Thursday Reading: Colossians 3 1-4
Key Verse: Colossians 3 3
3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
Devotion:
Imagine being told that you are dead! Whilst I do think that most of us would take words like that and try figure out what they actually mean, it is still a bit off-putting to be told that you are dead! But we are only put off because we limit our thoughts to our physical and maybe our spiritual worlds that we have come to know and hopefully understand a bit better. But this death that is being talked about is not the physical death that we will face one day, nor the spiritual death that we live (we are after all alive through the grace of God), but the fact that we should not be living in this world.
This world and all the people that make up this world are trusting in things that they see and feel. They do not all seek out the truth that God has given us and certainly do not all believe that truth if it is told them. It is the law of this land that we are dead toward. We should not be limited by the law of the land; but we should respect it and try to live within it for as much as it does not go against God’s Laws. There are many religions and sects in this world that will give you a myriad of things that must be done in order to please their god or their deity in some manner or form. Those laws do not promote our living God and hence we should not be limited to them or be constrained by them.
The disciples went to great lengths to make sure that the truth that God taught them was written down and given out to many more people. They knew full well that the Jewish leaders were the ones imposing their own rules on man instead of following God’s Laws. Jesus came to teach us the right ways because we were being trapped by our own imaginations and beginning to fall away from God because we thought our rules sounded better than those given to us through His original scriptures.
God’s Word never changes. We are the ones that bend things and massage the truth so that we can be pleased by what we wish to achieve rather than by what God has given us to do. It is a hard thing to accept God’s ways in everything because His ways are perfect and our imaginations certainly are not! God’s ways need to be sought after because the world has hidden His ways from us. The more we seek out His ways and find the truth, the more we should be willing to go out and tell others of those ways and that truth. God has set His Word in stone so that we can depend on it never changing – why should we try to change something that is already perfect?
Points to Ponder:
Do you change God’s rules?
How often do you change your own ways to line up with God’s ways?
Wednesday Reading: John 5 24-29
Key Verse: John 5 26
26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;
Devotion:
As I study to bring God’s Word to our teenagers I always come across verses that I want to be able to include in devotions – this being one of them. But if I were to bring every verse that I have wanted to I would probably have written a year’s worth of devotions ahead of time! God’s Word is so full of good news and blessings that I will have not scratched the surface by the time I have done a few more years of this.
When we look back on God’s Word as the disciples have written it down we may wonder how they did not immediately know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He is the Messiah which they had been waiting for. You may also argue that they did see this, but the more that we read the more that we find out that there were many doubts going round at this time still. The leaders of the Jews were struggling to get Jesus to openly admit something like this so that they could charge Him with blasphemy – and yet even when He said these words many would still doubt!
We serve a living God. One who has always existed and continues to exist outside this realm of time that we are held within. Jesus, as a man, was trapped within this realm of time as well, but He certainly was not trapped spiritually like we may think we are. The more we try to figure out how God can exist outside of time the more of a stumbling block we build up for ourselves. Instead of trying to figure God out, why can we not just accept that we do serve a living God who is more than we can ever dream of? Why can we not just accept the truth that Christ has been trying to get into our heads from the beginning?
Jesus Christ was given all authority to do what He did because of who He is. He, as a man, fully understood that God the Father had given Him authority and power over everything. That knowledge is what made Him able to do everything that He was able to as a man. Whilst the disciples could no more do anything than we can, they were given the authority by Christ to do so much more; but it was not just the belief but the power of God working through them that made it possible. Our living God gives us the power to take His Word out and tell others of this truth. If we went out and tried to convince people without believing and trusting in Him, we would end up looking every bit as silly as scientists who make assumptions that turn out to be false. God’s Word is the truth and we need to depend on God to allow us to go forward with this truth and share it with others.
Points to Ponder:
Have you ever “built up a story” that was not true?
Are you relying on God’s Truth?
Tuesday Reading: Job 28 20-28
Key Verse: Job 28 27
27 Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out.
Devotion:
God had worked with Job and had given him an excellent understanding of His Awesome power and might. Job was under no delusion that God was not able to do anything He wanted to Job, but he could not understand why God had allowed this all to happen to him when Job himself had tried his best to continue doing everything according to God’s wishes. What Job was beginning to see was that even though he had a pretty good understanding of everything that God had declared to man at that stage and even though he understood much of it, there were just so many things that he would not be able to understand in his life time.
No matter how much studying we do and no matter how much we turn our lives over to finding out about God, we will always fall short of the mark and we must always bow down to our God because of His infinite and perfect knowledge! No matter how much our scientists are able to find out about everything to do with man and earth, there will always be a bit more that we can find out about it and a bit more that God has got to explain to us – God’s wisdom is infinite whereas ours does have limits!
