Thursday Reading: Matthew 9 10-13

Key Verse: Matthew 9 12
12  But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

Devotion:
One of the best things that we can understand about why Christ came to earth is simply that He came to save sinners! He did come to glorify anyone who was perfect or to find out who was perfect because He already knew that we were and are all sinners; instead Christ came to save us all, sinners, from our deserved death sentence!

To many that may sound a bit harsh but it is the sad reality about our lives on earth, that we are all sinners and that we all do deserve to die because of our sin. I’m not going to go through the Bible to show you how many places it describes us as sinners, unclean or deserving of death because we all know that deep inside already. Instead I want to highlight the fact that Christ Himself reminded us all that He came because we needed to be saved from our sin. He knew the awful state that we are in and He knew that the only way we can be saved is for Him to be the perfect sacrifice in our stead!

I thank Him that He was willing to do that for me, even before I knew Him, and that His payment was in full and lacked nothing. I thank Him because He has shown me His mercy day after day whilst I was sinning. I thank Him because He has given me the strength to stand up to that sin and bring it to Him. I thank Him for the wonderful love that he has brought into my life. But I don’t know if I will actually ever really know just how much of a price he had to pay for my sin. We know we are sinners and we accept that as being so. Because we are sinners and do not know anything else we don’t really know what it is like not to have sin so bringing sin into our lives is just normal – For Christ it most certainly was anything but normal!

We rely on doctors and dentists and many other kinds of physicians to heal us and to assist us so that we can continue to live our lives. We often take them for granted because we think that we are paying enough somewhere along the line. But imagine what life would be like if we did not have any physicians whatsoever? Christ knew what was required and was willing to pay a terrible price just for us. Praise God!

Points to Ponder:
What do you do when you feel ill?

Do you call out to Christ when you feel tempted?

Wednesday Reading: Mark 2 21-22

Key Verse: Mark 2 21
21  No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.

Devotion:
I love the simplicity of Christ’s words when He describes how we need to put aside our habits that we have built up and start afresh with God’s ways and His Word in our lives. When we come to know Christ we come from a very different world full of and abounding in sin; a world where we may have known good and righteous things but one where we went along with worldly ways instead of clinging to God’s ways. If we then took a single patch of God’s ways and tried to weave that into our sinful lives we would very quickly find out that our old sinful ways are what we still have…

God wants us to cast away the old ways and to start afresh with His ways being guided by His Word and the Holy Spirit. He gave us His law in the beginning showing man that keeping that law was a very difficult thing, impossible for us in fact. He then gave us His Son to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven once and for all after we found out that keeping sacrifices was just as hard for us. He then gave us the Holy Spirit to indwell us to guide us and to keep us from going back to our old ways. He has done all of this because He cares so much for us!

Why then do we cling to the old ways and cling to what we think we are safe within. God has promised that He will take care of us if we allow Him to. He has told us that we need to cast those heavy burdens onto His shoulders because He is able to bare them better than we can. He has done this all so that we can separate ourselves from the evil and from the temptations in this world. We just need to give Him control.

The Jews were stuck in the past, stuck in their ways, their ceremonies and their habits they had built up. Jesus was trying to open their eyes to all that they had embraced. When we get used to habit we like to think that they are actually good for us because it gives us an excuse to keep them in our lives. What we need to do is put them aside to give the Holy Spirit room to work in our lives. He wants to be able to guide us and help us, but we have to make sure that He has room to work in us!

Points to Ponder:
Are you stuck with habits?

Are you worried about giving God control?

New Year’s Day Reading: 1 Corinthians 5 1-8

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 5 7
7  Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us:

Devotion:
The apostle had heard of things happening in the church at Corinth that disturbed him because they were so contrary to the law and to Christian ways, and yet men were boasting of their ways instead of being sorry for what they were doing. It is also amazing how easily we give in to temptation and how we may even boast of the things we have been tempted of. I have learned not to boast of the things that I have done wrong in my past because I know that it may lead someone else into temptation, instead I try to encourage people in the ways of God and in His laws.

The problem is not so much that we have sin in our lives but the fact that we give into it and then talk about it, opening others to that same sin. Yes we do have to admit to our sins and we do have to confess them, but we do not have to boast about those sins because God calls us to commit them to Him and not to the rest of the world. I can bet that there will be many people today looking back at what they have done over the past few days and wondering how they are going to clean up the mess they have caused… just because they allowed themselves to go overboard with celebrations or with temptations.

We live in a world where we are surrounded by temptation because so much of the world does not follow Christ and His teachings. As such we need to be strengthened by His Word against such things because they do stand around us. But because of the way that we live and the way that we commune with others and live amongst our neighbours, we do have to have a bit of a clean-up ourselves now and again.

We can look at all the things that we have let into our lives and we can realise that we should not have let some of those things in. If we try to hide those things under something else we may well find that the effects of that hidden thing seep through into our lives and corrupt more things. Maybe what we need to do is to completely throw out the old and start with a new.

Points to Ponder:
Are you hiding things in the closet?

Are you going to make a new start this year?

New Year’s Eve Reading: Jeremiah 31 31-34

Key Verse: Jeremiah 31 31
31  Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

Devotion:
If ever there was a lasting gift that was to be given to anyone it was the gift of grace that Christ was giving us by coming into this world to be born as a man, live as a perfect man, dies as a perfect sacrifice and then to defeat death by raising Himself up on the third day for our sakes. It is because of this grace that we can now be forgiven from our sinful ways simply through asking for His forgiveness in belief that that is what He will do because He is the Lamb of God.

In the Old Testament the sacrifice was to separate the believer from the unbeliever so that the believer would not have to pay for their sins through the death of their first born. In the New Testament the sacrifice was not one that we could somehow muster up, it was not a near perfect sacrifice of an animal that had done nothing wrong, but was a perfect sacrifice by a man who had done absolutely nothing wrong!

From this point on it would not be the finger of God that had written the commandments on tablets of stone, but the finger of the Holy Spirit that would write these laws directly into our hearts because He would be the one able to do this from the inside. Without the Holy Spirit whom Christ had sent after His death and resurrection, we would not have a perfect get-out clause through which we could escape the death penalty we live under.

Though we would not strictly have to teach each other about God because the Holy Spirit does not need our help; though we are not required, God still invites us to teach and to preach. What better witness than the people around us getting to know God and following His commandment because of their belief. What better witness than the grace of God being shown to us after we have spent a life in sin. What better reason that to live a clean life because of the Holy Spirit indwelling each of us? God has given us this to look forward to, so what are you going to do in the coming New Year?

Points to Ponder:
Do you know how much Christ did for you?

Do you that Christ for His personal gift to you?