Thursday Reading: John 5 39-40
Key Verse: John 5 40
40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
Devotion:
The more that we read from God’s Word the more that we will understand, or should understand; because if we allow ourselves to try and work things out in our own minds we will quickly become bogged down in the scriptures. We must never forget that this is God’s Word that He has given us and that the wisdom and knowledge that it took to write this is far greater than anything we can attain to.
We do need His constant guidance to lead us through the bible, even when we have others showing us what to read and where to go, we still need God to show us the meaning of His Word. When Christ promised us the Holy Spirit it was not just so that we would have a constant companion while He was back in Heaven but so that we would have a constant and perfect Teacher that would always be with us and always be able to explain His Word. I may be able to open the scriptures to you, but it is the Holy Spirit who will give you the understanding that you need.
And with that understanding must come the revelation that even though we can have it all explained to us, unless we make that move and come to Christ, we have achieved nothing. As Christ was explaining in these words, we may think we have everything because we understand that Christ will give us eternal life and that He has promised us that eternal life… but unless we do as is explained to us in the word we are not going to obtain that life. John 3 16 tells us that we need to believe so that we can have that life, and not just believe it because it is written down, but to believe it in our hearts.
God does not just want us to be lawyers that will understand the scriptures and be able to use the words to explain the law; He wants us to believe those same scriptures in our hearts. An instruction manual is very good if we follow it. But if we only follow it once and then believe we can do things better the next time, we will find out that we fall short the hard way. Instead God has given us the best way forward by giving us the scriptures and He wants us to take these words in our heart and trust in them so that we learn to trust in Him wholly and fully.
Points to Ponder:
Do you like following instructions?
Are you taking God’s Word to heart?
Wednesday Reading: Romans 5 15-19
Key Verse: Romans 5 19
19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Devotion:
We do tend to get bogged down with sin and in sin. We allow sin into our lives without thinking of the consequences and then when those consequences sneak up on us and pounce on us we get all upset that things are suddenly against us. We then start to try to blame other people for what is going wrong and we even go as far as asking God why He has allowed such horrible things into our lives – we are the ones that brought it in to ourselves first of all!
And then on the other side of the coin we start to look at the horrible side of our sin and just how far we have gone away from God and against Him and we think that He will never forgive us for how far we have strayed away from Him! But no matter how far we think we have gone we need to remember one thing – that Christ did not go to that cross in vain!
If He did not go to the cross in vain, then surely that must mean that that act is far greater than any sin we can do! If there was a sin (other than unbelief) that Christ’s act could not cover, do you not know that He would have gone further and made sure that it was covered? God knew exactly what was going on and allowed Christ to pay for our sin debt in full. That means all of our sins. That means that the grace that He shows us is far greater than the debt built up by our sins… as long as we are willing to bring those sins before Him and ask for His forgiveness.
As long as we are willing to believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ came to this earth to be born as a human baby to a virgin mother, to live amongst us as that human man, to perform all those miracles in the name of God the Father, to then lay His life down on the cross and die for our sins as the perfect sacrifice, and then to raise Himself up three days later so that the debt was totally defeated once and for all. As long as we are willing to believe that in our hearts, then He is willing to extend His grace to cover every single one of our sins! What an Awesome God we serve. What a Gracious, Loving God we have.
Points to Ponder:
Do you think you are too guilty?
Do you really think Christ would lay His life down if it was not enough?
Tuesday Reading: 1 John 2 5-7
Key Verse: 1 John 2 6
6 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.
Devotion:
How many times have you said something twice to someone to try and make sure that they get what you are saying? A bit of a silly question but one that we always take for granted and do not always spot when it is happening to us. This letter repeats the statement that we ought to be doing God’s will by following His commandments when we know Him because that is what He wants from us. By saying that twice the point is drawn to us quite clearly and is one that we need to remember.
When we get to know God and to know His will, we ought to be following that will. Part of that will is following His commandments because it will be by that act that others will be able to see that we are following God. Jesus made sure that He emphasised that by doing exactly what God wanted for the whole of His ministry on earth. That is our example that we need to look up to and one that we should always remember. When we see acronyms such as W.W.J.D. we should be remembering that Jesus did do God’s will and we should be following on in that same vein.
