Wednesday 29 Dec 2021

December 29: 1 John 2:3-6

Key Verse: 1 John 3:6
whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

Devotion:
When I started to get to know Christ, I also started visiting various churches and seeing how people worshipped in various settings. I also started to see how different people thought things were different, to the extent some were against others because they were different! It was only when I got to study God’s Word and read what had been written down that I started to see something very different.

Christ came to show us the way to live because mankind had done all manner of things previously and had got mixed up and lost their way in many settings. We can see this in some churches or religions, or whatever you wish to call them. Each seems to have their own idea on what is important and what should be followed. We have some who insist on following the original scriptures from the Torah. We have some who follow their own re-written bibles. We have others who follow people instead of Christ.

If we genuinely want to call ourselves Christians, then we need to act like Christians and not like religious organisations! One of my pet hates is being called religious by people who do not know Christ. Jesus did follow various ways and rights of the Jewish people – after all, God chose these people and taught them what they should be doing. But He also made sure people were told they had no more reason to sacrifice on their own because He was the perfect sacrifice for all.

If we try to live as Christ lived, we will find out a whole lot of things are actually what God has wanted from us all along. We can start by loving God and our neighbours; Jesus elegantly demonstrated this throughout His life. We then need to remain in the truth – always taking God’s Word with us and making sure other people get to hear it too. God gave us commandments we should follow, not because He wanted to make life tough, but because He wanted us to be fully prepared for life with Him in Heaven.

Points to Ponder:
How many commandments do you follow?

How often do you discuss things with God?