Tuesday Reading: Psalms 145 1-3
 
Key Verse: Psalms 145 2
2  Every day I will bless You; and I will praise Your name forever and ever.

Devotion:
When things are going well we love to lift up the name of God and praise Him for everything that He is doing in our lives. When we see how much He blesses us we lift up His name so that others can see that we love our Lord. But what about the times when things are not so good? What about the times when we are finding things tough? God has promised us a place in heaven when we will no longer have to put up with things going wrong and things not being good. He has promised us a place where we will no longer have to dread the unforeseen. That and more is what we can expect from our Heavenly Father when we finally go home to Him – for that alone we should be praising Him each and every day!

But, sadly, we live in a corrupt and sinful world where we do face all manner of things that are going to hurt us and even to lead us astray. That does not mean that we have to give in to them and certainly does not mean that God is the one giving those things into our lives. We are the ones letting them into our lives most of the time but there are also times when God will allow certain things to come into our lives so that we can be strengthened and built up ready for the next thing that He knows we will let into our lives.

You see, no matter how we look at it, God is blessing us every day through ways we just don’t realise! Whether it is to raise us up ready for what lies around the corner or to strengthen us so we can make it through the next week, God is the one behind each Christian and He is doing an amazing job! There is no way that we could fully comprehend just how much He is doing because the more that we look the more that we find He does. The more that we find the more we realise just how awesome He is! His grace and mercy go far beyond our vain imaginations. His word shows us how He has done this from the beginning of time but it also shows us through many generations of Kings in Israel how we turn our backs on Him. This is not particular to those people at that time but rather to the whole of humanity all throughout time. Now is the tie to stand up and praise God for His mercy, His patience and His love towards sinners like us!

Points to Ponder:
When do you turn to ask God for help?

Do you realise how much He actually does?

Monday Reading: Luke 20 27-38
 
Key Verse: Luke 20 38
38  For He is not God of the dead, but of the living. For all live to Him.
 
Devotion:
One thing that we can count on is that God does know the answers before we start to get ourselves confused. When we start to try and reason things through with logic or science we get ourselves into a right pickle as we try to make human sense of Godly matters – I’m sorry but that is just never going to work! It is a very common thing to try to undermine things of God because that way man can have some sort of excuse not to follow God’s law and not to be bound by the truth that is in His Word.

Man likes to think that He is in charge and that He knows the answers. Man likes to think that He can make his own world in which he can live, lifting up his own rules and laws that he has surmised as being true... unfortunately for us we do not know the whole truth. When the Sadducees confronted Christ with their own little logic problem they sought to trip His law up so that they could make their own rule instead – what they did not expect is to have their ideas debunked and made to look like fools...

God is not just a god of the world or a god of the dead but our God of everything. God is all knowing and all sufficient. There is nothing that our God cannot do or does not know. There is nothing that has been left unplanned; despite our earthly ways which we think are either random or ordered, God’s ways are the only ways because He has already planned things for us. Yes we do have choice as to how we influence His ways but He already knows our thoughts and continue to plan things for each one of us. He is our Living God looking after us as we live. He is not waiting for us all to die so that He can then do something with our souls... He is trying to guide our souls right here and right now – we are the ones not listening! We cannot come up with our own rules as being better than God’s law because He already knows our faults. We have ways here on earth that suit us when we live here on earth and He has given us laws through which we can live an abundant life on earth – but when we go to be with Him afterward we will no longer be bound by our earthly ways...

Points to Ponder:
What rules do you find ridiculous?

Are you looking forward to the freedom from mans rules in heaven?

Sunday Reading: Romans 6 5-10
 
Key Verse: Romans 6 8
8  But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

Devotion:
The one thing that we remember each Sunday is Christ’s resurrection; something that we treasure and glorify God for knowing that it was for us that He went through all that He did. When we become Christians we die to our sins. Or in other words we no longer have the curse of sin hanging over us. Once we die physically, we no longer have all the bad things of the world to worry about – so when we die in Christ we no longer have any of the sin to worry about. If we then liken ourselves to having died with Christ then we must surely liken ourselves to being raised from the dead with Him too.

When Christ arose from the grave, death was no longer an issue because He arose not as a human anymore but in His resurrected body that will no longer ever have to face death again. Just like that, when we are saved by His grace we no longer have to worry about that second death. Yes, we still will be faced with our physical death as He was, but we do not have to face any further death after that because we will be living with Him in a glorified body just as He does now. This is why Christ said that He goes to prepare a place for us – so that we can join Him in eternal life.

We can that Him that His single death was enough to pay for all of our deaths because He took on the sin of the whole world on that cross. We cannot ever imagine what He did have to go through when on that cross because we will not have to face that curse – we live in Christ. Just as we cannot grasp what He went through, we cannot grasp what we face if we do not accept Christ as our Saviour. We have our bibles so that we can begin to understand the predicament that we are in but also so that we can know that Christ has paid it all for us already and that He awaits us in heaven. The only way to heaven is through Him because He is the one that has supplied that free pass into heaven... but only if we come forward and accept it from Him...

Points to Ponder:
Would you like a body that would not face pain?
 
Have you received eternal life from Christ yet?

Saturday Reading: 1 Peter 4 1-2
 
Key Verse: 1 Peter 4 2
2  in order no longer to live in the lusts of men, but in the will of God the remaining time in the flesh.

Devotion:
Have you ever tried to do something that you thought was right and ended up getting a load of grief from it or about it? Have you ever wanted to do something that you knew was right in God’s eyes but has caused all manner of grief from people around? The world has a very different view of what we should be doing or what can be done to that which God has. When we work for God it should be for Him alone because He will guide us in our work so that He can get the best from us. People will tell us all sorts of things which we should do to get the best from any situation, but unless we are doing it for God’s glory then we are barking up the wrong tree!

Christ was the one who willingly took on all manner of things just for us. He took on the full blame for our sins even though He did not sin. He took on the curse that hung over us because He loves us. He went through more suffering than we can imagine just to make sure that we can join Him in heaven! He did not do this in vain... If nobody had taken any notice of it and all had rejected Him then it would have been in vain; but from before the time that He went to the cross and right up until the last day of this earth people are going to turn to Christ because of what He has done. Was it in vain? Certainly not!

We will have to put up with some suffering and pain whilst we live in this corrupt world but it is not going to be in vain. We are being shown just how bad things may get by what happens around us to even to us. This suffering is nothing compared to that which lies ahead if we do not turn to Christ. We can continue to live for this world as we live in it, discarding all things of God and then find out at the end that we made one huge mistake! Or we can turn from this world and live for Christ remembering what He did and not worrying about the difficulties that we may face here on earth knowing what glory await us when we get to live with Him! Give Him the glory now so that we can share in His glory when He wants us to come home...

Points to Ponder:
What sort of life do you live?
 
Are you living for Christ?