Monday Reading: Habakkuk 1 1-11
Key Verse: Habakkuk 1 5
5 Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.
Devotion:
If we really don’t want to listen to the truth then there is not a lot that will get us to listen to the truth. But God is our Awesome God who does know exactly what will get our attention. Over all the years that He has watched us grow and fall there has been one overall plan from His side – to get us to listen to the truth even if He has to do something to get our attention first.
Right from when man first sinned we have been fighting things in our lives that we have thought were not nice and so many of those times men turn round and blame God for things when they go wrong. Why should we think that we can get away with anything when God is watching? Have we not learned from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Obviously not because we have a whole string of events that show that man has not listened! And the words penned down from Habakkuk show us that God has had to go to extraordinary lengths to try to get us to take note of what we should be doing.
We do not have to look too far from our own front doors to see that God has continued to get our attention through things in our lives. He has continued to lay down a life in front of each of us that should be pointing us in the right direction – and yet we still continue to try to run things our own way just so that we can have a bit of pride! There is a major problem for us – pride! This was exactly what was facing the king of Babylon, even though they were the ones that would bring about ruin for the Israelites, God would still not let anyone get away with a sack-full of pride.
God continues to try to teach us about love so that we will lay aside that pride in our lives to live more for Him and less for our own devices. And yet when we are faced with trials and tribulations that should allow us to re-focus our lives, we continue to allow pride to drag us far away from His Word and from the truth. We look for all manner of signs in our lives, but when we see the signs clearly laid out by our God, we try to ignore them just because they do not fit in with our own ideals in life. We need to lose that pride in our lives and humble ourselves to our God who does know what is best for us – despite our best intentions!
Points to Ponder:
Do you always think you know best?
Are you willing to give God a chance?
Sunday Reading: John 20 11-17
Key Verse: John 20 15
15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
Devotion:
Today we serve a Risen Saviour! And yet there are many people who will have a hard time with the simple fact that Christ rose from the dead. As we go over the account of this time from the disciples we find that they too had a hard time believing things even though they were there. Just because they saw the empty tomb they did not immediately put two and two together and come up with the seemingly logical deduction that it was He Himself that rose from the dead – how great it is to know the truth after it has been explained so clearly to us; and yet we still have doubt!
When we are able to look back in time and see what was accomplished many people still have doubts as to whether things happened as they have been told us in the bible, and yet they have no problem believing a story about how life could have evolved from a random set of events way back in the past. Rather like telling someone that the lottery jackpot is a staggering amount and yet they have very little chance at actually winning the lottery; they still want to spend their money because they want to believe that is could be true and it sounds so good – but when they find out the truth they look back and know that it was a long shot anyway!
Men would rather believe in a random event that the truth when the truth goes beyond normal beliefs. And having someone raise themselves us from the dead is certainly in that realm of beyond normal beliefs. But when we have been told the truth, shown the truth and have people confirm the truth – why do we still have a hard time accepting it?
I think the answer is because we just want to believe in some things because they sound good at the time – and having to accept that someone was willing to die for us just because they love us, and then raise themselves from the dead just to justify us – well, that goes beyond what we may think of acceptable because we know what we are like! And having anyone tell us that they love us even though we think we know what we are like just goes beyond what we want to accept. But accept the truth is what we need to do. Today we do serve that Truth, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the One who died for us and rose again to defeat that awful price on our sin that was placed there by God our Heavenly Father.
Points to Ponder:
Do you acknowledge Jesus Christ?
Do you praise Him for what He has done for you?
Saturday Reading: Luke 23 52-56
Key Verse: Luke 23 56
56 And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.
Devotion:
Death is something that we all have to face at some stage in our lives; and I’m not talking about our own death because that is inevitable but not something that we are going to take much notice of. I am talking about the death of someone close to you, someone that you love and respect. There are certain people in our lives that we wish we should never have to hear of their being hurt, never mind their death; and those are the people that we love the most in our lives.
Whether they are family, friends or loved ones, we would rather not have to ever hear of anything bad happening to them. Unfortunately for us, though, we live in a world where all manner of evil things happen to everyone. It is not just the bad people that get affected by crashes or acts of violence but anyone who happen to be close to the ones carrying out the violence or causing the accidents. And then there are the “acts of God” as our insurance people would like to put it – earthquakes and floods and the like of which no man has control over. These do happen and they are not just going to be limited to places where there are no Christians because Christians are the world over.
God has warned us of many things that will come upon this earth, especially during the times just before Christ returns! So should we not be prepared for His imminent return? I hope that you are!