God is the one who spoke this world into being. It is nothing to do with big bangs or fantastical coincidences that we came into being but rather because God spoke and it happened. It is because of His infinite wisdom that this planet continues to be the perfect environment for us to live in. It is because of His constant support that we can know that we have a place here to dwell until He calls us back to be with Him!
God continues to watch over this world and continues to keep it in perfect balance around the sun and the moon around us. Without Him we would descend into chaos quicker than we could probably think “jack Robinson” never mind say it! It is because of Him that we exist and not in spite of Him that we exist. It is His world that we live in and because of His infinite grace and mercy that we continue to be able to survive here on this planet that we call home. If we want to seek wisdom then we need to have the uttermost respect for God and trust in Him for our lives and not just in our own abilities. Once we have that fear of God in us then we can aim for a better future with Him as we start to live with more understanding of His will and His ways. God wants us to learn and to move forward with Him; let us therefore study to be approved workmen for Him!
Points to Ponder:
How much science do you understand?
How often do you keep God’s commandments to show Him you respect Him?
Monday Reading: 1 Corinthians 2 6-9
Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 2 9
9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
Devotion:
One of the things that the disciples got to learn quite quickly was that the wisdom of this world is nothing compared to the wisdom that God has or that He gives to us through the Holy Spirit. No matter how much we try to learn, take in and live by, we fall very short of the mark when it comes to having any wisdom that can explain what God has done for us.
We are reminded that not even all the book in the world would be able to contain all the descriptions of what Christ has done whilst He walked on earth – so why should we even begin to think that we could in any way learn all that Christ can do for us. The Apostle describes the knowledge and wisdom of the princes and those learned friends of his that were accounted as the great minds at the time. He remembers all the things that he tried to uphold, the laws and the rules that continued to be broken by people all around him – yet he quickly realised that what Christ was doing during His ministry was just the tip of the iceberg as it were. He knew that Christ was so much more than the man he was talking about and that the more that he continued to love Christ, the more that he would in fact learn about Christ through the Holy Spirit.
When we describe our lives as having that “Joy Unspeakable” we are bringing to mind all the wonders that Christ has done for us, all that He has shown us not just physically but spiritually as well. We know that joy because of our faith and trust in Christ. We know it in our hearts because we believe the truth about Christ being the Son of God and because of that belief He continues to allow us to learn more about His life and His ways!
God wants us to be able to live our lives for Him but also to know it in our hearts that He is the one who has made all of this possible – just because He loves us so! It is not the knowledge that we have in our heads that counts but all that wisdom that the Holy Spirit is placing in our hearts that lifts us up when all else around us is failing miserably. It is that deep spiritual knowledge that He has given us that allows us to move forward with Him. We give God the glory because of the awesome and great things that He has done for each one of us!
Points to Ponder:
How many things can you think of that God has done for you?
Do you have faith in God’s promises?
Sunday Reading: Job 19 23-29
Key Verse: Job 19 26
26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
Devotion:
Job was a man who had absolutely everything to complain about because of all that Satan had made go wrong in his life at that point. God allowed this all to prove a point, that no matter what happens to us in our lives, we should always be allowed to praise God because we know where we are destined for! God had worked in Job’s life to allow him to see just how much He was willing to do for Job when he followed God and kept His commandments. Because of that knowledge that God was always with Him, Job knew that he had a certain future and that that future would allow him to be with Christ in spirit and in body.
If we start to think about our death we may well get a bit upset with having to face that point when we lose our bodies and they get buried or burned. But we can also know, just as Job did, that we too will be with Christ, not just in spirit but in our bodies as well. We may leave them behind for a while when we die, but come the time for Christ to come back to the earth, we will be re-united with our bodies after they are changed from this corruptible state they are in now to an incorruptible state so that we can be with God in Heaven for eternity!
I’m not sure if Job will have wanted his body after he saw just how much it had gone wrong in that short time of Satan’s troubles on him, and I’m sure that he would have wanted it changed before he faced Christ! We can be sure that when we do face Christ we will also have a perfect body – one that no longer has the ailments we have now, the shortcomings, the faults and the broken things we have now. Job somehow knew that he would have a physical body in heaven at some stage and not just to be a spirit. This has been affirmed by Christ so that we too can be sure and can also look forward to that glorious day.
I think one of the greatest things is going to be that we will be allowed to cast our eyes upon Christ, to be able to see Him in person and in our renewed bodies. Not to have to be presented as a corrupt body, but to have a renewed and perfect body so that we can stay with God in heaven! That is a sure knowledge that we have because we believe it to be so. Our faith is in the promises of Christ. Our faith is not in ourselves or what we can define, but in the perfect and literal promises that Christ has given us Himself – those same promises that Job apparently knew then as well.
Points to Ponder:
Do you ever wonder what else can go wrong?
How often do you remember the perfect state we are destined for?