October 30: Luke 12 15-21
Key Verse: Luke 12 21
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Devotion:
The worst things we could try to exaggerate are our spiritual riches based upon what we have here on earth! No matter how rich we are here on earth, it is not a measuring stick for how rich we will be in heaven. Judging how pleased God is with us by looking at the earthly riches we have is just madness; they are opposite sides of the coin.
Working for earthly riches will make us comfortable and will give us a good life whilst here on earth, but what we do with our riches may well break us down spiritually. Coveting what we have here on earth will lead our hearts away from God and will weaken us spiritually; why else would God list that as one of the Ten Commandments? Our lives must not be measured by what we possess, but how we use what we have. If we are going to let our riches guide us or control us, then we have left the path which God laid out for us and are now walking the path of covetousness. Just like the man in this parable, we will quickly loose our way.
We do not know all of what God has in store for us. We do not know His grand plan. How then are we to be ready if we are going to leave His world behind and seek our own covetous world instead? How are we going to be prepared if we ignore His work? God has the perfect plan and we seem to do nothing more than spoil it because of our greedy eyes. We do not stick with the plan but run with our own because we think we can see a great future ahead through what we are doing; our problem here is we are looking at things through our own eyes which are limited to the physical lives we lead. We are forgetting who is in control and who can see the bigger picture. We only have to have an accident to realise we are not fully in control, but remembering the steps which took us towards that accident is what we often forget or choose to ignore.
God wants us to be prepared for His plan in our lives. To do so, we have to be close to Him and listening out for Him along the way. Putting God’s will in front of our own wants and desires will help us figure things out...
Points to Ponder:
What would be your ideal job in life?
How much would you use it to glorify God?
October 29: Proverbs 27 1-2
Key Verse: Proverbs 27 2
Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips.
Devotion:
It is very easy to get carried away when describing yourself, whether you over-exaggerate a few things or just plain lie about your abilities, we all seem to get caught up in a bit of self-indulgent self-praise! From the Ten Commandments we remember the ninth “Do not bear false witness against your neighbour”; but what about false witness against yourself? When we lift up ourselves in praise we will not stop at what others see in ourselves but continue in expanding on things which others will not see in us. We continue to praise ourselves with more gusto than any advertising company could, because we think we know our own abilities.
We think we know what we are capable of even if we have never actually had to face up to the things we say we can do. We assume we are able to do things which we have never faced up to. We think we are better than we are. We get so carried away with our thoughts that we even convince ourselves we are better than we actually are. When we are then faced with something which stumps us we get so despondent about how we have been stumped with something we should be able to do, we start breaking down the walls of self-belief which we should have in the abilities we have already proven we have. We start to doubt things we have even done before!
This sort of thing happens, not just in our work and school lives, but in our spiritual lives. We assume that because we have a knowledge of some of the stories in the bible, we have a good knowledge of everything. We then get faced with a simple fact which we have not come across and we get stumped. We then start to doubt everything we have learned. This sort of position can take quite a while to get out of. What we need to do in the first place is recognise that we will be students for the rest of our lives and work in that new light. There is no way we are going to know what Christ has in His mind, but we can depend on Him because we know He is good and perfect. We do not know what is going to happen tomorrow, but we sure can depend on The One who does know!
Points to Ponder:
What is your honest opinion of yourself?
Is that what you admit to God?
October 28: 2 Corinthians 12 6-10
Key Verse: 2 Corinthians 12 9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
Devotion:
How many times have you asked God to get rid of something in your life and are still wondering if He will ever grant your wish? Or maybe you thought you had so much more potential than you have shown but cannot seem to ever get there... Well, just maybe, we look at things in the wrong way. Maybe we are looking at our own strengths and weaknesses and how they affect our own lives and forgetting about how they interact with everyone else around us. Maybe we are just being selfish.
There are those who will advertise how a bit of selfishness will make a big difference in your life. They will tell you that, in order to get a better business, you have to be selfish in some way, so others will not take advantage of you. Yet our selfish pride will stop us from achieving all manner of things. God has not placed us here to exercise selfishness but to learn to live in brotherly love. He wants us to be able to be humble enough to realise He is our God and that He is the one in charge of our lives. The longer we try to place ourselves in charge, the longer we will find we don't get our own way – that's all we will gain from it!
