Saturday Reading: Ephesians 6 10-18
 
Key Verse: Ephesians 6 18
18  praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching to this very thing with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

Devotion:
Spiritual strength and courage are required to go forward in God’s name and to proclaim His Word. Yes, anyone can go forward and bring the gospel, but if you want to be able to be convincing or authoritative, then you have to be sure in your wording. To be sure in your wording, you have to prepare so that you know what you are talking about. Then if there are going to be people who will ask questions, you have to be prepared to be able to answer them as well. Does this mean then that you have to memorise the whole bible just in case? No, what you have to do is to place your faith in God before you start.

You need to make sure that what you are saying is the truth – don’t make you own view of what you think people need to hear, but take God’s Word as the truth and deliver it. Make sure you make people realise just who is righteous – we may be delivering the word but we are still sinners. Our bibles do not promote war and we need to make sure that we don’t ask for war just because we think it best! We need to remember that God’s Word alone can beat Satan as it has done before and will do unto the end of time – don’t think you can outsmart the smartest deceiver of them all!

Jesus Christ is the one who came to save us from our sins and we need to make sure that people realise the fact that Jesus is God. Too many religions around the world will not recognise the truth and fall short of the mark. We have God’s Word, we have our bibles, we have the truth – we need to deliver that truth out to the people around us... but we need to deliver it in the manner in which it needs to be delivered! We have to put our faith in The Holy Spirit, knowing that He will be standing with us as we deliver His Word to those around us knowing that it is He that is to get the glory and not us. We are just the vessels used for the delivery, not the content.

Points to Ponder:
Are you prepared to tell others of God’s Word?
 
Are you standing strong in your faith when you talk about God?
 

Friday Reading: Genesis 2 18-24

Key Verse: Genesis 2 20
20  And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

Devotion:
Last night at our teens meeting we had a rather loud discussion about the rolls of men and women; as much as I tried to steer the discussion in the right way in the beginning the teens came up with a whole bunch of differences between boys and girls (and none reverted to the obvious physical differences). The simple fact is that we are different. God created us different for a reason and we need to remember that. If God had wanted one gender to be “the dominant race” (as some would see it) then He would have created more of one gender... He did not create Adam and Steve, He created Adam and Eve!

We can use all manner of animals and tools to reach our goals and to help us out, but the fact of the matter is that we are not really whole until we have a partner of the opposite sex. No matter how much we would like to think otherwise or how much we want our partners to be one particular way or another, we were created as two halves of a whole. God created male and female of each animal too because they need to be full too. But there is a big difference between man and any other mammal or animal; we have been created in God’s image!

God took Adam’s rib, being close to the heart, so that we would keep our partners close to our hearts. God knew exactly what we required and delivered as He knew best. Yet, time and time again we try to change the rules because we think we know better! How can we know better than our maker? How can we begin to think that we know better that the One who knows every hair on our heads and every star in the sky?

We have an awesome God who continues to bring us things that we can never dream of. He continues to make sure that our earth balances perfectly around the sun so that we can survive. He is the one that created us to be man and woman, living as partners who need each other...

Points to Ponder:
Do you help with stuff around the house?
 
Are you being the example God wants you to be?
 

Thursday Reading: Matthew 6 19-24
 
Key Verse: Matthew 6 24
24  No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

Devotion:
Name one thing that is most likely to stop you from going to church. Name one thing that would sidetrack you when you try to read your bible. Name one thing that stops you from reading your bible every day. When you stop to think about things, there are so many distractions that we have in our lives that is looks like a bit of a miracle that we can continue to follow God!

That is the game that Satan plays. He continues to throw every sort of temptations and distraction our way so that we will not serve God to the fullest that we can. He will even put other religions in our way so that we will begin to have doubts. He will distract us away from God’s Word and then level us with all manner of doubts so that our faith becomes weak. That is the time when he has us over a barrel and that, sadly, is where so many people go before they have a chance to hear God’s Word as it should be heard.

Once we have an eye for the life that Satan offers it is hard to turn away from it without the encouragement of others. It is hard to fight against the flow; just like trying to swim upstream... it is so much easier just to go with the flow and see where you end up. But what we do not see is the final destination of our efforts because when our efforts are our own, they will only take us downstream. There are very few rivers that do not end up at a perilous destination!

What we focus on will become the life that we live. What we continue to look at will start to seem normal to us. When things begin to seem familiar we start to bring them into our lives. When we bring things into our lives we allow them to continue and eventually they become habitual or we get carried away with the short-term enjoyment or excitement that we gain. We need to focus on our long-term goal; that of being in heaven with God!

Points to Ponder:
How long does it take you to go through your daily devotions?

Are you giving God the time that He alone deserves?
 

Wednesday Reading: Psalm 50:7-15
 
Key Verse: Psalms 50 14
14  Offer to God thanksgiving; and pay your vows to the Most High;

Devotion:
Right from the early days, man has gone about things in the wrong way. When God told Adam and Eve and their children about sacrifices, even they got it wrong. Cain offered a sacrifice that he thought would be good enough even though he had been commanded to give a meat sacrifice. We always take God’s Word and apply our own ideals over it to make it sound like our own ideals are what God actually wants! We are not alone in doing this but sometimes we get so carried away that we make our normal duties of little or no affect.

In this Psalms we are reminded that to obey God is more important that any sacrifice; nowadays we have no need for sacrifice because Christ has already paid the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. We are reminded that what we do should be done because of our love for God and not because of a sense of duty. If we are going to church because “that is what people do” then we are not showing God that we love Him but showing man that we can do what they can do! If we go to church because that is what is done, then we are not showing our repentance and we are not seeking forgiveness; we are in effect making Christ’s sacrifice of no affect!

Our troubles should bring us to Him in faith, calling on His name as our Saviour. Our blessing should bring us to Him in happiness, praising Him for all He does for us. We need to depend on His power, His wisdom, His strength, His goodness and His faithfulness knowing that He is the one that can and will deliver us from evil. We need to faithfully keep up our daily walk with Him so that we can show Him that we do it because of our love for Him – just like He continues to look after us because of His love for us. Through everything we do, God should be glorified and not us...

Points to Ponder:
Do you willingly give to your friends?
 
Do you willingly give back to God?