Tuesday Reading: Proverbs 1 7-9
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 1 8
8  My son, hear the instruction of your father, and forsake not the law of your mother;

Devotion:
How many times did you wish that you did not have to listen to your parents when you were young? How many times did you wish that you were old enough to take care of yourself rather than them doing it for you... And then when you get older you start to think the opposite... Why can’t my parents just take care of this like they used to! If we are not willing to listen to instruction when it is due then we are always going to have the problem of thinking that wisdom is always on the other side...

God wants each of us to learn when we need to learn, not when we want to learn but when we need it most. That is why He has given us a brain that is able to soak up so much information when we are young and able. He wants us to take those instructions and bury them in our hearts and in our minds so that they will stick with us as we grow older. Then when the time comes for us to call on that wisdom we will already have it. It is never too late to start learning but it is a lot wiser to learn whilst our brains are at their peak for learning ability.

It is not just the things that our parents teach us that are going to be called upon throughout our lives but the things that God wants us to learn too. He has given us the ability to learn things now so that we can pass on what we have learned to others when the time comes. He has given us the bible so that we have that knowledge at our finger tips so that when we cannot recall it we can look it up again and remind ourselves. Our bibles serve as our constant reminders of God’s Law and also the wisdom that He wants each of us to carry round with us. He has given us His Word so that we can pass it on to others just as others have passed it on to us. The bible is for sharing! Our God is for sharing!

Points to Ponder:
Do you really listen to your parents?

Do you really listen to God?

Monday Reading: Proverbs 1 1-6
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 1 3
3  to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgement, and uprightness;
 
Devotion:
How much studying do you do when you have a problem to solve? Many of us will jump in at the deep end and try to work things out from the inside rather than looking for the instructions and then solving it from the outside as it were. Too many of us think that we have the knowledge built in to solve just about anything that comes our way. But, no matter how clever we actually are there are always going to be things that come our way that we have to get help with or ask someone else how to do it.

Relationships are one of those things that we like to think that we have the knowledge to be able to handle. We jump in and try to swim as best we can not realising just how deep the water is that we have plunged into. We do not know the extent of the water, the depth of it or whether we will actually be able to swim in it. If only we had taken time to stop and ask someone some simple directions before we jumped in... If only we had taken some swimming lessons before we decided we could swim! There are so many things that we just do not think about and so many things that we need to know before we jump to the next level in life.

That is why God has given us the bible. If we are not going to ask a friend or ask our parents then we at least have to have somewhere we can turn and get the right answer. Our parents may well have been through it and understand things already so asking them is what we should be doing first. If they have lived their lives for God then they would have learned a lot from God’s Word already; that same wisdom we can then draw on now. God has made sure that people continued to write down His instructions for further generations to learn from. God made sure that some very wise people such as Solomon wrote down instructions for us to not only know him but also to get to know God through those instructions He gave to Solomon. God wants the best for each of us; we just need to listen to those instructions!

Points to Ponder:
Who do you think you learn most from?

Are you trying to listen to God?

Sunday Reading: Psalms 119 9
 
Key Verse: Psalms 119 9
9  BETH: With what shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your Word.

Devotion:
I’m pretty sure that all of us can look back on things in our lives and wish we had either done things differently or simply not done some things! But that is the way that life is... We are born into sin and live by sin until we learn God’s ways and accept them as our own ways. We then continue in sin but know we are forgiven by Jesus and know that we do not have to give in to that sin anymore. But that certainly does not exclude of from having to learn more about what God would have us to do by reading His Word!

We could look back on life and get all depressed about the way that we acted and the way that we are and think that there is nothing worth living for... Or we could seek out the truth and aim for that truth. God has given us that truth in our bibles; in His Word and He wants us to be able to learn from that truth each and every day. He wants us to learn that we are forgiven or can be forgiven and that we can learn all of this through His Word. His word points out that the beginnings of wisdom comes through learning His Word and applying His Word. We need to apply it just as much as we learn it.

And how do we go about learning His Word. Well the most important thing is that we need to hear it in the first place. That means picking up our bibles and reading them, not as a novel but as the truth. We need to be together in churches so that we can share that truth and learn from each other. We need to open up all that we know to others so that they can then know that same truth that we find. We need to take heed of all that has been written down because God made sure that all of it was written down for our benefit! It is not a chore that we have to endure but rather a new and exciting way of life that God has made for us to enjoy with Him! Enjoy it!

Points to Ponder:
How much do you think you know?

Have you learned anything from God’s Word?

Saturday Reading: Ruth 1 15-16
 
Key Verse: Ruth 1 16
16  And Ruth said, Do not beg me to leave you, to return from following after you. For where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
 
Devotion:
How much of an impression do you make on people when you tell them about something? Are you one of these people that would make a really good sales person because you can convince others of just about anything or are you one of those people that can only tell it how it is? It does take all types to make up this world and it certainly needs all types otherwise we would never be able to learn things from each other. So when you tell someone of a friend of yours, do you think they would want to get to know your friend or do you think they would want to run in the other direction?

You see, when you start to tell someone about someone else, that first impression may well be what counts when they think about befriending them or not. How many people have you not even tried to get to know just because of what someone else said about them? So how do we go about describing God to others? How do we tell others about Jesus and about Christianity? Do we make it sound like a total bore and something that they would never want to get close to or do we make it sound like something that is never to be missed? Or are you aiming for something in between?

Which ever way we look at it we are going to be making those first impressions by the way that we tell them about our relationship with God. What comes out of our mouths is going to depend on that relationship that we have with Him; we could end up describing our best friend or we could end up widening the gap between Him and them. Naomi made such an impression on Ruth that Ruth wanted to stick by her; it was not just because she had nowhere to go but because she knew that Naomi had a God that she could trust – and that was just from her impression of what God was like. In order for us to be able to make that sort of impression on others, we have to have a relationship with God that others would want to strive to have too. There is nothing more encouraging that seeing a strong relationship grow stronger...

Points to Ponder:
How do you describe your friends?

How do you describe God?