March 6: Luke 15:11-16
 
Key Verse: Luke 15:13
Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.
 
Devotion:
If God loves us so much, why doesn’t He give us everything we want. This is a statement I hear a lot from people who have not yet accepted Christ into their lives and are seeking for answers; this seems to be the simplest one to start off from because we each have very different experiences in our lives but a common theme in life is the giving of gifts to those we care about.
 
Sometimes giving gifts can be counter-productive because it gives a false sense of worth. The parable of the lost son is one of those which highlights human behaviour and one which we can relate to. God does love us, and He does try to allow us to have everything we need; but there is a big difference between what we want and what we need.
 
A common human saying is to teach a person to fish instead of giving them all the fish they need (or farming etc.) God wants what is best for us. Just giving us the food we need without us having to work for it or pay for it does not help in the long run. If we learn to totally rely on hand-outs from God, then we lose the value of what we have and lose the urgency of what we need in our lives.
 
Just like this teaching, if we are given everything we could ever hope for, we may well squander it because it loses its value. But if we have to balance what we can get with hardships in our lives, we add more value to those things we need. It teaches us to be more aware of the things we need in life. God wants us to assign greater value to the things we need and less value to things such as money even though it can be used to supply our needs.
 
Points to Ponder:
How often do you ask God for things in your life?
 
How often do you do things for others?

March 5: Mark 11:15-17
 
Key Verse: Mark 11:17
And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
 
Devotion:
What do you treat your local church building like? What does your local church group treat the building like? It is a loaded question because there are so many things we can do as a church group with the buildings we have and we should do as much as we can to support our communities through what we can do.
 
God wants us to do as much as we can, but He also wants us to listen to His instruction as to how we go about that work. We have a duty to uphold the name of Christ and part of the perception of Christ’s name comes from our local church buildings. This is not to say we should exclude anyone who does not follow Christ from our buildings – far from it.
 
God gives us so many things with which we should be encouraging people to know Christ, but some of those things can be used for our own purposes instead of Christ’s will. This is what the people in the temple courts were doing – they had turned over the area to those who were seeking their own profits and not anything to do with God. This is abusing what God gives us...
 
This goes much further than just church buildings and church grounds... God supplies us with the tools and the people we need to further the gospel message. We need to take care of everything He gives us and use them for the purposes He has charged us with. When we abuse this privilege and seek our own profit rather than Christ’s, we fall short of the charge God has given us and we then face His wrath or judgement alone!
 
Points to Ponder:
Have you thought about reaching out more with your church?
 
Will you support anything God asks of you?

March 4: Luke 16:19-31
 
Key Verse: Luke 16:31
“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
 
Devotion:
What does it take for you to believe something someone else says? Do you believe them because they are a friend, or maybe you believe them because they are an enemy! It takes all sorts of situations to change our minds about the things we have thought to be true or beyond doubt.
 
Do you think your task as a disciple of Jesus is to try and persuade others the Word of God is the truth and what they have held on about the earth is simply that – of the earth? I put it to you the answer to this is NO. Your task is not to persuade others the bible is true, but to open the bible up to others so they can make their own decision based on what God is trying to get them to believe in!
 
We often look to the evangelists to bolster our faith because they make it all sound so good – but we are set the task of basing our faith on what God has said and what He impresses upon us when we meet with Him in prayer. He will take, and has taken, steps to make sure we always have someone who will help us to believe the Word, but also always makes sure we are the ones who make the decision about our own faith. This is important because God wants us to not just believe Him but also to know our own beliefs.
 
We will probably not get a personal evangelist to visit us and keep us going. We will probably not get the ideal church leader in our local church to keep us going. It is our task to delve into God’s Word and come to our own conclusions – this is our faith!
 
Points to Ponder:
How often do you delve into God’s Word?
 
Will you make a point of convening closer with God today?