Saturday Reading: John 3 14-17

Key Verse: John 3 16
16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Devotion:
Depending on who you ask you may get varying responses to the question “Is it easy to become a Christian?” For those who look at the lives they have had to lead, some will answer “Yes it is very hard”. For those who love the peace that it brings, many will answer “No it’s quite simple”. And then you will get all the layers in between…

Becoming a Christian and living as a Christian should be looked as two entirely different things because they are. Christ indeed came into this world so that all may come to repentance and believe that He is the Son of God but He also came to remind us that we are sinners. Just because He has already paid the sin debt that we owe does not mean that we are automatically all Christians. We still have that choice to make as to whether we do believe in Him or whether we quietly (or brashly) continue on in our own little worlds. I say little because in comparison to eternity, our world is very small and very short!

God has shown us all along that it is a simple task to believe the truth but we are the ones that make it such a hard task to follow. Just as Adam and Eve turned a simple “don’t” into a life changing even, we take the simple truth and come up with all manner of excuses and even rules of our own to try and make things happen our way instead of following the law. In the desert the Israelites just had to look up at the brazen serpent to be healed; or in other words they had to believe that by looking up at the serpent they would be healed. All we have to do is to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He did come to save us from our sins.

The love of God should never be brought into question because we have more than enough proof of that love; but we look at all of the other things that happen in this world because of the sin and we turn round and blame God instead. It is not His fault that we sin – it is our choice. God has given us the choice – we need to choose!

Points to Ponder:
Do you know God’s love?

Do you believe in your heart that Jesus died for you?

Friday Reading: Romans 5 12-17

Key Verse: Romans 5 17
17  For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

Devotion:
One of the biggest problems we seem to have in our lives is that we do not regard all parts of the law as being the law. We all like to think that there are either some parts of it that should not apply to us or other parts that we can bend without having to face the consequences. Well, sadly for us, the law is the law (as succinctly put by a certain well know judge in one of his Hollywood films) and does not change just for our benefit. We cannot bend the truth and sweep something under the carpet no matter how small and insignificant we think it is!

Adam’s sin seems so small for us that we struggle to see it as a sin; after all, eating a bit of fruit does not seem like an ‘end of the world’ event. Sadly, for Adam and Eve and all of us who followed, it was and is! That one thing broke the law, the covenant made between Adam and God. When we live in a country we effectively agree to abide by the rules of that country so that order may be maintained. If we break the laws then we expect the consequences to follow on after we break the law. So why should we think of living in God’s world as being any different to the local laws we follow?

God has given us a set of laws that we ought to follow. He has not given us those laws to make our life difficult or arduous in any way but rather as a line over which we must not step. Once we step over that line we are guilty, no matter how far we step over the line we are still guilty. If you are watching the Olympics this year then you may well see people step over the line in various athletic events such as long jump. The fact that the slightest bit of the toe reaches over the jump line means that that competitor has broken the rules and is guilty and has to try again.

We can be very thankful that God has given us another chance! In most sporting events there is a limit to the number of second chances but with God the chances keep coming until we run out of time. Time is the limiting factor and not how badly we break the law or how many times we break it. Unfortunately for us we don’t know how much time we have got so we need to make things right right now and not wait around in case we get another chance!

Points to Ponder:
Do you admit to breaking any rules?

Are you looking to God for your second chance?

Thursday Reading: Genesis 3 16-19

Key Verse: Genesis 3 19
19  In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Devotion:
How many times have you been told bad news where you just know that what is going to happen will affect you for the rest of your life? Hopefully you have not had to endure too many of those times and that you are still excited about being alive and living with our Awesome God! I will not go into any of those times or dwell on them other than to remind you that they do happen and that we have to get on with our lives once those times have passed or arrived. Some may look back on times when a loved one died or maybe a move to a different country; whatever that moment or happening, it is now part of your life and we have to live with it.

I cannot imagine what went through the minds of Adam and Eve when they were faced with the absolute contrast of walking with God in the most beautiful place on earth to having to fend for themselves in an evil world. All we have even know is that walk in this evil world and so that is what we think of as normal – but that is not the whole story because we know that there will be a time ahead when we will be faced with that beautiful place again and being able to walk and talk with God in person. So don’t look back and wonder how we could have changed things to make them better but look forward to the time when we will have a better place!

But just as God told Adam and Eve about the hard and harsh times ahead, we need to take on board that we too are going to have to face some pretty grim times whilst we do live on this earth. We are surrounded by sin and by so many things that are just not right so we cannot but be affected by those things around us; so we have to live with the consequences. It does not mean we have to go with the flow and accept every evil thing that comes our way because God is still God and He is still in control of this place called earth!

We can and must lift up our prayers daily to Him to ask for His guidance and His protection. So long as we remember that He is our Great Protector then we can at least have peace of mind knowing that we do have the greatest protection we could ever have – we just need to accept that guidance and protection so that we can move forward with Him in our lives. Praise God for His wondrous mercy!

Points to Ponder:
Do you get down about the troubles in your life?

Do you look forward to your peace with God?

Wednesday Reading: Romans 6 21-23

Key Verse: Romans 6 23
23  For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Devotion:
It is all OK painting a great picture of how wonderful and loving our awesome God is, but we must always remember that He is Holy and that He is Just. That means that we are not going to get away with sin just because we think we can or we think that nobody is seeing what we do! God sees everything and will not ignore those things that we think we can ignore. Just because we think it is not so bad to do some things does not make them right. When God says something is a sin we must know that it is a sin and that we will be found out as soon as we think about getting down and dirty with that sin in our lives. As Christ reminded us, if we are thinking about the sin then we may as well be doing that sin.

God wants us to separate ourselves from the sin in our lives and that means asking Him for strength and guidance to avoid the sin, not just in avoiding doing the sin but avoiding thinking about them too. As we have said before in past devotions, the things that we allow into our lives tend to fill our lives and will eventually overflow or fall out of our lives – the old adage of garbage in, garbage out is one that we need to take notice of!

I like the way that Matthew Henry puts it in his commentary of the bible – the so-called ‘fruits’ of our sin are not worthy of being called fruits because we really do not want to have to remember the consequences of our sin. There is nothing good about the product of our sin because every sin works against God no matter whether we think it is in a good cause or not! But we do have a lifeline that God has thrown us and that is Jesus Christ His Son.

It is because of the blood that Jesus shed for us on the cross that we have any hope whatsoever. Because God does not miss anything, you could say that our sin has already found us out even before we have committed it! God cannot ignore our sin until it is covered by the blood of Christ because it is only once that sin debt has been paid that it can be put aside by God. We need to bring those sins to Christ and ask Him for forgiveness – He alone has promised to forgive us when we do exactly that. That is the other side of prayer that we tend to ‘forget’ so that we don’t have to remember!

Points to Ponder:
Do you ignore certain things in life?

Do you think God ignores what you ignore?