But with every good thing in our lives, there seem to be a whole bunch of bad things which may come along too. God does not want us to be conceited in our relationship with Him. He wants us to be totally confident in Him, yet does not want us to take Him for granted. He wants us to be sure we are dependent on Him in all things. Watching us beam in pride for doing something right is not really helping us to glorify Him in the right ways. Watching us succeed in business and proclaim our way as the right way of doing things is not helping His cause. He may just allow things to go wrong to make sure we do remember who is in charge and who needs all the glory in our relationship with Him!
Points to Ponder:
Are you dependant on any people in your life?
How dependent are you on God?
October 27: Mark 9 14-29
Key Verse: Mark 9 24
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
Devotion:
There are many times in our lives when we feel totally helpless; no matter what we try to do, nothing seems to work or go our way. We feel like there is nobody helping us or willing to help us; and yet there is! What is failing to help us is our lack of faith or our unbelief. We may think we are strong Christians and that we have God on our side all the time, or we may feel like we are weak Christians, bending all the rules and not being very successful. Well, whatever side of the fence you think you may be on, we kind of fall in the same boat.
The strong Christians may well find something they just cannot face up to. These disciples did. No matter how much they tried to get rid of the spirit within the man's son, they could not. They had to wait upon Jesus for the final victory over the spirit. Even though they had been told anything is possible through belief, they could not quite go all the way. They were trying to go all the way by themselves. When Jesus came to their assistance He did nothing more than turn it over to God in prayer. He demonstrated absolute faith by giving up the problem totally to God.
As weak Christians we may well find all sorts of things go wrong all the time, or so it seems, and we put it down to being weak. We may find we still get into all sorts of trouble. We may find we don't quite trust our belief. That is the issue. We don't trust! This man cried out to Jesus to help his unbelief. He knew his faith had holes in it and put that down to lack of faith. But seeing Jesus in front of him allowed him to realise his unbelief. We will not get a personal audience with Christ until we get to heaven, but why should our own death and journey to heaven stop us from seeing everything Christ does in our lives now or everything He has already done through passages like this. There is no reason for us not to believe other than our own pride or our giving in to the temptations and stumbling block the evil one has put in our path. You see, Satan is going to continue his best to throw everything in our way. We need to look up to Christ to seek His grace to cover our unbelief, so we can draw on His strength and be totally prepared for everything!
Points to Ponder:
What is your biggest fear in life?
Have you ever asked God to help you with that?
October 26: Psalms 77 1-10
Key Verse: Psalms 77 7
Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favour again?
Devotion:
How many times have we reached a point in our lives when we begin to ask whether God has actually forgotten us. Maybe we get to know God at an early age and then get carried away with the world, forgetting God, going with the flow... Then one day we start to think again, thinking about what God thinks of our lives, thinking about what we are doing... When I got to the stage described above, I felt I had abandoned God and He, in turn, had abandoned me. I could not help but think I was alone even though I had my most precious people with me – my children.
This psalmist must have been going through troubled times to have thought in a similar way. When we go through troubled times, we will probably start to think in a similar way – we imagine how God has abandoned us in our hour of need. Most of the time we cannot understand why He could abandon us in any way; yet that is how we feel. Whether we are the ones at fault for abandoning Him, or whether we simply feel alone, the fix is the same. We need more time in a close relationship with Him. Time in prayer to let Him know how we feel, time in His Word to allow Him to show us what we need to know, and time to reflect upon what is going on in our lives...
Our weakness is not the fact we feel this way but that we had ever thought God would abandon us at all. Our weakness is that of lack of faith in His love for us, the lack of faith in the fact He will look after us and the lack of faith He does know exactly what we need in our lives. Our guilt should not be the fact we have abandoned Him or He us, but that we have lacked faith in His awesome power in our lives. Surely we should not forget what God has done in our past, nor what He has done throughout history; He has continued to be there and to uphold His Word continually. Spending more time in His Word will allow us to see this to be true. Spending more time finding out what He has done, what He is doing and what He has promised to do will give us hope. Living out that hope will keep us close to Him where we can commune most effectively with Him!
Points to Ponder:
How often do you doubt things in your life?
How often do you doubt God?