Friday Reading: Proverbs 9 7-10

Key Verse: Proverbs 9 8

8  Do not reprove a scorner, lest he hate you; give to a wise man, and he will love you.

Devotion:

There is always going to be someone who just does not want to know anything about religion, about God, about love for the unseen or about faith in anything or anyone else other than themselves. When we do come face to face with them we will find it very difficult to reconcile how we cannot reach them with anything we say. We may well find it hard to ever see how we can stop trying to tell them about God because we can see that their need is greater than others. And yet there has to be some point at which we turn away and move on.

Then there is the other end of the scale when we will come up against people who just can’t seem to get enough information about everything. They want to be able to hear all about everything and then they will spend time trying to decipher everything they have heard. They will spend so much time going over what we have said that we may well begin to doubt that we have reached them with anything that we have said so far. 

So how do we tell who are the ones that want to receive knowledge and wisdom and those that will reject it? The most telling difference will not be that they throw everything back into our faces because that is going to happen all the time whether people are trying to learn or not. The difference will be that God will show you when to move on – so long as you are fully trusting in Him and have faith that He will continue to guide you in your work for Him. Never give up because you think it is too hard because God may just be getting started – trust in His ways and not in your own limitations!

Points to Ponder:

Do you always feel strong?

Are you calling on God for help?

Thursday Reading: Isaiah 29 15

Key Verse: Isaiah 29 15

15  Woe to those who go deep to hide their purpose from Jehovah! And their works are in the dark, and they say, Who sees us? And who knows us?

Devotion:

How often do you try to hide things from others? How often do you go ahead and do something and then don’t dare tell anyone that you have done it just to try and make sure that nobody will find out… Well, too late, God already knows!

We dare to think that we can be like Jonah and run away from God and hide in a ship sailing in the other direction – we cannot. We dare to think that we can hide our sin under a carpet such that nobody will know that we have done this deep – we cannot. We dare to stand up and do things when we are away from other Christians just so that we can fit it – we don’t. We dare to stop doing what we should be doing for God just so that we can have a look at what others are doing – we shouldn’t. You see, we do have a choice as to what we want to do, it’s just that what we think of as a choice may not be a simple a choice as what we first think. Jonah though that by running away he would get away with things but he certainly did not do that!

We can hide our devious ways or purposes deep in our hearts so that others will never find out what is going on in our minds – but God already knows the truth. When we see it necessary to deceive ourselves by hiding the truth from ourselves, then God may well not stand by quietly and allow us to dig our own grave. Instead He may well turn our lives around in a manner that we certainly would never wish on ourselves. God is not above showing us the truth in the most strict and undeniable ways – but we should never blame Him for allowing that in our lives when we first ran away from Him!

Points to Ponder:

Are you being a Jonah?

Are you following God’s light yet?

Wednesday Reading: Psalms 139 1-14

Key Verse: Psalms 139 11

11  If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light around me.

Devotion:

One thing we can be sure of is that God does know everything. There is nothing that we can hide from Him and certainly no place that we can go to try and escape from Him! The Psalmist seems to have been constantly reminded in his life that God was ever watchful and ever present. It was not just the time when they marched through the desert, nor the time when Adam and Eve walked with God in Eden, but always!

We don’t have to search too deep or look too hard to realise just how true this is because we can see the evidence everywhere that we look. We can see the evidence in everything around us – so why then do we still doubt that God is close by? Well, probably because when we get down we think we are surrounded by darkness and we think that nobody should ever be able to see through the darkness that we have. We wallow in our own problems and never think to switch on the Light that is God!

When we realise that we do have Go in our lives then we can and always will know that we have His Light ever present! Just because we cannot see with our dim eyes, does not mean that God cannot see. He already knows and is trying to guide us in the right direction. Just like a set of fire exit lights in the time of a fire, they are there, ever present, trying to show people the way… as long as they are willing to stop for a second and look! God needs us to realise that He is here and that we can call on Him at any time. God has placed that knowledge deep in our hearts such that we know it must be true – but just because we cannot see it for the fog that surrounds us, we assume something must be amiss! 

Points to Ponder:

Do you close your eyes when things get tough?

How often do you switch on your “God Light”?

Tuesday Reading: Numbers 32 1-23

Key Verse: Numbers 32 23

23  But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord. And be sure your sin will find you out.

Devotion:

Nothing seemed to happen in half measures with the children of Israel as they wandered through the desert; well, nothing that God did, but much that man did was done in half measures! And so it continues on throughout history and into our lives as well – we like to think that we are subject to authority and that we do keep up in what we should be doing for God, but in reality we always seem to hold back at the crucial times!

These first verses tell us of the time when the tribes of Rueben and Gad decided that they were better off in the land that they were in than in the land that God had set aside for them. We can look back on that and think about how silly they must have been to think such a thing – but then we could also look into our own lives and look at the many times when God was trying to get us to do something or go somewhere and we simply turned back and said we are better off by ourselves rather than with God!

Yes, we have all been there! Yes we have all been a Jonah at some stage in our lives, and no matter how much we try to hide from that fact it is true! It may well have been something that we consider to be very minor and to have no effect on anything or anyone outside of us – but the fact is that we chose our own ways in preference to God’s ways. When we say it like that then we realise just what we are doing – but at the time we don’t even think about what we are doing! Just because it does not seem to affect anyone else does not mean that we are doing the right thing – there are God’s ways and then there is everything else… choose well…

Points to Ponder:

Are you head-strong?

Are you too head-strong to listen to God?