Tuesday Reading: Habakkuk 2 1-4
 
Key Verse: Habakkuk 2 4
4  Behold, the soul of him is lifted up, and is not upright; but the just shall live by his faith.

Devotion:
When I read some of the Old Testament books, I can see why some religions stick with Old Testament books only; not from the stance of leaving Jesus out of their religion, but because of the amount of information held within them. The words that the prophets wrote down need to be studied so that we can learn why they wrote the words that they did. They need to be studied by everyone and not just scribes and priests. God has made sure that we all have access to all of the bible so that we can all find the truth.

We will all face temptations at some time or another and some of those seem to come when we are asking God for something else. Satan is not going to let up until he is chained away forever and we have to remember that; we will still face his temptations and it is God’s Word that is able to strengthen us against those temptations. We need to keep His Word with us and depend on it, reading and discerning the truth so that we can know it. Bringing forward God’s Word when we are faced with troubled times will help us and guide us. It is God’s Word.

If we are willing and able to seek out the truth by reading God’s Word, we will not be disappointed in all that we find because what He has given us is sufficient. We may struggle to understand the words when we first read them because they were written by people from a different culture and a different time, but study them we must because God will give us understanding when we seek it. We must not expect things to happen overnight because God works to His timescales and not ours. We must depend on the truth and trust in it because we know it to be God’s Word. When we depend on it we are showing our faith in God, we are showing Him that we do trust Him and that we are waiting patiently for Him to answer our prayers according to His time. Walk by faith and not by works and He will bless us mightily!

Points to Ponder:
When you trust someone do you listen to what they say?

Are you listening to what God has to say through His Word?

Monday Reading: Luke 18 9-14
 
Key Verse: Luke 18 13
13  And standing afar off, the tax-collector would not even lift up his eyes to Heaven, but struck on his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner!
 
Devotion:
It is so very easy to judge others in what they do or do not do that we all fall into this trap at some stage or another; maybe not as verbal and demonstrable as this man, but we do all judge others. But this parable is not just about judging others, nor is it just about judging yourself, nor is it just about asking for forgiveness, nor is it just about coming forward in the right way... it’s about all of those aspects and more! Judging others is just one aspect of our lives that we have to watch. Trying to keep an eye on what we do ourselves and fixing the problems that we have is another. Making sure that when we do discover problems that we try to fix the issue and not just ask to forgive and forget is yet another aspect.

This parable brings so much together that we need to remember it and think about it instead of just taking one meaning away with ourselves. We need to remember, first of all, that we are God’s children and that we are under His command. We should not be living according to our own rules but according to God’s rules. We should not be trying to build our lives by our own wisdom but according to God’s wisdom through His Word. When we start to remember just where our position is in relation to God then we will start to move in the right direction with all the other aspects of this parable.

When we remember we have all been created by God we start to remember that we need to look out for each other and not put each other down. When we remember we are all people, we start to think about how we all can fall into the same traps through temptations that take us away from God’s Word. It is our choice. Each one of us makes that choice for ourselves, not for each other. We cannot then judge each other because we are not making those choices for other people. We can encourage others to seek the Truth so they can identify if they have made bad choices. If we are the ones who make the bad choices we should be the ones coming forward with the right attitude to make things right again...

Points to Ponder:
Do you hold grudges?

How often do you think about others?

Sunday Reading: Luke 15 17-24
 
Key Verse: Luke 15 20
20  And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

Devotion:
Having been through the parable of the lost son recently in bible study, I thought it about time that I mentioned here in our devotions again. When we read parables like this we can relate to them because of their human content and human level, but looking beyond the obvious is what Jesus wants us to do. Yes we see the need for righteous thinking from the son’s side, the need for forward planning too, and we also see the love that the father has for his sons and the sons repentance after he realises what he has done wrong. But Christ’s true teaching comes when we start to compare this with how God looks at us.

God is our heavenly Father who is constantly looking out for us and loves us. He is the one that has given us the opportunities and He is the one that has given us the inheritance too. We are akin to the sons and we are the ones that have the choice as to how we deal with our inheritance. We have been given the gift already because Jesus has already paid for our sin debt on the cross. We now have the choice as to whether we want to accept that gift and its true wealth or squander that gift through wrong living. The son in the parable certainly cause a riot when he went off and wasted that gift on just about everything that he could – something we tend to do when we do not know the true wealth of Christ’s gift to us.

When we begin to understand just how much of a wonderful gift Christ has given to us through paying for our sin debt, we then begin to see just how much we have done wrong in our lives and why He had to go and do that in the first place. Imagine knowing that you have to live your whole life just so that you can pay for someone else’s life... That is exactly what Christ did for us. Jesus is waiting patiently for us to repent of our sins. When we do, He will be faithful and loving like the father in the parable and come to us wherever we are because then He will know we are sincere about our lives with Him.

Points to Ponder:
Are you surprised by how much people do forgive when you apologise?
 
Are you confessing your sins?

Saturday Reading: Matthew 3 1-6
 
Key Verse: Matthew 3 6
6  And they were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.

Devotion:
When some people describe John as being in the middle of the desert, it draws a picture of a man in the middle of nowhere with nothing around him but sand and sun. But in order for John to be able to attract so many people, I’m sure that there must have been things nearby otherwise how would anyone have heard of him to start with. I doubt he was in a built up area because he was depending on God for everything – but his semi-isolation did not stop him from preaching the Word of God and letting people know about the coming of Christ. He continuously preached that people should repent of their sins... how many churches do not get round to teaching us that nowadays but would rather concentrate on God’s love and mercy.

We always need to remember that we do need to confess our sins to God. Christ came to give us a way whereby we would be sure that our sins are forgiven, but that does not mean that will happen without us confessing our sins in the first place. Right from the beginning God has required that we do confess our sins to Him in one way or another. The offering of sacrifices was how it started but man soon enough corrupted that by rewriting the rules of sacrifices to suit himself. One rule man cannot ever rewrite is that our sins have been covered by Christ’s sacrifice of His own life on the cross; but in order for them to be forgiven, we have to first admit to them!

John made sure that people understood just what repentance meant too. It was not the act of saying sorry, being forgiven and then going on in life in your normal manner. Repentance means that we come forward knowing that what we have done wrong is wrong and that by admitting to it we are saying that we are now going to do our best to not go there again. Repentance is a life-changing action, not a simple sorry. John made sure that his whole life was dedicated to making sure that people knew that so that when they confessed to Christ, they would rest in Him and His ways.

Points to Ponder:
How many times do you say you are sorry?
 
Have you repented to Christ?