Tuesday Reading: 1 John 3 22-24
 
Key Verse: 1 John 3 23
23  And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment.

 

Devotion:
Would you normally go up to some random person in the street and ask them for something, or would you go up to people that you knew? Personally, I would prefer to go to someone I knew to ask for any sort of help. The closer we are in a relationship with a person, the more that we can ask them and the more likely that they will be able to fulfil our asking as well. This is not any different to our relationship with Christ. If we are only going to see or speak to Him once a week when we go to church, then how should we expect to be received? If someone only ever came to visit me when something was wrong, then I would begin to think that they are only visiting me because something is wrong and they need help.

 

God wants us to depend on Him for things; but He does not want us to go out there and think we can do it all, wait until we find we can’t and only then come running for help… God wants us to be in a constant relationship with Him so that we can see His power, strength and might through His constant supporting us not only in our hour of need, but in our hours of comfort too. His promise is that He will hear our prayers and that He will answer them as well. We need to be able to be close to Him to make sure that when He asks something of us, or tell us something, we are close enough to hear Him and then to do His will willingly.

 

He has given us the great commandments to love Him and to love one another. Those commandments are not to be adhered to just when we feel that we should, but always. We can show Him how much we love Him by doing His will. We can show Him how much we love Him by keeping close to Him. But He shows us how much He loves us by answering our prayers – something He has done from before we started to ask, and something He will continue to do even when we do not ask. My only wish would be to be able to walk constantly by His side and not to be distracted by the temptations we pass each and every day.

 

Points to Ponder:
Which people can you go to and ask anything of?

 

How much do you take to the LORD?

Monday Reading: Philemon 1 1-7
 
Key Verse: Philemon 1 4
4  I thank my God, making mention of you always in my prayers,
 
Devotion:
One of our problems in life is that when things get us down, we tend to retract into our own shell or become very quiet about things. We can learn a lot from Paul’s example here when he was in prison (another one of the times!) His thoughts and prayers were not for himself or his fellow prisoners, but for those people out there in the open world. He knew that he was in God’s will because he knew that he was going to get persecuted for doing God’s will, but any desperation in his circumstances does not come out in his letter at all. He is being held in prison, probably under very bad conditions (prisons back then were nothing like the humane places that they are now where civil rights seem to dictate that people get treated like they are on holiday rather than in prison) but that is not what the letter is about.

 

Paul’s letter is about people making amends after they have done wrong. It is about accepting someone who is willing to ask for forgiveness. It is about accepting fellow Christians when they have repented. It is about accepting people in the same manner as Christ would accept them – with open arms, forgetting about what has happened in the past. If Christ is able to forgive us and to forget about our sins in the past, should we then not be willing to at least try and do that for others who are willing to try again?

 

You see, being a Christians is about thinking about others. We do get very involved with our own circumstances and often forget about other people in our lives. We often forget about family life too which is so important. God gave us into families for a reason. He wants us to be safe, secure and loved in our families. He wants us to build up our churches like families. He wants us to be able to turn to others and treat them like brothers and sisters too. Getting involved with Christ means that we must continue to uphold our relationship with Him, our relationship with our families and our relationship with others in the church too – and in that order. If we cannot be with family, prayer can. If we cannot be with friends, prayer can. Show God that you do care by placing your prayers in His grip.

 

Points to Ponder:
How often do you uphold your family life?

 

How often do you uphold your life with Christ?

Sunday Reading: 1 John 4 14-17
 
Key Verse: 1 John 4 16
16  And we have known and believed the love that God has in us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

 

Devotion:
It was God’s choice to come into this world. How do we know? Because we have the written proof from the Apostles who were eye witnesses to the fact! What better proof can we have than the written testament of an eye witness? And yet so many still refuse to believe because they think it will make them do things that they don’t want to do. Well, if truth be told, we live in a world where we have been coaxed into doing things we don’t want to do all our lives. From the advertising through to peer pressure, we are always being persuaded by one thing or another to do someone else’s will. What God gives us is a choice as to whether we want to do our will or His will. He lays out the truth in no uncertain terms and leave the final choice up to us. That is what I call love…

 

Being brought up to do certain things just because someone else wants you to do them is not love; that is self indulgence by the person doing the persuading. Giving someone all the details that they need to make an informed choice and allowing them to make a choice is. Making sure that a person does get to know the truth so that they can make that choice is our goal. But there is a fine line between giving someone the truth and thrusting information on them. We have evolution thrust down our throats at school without certain proof that it is real. We are told that because the books have the details in, it must be true… The scientists all agree that it is based on assumptions and yet they do not openly inform us of that fact. Other Christians will tell us of the creation of the world and God love; they back that up with written proof that itself has been proven with people like the Apostles. How can we turn our backs on that sort of proof?

 

We need only to confess in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God. That fact that the Apostles testify to and that other historians agree has been told for 2000 years. Once we know Christ as our God, we know we have His love and we know that nothing can ever take it away from us. We no longer have to fear about the safety of our eternal souls.

 

Points to Ponder:
How do you persuade others to do something?
 
How much more proof must God give for people to believe?

Saturday Reading: John 3 16-21
 
Key Verse: John 3 20
20  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

 

Devotion:
How do you go about knowing just who you can trust? Well, that normally takes time. We start to trust people that seem to tell us the truth. We then place more trust in them the longer they continue to tell us the truth. That trust gets eroded quite quickly every time that person comes up with something that is not the truth, much more quickly than the time it takes to build up that trust in the beginning! The disciples did not have too much time to learn all about Jesus as they followed Him as His disciples. But in everything they did, they found truth through Him and built up a trust that would stand the test of time and persecution!

 

A perfect record of His love towards us is written in our Bibles so that we can know that same truth. All we need do is to read about it and we begin to see the truth that was started before time and will continue until time is no more. Within that truth we find out Christ Jesus. He came to this earth so that He could willingly go to the cross and pay for our sins; sins that we may continue to do, but sins that are forgiven through what He did for us. I know of no other person who can show that much love. I know of no other records of any other gods that show so much love as Christ has shown us. For me, that fact alone sets Him apart from any other god. The fact that all other gods can be traced back to things that people have created for themselves also means that there are no other true gods than God our Father.

 

The truth is plain for us to see. He continues to watch over us. He continues to love us. He continues to answer our prayers. He continues to uphold His law. He continues to make sure His promises stand for eternity. We need to realise that fact and make sure that we do recognise Him for the Very God that He is. He shows us the light, giving us the choice to follow it in truth, or hide from it because of our shameful deeds. The choice is our. The destination is sadly never considered…

 

Points to Ponder:
How often do you try to find things in the dark?
 
Do you wait for God’s instruction where you would not expect Him to be?