Friday Reading: Psalm 138:6-8

 

Key Verse: Psalms 138 8
8  The LORD will perfect His work in me; Your mercy, O Jehovah, endures forever; do not forsake the work of Your own hands.

 

Devotion:
One of the most wonderful things about our God is that He thinks of the little people! There are so many religions that would have you to believe that you have to be a giant in society before you can feel their gods presence or that you have to work so hard at things before you can know that their gods will be watching. Our God continues to watch over each one of us that wish to have Him close to us. If we turn our backs on Him and walk away, He waits patiently for us to return.

 

When we find ourselves walking through tough times, He is the one that is willing to lead us through those times. When we find the going tough, He is tough enough to ease our path… so long as we are willing to depend on Him. When we find things getting us down too much and can’t see the wood from the trees, He is the one that reminds us of the life that is around us. When we are up against others who seek to put Him down, He is the strength that can keep us going to make sure that He will continue to get the glory only He deserves. He will continue to fight for us as well as carry us through because He is the only one capable of doing it all!

 

God is the one that will help us to show others that He is our God. He is the one that can use all of us to His glory. He could use the unbeliever for His glory but instead He chooses us. We are the ones that He wants to be examples for Him. We are the ones He wants to strengthen and guide. It is amazing just how much mercy He does display when you consider the amount of things that we have done wrong or against Him in the past that He has forgiven. We look back in history and wonder at the mercy He continues to display for all of us. Let us never confuse what God continues to do for us and what we think we can do for ourselves. It is He that is able; it must be us that are willing.

 

Points to Ponder:
Do you find it hard upholding Christ?
 
How much do you really depend on Him?

Thursday Reading: Job 28 20-28
 
Key Verse: Job 28 28
28  And to man He said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom! And to depart from evil is understanding!

 

Devotion:
The difference between God’s wisdom and our wisdom is much more than anything we can think of. We may like to think of it as being the difference between a toy car and a real car, but in reality it cannot be described by us because we simply do not know the depth of it. Job began to see the vast difference between earthly wisdom and Godly wisdom when his friends tried to explain what God was allowing into his life. To put it quite simply, they could not explain anything because they lacked the understanding!

 

When we try to explain things from God’s view, or try to explain things that God has done, we will always fall short of the mark. But, having said that, God has given us a source of wisdom that is enough for us. The gospel has been written so that we will be able to understand as much as we need to. He has given us enough instruction so that we will be able to understand that He is our God and that we need to depend on Him because of His infinite wisdom. Adam and Eve were tempted to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they were thrown out of the garden to ensure that they did not disobey God and try the fruit from the tree of knowledge. God does not want us to have to cope with that sort of wisdom nor to want it.

 

To fear the Lord is to behold His wisdom and recognise that He alone has the capacity for such wisdom. When we understand that then we may seek that wisdom that He gives to us; that being all that which is held in His Word. That wisdom is hid in Christ, revealed by the gospel, received by us through our faith and through the Holy Spirit. That wisdom will not feed pride, greed, vanity nor lust because it is there to exercise our faith. It teaches and instructs us to fear God, depart from evil and to depend on Him. That is the beginning of wisdom that we can know.

 

Points to Ponder:
Where do you go to learn things?

 

How much do you depend on your bible for instruction?

Wednesday Reading: Proverbs 1 7-9
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 10 1
1  A wise son makes a glad father; but a foolish son is the sorrow of his mother.

 

Devotion:
You know, one thing that I am not good at is keeping in constant contact with my parents. Whenever I do ring them or talk to them, they are so happy to hear from me. Whenever I go round there, they do like to fuss over me and make me feel like the prodigal son coming home. They do this because of their love towards me, not the fact that I am so good to them, because I never feel like I can do enough for them.

 

Love is like that. Love makes you give 110%. Love makes you go further than is required. Love makes you do unexpected things! God's love to us has been shown in an extraordinary way. He allowed His son to give us His life for us on the cross, to pay for our sins. And He can only have done that for us because of His love for us. But how much do we actually give back to Him to show our love in return?

 

God wants us to be in constant contact with Him. He wants us to be with Him so that He can shower us with blessings. He wants to give us loads of things in our lives to make them better. But in order for us to accept those gifts, we have to go to Him in the beginning! If we are not going to go to Him, then how is He supposed to continue showing us His love?

 

Our parents showed us so much love in the beginning by being there for us without us asking. They continue to look out for us even without us continuing to ask… But in order for them to know that we appreciate what they are doing for us, we have to thank them and we have to show them that we care what they do for us and think of us.

 

If we are to be wise, we have to live our lives according to Gods word. We have to make sure that we have Him in our lives so that He can work in our lives. He does this all for love. We should be doing this all for love too.

 

Points to Ponder:
What was the last unexpected thing that your parents gave to you?
 
God wants to be your Father, are you willing to let Him?

Tuesday Reading: Revelation 4 9-11
 
Key Verse: Revelation 4 11
11  O Lord, You are worthy to receive glory and honour and power, because You created all things, and for Your will they are and were created.

 

Devotion:
When was the last time that you were really thankful for something going the right way? When did you last have something happen, look back and think, wow, I am really glad that it turned out this way after all? We all try to control our own lives and think that we do a pretty good job most of the time, but we always seem to make mistakes and loose faith in what we can do because of those mistakes. We may look back on our accomplishments and think that we have done ok, but there will always be times when we think we could have done better.

 

It is at those times that we think that we could have done with fore-sight because looking back we can see the pitfalls that we did not see before. If only we could have had someone guiding us through our lives who knew exactly what was going to happen! But we have! Christ has promised us that He will be with us and that He will be willing to guide us and to keep us if we are willing to trust in Him. With that trust will come all manner of things that we would not have otherwise thought through.

 

Can you imagine the joy that we will have knowing that we have been able to make it through to the end; but not only that because we will be living out our eternal lives in joy and happiness! Can you imagine the sorrow that we will face if we make it through to the end but we find that what we face is the rest of our eternal lives living in sorrow? We all do have the choice as to which way we see our lives working out. We all do have the choice as to whether we want to honour and obey our Living, Eternal, Loving and Caring, Awesome God! Once we do bring God back into our lives we will find that not only do we have joy and peace whilst we live on earth, but we have the secure knowledge that we will have even more joy and peace living eternally by His side!

 

Points to Ponder:
How often do you think about the long term rather than the short term?

 

How often do you let God be your guide?