Thursday 6 December 2007

Thursday Reading: Numbers 11 31-35
 
Key Verse: Numbers 11 34
34  And he called the name of that place Graves of Lust, because there they buried the people that lusted.
 
Devotion:
No matter how we see things and what we think about things, there will always be times in our lives when we think that God is not doing enough for us! Those times are when we are thinking about something, maybe coveting it, but certainly lusting (thinking more than we should about it) after it. When we get to that stage, we allow our thoughts to get hold of us and we start to follow those thoughts, not taking care of the will of God, but our own will until we satisfy our wanton need.
 
Lust is used nowadays to describe our over zealous sexual desires towards others. We can all identify with that sort of feeling, maybe not through our own feelings, but certainly through what we see happening around us today. But what we have to watch out for is the lust of our thoughts towards other things in our lives. We can identify sexual desires and can probably control those, but what about the lusts towards money, drugs and even things like chocolate. We allow those feeling to control our lives. We allow simple things get in the way of our normal way of thinking and living just because we get caught up in them. Most of the time we are caught up in the social aspect of our lusts, not realising that there are sever anti-social sides to what we do as well.
 
But it's not just the fact that we are being anti-social when we allow our lusts to control our lives. It's the fact that we are extending that anti-social behaviour towards God during that time as well. Turning against yourself is one thing, but allowing your lusts to turn you away from God and His people is entirely different. We will have to face up to what we do if we choose to follow that route. When God allows certain things into our lives, He is doing so under the assumption that we will accept things without going overboard. When you offer someone an open box of chocolates, you don't expect them to take all of the chocolates! Be aware of how much God loves you by seeing how much He does for you, but don't allow your lust to overstay your welcome!
 
Points to Ponder:
Is there one thing that you will not share in case people take too much?
 
God shares everything with us. Are we being good stewards?

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Wednesday Reading: Hebrews 11 4
 
Key Verse: Hebrews 11 4
4  By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts. And by it he, being dead, yet speaks.
 
Devotion:
When we start to do what God wants us to do, we are going to upset others; not because of our actions, but because it makes them look bad. When people start to see us acting like the Christians we say we are, they are going to take notice because we are now practising what we preach – literally. Jesus did not go round saying one thing and doing another – He made sure that what He said, He did. Oh how wonderful it would be to live up to such a standard!
 
In the next few verses in Hebrews 11, we are reminded about various people from the scriptures who have shown faith. What is different about Cain and Abel is that we know so little about them. Cain looked after crops and Abel looked after the animals. Together they provided food for the family. But in order for them to know about sacrifices, God must have given that knowledge to Adam in the first place. God must have told them about making a blood offering to cover their sins. The rules before Christ died for our sins were simple. Make sure that you offer a blood sacrifice that is good, without blemish. What better sacrifice than an innocent lamb.
 
Christ died on the cross as our blood sacrifice so that we would no longer have to offer blood sacrifices that did not quite live up to the mark. No single sacrifice before Him was enough to cover all sins, forever! Every sacrifice before was a temporary solution. If people did not offer the blood sacrifice, they were not forgiven. They did that through their belief of the unseen. They did that because they knew it was right. Short cutting anything was wrong and Cain knew it but still chose the wrong way. The result was that he got so upset, he ended up killing his brother... We need to give up on our ways and follow the rules God has laid down for us. Acknowledge Christ as our last blood sacrifice and ask for His forgiveness. We know it is right.
 
Points to Ponder:
How often do you have to say sorry for thing you do wrong?
 
Have you chosen to say sorry to Christ yet?

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Tuesday Reading: Hebrews 11 1-3
 
Key Verse: Hebrews 11 1
1  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
 
Devotion:
Faith is not a way of living. It is not a religion. It is not an asset of anything received. It is not temporary. It is not an act. Faith is not a moral virtue. These are often things that are associated with faith because people do not know how to handle someone that shows faith. This first verse in Hebrews 11 describes what faith is.
 
Faith and hope go together because the same things that are the object of our hope are the object of our faith; or should be. It is the firm belief that God will perform all that He has promised to us in Christ Jesus. This belief is implicit. It gives our souls an expectant foretaste of things to come. Faith will change our way of living. It will be seen to others as a religion. Faith will give us a different outlook on life.
 
