Friday Reading: James 4 1-4

Key Verse: James 4 3
3  You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it upon your lusts.

Devotion:
How many times in your life have you asked for something and never got it? Most of the time that we ask for things it is because we want them as opposed to needing them; when we do need something it is often supplied to us. Our wants and our needs are two different things... We need food and water to physically survive but we would rather have cake and coke! Our need is for sustenance but our want is for the niceties! If we have both set out in front of us we will do what is in our hearts and that is to go after our wants rather than our needs because our hearts are ruled by emotion rather than common sense!

You can wind up just about any country enough and they will be willing to go to war. War is where people kill each other; yet they would not choose to kill another person normally. Our hearts do give in to our lusts and our wants rather than our needs. We may need peace, but our hearts want us to have war against those that do not want us to have peace.

And then we come to the way we act with God... Not only do we do all this in front of Him (so we are acting like that to Him) but we get to the point where we suddenly think that it is OK to ask for our wants rather than our needs. That is when we suddenly get a deaf ear turned towards us. Why should God listen to our wants when He knows that that is exactly what they are? Why should He feed our lusts when He knows what we do need? If we ask in vain we should not expect to receive! If we want to have Christ as our Friend, we need to first turn our back on the world because the world has already rejected Christ and He does not abide in it. It’s not a case of turning you back on everything and all others, it’s a case of sorting out the difference between your wants and your needs!

Points to Ponder:
Do you always get what you want?
 
Are you asking God for your wants or your needs?

Thursday Reading: Genesis 3 1-7
 
Key Verse: Genesis 3 4
4  And the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die,

Devotion:
When was the last time that you doubted yourself? We probably give in to doubt every day without thinking much of it; we are told something and instead of thinking about the truth we just accept that we have made a mistake and believe what we have been told rather than do the donkey work and find out the truth. Why do we do that? Probably because it is easier for us to believe someone else; anyway, it gives us someone else to blame when things go wrong...

As the Three Stooges would say “That is another fine mess you have gotten me into”... Isn’t that just the case; blaming someone else because of the choices we have made. Yes, many a time we are told thing by those in authority and if we were to question everything we would never get anything done, but there are things we are told that we know are wrong. Why should we give in to those things when we know they are wrong?

Satan is behind so many things in our lives that look so good, sound so good and yet prove to be against what we have been taught. Yet so many things like that surround us every day that we start to doubt... That is all Satan is trying to do. He is not trying to make us all worship him because he knows that is not possible because he has already been defeated; but if he can just make us doubt then we have taken the first step away from God just like Adam and Eve.

Doubt is one of the strongest weapons that Satan has at his disposal and he is going to try that on us at every opportunity that he gets. So how do we avoid it? That’s when the hard work comes in, that thing that we all shy away from... We have to read our bibles so that we know what God wants us to know. If we do know the truth then we can make the right choices by following the truth rather than giving in to doubt!

Points to Ponder:
Do you doubt things?

What makes you doubt God’s Word?

Wednesday Reading: Psalm 103:8-14
 
Key Verse: Psalms 103 13
13  As a father pities his children, Jehovah pities those who fear Him.

Devotion:
What happens when a child falls down in the playground? The first person to jump up and rush over is probably their parent! No matter what the child was up to, being hurt is not a good thing and the pity of that parent extends over and above any indiscretion that child was up to. I can remember a few times when I thought that I was not going to get any pity because of what I had done, and my parents still showed their love and pity to me.

We have a father in heaven whose pity and mercy is without end. We cannot compare His pity for us against anything that we know. We cannot fathom His mercy for us – it is without end. Have you ever tried to imagine walking from the north pole to south pole? When you reach the south pole, you suddenly start walking north again... But if you were to walk round the equator westward, you would continue walking westward forever. God’s mercy and pity for us is without end...

Without the love and care that we have in our families, we would not know of the love and care that we can find in Christ. The family unit is the place where we start to learn about love and care. From there we can then learn about who in life will love and care for us. When we read God’s word we can learn just how much Christ has already done for us and how much He continues to do for us on a day by day basis. We may think that our parents were harsh at times but we know they do love us. If we continue to work against God we may well find that He can be harsh too, but we will always know that He loves us! We may find out just how to make our parents angry within a few seconds – but God is never tempted into anger. If we are persistently bad He will try to open our eyes to what we are doing so that we can return some of His love rather than continuing to be bad. All He wants is for us to show that love and respect...

Points to Ponder:
Do you wind your parents up?
 
Are you winding God up?

Tuesday Reading: Hebrews 13 7-9
 
Key Verse: Hebrews 13 8
8  Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.

Devotion:
No matter how far back you go through the ages you will continue to see that God does not change and you will also see the evidence that God had promised us Salvation right from the beginning. When people come and try say how the bible contradicts itself it is because they do not know what the bible says; all we have to do is to read God’s Word and we too will see the fullness therein. But we all need help at some stage to get to understand what some of it says because we all get side-tracked by our own thoughts and our own ways. If we have one idea and the bible tells us another, we would rather stick to our own than have to change... That is human nature – to stick with what is known rather than embrace change.

God has given us faithful men and women who will continue to try and explain His Word to us in simple terms so that we can begin to learn it. Once we start to learn we will then be able to learn more. Unless someone first teaches us to read, we will not be able to read our bibles. The Ethiopian eunuch was reading Isaiah but could not understand what he was reading until it was explained to him. We are like that in that we may read and not understand until someone is able to explain it in a different way to us, one that we can relate to. But isn’t God supposed to guide us? Well, have you ever had a teacher that was so brilliant that you always struggled to understand the perfect way they explained things? Well, sometimes we do struggle to understand God because we are the ones that are confused...

Understanding God’s Word is not all about reading as much of it as possible each day but trying to understand it each day. We don’t need all manner of people explaining to us what they think God should be, all we need is one who is faithfully recounting God’s Word because that is what we do need!

Points to Ponder:
Do you always understand everything?

Are you listening to others explanations about God?