Wednesday Reading: Zechariah 9 9
Key Verse: Zechariah 9 9
9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.
Devotion:
One thing that I do enjoy doing is matching up scriptures that the prophets foretold and the actual events afterward. To me it shows that God’s Word is here to be trusted and obeyed. We have so many great preachers, Rabbis and teachers that have studied these things through and through and have taught long and hard about the fact that God’s Word supports itself – and yet we have so many people that are also willing to take a few lines out of context to try and debunk the truth. If we do not know God’s Word, if we do not study up and find out the facts, then we may well find that we could be swayed by their arguments against God – not swayed fully but even nudged a bit in doubt… But God has given us the complete truth in His Word and has continued to make sure that it is made available to all who are willing to listen and hear.
I wonder what was going through the scribes mind when they wrote these words, or re-wrote and copied these words. Had they been taught that it was their Lord and King, our Saviour; or had they been taught that it was something else? When we study this we know the answer already because we know that Jesus came to accomplish God’s Word. We know from the accounts in the Gospels that this is exactly what Jesus did as He came into Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. What a Saviour we have that He was willing to come and face all that was written, just because He loves us so!
Would you be willing to walk a mile if you knew that at the end of that mile you were going to be mocked and beaten? Would you walk straight toward a certain harrowing ordeal if you knew that it was going to happen? I’m sure that most of us would try to find another way out, round or some excuse by which we would not have to face certain death… but Christ willingly continued forward knowing that this is exactly what God the Father wanted right from the beginning.
It is always a sobering thought to think of what Christ would have had going through His mind as He came through Bethany toward Jerusalem, toward His Calvary. What kind of love is that that He should be so willing to walk into a certain death trap, to be crucified by the very people that He loved?
Points to Ponder:
Would you be willing to show your love?
How much more should God have to do for you?
Tuesday Reading: Deuteronomy 10 12-13
Key Verse: Deuteronomy 10 12
12 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,
Devotion:
When Jesus turned to the disciples and said to them that they should love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, it was not just so that He could drum up a bit more support; it was because that is what was required from the very beginning. God has never changed. He still requires the same of us as He did in the beginning. He still requires that we listen to His laws and that we obey them. But it is not in a manner that a slave has to comply to his master but our Lord has required this of love. He tried to show mankind just how much He loved us and even demonstrated that love in the most amazing way through Christ on the cross, and yet we still uh and ah about whether we should love Him back!
Or we turn round to our fellow people and say that we do love our Lord and God but then we go off and do other things rather that walking in His ways or serving Him or really loving Him. You see, love is not just something that you say to someone; love is show through what we do and how we act and react. It is far better to start off by showing someone that you love them through doing things for them than to start out by saying that you love them and then finding out that what you thought was love dwindles as time goes on.
God started off by creating the universe for us! He then made the perfect garden for us to be in. He then gave us the perfect partners… and then we broke it because we did not show our full love back to Him. Despite that, God has continued to keep the universe in motion and has continued to show us His love through so many different ways. He has literally given His life for us so that we can experience His full love. What are we going to do in return?
Are we going to ignore that love just a little bit longer so that we can have a bit more fun? Are we going to put it aside because we don’t think that the time is right? Are we going to say “no” just because we think there is a catch further down the line? God has been honest, up front, truthful and loving toward us from the beginning. Loving Him with our whole being should be the natural thing we expect and do for Him.
Points to Ponder:
Do you ignore love shown to you?
Are you passing over God’s love?
Monday Reading: 1 John 3 18-21
Key Verse: 1 John 3 18
18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
Devotion:
I think one of the hardest things that I had to learn was to love in deed and in truth rather than just saying so. It is easy to say that you love something or someone after you have said it a few times, but to really love someone and to be able to show it is not as easy as that. Love is something that my mother showed me in the beginning and something that she made sure that I grew up with. Taking that love and expanding on it as I learned about God’s love was then the next logical step. Unfortunately for me I took a few too many wrong steps along the way before I figured that out!
Just because God has given us the truth and shown us what we should be doing, does not mean that we are going to get things right the first time round unless we are willing to take time out and spend it with Him. But, just like Adam and Eve, many of us want to take the fast route to find out about love and we seek out the short cuts so that we can get there sooner than the others around us.
But love does not work like that because love, as I have said before, is not something that can be rushed; we must be patient. God continues to show us that we do need to listen to Him and that we have to have patience in our listening. If we try to jump ahead of ourselves we may well find that we fall flat on our faces as we try to shortcut things that God has laid down for us to follow. God wants us to be able to understand why we should love Him and not just to say that we love Him. He wants us to know it in our hearts and not just to say that we believe it.
