June 23: Mark 7 14-15
Key Verse: Mark 7 15
Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.
Devotion:
What is it which makes you afraid of going out into the world and showing people you are a Christian? I know we all still have fears during this time when the virus is still hanging round our necks, but what I am aiming at here is the choice we have to go into a different surrounding to our normal lives and try to make a difference. I used to be very scared of allowing myself to be ‘corrupted’ by people whom I thought not to be Christians, but God has taught me we have to do what Jesus did!
Jesus did not just limit His journey to a few converts and teach them all they needed to preach to others. He went into the most deprived places, the places where criminals kept company and to the places where one would not normally invite yourself into. This is what He wants us to do as well – as scary as it does sound and feel!
The thing which opened my eyes was to go onto a travellers camp and open up the bible to the young children. I have never felt so comforted by God and, as it happened, so protected by the people I was sharing God’s Word with! When God wants you to go somewhere, He is going to make sure you make the right impression and are comforted and cared for as long as you are doing what He is asking. It is very easy to go in with your guns blazing and try to do things by yourself and how you think things should be done. This is not what God is asking. He is asking us to continue listening to His instructions!
So how do we know the difference between what we want and what God wants? There-in lies the issue for us. We have to ask Him and wait for instructions. Not just a couple of seconds after we pray as our minds fill up with good ideas, but wait for as long as it takes for Him to give us a definitive answer – that is always the hard part!
Points to Ponder:
Do you think you are doing the right things for God?
Are you doing what God is actually asking?
June 22: Mark 7 1-8
Key Verse: Mark 7 7
They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.
Devotion:
It is very easy to get caught up in the feelings of a mass gathering and do things without really meaning them. It is very easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and do something which you would otherwise not think of doing. This is part of our human nature; a part we need to watch out for when we come to worship God.
God is not caught up in the moment and will not accept a repetitive task being done as a substitute for a relationship with Him! We may be able to fool people by doing something over and over again to pretend we are doing it for the right reasons, but we cannot pull the wool over God’s eyes – He sees everything, including what is in your heart.
The prophet Isaiah had been given warnings from God that the people would ‘turn cold’ because they would get caught up in doing things out of habit instead of doing them because of their love for God. He wrote those things down for us to remember and people do remember these things; but we still get carried away with doing things out of habit instead of doing it for God. Christ came to give His life for us so we could draw near to God. He gave everything so we could come closer to God with open hearts and minds. The least we can do is come forward with open hearts…
Jesus berated the Pharisees and the teachers for doing things out of habit or because that was the way the other people were doing things. God does not teach us to follow human rules but to follow His rules. He does not want us all to be people who gather round and do things together just because our parents or our grandparents did so. He wants us to do things because we love Him and want to honour Him with our actions and our thoughts.
Points to Ponder:
What do you do to honour God?
Will you do something different today to honour God?
June 21: John 6 60-66
Key Verse: John 6 66
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
Devotion:
One of the hardest things to accept is a person who once believed everything you said, turning their back on you and saying they no longer believe you. If you had given them a reason to turn away such as telling a lie, then you have nobody but yourself to blame. But if you have continued to tell them the whole truth, how do you come to terms with this? The answer is a difficult one to accept, but one we will have to face as Christians from time to time. We have to accept some people just do not want to know the truth when the truth gets hard to accept into their lives...
If we had built our lives on bending the truth all the time, then we would find it very hard to straighten our act up and accept the truth – because that is not what we are used to and not what we have accepted up until the point where we heard the actual truth! We are going to face many people who will say they believe in God and who say and do the right things, but when they have to face the truth, they will turn their backs on God and go their own way.
Let us not tar everyone with this same brush. If we had lived our whole lives in the dark, accepting the light is difficult and living in it a long hard slog. In this case we may well creep back into a dark corner now and again just to get some rest from the bright light which is showing up every little thing we do wrong! But when we do, God knows what is in our hearts and He will extend out His arms to welcome us back every time we walk away – that is His love!
When we see the truth of how much life the spirit gives us, we will be more inclined to allow the light to shine so the spirit can guide us in the light. The light may well be too bright for us to accept at first, we have to become acclimatised to the light. We may well have to accept it in small doses at first otherwise we become totally lost; but the light is the only thing which will show us the correct way to go.
Points to Ponder:
Do you still shy away from the light?
Will you ask the spirit to hold your hand and guide you when the light is too bright?
June 20: John 6 30-33
Key Verse: John 6 30
So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?
Devotion:
What does it take for you to believe something? Do you have to see it in action or do you trust what other people tell you? What then has brought you to the stage where you sought out the great questions of life and of God?
For some it has been a traumatic event in their lives which has made them question their own lives and turn to find comfort in God. For some it is the mundane existence of their lives which has led to them seeking something more from life and found themselves looking at God. But, whatever has happened in your life to get you to this stage where you are seeking God, just remember one thing: It is what comes down from God in Heaven which makes all the sense and what we should be seeking.
We like to try and justify things through earthly events and like to make sense of things according to our own rules or expectations – but sometimes it is beyond our comprehension and we just have to accept there is more to life than our existence. God continues to try and allow people to see how much more to life there is than what we see. He tries to open our hearts to allow true love to come in. He allows many things in our lives so we can try and identify what parts come from Him.
But all through this, He is continuing to pour out His love to us and continues to lift us up when we trip up and stumble. As long as we are willing listen to what we are hearing from God, we are going to be able to achieve what He would like us to do. But when we turn up the volume of the world instead, we lose focus on Him and allow our minds to go off for a wander into the pitfalls the evil one has laid down before us. It is the bread from Heaven which will feed us and allow us to grow stronger each day.
Points to Ponder:
Do you try to survive on whatever food you can get hold of?
Do you continue to look after your spiritual life with bread from Heaven?
June 19: Mark 6 14-16
Key Verse: Mark 6 16
But when Herod heard this, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!”
Devotion:
How far are you willing to go to have your own way or to cover up a lie you have told? I know I have gone pretty far in the past, but most of the time I was found out pretty quickly and things always went South after that! I was raised in a country where racism was a way of life, not one I liked and as I grew older, not one I supported. Some of the people around me were going to extraordinary lengths to do very racist things and many times they would not even bother to cover them up – that was what they had been conditioned to believe!
After years of being away from that environment and living amongst the people in England I started to think things were so much better here, but even here I started to realise there was still racism in society. It is not something we can just switch off or run away from, it is something we have to live with and change from the inside out.
Because Herod was in a position of power, he thought he could get away with anything he wanted to do; something we still see in our leaders all around the world. There is nothing new about people abusing their positions of power to suit their own wants and desires! Unfortunately there are always people on the receiving end who get abused because of this greed and we, as Christians, need to stand up for all of us and promote the way Jesus wants us to live – by loving our neighbours!
I love living on the estate I currently live in because there is such a diverse group of people who live together; many live at or below what is considered as the poverty line on our estates here in London. We try to show people there is hope through Jesus Christ and allow them to experience a bit of God’s love where the country seems to be leaving them behind. This is just as bad as racism, yet so many countries ignore these situations just as they ignore racism. Now it the time to change. Now is the time to love your neighbour – no matter who they are!
Points to Ponder:
Do you love living where you live?
Are you sharing God’s love with your neighbours?