Thursday 27 May 2010

Thursday Reading: John 10 10-11
 
Key Verse: John 10 10
10  The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come so that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Devotion:
You don’t have to look too far to realise just what a bunch of thieves we are. I’m not apportioning blame on any individual nor reminding anyone of what they have done by themselves but rather reminding us as a nation, as a people, that we are thieves. When it comes down to it that is what we do during war times. We invade, maybe plunder and carry away something from that land as our own. Is that not the definition of a thief? Taking something without asking... We can use all the excuses we like but when we do examine ourselves we find that that is what we are like on the inside, that is the way that we are. Our lives are built up around such things and around that sort of idea that the strong will be able to take from the weak.

But it’s not just the physical that we steal because we also steal the spiritual! When we do something that upsets someone else or when we do not do something that we should be doing we are taking away spiritual joy from someone else without asking. We are stealing their spiritual joy. God has given each of us a spirit by which we can commune with His Spirit. It is not something physical that we can put our hands on but we sure do know about it when something goes wrong!

God wants each of us to have joy in our lives. Not just physical joy but spiritual joy too. He wants us to be able to bask in the sunshine that is His to give to each of us. He wants us to be able to have that joy in abundance. He came so that we might find that joy because we are being released from the trappings of sin. We are being released from the burdens of sin. He is giving us a way through which we can attain our spiritual joy in abundance. He is the way. He is the life. If we want to be able to get the most out of our lives then we have to make sure that we have the right ingredients to start with. We have to make sure that we have Christ in our lives and to make sure that He is the centre of our lives too.

Points to Ponder:
Have you been spiritually robbed lately?

Are you a thief in the night or are you following Christ?

Wednesday 26 May 2010

Wednesday Reading: Proverbs 30 2-3
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 30 2
2  Surely I am more like an animal than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man.

Devotion:
Agur was a man who knew that he was just a man. He saw the people around him and he saw the difference between the way that he was and the way that men of God were. He had obviously some knowledge about men from the bible such as were holy men and blessed men and he had knowledge of those prophets that showed themselves to be different from others by doing God’s will. That is what undid him, the knowledge that he fell short of that mark set by others.

God has given us our bibles so that we too may find out that we do fall far short of the mark of the man that He created in the first place. God created Adam as a man who was wise, understanding and who communed with Him. He was good enough to be in God’s presence... Nowadays it is sometimes hard to find an example of a good man from our point of view rather than from God’s point of view. Our measure by which we judge others is but a yard stick in comparison to the measure set out by God.

Adam filled his mind with things of God and His ways. We now fill our minds with so much junk what we do not have room for the things of God. We fill our minds with so much junk that it spills out all over the place without us realising just how much of a mess we are making! Agur began to see the folly of his own existence. He began to see just how far short of God’s mark that he fell. When we start to discover that our ways are so corrupted with the world around us we can then start to realise how important God’s ways are. He has laid down His ways in our bibles so that we may know them. It is our decision to follow those ways and leave the worldly ways behind. If we do anything else then we follow the foolishness that Agur began to see that surrounded him. The foolish ways of man will never amount to anything after his death – that is the place that we should fear, not the now but the when...

Points to Ponder:
Do you consider yourself to be good?
 
How do you think God sees you?

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Tuesday Reading: Jeremiah 10 14-16
 
Key Verse: Jeremiah 10 14
14  Every man is stupid for lack of knowledge; every refiner is put to shame by the graven image; for his molten image is a lie, and no breath is in them.

Devotion:
No matter how much we think we can achieve or succeed in doing things we will never match what God has already done. Through His creation He has shown us His power and His supremacy. Through His ways He continues to show us that He is our Living God and that He is all powerful. Everything we attain to is to nothing in comparison to His works!

We have done some pretty amazing things – the human race that is. We have made it possible to transplant a heart or other essential organ from one man to another. We have made it possible to fly to the other side of the earth within a day. We have made it possible to create machines that are so small that we cannot see them without the aid of a microscope... but still we fall short of doing things right! No matter how far we advance we always seem to take backward steps when walking toward righteousness. The more we advance in science the more we fall short of God’s glory. This does not mean that we should give up our scientific ways and ask God for everything. He has given us the wisdom to do these things. He has given us the minds to conquer such science. All He wants is that we do follow Him first.

