Thursday Reading: John 17 1-3

Key Verse: John 17 3

3  And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Devotion:

It is truly an amazing thing that Jesus Christ should come to earth as a human being so that He could do so much for us; and He did this knowing what was ahead, knowing what had to be done, knowing the rejection, knowing the sin, knowing the future… How many of us would be willing to go forward knowing that we are going to be beaten, mocked, reviled and abused? How many of us are willing to step forward just to show others that we do love them?

It seems such an easy choice to make up front saying that we will always go forward in the name of Christ and that we shall always be here so that He can use us at every opportunity. But actually stepping forward again after you have been beaten or mocked or abused is not that easy for us. We like to think that we can withstand all those things in the name of Jesus our Lord, but when we get faced with the physical results we do tend to shy away.

Our Lord does know what is in our hearts and He knows that we may well ultimately fail when pushed to the extreme but He is always going to be here for us. He has proved it from the beginning and continues to prove it year after year. He has shown us just how much He loves us by coming to die on the cross for us in the face of such extreme adversity. He has shown us that He does not flinch. He has shown us that He steps forward time after time. He has shown us that He is willing to wait for us to see our shortcomings and to bring our burdens to Him. He has shown us that He is willing for forgive each and every sin that we bring to Him in humbleness and respect.

He did this at a time when nobody else would bother. He did this when everyone else had failed. He did this, just because He loves us so much. What an Awesome God we have!

Points to Ponder:

What does it take for you to give up?

Have you seen how much He has given for you?

Wednesday Reading: 2 Chronicles 33 9-13

Key Verse: 2 Chronicles 33 13

13  And he prayed to Him, and He was entreated of him, and heard his prayer, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. And Manasseh knew that Jehovah is God.

Devotion:

Just how much will you have to have things happen to you before you start to realise that God is for you and not against you? If we are honest we will look back at certain times in our lives and begin to wonder whether God is for or against us. We look back and wonder how He would allow certain things to happen in our lives when we are supposed to know that He is a Loving God! But it should, again, not take long before we do see that His ways a far above our own ways!

When we begin to see how complex our own lives are we start to falter and wonder if we should ever be able to be in control at any time! We begin to see how many variables there are in our lives and we figure out that we cannot hope to be able to unravel everything that should happen in our lives. We see how confident some people are in their lives and we wonder how we cannot have such confidence. We see how some people enjoy a very good life by our standards and then wonder how we can ever hope to reach those standards! But it is only after we stop and think about how much he does in our lives that we begin to realise that His ways are far more complex and further reaching that our ways!

God continues to power through our lives when we crumble day after day. He continues to shed light when all we see is darkness. He begins to allow us to see His ways are far superior to our ways simply because He does actually know where we doubt and where we crumble and fall!

We certainly do not look too often at the long term plan for our lives but try instead to live one day at a time. How can we ever hope to be able to see further than one day at a time when that is all we are looking for?

Points to Ponder:

Are you growing weary of your life?

Do you trust God to bring you through it all?

Tuesday Reading: Genesis 25 21

Key Verse: Genesis 25 21

21  And Isaac prayed to Jehovah for his wife, because she was barren. And Jehovah heard him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.

Devotion:

What will it take for you to trust in God’s might and power? What will it take before you too believe in your whole heart that He is able? If we were told that we were going to have a child when we were full in years or if we were told that we would become a leader of many, we may well be the ones who doubt things will happen as well. When Isaac prayed to God for his wife Rebekah it must have been with a memory of what God had done in the past and it may well have been easy for Him to ask and trust in God answering His prayers…

So why then do we continue to have problems with believing that God can do anything? Why then do we not believe that God is able to do anything? Have we not got enough proof in our bibles to show us that He is able? Have we not got enough written down that we can read about? Have we not Got His Word?

No matter how much we are able to read about things we will always have doubts because we have not seen things with our own eyes? But when we do finally get to see something that He is able to do in our lives, we suddenly get a glimpse of the awesome power of our God! But then after a few years we tend to start forgetting just what He has been able to do in our lives and we start to doubt again…

Whenever I start to doubt that God is capable of anything I spend a bit of time thinking back in my life to bring to mind the things that I have asked from Him in the past. I then bring to mind how I asked Him for those requests and that in turn starts to remind me of my lack of faith during some of those times. But when we place our complete faith in our Lord we very quickly begin to see just How much He is able to do for us and how much He does accomplish for us; especially during those times when we think of our faith as being the weakest link! Those are the times when we see just how strong God is and how much He continues to do for us at all times! Then I remember the awesome things He does for me and has done for me and then I have no problem believing that what He has promised will come to pass – just because He said so!

Points to Ponder:

What does it take for you to remember?

Are you not glad that God never forgets?

Monday Reading: Genesis 15 1-6

Key Verse: Genesis 15 2

2  And Abram said, Lord God, what will You give me, since I am going childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?

Devotion:

How many times have you doubted God? Be honest! Most of us will admit to having doubts that God will do things in our lives or that He will answer prayers or that He will be able to live up to the promises that we might claim from Him. But then we don’t really have to look all that far to be able to count everything that He has accomplished and done for each one of us and for our friends and families. All we tend to do is to remember the bad times and the things that go wrong instead of counting the good things and good times and then we bring those to mind when we start searching for what God has done in our lives…

The truth is that God continues to lift us up and continues to do so much for each of us that we should not be able to remember all that He does – instead we bring to mind all those negative thoughts. Who do you think is behind those negative thoughts? Who do you think is the one trying to make us crumble and fall before our Lord and God? Who is the one that is trying to make us doubt what God can do?

When you look at it that way then you can see just how much we have going against us. When you look at all the things that go wrong and all the things that happen around us you begin to wonder how God would be able to achieve anything at all! But he does – day after day, week after week, He continues to lift up all that we see and do to show us that His promises will continue to stand throughout time. When we start to place our limitations on God we start to fear that He cannot do what He has said because we are looking at the world through our own eyes instead of through His eyes. How can we ever hope to be able to see the greater picture if we are so blinkered and limited in our imaginations?

It is not just the fact that we try to think that we can run our own lives but the fact that we think that God cannot do a better job that we are because we are the ones in our own bodies… Well guess what – He can and does do better than us because He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is our Creator and our Lord and King. He is the one who created everything around us in its proper place so that we could be here right now…

Points to Ponder:

Do you know God is great?

Do you know what God can do for you?