This is not really anything new either because God asked us to do His will from the beginning. He gave Adam and Eve the free choice but He first gave them the commandment not to eat of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That was the rule back then and Adam and Eve were given the choice as to whether they should follow it or not. In the beginning they did follow the rules and they had a very good life with absolute freedom to enjoy everything God had given them.
But they made a choice that broken God’s heart. They chose to disobey that one rule that He gave them. That one thing that He had given them absolute trust with was the one thing that they abused and by that they fell into sin. The consequence of that is that sin had stayed with us and we have to live with it. All of our actions have consequences and we have to live with those consequences – God has given us the right way to act and wants us to understand that following His rules is that right way of acting so that we have fewer consequences to live with…
Points to Ponder:
How do you know when you have done wrong?
Do you realise that God has to do what is right?
Monday Reading: 1 John 2 1-4
Key Verse: 1 John 2 3
3 And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
Devotion:
Even though God is in charge of this world and has ultimate power and control over everything, He continues to give us a lot of free will and free choice. Unless we are willing to remember God and remember what Christ has done for us, then we may well allow the world to control us rather than allowing God to have that control. That is when we will find that we walk directly away from God instead of walking with Him.
When we allow Christ into our lives we need to think about what we are actually doing; we are not just saying to Christ that we now believe in Him but we are inviting Him into our lives – personally inviting Him in! How many of us would invite a person into our home and then treat them as horribly as we can? I would rather treat someone with love and respect when I invite them into my home so that they will be more willing to come back again and enjoy being with me.
That is one thing that I struggle with in modern society… As Christians we need to show others the love and respect that Christ wants us to show them and that must mean inviting them into our lives with an open heart and without worldly restrictions. We should not restrict ourselves to worldly limits because the love of Christ is certainly not from this world – the world is in opposition to Christ. We see people leaving Christ out of things just because they don’t want to upset someone by saying that Christ is important to them… Well either He is important to you or He is not. If He is important to you, then people need to know that and people need to see that.
Anyone can be religious, go to church, give to the poor, say they love God, and pray out loud on street corners; but if they do not live that life in their hearts and allow others to share in that life in their hearts then they are just going through the motions and not actually keeping God’s commandments! We may be able to fool some people some of the time, but we will never fool God because He sees directly into our hearts and knows our inner thoughts. We need to show others what those thoughts are by acting in a Godly manner by using Jesus as our example. Jesus did not give in to the world but depended on God to protect Him as He went forward with God’s love as His purpose.
Points to Ponder:
Are you scared to show people Christian love?
Are you depending on God to allow you to love others?
Sunday Reading: Genesis 6 1-7
Key Verse: Genesis 6 3
3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
Devotion:
When we get to start thinking that we are in charge we will find out the hard way that God is the one who is in control of everything still. Yes we may well get our own way for a while but God will allow things into our lives again that will show us in no uncertain terms that we have erred or strayed away from His path and that we have consequences to live up to!
When men of old started to think that they could go off and do their own things and get involved with whomever they wanted to, then God started to tighten the belt and eventually made sure that man paid for what he had done wrong. When we lose focus on God we tend to go off in our own direction and in doing so we also allow some pretty horrible things into our lives. It is not for us to go after our lusts and desires when God has tried to show us that we should be obeying Him. It is not our choice that matters when God has given us the right path to aim for – but we still do it and we still get tripped up by our own desires and lusts.
Lust itself can be a very powerful drug that we will get hooked into and will not be able to shake free from without some outside help. When we start to get involved with lustful thoughts and feelings we will lose focus on God and that will invite all manner of evil things into our lives instead of the righteous God that we need. When we allow those feeling to take control then we also allow other peoples gods to become the focus of our lives… If we are in love with someone then we want to be able to please them in whatever way we can; but if we are “in lust” with someone then we also want to be able to do what we can to keep ourselves close to that lustful feeling. The big difference is going to be apparent when we see what we have actually allowed into our lives – or in other words, when we see the effects – which means it is too late already!
God wants us to focus on Him so that we can listen to His advice rather than being trapped by the evil intents and advice from the worldly people around us. Satan is going to use whomever he can to try and make sure that we do walk away from God because it is at that stage when he will be able to ruin our lives…
Points to Ponder:
Who do you think is in control of your life?
Are you letting God guide you?