When Jesus died, they buried Him in the tomb of a rich man and because it was then the Sabbath, they had already returned to their homes to rest just as God had commanded us in the beginning. God even made sure that this was written as one of our Ten Commandments so that we do realise just how important it is to rest. I am just as guilty as others when it comes to squeezing in a bit of word when the day is quiet – but that is not what God wants us doing. He has given us a day of rest so that we cannot just remember Him but also have that much needed rest that we DO need! None of the disciples had quite understood the significance of the death of our Lord and they went back to doing exactly what they were commanded to do and that was to have a day of rest. Why then do we turn to find some way in which we can spend even more energy and money and time over the weekend when Christ gave it to us as a way of resting? Because we are not giving back to God the things f God!
Points to Ponder:
Do you rush out to do things at the weekend?
Do you rush out to meet with God on Sunday or rush out to be with the world?
Friday Reading: Luke 20 22-25
Key Verse: Luke 20 25
25 And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.
Devotion:
I am sure that I have come up with some odd things for Good Friday in the past, but no stranger than calling Good Friday “good” when we are remembering the crucifixion, death and burial of our Lord and Saviour. So why choose these verses? You only have to look around you and wonder what all the fuss is about to then begin to see why. The world seems to have gone mad with making any celebration into the largest selling commercial venture that they can. They have ripped the true meaning out of Easter and replaced it with the same “holiday spirit” that they have replaced our remembrance of Christ’s birth with!
Long gone is the time we can spend thinking about what God has done for us. Long gone is the coming together of people to have a look and see what that bunch of Christians is doing down at the church on Good Friday. Instead we have all manner of things pushed in our faces about bunnies and enough chocolate to float the entire third world with – and yet love is being left out of it somehow. The commercial thrust was supposed to be toward bringing families together and allowing them to celebrate something special; but instead that love has been torn out and replaced with a requirement to buy gifts for people as if it were their birthday again.
Don’t let me put a dampener on our Easter celebrations. I fully intend to celebrate Easter; but not as another commercial “day of reckoning” but rather with people that I want to be with – because they celebrate the same love for Christ that I do… and if they are busy, well I will be out there trying to tell someone else about the true meaning of Easter!
Maybe this is one of those times that Christ was speaking of when He said that we should separate ourselves from the world. Leave the things of this world to their own devices, “give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”. We don’t have to get caught up in trying to bring worldly possessions and worldly ways into Easter because this is not a time to celebrate the world and what it has done for us – this is a time to celebrate all that Christ was willing to do for us and all that He actually has done for us. He willingly gave it all up for us just so that we would not have to be conformed to the worldly ways. So Give “unto God the things which are His”. Love was first shared by Christ with us; let us therefore show Him some of that love that He first showed us!
Points to Ponder:
Do you get church and the world mixed up?
Then why get God’s ways and worldly ways mixed up?
Thursday Reading: Luke 19 41-48
Key Verse: Luke 19 41
41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,
Devotion:
We can look on this verse and think about the love that Christ had because He was brought to tears by the thought of what was to unfold but that would fall short of the love that Christ was actually showing at this stage. In our all-to-short study of love over the past weeks we have seen many aspects of what love is and one of those that we need to be reminded of here of is not just that Christ was willing to give His life, but that He was also chastising the people. When we do love someone we should not allow them to go ahead and do things that are unlawful and that is exactly what Christ was facing now.
His compassion for the people was shown by the fact that He wept for them before He came into their midst. But He also knew that He had to come and sort out so many people as well. He knew that He had a task to do and that nothing should detract from that task, but He also knew that He could not stand by whilst the people desecrated the temple through their evil deeds being done there.
It saddens me to see just how much this country has forgotten what Easter is all about. It saddens me to see so much being done to promote a festival that has little or nothing to do with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. And then it frightens me to see how much pressure is put on our children to spend what little money they have in promoting a commercial event; the same sort of event that Christ came to clear out of the temple that day He arrived there!
We are faced with people who don’t care for Jesus and what He did. We are faced with people whose love for money has taken them far beyond what we would accept as reasonable behaviour. And yet we all stand by and watch as they continue their trade right in front of our Lord who willingly came to give His life in our stead. “Lord, grant us strength that we may stand and be counted as Children of God” is what we need to be doing so that we can come forward and show people that we do care about what has happened because we do love them, even though they may not love us back. But by re-starting that circle of love we will be able to win some people back to the truth so that they can find out just How much Jesus should mean to them at this time of year!
Points to Ponder:
Will you continue to let people go their own way?
Or will you stand up with Jesus?