Tuesday Reading: Romans 11 22-24

Key Verse: Romans 11 22
22  Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

Devotion:
When we try to figure out people we often look upon them as having two sides and we try to justify many things based on our judgment of them. When we look at God we will often try to attribute two sides as well because we have managed to justify our judgment of others based on these sides. But our definition of God cannot have a good side and a bad side because there is no bad side to God; instead we find His good side and we find a just side as well.

We may look at people’s willingness to look the other way as being part of their good side,  but God will never look the other way. God will see everything and He will not just ignore things when we go wrong. He will try to show us that we have gone wrong and that we need to steer back into the right direction; this is what we may see as a wrathful or severe side that we may not like at first. After all, none of us like to be told that we are doing things wrong all the time.

This just side of God should actively encourage us to continue walking in goodness and not into sin. This letter to the Romans was written to encourage people to continue walking in God’s Laws, obey the commandments and wanting to walk worthy of being called Christians. It also served to illustrate that God had ordained that the gentiles should be called to become part of the church just as the children of Abraham had that right. Using the grafting of branches into the olive tree symbolises that even though gentiles were not originally part of the church, God’s invitation for them to be grafted in to become a permanent part of the church was real and would show rewards as well.

It is one thing for God to show us where we go wrong physically, but for Him to show us where we are going wrong spiritually will hurt us on a much deeper level than physically. This must mean that we need to take even more care of our spiritual growth and health than our physical growth and health. Being grafted in means more than just surviving; it means becoming part of the Church of Christ and living a life that is becoming of a Christian.

Points to Ponder:
Are you ready to accept justice?

Will you accept God’s justice?

Monday Reading: Proverbs 30 2-4

Key Verse: Proverbs 30 4
4  Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what is his son's name, if thou canst tell?

Devotion:
I wonder if you have ever had a very clear head in a situation where you were able to think perfectly and able to overcome a situation by doing the right thing. And now think of all the times that you have thought that you could do something and have fallen flat on your face. I bet the time you have fallen are more than the times you have succeeded! But this is not about whether you can succeed in your life or not, this is about your attitude when you try to succeed. The more we try to go it alone the more brutish or course we get; we lose control of our thoughtful ways and take on the ways of the world.

We can try to figure out as much as we can through philosophy and through trying to learn about human nature but when push comes to shove all we are going to know is what others have done and not what lies ahead for us. Wisdom can be described as being the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement. Most of that can be learned through experience and seeing how other people have handled certain situations but when we are faced with the things that have happened to others we may well act totally differently to others because each of us is unique.

No amount of learned experience or historical evidence can give you the definitive answer to what is going to happen in the future. Yes we have a very good idea about how others did react and we can base what could happen on what has happened but it is not an absolute science. On the other hand God knows exactly what is going to happen and can give us more insight into what we need to be prepared for than any amount of past events.

None of us can lay claim to either going to heaven or coming back from heaven other than after our physical death, but Christ can say both of Himself as well as many other things. He can say that He was there when heaven and earth were created. He can also say that He has ultimate control of the wind and oceans. He has known all of this throughout all time. And He knows every little thing about us too. He is the only one who does know what will happen when we are faced with new obstacles and temptations so we need to rely on Him for advice on everything in our futures.

Points to Ponder:
Who do you ask for advice?

Are you asking God yet?

Sunday Reading: Psalms 139 1-6

Key Verse: Psalms 139 6
6  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

Devotion:
These are a few of my favourite verses because they remind me of two things: the first being that God has got perfect knowledge of each one of us and the second being that He has perfect knowledge of little old me! I mean, me, just one person out of billions who have lived so far on this tin planet in the massively empty universe over thousands of years!

When we go to the doctor we expect that the doctor should be able to identify what is wrong with us. If they cannot then we would want someone who has more specialist knowledge to be able to shed some light on any ailment we have. Ideally we would want to be referred to doctors with greater and more specialised knowledge and skills until we have a satisfactory outcome for our visit. If we were able to identify a single doctor who would be able to identify what was wrong on the first visit then we would probably want that visit to be the first visit we make – but life just is not that good!

But when we bring our burdens to God we are bringing them to the single person who knows us from the inside out and who knows exactly what we need in order to have those burdens lifted. Unfortunately for us we don’t always bring those burdens to Him first of all because we like to think that there is always some way in which we can help ourselves of someone else who can give us an answer that we can handle. After all, why should we bother the greatest and highest authority?

Well, guess what. God wants you to come to Him personally at the first sign of any problems; something we will not see in our quest for the perfect doctor’s appointment! God is our designer, our creator, our builder and our sustainer and as such does have knowledge of every aspect of our existence; but His knowledge of us goes so much further than this. It’s not that God can read us like a book but rather that God knows our very thoughts and emotions. No matter where we are in this world He knows everything about us. There is nothing we can hide from Him and nothing that He does not already know about us. We do need to know this but we also need to respect His position as our God and bring everything to Him with all honesty and with absolute openness because He has always been honest and open with us.

Points to Ponder:
Do you think you can keep a secret?

Do you know God knows every secret?

Saturday Reading: Matthew 16 5-12

Key Verse: Matthew 16 6
6  Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

Devotion:
There are going to be times when God’s Word will not make sense to us the first time round and we have to be taught it again in order to understand it. We are not alone in this because there are echoes of this happening time and time again throughout history and recorded in our bibles. What we do when we do not understand is what is going to make or break us.

Now we can either try to figure things out by ourselves and make up our own ideas of what should be happening or what we want to happen. This could lead in the right direction, but based of our history it is probably not going to lead us there but rather into another pit or into a dead end. Or we could go back for more and ask for guidance from God who may supply that guidance directly or through people around us. The Ethiopian Eunuch received help from someone who God had placed in this path. The disciples had Jesus there to teach them – but even then they had to be taught again by the Holy Spirit later in order to fully understand what had happened.

Our thoughts are going to be about carnal things and we will focus on the world around us because that is where we live. When God tries to teach us by allowing things into our lives we may well take it the wrong way at first because we think in our own ways instead of focusing on God – this is all part of God trying to get us to recognise His ways instead of our own. So when we see God trying to teach us we have to stop and listen. Not stop and wait for Him to do something again but to stop and think about what He has already done and compare it to what He has done for others in the past.

Yes we are all unique and we need different things in our lives, but God’s ways have not changed. We change as the world around us changes and we have to move on in different ways applying God’s truth in those different situations. The same truth will continue to work because it is God’s truth; we may just have to teach others in a slightly different way in order for them to focus on that truth of old. That may mean that we think God is teaching us something different because things happen in a new way nowadays, but God’s Word has remained the same from the beginning of time whilst the world has grown up in an amazingly complex way.

Points to Ponder:
Do you seek the truth?

Are you seeking the world or God?