Thursday Reading: Ephesians 2 4-7
Key Verse: Ephesians 2 5
5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
Devotion:
Have you ever tried to sit down and compare your life when you were deep in sin with your life when you followed Christ? Did your life change or are you still plodding along the same old path? When I look back at the time when I first got to recognise all that Christ had done for me I can see that I made an effort to change things in my life; but all too quickly I gave in to many things that I had done previously just so that I could continue to do things I liked or continue to hang out with others. The fact that I could now see that we were doing wrong was the part that I struggled with in the beginning.
It did take quite a long while before I began to realise that even though I was the same person with the same bad habits and the same things wrong, I did not have to continue giving in to those habits nor did I have to continue doing all those things that I now knew were wrong. Christ had given me the escape route, had shown me the way, had encouraged me to go there and waited ever so patiently for me to see those facts. His grace and mercy had already covered my habits and ways, but my own mind had not realised that. Once I did eventually get to see that love as it was intended to be, my life began to change as my spirit basked in the peace that only He could give me.
We may look at all that Christ has done and begin to realise all that He has achieved by going to the cross, but we will not really see the enormity of what He has accomplished until we are with Him in heaven for all eternity. We may look back at a long life with Christ or we may be looking at a few days with Him; nothing in what we see now will really prepare us for the eternity we shall enjoy with Him because we are still bound by time. Who knows whether we will realise that as soon as we are with Him or whether it will slowly dawn on us after being with Him for an age – but we can be sure that we will get to see just how amazing His love for us is.
We may look at a long road a think that it will never end, but as we drive along it we see it changing and eventually we get to reach the other end. Everything we currently do always has an end whether we see that end approaching from a far distance or whether we hit the end unexpectedly, we will see the end. Life eternal will never end. Instead we shall continue to grow and live in Gods boundless grace and mercy!
Points to Ponder:
How long would you wait for something?
Are you making God wait?
Wednesday Reading: Romans 5 20-12
Key Verse: Romans 5 20
20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
Devotion:
No matter how deep we get ourselves into trouble there is always a way out. We may not like the “way out” because it may well be that we have to pay for the trouble that we have been in, but there is a way forward. It troubles me greatly to see anyone in the position that they should think that the only way out should be to take their own life when God has given us such words as these “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:”
We may well look at some people in the bible and think that we will never be able to be like them, to hold up Christ as high as they have done or to honour God in such ways as they have done – but it is not about how we compare to what others have done; what it is about is what we can do in our own little way for Christ. He is the one who has shown us the ultimate grace. He is the one who has drawn the line and said that nothing will ever go too far so that I cannot forgive those that wish to come to me. But should we choose to stay away from Him, then He will allow us to make that choice. Do people not see that that choice is the only way that we can go against the grace that Christ has shown us?
God laid down the law in no uncertain terms with many rules being given to the Israelites so that we can all see how we can never quite attain to living the way that God created us to live. Those laws are not to bring us down into the depths such that we should want to end it all but rather to show us that we do need that forgiveness that Christ is offering and that what he offers us will cover anything that we have done in the past and that we may choose to do in the future.
Because of our sin we are going to have to face death; that is an absolute certainty because we cannot be with God until we are given a sinless body. But the most amazing thing that we really need to take notice of is that He was willing to take on that debt that we owe so that He can give us eternal life to be with His Father in heaven one day. What an awesome thing our Christ has done for us! It is Christ who has shown us that He has the power to overcome every sin that we have done. It is us who need to choose that right way.
Points to Ponder:
Do you ever think you have gone too far?
Do you know Christ has already covered that sin?
Tuesday Reading: Psalms 86 14-17
Key Verse: Psalms 86 15
15 But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.
Devotion:
One of man’s shortcomings is pride; I say one because we do tend to have many vices and not just pride. Those people that we do see succeeding around us lift up themselves in pride as if to say that they have been the ones being able to succeed when we have failed because we stuck to the righteous ways. Let us not lift them up to fuel their pride but rather stick to the righteous ways that our Lord and Christ promotes, or tries to promote for us.
The strong may tend to lift up their strength instead of showing that they are willing to rely fully on Christ instead. The intelligent may well lift up their knowledge and self-acclaimed wisdom instead of saying that it was Christ who gave them that wisdom to start with. But even though man continues to lift himself up in so many ways, Christ is the one who continues to have mercy and compassion on us. Despite all that we do against Him, He continues to show us love, mercy and compassion!
