October 2: Luke 9:57-62

Key Verse: Luke 9:62
Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Devotion:
How many times have you heard someone say how much God loves you or how much we should love Him? How many of those times have they told you it would be such a wonderful life and times if you would follow Christ? How many times has someone stopped to tell you the truth about how much it will cost to follow Christ?

I may live in a country where I am free to follow God and free to talk about Him in public – but there are so many places in our world today where we are not allow to openly say we follow Christ for fear of being imprisoned or breaking some sort of law! God does not want us to think following Him is going to be a piece of cake and everything will run smoothly as soon as we do follow Him.

Jesus warned the disciples and others around Him they would have to put up with many things such as being persecuted if they chose to follow Him. They would have to face that because of the law of the land which mankind had created to suit themselves – not because it was the wrong thing to do!

Here we are reminded of just some of the costs of following Christ. We risk alienating our friends and family at times because we choose to follow Christ. We may well come up against all manner of bad things just as we know Job faced. None of these things are created by God, but by man for mankind. God wants us to buck the trend and to submit to His ways and His will in our lives instead.

Points to Ponder:
Are you willing to stand up for Jesus?

Are you willing to face persecution just because you love Jesus?

October 1: Job 3:11-17

Key Verse: Job 3:11
Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?

Devotion:
One of the hardest things to fight is depression in our lives. No matter how many people around us say we should perk up or do this or do that, we stumble at every step we try to take and the more we stumble, the harder it is to think about walking properly in our lives again. I cannot imagine what Job was going through after losing his whole family in such a cruel way and I would not know how to respond to anyone in their situation other than by trying to tell them how much God does loves them and how much He cares for them.

No matter how deep we are in depression or how much we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, if we can understand how much God cares for us, we can overcome anything. I can recall a time when I dropped to my knees in absolute fear of what was going to happen, not so much because of my safety, but the safety of my children who were with me at the time. I know God had me there and then because I know what happened now that I lived through that time…

What did it take? Did it take someone to tell me about God at that moment? No. Did it take someone to shake me and remind me of God’s power? No. It took a moment of pure submission on my behalf where I demonstrated to God I was willing to submit to Him for our livelihoods. He did not let me down then, and He has never let me down!

Points to Ponder:
How upset do you get with things when the world is not right?

How much does it take for you to submit to God?

July 27: Jeremiah 7:1-11

Key Verse: Jeremiah 7:6
if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm

Devotion:
We do not have to read too much from the Old Testament to figure out what God likes and what He dislikes. We have all of this written down so we can find these things out for ourselves; after all, we don’t seem to like listening to people when they tell us what we can and cannot do! But God gave us our history so we can learn the good from the bad. He gave us families to help us spread the knowledge about the good and bad – but left us with the choice we have to make by ourselves.

He is not forcing us to do anything, but He does give us very strong words of what may happen if we ignore His ways and His rules. It is not so much that He will bring things upon us, but that the world will be able to treat us unjustly because we will not have His protection all around us!

God does not choose to do bad things to us. We choose to walk away from Him and His ways and invite those bad things upon ourselves. We are responsible for the choices we make and the things which happen to us. But, if we choose to follow His ways and His instructions, He will be close at hand to protect us from the world and will try to guide us to avoid all those bad situations we always seem to find ourselves in!

The more we do wrong, the further away from God we get and the less protection He is able to offer us – think about it and draw closer to Him!

Points to Ponder:
Do you knowingly invite bad things into your life?

Are you walking away from God and His protection without thinking about it?