the ones who had spent their lives trying to learn the scriptures. It was the Holy Spirit through Peter that was educating the leaders and it is that same Holy Spirit that we should allow to act through us rather than us trying to lift up ourselves!
Christ is the corner stone of the church and without Him there is no church. If we shortcut things and leave Him out, what we build will fall down around us! There is no way we can get anyone to heaven without Christ and no way that we can attain such heights without Him either. Christ alone is our way to heaven. Christ alone is our Saviour. In Christ we must stand!
Points to Ponder:
Do you flatter yourself?
Are you really trusting God?
Wednesday Reading: Hosea 13 1-4
Key Verse: Hosea 13 4
4 Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.
Devotion:
As with so many of the people in the Old testament we see Ephraim fearing the Lord for some time and God keeping him going; but as soon as he turned his back on God then he dies. We may look at all these examples and say that it deserved them right or that they should have seen it coming. But we have our bibles, all the scriptures written down in a single bound copy for easy reference; they had to rely on scrolls and word of mouth. If they did not get fed daily by someone who cared about them then they may well have found it very difficult to keep going with God because of the temptations of the world.
We should count ourselves so lucky that we do have our bibles and that we can pick them up at any time and get fed directly from God! And yet we still fall into the trap of taking a few days off which turns into a few weeks and before we know it we have fallen away from God too! We have so many warning of all the things that can go wrong that we should be able to see it all coming long before we go that far – but we still don’t.
The evil one is very canny and he will continue to draw us deeper into temptations, deeper into sinful ways and further away from God for as long as he can. We need to take a firm stance and stand on the word of God continually. I marvel at some who are able to spend so much time in God’s Word when I know that I have to make time. I try to get up in the morning and give my first hours to God so that I can start my day firmly in His grip, but there are so many distractions around us. If we think that there are too many distractions for children, then we need to open our eyes to the amount of distractions that we have as adults!
God is good! There is only one God! There is only one way of salvation. God’s Word is unique… and we can carry on with all sorts of truths; but unless we are willing to spend time in that truth then we are always going to fall short because we will always give in to the ways of the world instead of knowing what God wants from us.
Points to Ponder:
Do you start you day with a good breakfast?
Is that food or God’s Word?
Tuesday Reading: Isaiah 43 11-15
Key Verse: Isaiah 43 11
11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
Devotion:
Right from the beginning God is the one who has always declared His self-existence, His omnipotence, His omnipresence, His omniscience and also continued to remind us that we actually do know this all in our hearts. Despite what people say, the excuses they make up or bring up, the lies they tell; we all know in our hearts that God is real and that He alone is our Saviour.
God has been the same from before time began – which in itself is a hard pill to swallow for many people because they refuse to believe that anything could exist outside of what we know about time and space. That is one of the reasons why God came down to earth and lived in the form of a man so that He could exist in a manner that we could understand - but in doing that we had doubts because that brought Him into our realm! How are we ever going to be convinced of anything when we always question everything?
Yes it is actually good to question things and God encourages us to ask questions about things, but He always gives us a base line, or a base point of absolute truth where we can then build things on. In our world scientists and philosophers are trying to do that same thing but they start at a supposition or a theory instead of starting with an absolute truth. That is where we should be able to pull apart their theories because we know the truth and that truth is what will set us free from having to depend on the lies being told to us!
God continued to make sure that we knew that He was in charge, that He loved us without condition and that He continued to anchor everything to the absolute truth. With that anchor we can know that the scriptures are then built on the truth and that we can depend on them fully. The theories of evolution and other sciences are based on theories and not on fact. Man continues to struggle to find anything that He can anchor his science on, whereas God continues to provide us with everything that we need to know the truth! We have plenty of history to back up everything God tells us, and yet we continue to act like Pharaoh, building up hopes on theories and hoping one day to find the truth!
Points to Ponder:
Where do you search for the truth?
Are you really looking to God?
Monday Reading: Exodus 12 12
Key Verse: Exodus 12 12
12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.
Devotion:
What will it take for you to believe that God has ultimate authority over everything and everybody? Will you be one of the ones like Pharaoh who would not believe any of the miracles that God showed him throughout the land, one that has to have an earth-shattering event that is guaranteed to break your life before you will listen? If you honestly want God to show you a miracle that is absolute and cannot be refuted then you had better be aware of what the consequences could be!
I am sure that Pharaoh did not fully realise just how powerful God was because he had been hoodwinked for so long by various magicians and philosophers. We have so many people like that around us who are undermining the things that God has already done for us and that brings doubts into our minds. Pharaoh had doubts because he saw others could do things that he could not explain; but just because people around us can do things we cannot explain does not mean that we have to trust them or even believe them.
If they do not have sound backing and truth behind their works, then we should not entrust our beliefs in them! God is the only one who we can trust fully because He alone is Lord and God above us all. When we lift up others into positions of pre-eminence we find out the hard way that they are faulty at best and liars at worst! How are we ever going to be able to trust in someone unless they show us that they trust in the absolute truth first of all?
When God casts His judgement upon anything or anyone else, we can be sure that it is going to be just and truthful in every way. We can be sure that anything that is against His ways will fall apart or be burned before it has time to grow to fruition. God alone is Lord over all. He alone is able and willing to do what it takes to get our attention and to hold onto it. We all need to trust in Him and take His Word for everything – without calling Him into question!
Points to Ponder:
Are you easily persuaded?
How well do you listen to God’s ways?