Thursday 5 May 2011

Thursday Reading: Genesis 3 1-10

Key Verse: Genesis 3 1-10
8  And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God in the middle of the trees of the garden.

Devotion:
Oh how awful it is to be caught out doing something really bad; the worse the act, the worse the feeling that we have when we get caught. The worse the act the more that we will try to hide the act from others so that they may not find out in the first place. Oh how we fool ourselves! Just as we find out by reading the Genesis account about God looking for Adam and Eve after they had first sinned we can relate that account to our lives in so many ways. Each time we depart from doing God’s will, each time we sin, we have to run and hide from Him because we know that He will not be pleased with what we have done!

We can look back and see the futility of our actions; I mean, trying to hide from God... the God who knows everything, who sees everything... what are we thinking! But you know what – we all do it still, just like Adam and Eve, we all still try to run and hide. Time and time again we see just how many people have tried to run and hide from God. Satan will continue to corrupt people’s lives so that he can trip us up into believing that we have the chance to run and hide from all manner of evil that we may get up to. He will even try to convince you that you can hide it from God. He may not get you to run physically like Jonah did but may get you to break God’s rules by telling you a lie like he did to Eve.

Yes we can run and try to hide but when we do that we then have to put up with the consequences; not from the running and hiding but from the sin that we tried to hide in the first place. We cannot escape the fact that we have sinned against God. We cannot escape from the fact that we have broken God’s simple rules. What we can do though is find out about what He has done for us so that we can escape the punishment for those sins. He tells us through His Word that the punishment is death, but He has shown us His love through Christ on the cross so that we can seek forgiveness. And if we seek that forgiveness with an honest and humble heart, He is faithful and just to forgive us! What an Awesome God we serve!

Points to Ponder:
What things have you run from in your life?

Are you willing to stop running from God?

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Wednesday Reading: Jonah 1 1-4

Key Verse: Jonah 1 3
3  But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of The Lord. And he went down to Joppa. And he found a ship going to Tarshish. And he gave its fare, and went down into it, in order to go with them to Tarshish, away from the sight of The Lord.

Devotion:
One of the greatest problems we have in our lives is unbelief and I am not just talking about unbelief in God because we doubt all sorts of things in our lives. If you want to be as stubborn as Jonah then you can expect some rather strange things to happen in your life as God tries to get through to you. I am not saying that if you run away from God that you will end up in a big fish because that is what it took for Jonah. God knows what it will take to get through to you and He will make sure that if that is what it is going to take, then that is what He will do!

Does this mean that God is going to make our lives miserable? Far from it! You are the one that will make your life miserable all by yourself – believe me because I can see how I have done that in my life. It may just take God having a stern word with you rather than having to isolate you totally from society, or it may well take your life falling apart like Jonah’s life in order for Him to get through to you. But just because you believe in God it does not exclude you from the terrors that happen to people on this planet! Just because you are a Christian does not mean that you will escape the earthquake whilst all around you have to experience it... We live in a dynamic world that is firmly in Satan’s grip. He is going to do what he can to try and get you to doubt God – so expect things to still happen!

But if we turn our backs on God when He is trying to get through to us, we are not just turning our backs on God but turning towards Satan and giving him free reign instead. We can look through the book of Job and see just how evil Satan is and how much he is willing to do to even the most devout Christian just so that he can try to make us doubt! That is not a place that you should even think about going towards – just like Jonah would never have wanted to end up in the belly of a fish!

Points to Ponder:
Do you still have a problem listening to people?

How well do you listen to God?

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Tuesday Reading: Joshua 10 8

Key Verse: Joshua 10 8
8  And Jehovah said to Joshua, Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hands. There shall not a man of them stand before you.

Devotion:
What is it going to take for you to listen to God’s Word? How about what was happening to Joshua after he had taken Ai? (Yes that’s the place, not artificial intelligence) God wanted Joshua to have absolute trust in Him so that the people would follow and have absolute trust and hence faith in God. And that is exactly what God wants in our lives still today – He wants us to know that we can trust Him in everything. He wants us to know that we can depend on Him for everything. He wants us activate that trust and that dependence and to use it every day in our lives.