It is the substance of things hoped, not an asset of things already received. Faith is believing in things that we are told will happen. If we wait until after they have happened before believing, then we no longer have faith, we have evidence. We can look back through our bibles and see the evidence of things that have passed and that have happened to others. That then gives us evidence of things that will come to pass because they come from the same source. Believing that they will come to pass even though we may not see them is faith.
 
Seeing that a tightrope holds up a person is evidence. Getting ready to go out onto that rope for the first time takes some faith. Real faith could only be likened to being told about this rope, never seeing it, and being blindfolded and lead out to the rope. Out on the rope, we have the evidence that it did hold. Faith in Christ is continual because we will not get out on that rope until we get to heaven. Living by faith will change our lives just like it has changed many who have gone before us. Living by faith will give others the encouragement they need to take that first step out towards Christ.
 
Points to Ponder:
What gives you hope?
 
Could Christ have done anything more to convince you?

Monday 3 December 2007

Monday Reading: Proverbs 27 12
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 27 12
12  A sensible one foresees the evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.
 
Devotion:
There is still a large gap between God and sin. We may have that gap bridged for us by the death of Christ so that we may have a way of getting to heaven, but sin is still far away from God. We may look at it another way. Sin is in our nature, but sin is against the very nature of God. The sin we are talking about is the internal, indwelling rottenness of our societies. The very stuff that keeps people away from knowing God. The sin that is built into each one of us and the sin that Satan takes hold of and steers us away from God with.
 
God has given us the ability to see what sin is. He has given us the ability to tell the difference between doing good and doing evil. Yet we still choose evil over good so many times in our lives, just because we think we can take hold of it and control it. What we don't see is the rottenness that sets in as soon as we choose that way of doing things. As soon as we allow a little sin into our lives, we allow the rottenness to start working. If you had a whole sack of apples, would you store a rotten one in the middle of all the good ones? Hardly, because it would spread the mould and germs to all the others before too long. We need to make that separation between good and bad and we need to keep them apart.
 
God cannot abide sin, that is why sin will never get close to Him. We, on the other hand, dabble with it for all of our lives. Choosing the sin path is easy because everyone else around us is doing exactly that. Choosing the good path means going against people, even our friends. We know what we are going into, but we pretend to ourselves that everything is going to be ok. We place the rotten apple straight into our sack and expect it not to affect the rest! When we choose the wrong way, we don't advertise it because we know it's wrong – we would rather do it in the dark away from others, just in case... so why do we do it? Because we don't depend on Christ!
 
Points to Ponder:
What is your worst bad habit?
 
How often have you tried to ask for help with it? How often have you accepted help...

Sunday 2 December 2007

Sunday Reading: Psalm 139:1-6
 
Key Verse: Psalms 139 2
2  You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.
 
Devotion:
So many times in our lives we would like to think that people know us enough to be able to do the right things for us. When it starts getting close to Christmas we like to think that people will know what we want for presents! We just assume so many things about people knowing us... Yet when it comes down to our bad points, we don't want anyone to even hear about them!
 
We can thank God that He is all-powerful and all-knowing. We can thank Him that even though He does know all about our bad points, He continues to love us totally! He alone is the one who does know us inside out. He alone knows our thoughts. He alone knows our deeds. He alone knows what each of us has on the inside – the parts that we try to hide from others, the parts that we try to pretend do not exist! But through all of that, He continues to be faithful in His absolute love towards us!
 
We don't have to pretend with God. We don't have to make ourselves look good. We can be ourselves and He will accept us the way we are. We know our bad points and should not ignore them ourselves. For when we do that, we are telling God that we know the law and yet do not care for it. We know when we do wrong. We know when we think wrong. And so does He.
 
We need to make sure that we do lift up our lives to Him. We need to life up our sinful lives and beg for His forgiveness. It is not Him that is tripping us up with all the things that we do wrong. We are the ones making the choices to do those things and to ignore His faithful and just laws. We need to straighten up our act so that we don't have to pretend to be who we are not in front of Him! We need to be honest to ourselves and to Him because He has been totally honest with us!
 
Points to Ponder:
What things do you hide from others?
 
What do you think upsets God the most with your life?