Tuesday 1 Aug 2023

August 1: Exodus 34:5-9

Key Verse: Exodus 34:7
maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

Devotion:
I have been asked a few times about these words with people being worried about what their children get up to or what their parents had done in the past with the main complaint being ‘how do I control what my children/parents do/did?’ The short answer is you can’t! The long answer is actually quite simple as well… Each one of us is personally accountable for the actions we take; the most important action being us choosing to believe in God!

We cannot and should not try to say what Christ did on the cross falls short for paying for the debt we owe due to our sins. When Christ said He will forgive all who come to Him it was a promise, not a suggestion. If we impose a restriction on how much He can and does forgive, we are imposing earthly limits of our Heavenly Almighty God!

So the phrase I like to use is ‘the buck stops here!’ When we believe and trust in Christ to forgive us of our sins, we are forgiven in totality, which means nothing anyone else has done wrong is going to affect our level of forgiveness from Christ. The provisor being ‘what are we going to do about the great commission?’

Christ will forgive us. The buck stops there. What we then do as a new disciple of Christ will affect how our grandchildren, children or parents live their lives. If we are not willing to show them there is hope for a total forgiveness, then we are falling short of the mark in our relationship with Christ. A big part of living with Christ is taking on the task of spreading the gospel through the way we live.

Points to Ponder:
Do you believe God’s love is all encompassing?

How does your love stack up?