When we look at the promises of God we see that there came a point where He did show His wrath and did cut short the mercy; but it was not because He ran out of love for us but rather so that He could show us that He cares that we should be doing all that is right and not falling off into the ways of the evil one. We can also look back into the Old Testament and see just how long suffering God is with our condition and our selfish ways. It is with mercy and truth that He approaches us with the hope that we will turn toward that mercy and truth and follow His ways.
With all this being shown to us both through real life occurrences as well as with all that is contained within God’s Word we should be strengthened in our belief and faith. Do we not seek our proof for God’s love toward us? And yet we ignore so many things that are right in front of us because we think they may be a bit too easy to believe… That is often when we turn to God and ask Him to show others that we are believing in the right thing – but are we just doing that because we are lacking a bit in our own faith? These are hard questions to ask ourselves and often very hard to admit to the answers as well.
Points to Ponder:
Do you want God to show everyone you are not alone?
Are you actually exercising your faith?
Monday Reading: Psalms 72 11-14
Key Verse: Psalms 72 13
13 He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.
Devotion:
There are many places in the Old Testament that taught the people about the coming of the Messiah and of the praise that would be due the man Jesus, the Christ. But this is one of those passages that remind us that everything on earth will have to sing praises to Christ one day – whether we do it the right way and praise Him whilst we are alive or whether we wait until it is too late and praise Him when we see Him face to face is our choice that has to be made before it is too late.
The worship that is due Christ is not just a praising Him with voice and hands on the Sabbath or on Sunday. It is not just lifting His name up above all others. It is not just saying that He is the Messiah or believing that fact. The worship that is due Him is total worship love and reverence! And the results of that praise will be the Just and Faithful result that only a Just and Faithful God would perform on those that lift Him up.
It is those people that need Him most that will be blessed in the manner that Christ Himself deems necessary; don’t forget that He is the Just one, the one who actually knows what is best for each of us. So do not be surprised that He will do amazing things for those that He wants to. In fact what we should be doing is expecting the expected, not expecting the unexpected. Christ is just and faithful; we should therefore expect Him to be Just and Faithful!
But notice what it is that is said to be redeemed. This passage does not say how great life is going to be or how nice and easy things are going to be for anyone who wants to believe in Christ. Instead what is being told us is that the soul will be the one that finds the peace and rest – the soul and not the earthly body. Yes Christ is Just and will look after us in ways in which we can only imagine; but the goal is for Christ to save the soul from eternal death because it is our souls that will be living forever and He wants us to be in heaven with Him and not separated from Him forever.
Points to Ponder:
Do you seek earthly joys?
Are you seeking heavenly peace and rest?
Sunday Reading: Psalms 103 1-5
Key Verse: Psalms 103 1
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Devotion:
What worth would you place on your own soul? What worth could you place on it? I know we have seen films, jokes and all manner of things said about selling your soul or exchanging it for favours, but really, seriously, how could anyone ever place any price on the soul of a person? Governments and leaders will inhumanly calculate the price on a head due to circumstances surrounding them so that they may minimise loss of life or discomfort, but that should never detract from the fact that God has given us, our souls, eternal life. Now what we do with it is still our choice but that choice is something that we should only make when we are in possession of all of the facts and not just say-so or hearsay from others.
God has given us life and we need to treasure that life with everything that we have otherwise we will end up regretting it for a very long time to come. God has given us the ability to find out the truth and to get to know Him in a very special way by understanding just how much He loves us. All too often we forget about all that God has given to us and all that He does do for us every second of every day that we spend here on earth; so let us take a look at some of the things that we have that should give us every reason to praise our Awesome God!
We can look at the state that we, humans, are in and wonder how we have ever been able to survive so far. It may take rocket scientists to work out how to go to the moon and back, but it does not take much to realise that there is a Creator in charge and that He is the one that holds so many things together – things that would otherwise fly apart from the way we treat them. He is the one who continues to keep so many things at bay; even though we do have to face many hardships and trials we can continue to know that He does look out for us because we see that we have been kept from total destruction as He continue to teach us about all that He is.
We may complain about the state of countries, their economy, the plight of their people, the lack of standards of living and so many other things but most of that can be directly attributed back to a lack of control, direction or care from people in charge or even neighbours. God has told us time and time again that we need to look out for each other and yet we continue to blame Him when things go wrong. He is actually the one who does keep it all together – without Him we would have disappeared a very long time ago!
Points to Ponder:
What do you do to live fully?
What do you do to live for God?