The quicker we make advances the quicker we find out the faults in the science man assumes. The quicker we find answers the more we build up against ourselves and the more we uncover the truth about God. Yet so many people still refuse to believe because they are baffled by the science and are confused by the knowledge required to understand such things. God’s ways have been the same straightforward, truthful, simple ways from the beginning of time. We are the ones that seem to make them seem difficult because we don’t want to believe that something so good is so simple. We see the work that is involved with all the science and we assume that more should be involved with God because it is so much better! It is vanity – God’s ways are good and they are simple enough for everyone to understand.

Points to Ponder:
How many scientific theories do you know?

How much of God’s Word do you know?

Monday 24 May 2010

Monday Reading: Psalms 40 1-4
 
Key Verse: Psalms 40 4
4  Blessed is the man who makes Jehovah his trust and does not turn to the proud, nor to those who turn aside to a lie.
 
Devotion:
Because we are governed by time we automatically assume that everything else is because that is all we know. God is not. That alone makes it difficult for us to comprehend Him and His ways sometimes. No matter how much we think that we can understand it we are always impatient because we still live in time. We see everything as having a start and end and when we want something we always like to put a time limit on our requests so that we can gain some sort of closure – but God is not governed by time... God is the one that created time for us to live in and by.

When things go wrong in our lives we want to be able to see the end of those bad times as soon as we can; we do not like those things to linger in our lives. When things go badly we lift them up to God to ask for His help, His blessing and His peace; but we also put a time limit on those requests. Maybe not physically but mentally, in our minds, we limit everything. God wants us to recognise that because He is not governed by time He does not have to want on or for time. His ways are beyond our comprehension in that front because everything is always in the present for Him. So when we ask Him for things in our lives we must not shackle His ways by imposing time on them but rather patiently wait on Him because He has already known it!

Our mission in life is not to prove that we know Christ, nor to prove that He knows us but simply to believe in Him, trust in Him and praise Him. Just those simple acts are going to put us at odds with the world because the world will want us to keep to time and to take it first rather than God. We need to put our trust firmly in Christ’s hands and not in the proud upstarts of this world. We need to put our faith and trust in the truth and not in the lies of this world. The proud are too proud to admit to their lies and will trap as many as possible in their lie to try and comfort themselves. We need to put aside those ways and firmly grasp Christ’s ways.

Points to Ponder:
What do you look for in someone to follow them?

Are you looking for Christ’s truth?

Sunday 23 May 2010

Sunday Reading: Proverbs 17 3
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 17 3
3  The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but Jehovah tries the hearts.

Devotion:
When I was young I was able to go on a tour with the school through a steel works where they turned iron ore (rock) into steel through various steps most of which involved so much heat that we could not stand close to them. I can still remember all the smoke that used to come from that steel works as all of the impurities were burned off time after time; the red dust getting absolutely everywhere. But the iron and steel that that dirty place created was used all round the country. There was no way that that place could be used for anything other than the production of iron and steel because none of the equipment was right for anything else. The same would be for a furnace or plant where they produced silver or gold; they would be purpose build.

Each one of these plants do use a whole lot of heat to burn off impurities and to melt the metals into blocks that can then be carried, transported or used in other ways. Each plant works at the raw materials slowly taking away the impurities until what is left behind is as pure as they can make it. But if you were to study any material that comes out of these places there is always some impurities left behind. We are like that raw material, full of junk to start with. When God gets hold of us He blasts away at the junk to leave behind something that is closer to the finished product. We will always have our share of faults that we carry around with us, but the more that we are willing to allow God to work with us the purer that He will be able to make us!

It takes a lot of heat and many processes to make steel out of iron. If we would get too close to that process we would find out the hard way just how hot things can get. God, thankfully, is not going to burn us to a crisp just so that He can get rid of our sins. He has already allowed Jesus Christ to pay for our sins so all that is required is that we allow Him to work in our lives to purify our hearts for His will and His work.

Points to Ponder:
Do you listen to His call?
 
Are you submitting to His trying?