Wednesday Reading: 1 Timothy 1 1-7

Key Verse: 1 Timothy 1 4

4  nor to give heed to fables and endless genealogies (which provide doubts rather than the nurture of God in faith).

Devotion:

What sort of things do you find make you start to doubt what is going on in your life with God? There are many things that we do not think about which do cast doubt and those things can be simple stories or even finding out who’s who in the lives of those around you. One major stumbling block or should I say doubting block is the hunting down of families in the bible or in our lives. What turns up either distresses us or confuses us because we, in theory, could all trace our lives back to Noah and sons! That would then mean we are all related which then casts doubt in our minds.

When we place our faith and trust in God’s Word we should be accepting it as the absolute truth which means that we are all related. Just because it was OK back then to marry your close relatives (because there was nobody else) does not mean that it is ok now. We have come a long way in life and we need to realise that the more we breed the more we corrupt and mix our genes which means the more likely we are to have faults appear if we marry close relations. The actual explanation is simple but always casts doubt first. That is why we should be avoiding those subjects until we have the confidence that we can seek out the answer before we collapse in a heap!

Doubt is dangerous because it is like a flaw in a design. If it is tried before it is secured then it may well fail. But if we do have time to find out how to protect ourselves from that flaw then we will be able to work our way through the problem. When we begin to realise that Christ wants us to be strong by depending on Him and He wants us to learn through the Holy Spirit, then we have a means to strengthen and make sure our ways before we are tried to destruction. At university we were to try things to their design limits before then trying them to destruction to prove that the design limits were there and could be trusted. God wants us to know how much we can trust in Him. We need to do it and not doubt it!

Points to Ponder:

Do you trust limits?

Are you trusting God’s limits on you?

Tuesday Reading: Jeremiah 17 9

Key Verse: Jeremiah 17 9

9  The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?

Devotion:

When doubts start to creep in then we start to go astray – but isn’t that just human? Well yes it is, but it does not mean that we have to go that way because we still do have a choice. It does not matter whether we have been brought up in a Christian home or whether we have been brought up in a secular home; we still have the choice to make and it is our choice. Ok, the odds are stacked against you if you are brought up in a secular home but when you finally do get to hear the truth you will be faced with the same choices as if you were brought up in a Christian home.

Our problems, from the beginning of time, has always been that we have a wicked heart. Our very core beings are corrupt because of the corruption Satan spoiled us with and because of that we tend to follow the track of least resistance when we meet up against rules. You would think that the path of least resistance would be to follow the rules but as soon as we are faced with all the odds we quickly find that the path of least resistance is actually to work against God – Satan has made sure that that is true!

Wide and straight is the highway to hell, but narrow and winding is the path that leads to Heaven. God wants us to be on that narrow winding path; we know this because He has given us our torch to find the way, instructions to find that path, rules to stay on it and a whole bunch of encouragement to boot. So if that is the case, why then do we insist on choosing the wide and straight path? Because it seems so easy! Satan is not going to allow us to freely find out the destination of this straight highway he has laid before us – otherwise we would know the truth. Instead he plants uphill struggles all along the narrow winding path so that we might give up and go back to his highway to hell. Very cunning, but absolutely deceitful! Never doubt the narrow winding path, but always question the straight and easy path...

Points to Ponder:

Do you question your direction each day?

Are you following God’s directions?

Monday Reading: Job 21 7-19

Key Verse: Job 21 19

19  God lays up his iniquity for his children. He repays him, and he knows.

Devotion:

How many time have you asked the question, or been asked the question “why do the wicked people prosper?” Well, despite some people saying that you should just read your bible and believe God, it is a very good question to ask. Not because it may raise feelings of resentment or feelings of jealousy, but rather that it will help you to understand why we seem to have it rough when they seem to get away with it!

It’s one of those things that we question right from school days right through our whole lives... why do they get away with it when we don’t seem to be able to get away with anything! If you do do a study through the book of Job you will find that God was pleased with the way that Job had spoken – and when we see a statement like that it must cover all that he spoke and not just one of two words. God supported Job’s explanation here in these verses.

God wants us to learn right from wrong because we should be trying to be Christians and to act more like He wants us to. That means that when we do go astray, God will pull us up before we get too deep into trouble. In other words, we do a little bit wrong and we get it in the neck! But on the other side of the coin, we can see that the wicked people of this world seem to get away with all manner of things. Well, those people are going to face a punishment that not even your or I would wish upon them because hell is not a place that you would wish on them! God knows that we are not going to go there. He knows that we will be spending eternity with Him. Making sure we stay on the straight and narrow will help us to be a better witness to others. Just because a friend or someone you like is doing things wrong, does not mean that you should. Stick with God. Stick with His ways. Put up with the telling off because it is good for you!

Points to Ponder:

Do you think the world is unfair?

Do you think God is unfair now?

Sunday Reading: Genesis 17 17

Key Verse: Genesis 17 17 

17  And Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born to him that is a hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear?

Devotion:

Doubt is a cancer. Just a tiny bit of doubt will start to grow and end up consuming so much more before you realise it. None of us are immune from doubt because it has always been there in us. So if it has always been there then the problem is not that we have it but how we can manage it. Managing doubt can be very difficult or it can be hard; but if you say that it is easy then just maybe you are not thinking things through properly.

Adam and Eve had doubt. We knew this because they were tempted by the serpent through such a simple scam; “you won’t die” was an outright lie because Satan knew that God meant that they would die spiritually and not physically. He is the one that will use every possible scam and scheme that he can muster in order to trip us up before we get to know Christ – and even then he continually attacks us in the hopes that we may turn our backs on Christ.

Do not ever be discouraged to think that your faith is at risk because you have given in to something or because you have failed at something! Do not ever think that God is not able to do what He has promised to each one of us. Do not ever think that God is not with us. As long as you can keep those thoughts in your mind and depend on God’s Word and not your own imaginations, then you will be able to fight your doubt all the way. We do need to constantly remind ourselves of all the things that God has done in our past to see just how willing He has been and how much He does actually care for us. Trusting in God is a daily exercise, not a one-time affair…

Points to Ponder:

What will make you change?

God will never let go!