Thursday Reading: 1 John 4 1-3

Key Verse: 1 John 4 2

2  By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God;

Devotion:

It is hard to identify just who your friends and enemies are sometimes; you get all manner of people around you all seemingly promising you a fruitful and joyous future through what they seem to know or say they know. The proof comes down to finding out the hard way which of those promising will stand the test of time and which one of them will break down or be shattered by those broken promises or deceit.

I have always been a person who does not like to ever think that anyone else could be to blame – I seem to have lived my life thinking that I could be taken account for everything that has happened in my life. The actual truth is that the world around us is a very corrupt place that pretends to be good and clean and honest. It just is not so! Who would have believed that it would take me 50 years to figure that one out!

If we want to be able to separate the honest and good from the evil and deceitful then we have got to have something that we can compare things against. That comparison or yard stick has got to be absolute and cannot fail in itself. And if you haven’t realised yet that God’s Word is that yard stick then it’s about time you took it back as the truth and kept it as the core truth that you can and must compare the world against. When you take whatever you think is good in this world and compare it against God’s Word then you will find the truth.

Yes it is scary to find out so much is not what it seems but it is so rewarding and conclusive to find out that God’s Word stands no matter what!

Points to Ponder:

How much of your life do you like?

How much of your life agrees with God’s Word?

Wednesday Reading: Colossians 1 19-26

Key Verse: Colossians 1 21-22

21  And you, who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled  [22]  in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish, and without charge in His sight,

Devotion:

Now and again Christ will take you on a journey through scripture that will make you stop your normal ways and think about what has gone in the past and ponder upon what will happen in the future. That journey may take you a few hours or it may take you several years, but you can be sure that it is through Christ alone that you will learn a whole lot more about your relationship with Him.

As we go through life we enter into relationships with others that will grow stronger and deeper and even some that will dwindle and all but perish; but each one is now a part of you that you can look back upon and find out more about yourself. Christ allows us to grow through our relationships and none more so than our relationship with Him. Over the past year I have been on a journey with Christ as He opens up my eyes to some of the things that I have been trying hard to bury and leave forgotten; these last few weeks being a time when I have faced up to things that have happened many years ago and gone over them with God’s Word.

If you want to know just how much you mean to God and how much He does continually contribute into your life, then you should start comparing your own life with God’s Word – it will open up your eyes to a whole new world! I can personally thank Him for the grace and mercy that He has shown me many years ago whilst I was not walking with Him in my life… At least that is how I saw it, but in reality He continued walking with me and carrying me when I stumbled and fell. He allowed me to walk a path that seemed to go against His Very Word, but one that has led me back to be firmly in His hands.

I am now learning to lift up my head knowing He strengthens me through His Word!

Points to Ponder:

Do you feel at the end of the path?

Have you asked God to guide you to a new path yet?

Tuesday Reading: Matthew 23 1-7

Key Verse: Matthew 23 3

3  Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do. But do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.

Devotion:

Do you feel like people around you are telling you to do one thing and yet they run off and do another thing? Or maybe you feel like you are guilty of doing that; saying one way and acting another way. Christ wanted to make sure that people saw the difference between being a Christian and saying that you are one – the gap between the two is huge. Just because you say that you are a Christian and can quote bible verse and can talk the talk does not make you a child of God. God knows each of us personally and wants to make sure that we do as we say and say as we do.

That means that we have to make sure that we live according to His Word as well as being able to quote His Word and know His Word. If we are not going to take that final step and live as He wants then is what we believe in actually sound? That is a question that we may well ask ourselves when we find ourselves doing things wrong or doing things against His will. But just because we think those thoughts does not mean that we have to go off the rails. It does not mean that we have to give in to the things around us nor that we have to pretend in any way

We will find that there are many people who will put burdens on our shoulders that we should not have to bear. They do this because they may well have more burdens that that and want to offload some of their weight onto others thinking that that will make their burden lighter. That fact is that it will not. It will simply give another burden to someone else. What we need to do is to lift up those burdens to Christ so that He can take them away from us or show us how to work with them. We need to live our lives according to God and not in spite of Him – I think that may well be something I say a lot, but it is because it is so very important!

Points to Ponder:

What do you do?

Do you do things according to God or according to yourself?

Monday Reading: Galatians 5 1

Key Verse: Galatians 5 1

1  Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free, and do not again be held with the yoke of bondage.

Devotion:

There are several places where the word ‘yolk’ is used to describe the bondage that we live in/under; this being one of them. If you look at what a yolk is, it is a form of trap from which the animal that is being yolked cannot escape; that being the whole reason for the yolk in the first place. But if we look at it from another point of view, that yolk is there for a reason and serves a purpose. Sin, you may think, has no purpose. I beg to differ on this one because without sin we would not know what is wrong – yes we would be much better off without having to know sin, but we are born into a sinful world so we live with it.

When we can identify that sin by comparing our so called normal lives with God’s Word we then can find out that what we may think of normal is far from actually being normal when God created us. Our normal is nothing like that which God had planned for us! So when this verse says that we will be made free it is the freedom from that yolk that has held us back from the beginning. What we thought was normal was a wandering away from God. What we thought was normal was a bondage that held us apart from God and His ways.

Because of what Christ has done for us on the cross we are freed from that yolk in that we do not have to serve it any more in our lives. It does not mean that we are taken out of that life never to see it again because we continue to live alongside others who continue to be trapped in that yolk of sin. That long time that we have spent in sin should have prepared us to fight free from that very yolk; but without the knowledge of Christ first we would not know that we could be set free! Christ continue to try to get us to read His Word in the hopes that we will be able to identify this yolk that is holding us back from a free life with Him; we just need to read it and believe it!

Points to Ponder:

Do you feel trapped in this world?

Do you realise that there is a freedom for all?