Love needs to be real. Jesus displayed a very real and very personal love towards us in what He did for us; it was no small thing that He laid down His life on that cross so that we would understand just how much He does love us. If He had not completed His task of going through with that, then we would have never been able to understand His love and therefore His grace and mercy too. Can you imagine knowing that you would have to go and do something terrible by the end of the week just so that others would get to know that you cared about them? Could you imagine throwing away everything that you had in the world just to show someone that you loved them? Could you imagine emptying your bank account just to say “yes, I do love you”? If you can begin to imagine that, then you can begin to imagine just how much God does love us!
Points to Ponder:
Would you be willing to give it all up?
Do you know Jesus has already given it up for you?
Sunday Reading: 1 John 4 5-8
Key Verse: 1 John 4 7
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
Devotion:
One of the things that we will always come up against is the difference between how we live as Christians and how the world lives. The more we live for Christ and the more that we want to be able to please Him, the more that we find that our lives are so very different from the people of the world. When Jesus said that we should be separate from the world it cannot be displayed any better than by looking at the differences between our lives and the lives of those people around us. If we find that our lives are exactly the same as of the people of the world, then I fear that we have lost our direction and we are following the ways of the world instead.
So when someone says that I am weird or that I have a very different life to them, I am often quite pleased about it because I then know that I am showing others that I am different! When we then try to describe why we live the lives we do, they look at us as if we are from one the old shows like “Tales of the Unexpected”. In reality, though, we are beginning to understand the events around us in a very different way because we are beginning to look at things from God’s perspective rather than just our own view.
God is the one who has first showed us that He is very different by showing us through the example of Jesus Christ. When we see just how He lived His life, we marvel at the things that He did but also at the way that He acted. His ways were to love those people around Him in such a manner as to make them stop and think about that love. God is love. That is to say that everything that He does is out of love and is therefore an example of love. So if we are seeking love, then surely we need to start by finding Him first of all.
I am so very thankful that I do know Christ and that I have been able to understand just one small portion of that love that He has shown me. Through that understanding that He has given me I am able to move forward and to embrace the world around me in a whole new way; not as the rest of the world sees it but more along the lines of how God wants me to see it. God sees the truth and He sees all the lies and pretence that we lift up to hide behind. Being able to identify the truth and to live for Him in a whole new way is something I continually hope that I am able to teach others.
Points to Ponder:
Do you stand out from the crowd?
Do you fit it with Christ’s ways?
Saturday Reading: Galatians 6 1-5
Key Verse: Galatians 6 2
2 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
Devotion:
There is always going to be a point at which you start asking question and a further point at which you start to refuse to do things and maybe a further point after which you actively rebel about things. But just how far are you going to be able to be pushed before you start to turn? Each of us will set our own limits and each of us will have different criteria by which we set those limits – but how many time do we consider God’s ways when we set limits in our lives?
If we are honest then we will say that we just set the limits and then think about things afterwards. If we are honest we may well say that we set our limits based on how others treat us to begin with. And then we may well be one of those mellow people who just carry on and wait for things to go wrong before challenging anything. Unfortunately for me I fit into that last category and I do normally wait until things go wrong before asking for help – but when I see things going wrong in other people’s live I like to be able to step in and offer my help toward them before it all goes pear shaped for them.
To me, this is just another part of the love that God has shown me. He has shown me on many occasions that He is willing to help me out before things go wrong and not to demand any recompense from me for fixing things. Imagine having a mechanic that would offer to fix your car before it went wrong just because he heard something as you drove past – and then for him to not ask for any money for fixing it! Life would be a bit hard for that mechanic because he may well not earn any money to cover his own expenses!
But God continue to show us that that is the sort of attitude that we should have towards others – that we should offer them our love before it is required and that we should not demand anything back in return. If everyone was to aim at that sort of love toward each other – this world would be so much better off than it is now. I somehow think that that is what God had in mind when He created us – but how the evil one has ruined things by throwing temptation in our path. It is now that we need to turn back to God and ask Him for help in sharing the burdens that we now carry because of our mistakes that we have chosen. Even though the evil one is the one who showed us those wrongful paths, we still made the choice to follow them instead of sticking with God’s perfect plan.
Points to Ponder:
Do you offer to lighten other peoples burdens?
Are you willing to share your burdens with Christ?