How do you think that He could show you to depend on Him? Could He continue talking to you until He is blue in the face to wait for you to actually listen? Could He allow something to happen in your life so that you suddenly realise that you do need to depend on Him? Well I would like to think that He would continue talking to me until I listen but I know that from my life people eventually give up telling me to do things and then things tend to go wrong! People can try to warn us as much as they can – but if we do not listen then we are the ones that are going to have the problem! If we are only going to use that faith to depend on God when things are going really bad then should we expect anything else in our life?

Joshua was shown many times that He needed to trust God and some of those times may well have seemed a bit scary – when we look back at them now we think of them as being scary, but for someone on the inside that is actively placing his trust in God it might have been ‘normal’. We know that many people have continued to doubt God’s strength because we can read about people in our bibles and we can read about God’s responses to those actions by those people. With hind-sight we can look back and say we know best but when we are caught up in the action we look to what is directly in front of us and nothing else – how then can we see what God wants in our lives? The only way is to focus on His Word to see what He wants of us...

Points to Ponder:
Do you trust people?

Are you trusting God?

Monday 2 May 2011

Monday Reading: Hebrews 4 11-16

Key Verse: Hebrews 4 15
15  For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted just as we are, yet without sin.

Devotion:
One of our biggest problems in life is probably unbelief, not just in God but in so many things in our lives. Before we get to know God we are in a state of unbelief and it is that single fact that is keeping us from God because that is the one thing that He cannot forgive – our unbelief. Christ was tempted by Satan in every way as we are and He was able to withstand all that Satan tried because He believed in the truth. Jesus knows the truth and was not swayed in any way as we would be. We start out in unbelief and work away from God whereas Jesus started in belief and remained there.

When we get to know Christ and hence God we begin to know that that truth that Christ is the Son of God is what separates us from the rest of the world. That separates us from the people who do not have hope. We have that hope because of our belief in Christ.

We have learned that truth through our bibles – God’s Word – which is the great separator splitting our lost lives and our lives in Christ. Nothing else will give us that truth in this world because everything else in this world is corrupted already; we have to look to the one thing which cannot be corrupted – God’s Word. Yes man will do his best to bend the truth and to say what he thinks should be said, but the actual truth of God’s Word will never be changed! If you are not already engrossed in reading God’s Word then you are not accepting the truth. If you are avoiding God’s Word then you are avoiding the truth. 

It is not going to be a walk in the park when you do find out the truth because you will then have to turn your back on the things that you have got used to in your life. It will not be easy to accept the truth because you may well have worked against it for most of your life. God’s Word will open your eyes to the truth like nothing else can because God alone wants you to know the truth.

Points to Ponder:
How do you tell if someone tells you a lie?

Are you trusting God’s Word?

Sunday 1 May 2011

Sunday Reading: Matthew 14 10-14

Key Verse: Matthew 14 14
14  And Jesus went out and saw a great crowd, and He was moved with compassion toward them. And He healed their sick.

Devotion:
What do you do when you hear of bad news? Do you like to go somewhere where you can be alone and spend some quiet time by yourself or do you like to be with friends and family for the comfort you can get? It is probably a difficult call for most because we do feel like we just want to get away from all of the strife and find a quiet moment to reflect on what has happened and yet we also crave the comfort we can get from people that we love.

When Jesus was told of the death of John the Baptist I am sure that it was no surprise to Him but He did elect to go somewhere deserted to have time alone. I am also pretty sure that He would not have chosen to have time alone by Himself but rather to have time speaking with God the Father. If there is one person that you should choose to be alone with it should be God because He is the only one who will truly understand what you are going through and He will be the one who can give you what you need at that moment in time.

God knew that what Jesus needed at that time was the opportunity to share His love with the many more people that were being left behind. Jesus knew that He would be able to see John in heaven pretty soon but all around Him were people that did not yet have that privilege. God knew that there was still work to be done and He knew that Jesus needed to share His love at that time – the perfect opportunity would be for Him to share that love by healing the needy people around Him. God provides the best opportunities at the best times! The only stumbling block is our faith in being able to trust that God will provide that opportunity when we need it... And that is what it is; faith in the unseen. Trust God because He can.

Points to Ponder:
Do you trust God?

Do you still trust God when things go wrong?