Tuesday Reading: 1 Kings 12 6-8 
Key Verse: 1 Kings 12 7
7  And they spoke to him, saying, If you will be a servant to this people today, and will serve them and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.
 
Devotion:
In order for people to be able to trust you, you have to show them that you trust them. In order for people to love you, you have to show them that you love them. We will not get anything for free and we will not be able to take things when they should not be ours. We may find a short term loophole, but in the long run, we are the ones that need to show the way before people will follow our way.

 

You do not have to be a leader in order to carry out these rules. We should be adhering to them in everyday life; love before you expect love, give before you expect gifts, help before you expect help. If you want someone to be your friend, then you have to show them that you want to be their friend. Most of the time when we make new friends it is because we both make that initial move towards friendship. Most of the time when we show love it is because both make that move. In reality, one had to take the lead, but when we look back it seems so natural... and that is because it does become natural when we are in it the right way!

 

God wants the most natural love between us and Him. That is why He made the first move so that we will know that He first loved us. He wants us to be able to trust Him, so He showed us trust first. He wants us to serve Him, so He first served us. How much better example could we hope for? And yet we do exactly what Rehoboam did, we turn to the popular people rather than the people who we need to turn to. We turn our backs on the good relationships in order to follow the popular ones. We turn our backs on good people in order to seek out the popular people. What example are we showing others when we turn our backs on them? What example do we show when we turn our backs on God just for a bit more fun in our lives?

 

Points to Ponder:
Have you hurt someone just because you ignored them?
 
Are you hurting Christ by ignoring Him?

Monday Reading: Proverbs 27 9-10
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 27 10
10  Your own friend, and your father's friend, do not forsake them; nor go to your brother's house in the day of your trouble; better is a neighbour that is near than a brother far off.
 
Devotion:
How much do you really put into friendships? How much do you trust your friends or neighbours that are close by? Sometimes we withdraw from people that are physically close to us and depend rather on people that are closely related to us. What happens then when we are in desperate need of something and the only people close enough to help us are those friends and neighbours that we have refused to get close to?

 

God wants us to be able to mix and interact with our neighbours and friends that live close to us. Some of us are fortunate enough to have family that are just as close, but that is not always the case. What we have to begin to realise is that we are actually all one family when seen through God's eyes – so why do we act differently? There are many societies in different countries that do mix well with each other and depend on each other. They live very happy lives together and build up circles of trust that run very deep. But here in England so many people tend not to do that, closing the rest of the world off when the front door is shut.

 

We can set up our homes as best as we can with all the luxuries that we can afford, but none of that is going to match up to friendship. No earthly materials are going to match the friendship we can gain from others. No materials will ever affect the heart like a true friendship can. When we build up true friendships, we know then that we can depend on others for anything. We know then that we can rely on others. When they need help, we can help them. When we need help, they will be there for us.

 

But never forget that God is closer to us than any friend. He is there to help us at all times and we need to acknowledge Him as our close friend at all times!

 

Points to Ponder:
When did you last do things with your neighbours?
 
When did you last include Christ in your circle of friends?

Sunday Reading: Obadiah 1 12-14
 
Key Verse: Obadiah 1 13
13  You should not have entered into the gate of My people in the day of their calamity; also, you should not have looked on his evil in the day of their calamity. Nor should you have sent out against his force in the day of his calamity.
 
Devotion:
What happens when you are playing a sport and the opposing team makes a mistake? You try to make the most of that mistake and you take the advantage as far as you can. If you fail to take the advantage, then you will not get round the winning in your sport. You cannot rely on waiting for your opponent to make mistakes. So should we take this sort of attitude into life with us? If you are going to treat life as a sport or a game, then you will, and so many people do exactly that! They treat life as a game to be played to the best advantage to gain out if it what they can.

 

If we break the rules in a sport, the referee will soon blow the whistle and we will loose our advantage because of the foul we have done. But in life we do not have referees standing on the sidelines to check up on us all the time. People are out there breaking the rules because they think they can get away with it. They take the advantage through any means that they can. In Obadiah's prophecy against Edom the destruction was listed out in similar ways to other who took God's work into their own hands. The carnal desires and earthly security was what would bring them down. They played the game and thought that they had won. They looked for the mistakes and pounced upon the people when mistakes were seen. They did not follow God's laws, they took things into their own hands.

 

Just like so many people today, they tried to make their own rules instead of following God's laws. In doing so, they lusted after success, no matter what. They lost sight of what was good. They went too far. Their earthly desires took them further than required because they lost sight of God's rules. The only problem being that God was watching that game... We need to remember that in everything we do, God is watching over us and waiting for us to follow the rules...

 

Points to Ponder:
Do you set your own standards or follow God's standards?
 
Do you keep to God's rules even when the world breaks them?

Saturday Reading: Romans 3 19-20
 
Key Verse: Romans 3 19
19  Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
 
Devotion:
Have you ever looked at society in this way... The law convicts you and declares you guilty, not because someone has caught you, but because you have done something wrong. That means that we should all be on our way to jail. That means that we are all hypercritical law breakers because we, as a society, are condemning people to jail because they have broken bigger laws than us! If we truly do follow the law to the utmost, then we are going to be broken, distraught, condemned, failed humans.

 

We like to think that we do have a good set of laws in our own countries, and that we try our best to keep those laws. And yet we don't like to follow the laws that we do not agree with. It sounds so bad when you say it out loud. But that is exactly what we do. We follow the laws that we like. We try to keep the laws when others are around so that we can look good. We like to look good in front of others. We try to look good in front of others. We don't like to point out when others do small things wrong, because we don't want them to point out when we do things wrong. There is no real encouragement to follow the law and make a good example...

 

But when we come to look at the Law of God, we find a whole new set of laws. We find laws that tell us what we should be doing and not telling us we are guilty of what we have done wrong. The laws of God are there to encourage us to reach further into doing what is right, but also to show us that we do do small things wrong. God's laws are there to show us that we are sinners, that we do do things wrong. God's laws remind us of what we are doing wrong so that we can convict ourselves. When we begin to see what we are doing wrong, we can identify what we have to change. We are still guilty until God forgives us. That comes through admitting our sins to Him and asking for forgiveness... So simple... not so hard...

 

Points to Ponder:
How many laws do you break each day?
 
With God looking into your mind, how many laws do you break through your thoughts alone?