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May 25: Matthew 18:12-14
Key Verse: Matthew 18:13
And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.
Devotion:
How many of your friends are always there for you and how many of them just seem to come and go when it suits them? I know this is a harsh thing to say and I know there are so many reasons why we all ‘come and go’ in friendship circles, so generalising is not encouraged! But there is a friend who will never leave your friend circle and who will always come and find you when you go off and get lost! That friend is Christ!
In our societies we often look at the profit margin rather than in our hearts when it comes to business decisions – but people’s souls have nothing to do with business decisions, or at least they should not have! God does not weigh up things and see where and when the most profitable time and place will be to gain the most souls! God seeks out every single soul, leaving none alone!
This is so aptly told in the parable of the lost sheep where the shepherd is looking after 100 sheep, notices one of them has wandered off, leaves the 99 safer sheep and goes off to find that one lost sheep. He knows those 99 are going to be safe because He knows each one of them. Often as Christians we get down-hearted because we think God is not listening or we think He has wandered off to do something else… These times are when He has faith in us, knowing we are strong enough to continue going while He makes a detour to find another lost sheep!
God does not want to see any one of us wander off and get lost. As Christians we need to stick together to keep each other safe from the world; we need to encourage each other knowing we are in the fold where we are safe. God is not leaving us alone and He certainly is not turning our backs on us; just maybe He has made a detour to find the single lost person and wants you to be strong and loving to welcome them in when He returns with them!
Points to Ponder:
Do you get tired of just being a Christian?
DO you know God is trusting you with Christianity to be ready for the next one?
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May 24: Romans 5:6-8
Key Verse: Romans 5:6
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
Devotion:
This is probably the most important part of God’s love which we need to be reminded of – especially when our lives are being turned upside-down with the pandemic situation! This is how God loved us even before we got to know Him! Have you ever ‘fallen in love instantly?’ Not that this can be compared to the love of God, but you know how it changes your life and eventually the life of the other person if you get together. It’s that point I want to focus on – how your life will change when you reciprocate a bit of that love God showed you first of all!
It’s not like we had to do anything to get God to love us – something I see so much of around me and something I find a bit disturbing. We may be able to fool other humans into believing we care for them for a while, but the truth eventually comes out. We cannot really hide from the love of God because He has shown His love for us from the beginning and has done some pretty amazing things to try and convince us of His love… even before we got to know Him!
God knows what we are like. He knows all the bad things we get up to and He knows what is going on in our hearts and minds; yet His love for us knows no bounds and continues to be poured out on us. We don’t have to sort ourselves out before He can love us. We don’t have to make sacrifices before He loves us… He loved us from the beginning and that was when we were powerless to do anything about that love! Jesus died for us even though we were doing things against Him!
We may think we would protect our nearest and dearest even by giving our lives for them, but would we do that for our enemies? Would you willingly give your life so your worst enemy could live? That is what Jesus did for us! That is the awesomeness and faithfulness of Christ’s love for us!
Points to Ponder:
What do you do for the people you love?
Do you know how much Christ has done for you already?
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May 23: 1 John 4:7-11
Key Verse: 1 John 4:11
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Devotion:
Having looked into God’s definition of love albeit in layman's terms for our sakes, we can now look at what God is asking us to do with this love. He is asking us to love one another, which again raises the doubts we have of being able to love our enemies; but as long as we keep hold of our own definition of love we will probably never be able to love our enemies!
So how do we do it? Well, we start with the love God is giving us and not what we claim to have ourselves! True love comes from God and has been shown to us through His actions. God showed His love to the Israelites by taking them out of slavery and into a land where they could thrive. God showed the love He has for all of us by allowing His one and only Son to give His own life up on the cross in our stead!
It is through Jesus’ action on the cross we have access to eternal life, not because we deserve it but because He loved us enough to provide a way for us to join Him in Heaven despite us having sin in our lives which excludes us from being with Him! His love far out-weighs the sins we have done and Jesus’ blood covers them all allowing us to come out as if we had not sinned – this is the only way we can be with God the Father!
We don’t get a free pass to Heaven just because we declare our love for God, nor for saying we love Jesus or for saying we have the Holy Spirit. We gain access to Heaven because of what Jesus has done and because He is willing to inter seed on our behalves – He is the only one who can do this because He alone shed His blood to cover our sins. This is God’s love for us embodied… so our choice is to either reject that love or to grasp it fully and follow God’s wishes; to take this love He gives us and share it with the people around us, friends and enemies alike!
Points to Ponder:
What is the most you have done for love?
Do you realise how much God has done because of His love?
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May 22: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 13:6
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Devotion:
We spoke of God’s love yesterday and how much He cares for the whole world, but what is this love? By human standards we have all sorts of ifs and buts which we apply to love just to get us out of tight spots or ‘little lies.’ None of that is the true definition of God’s love, but these verse help us to understand some of the aspects of God’s love and enough to inspire us to aim toward something which is achievable!
To be honest, one of the hardest things to accept is when God tells us we have to love our enemies, because, well, they are our enemies! But if we take these verses to heart we begin to see how we can love our enemies through something quite different to our normal feelings we ascribe to love.
How often do you get sick and tired of waiting for someone to respond in a way you like? How often do you get envious of the love a friend has for another person? How often do you overstate your ‘love’ for someone to try and get something out of it? How often does our so-called love put others down, anger others or keep record of any little thing someone does wrong? This is not the love God wants us to have, but what we call love in this world.
God’s love does nothing described above because it is a love which covers all of those things we do wrong in our relationships. His love does not know evil but always remains in truth. His love always seeks to trust, protect, uphold, all of which gives us hope as it perseveres. This is the love God wants us to share amongst our communities and not just with the ‘one we love!’ God shares this love with us all and continue to share it no matter what happens in our lives. He does not stop loving us just because we fell off the rails and did something wrong. His love is forgiving and perpetual!
Points to Ponder:
How do you describe your love?
Will you try loving with God’s kind of love?
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May 21: John 3:16-18
Key Verse: John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Devotion:
I thought it time to visit some of my favourite verses in our Bible; these are the first verses I learned off by heart and they have stuck with me through all my time since coming to know Christ! I actually learned them because I had to, but did not understand the full gravity of these words until a few years after I had learned them...
This is, unfortunately, part of the way we live nowadays. We learn things and do things because we are told to. We learn how to reply to things because that way we will pass the test of being asked the question – but that is not real in a sense it is just like a machine learning to respond to pre-set questions. The more I get to know God, the more I want to explore different ways of being with Him and different ways in which we can relate to Him.
Life should not be a pre-learned response to a set of pre-set questions. Life just isn’t like that. We get to face issues we have not faced before and get to confront new ways of seeing things. We have to adapt to life as we live it. The wonderful thing about God’s word is it isn’t a text book we have to learn verbatim! We get to use it to guide us in life. God has given us this perfect set of scripture so we can face up to almost anything; and when we reach a point we don’t understand, we need to leave it up to God to guide us through the problems.
Jesus did not come to put us all to death for the sins we have done, are doing and will do… He came to set us free from those sins so we don’t have to live that way any more. If we choose to ignore this truth, then we are condemning ourselves to live by human laws which we know to be faulty and we will die confined by those laws; but if we choose to accept God’s Word as the truth, then it will set us free from this trap we set for ourselves – all because God knew what we needed!
Points to Ponder:
Do you ever despair at the way politicians try to bend the laws?
Do you know God’s law never changes?
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May 20: Colossians 3:5-10
Key Verse: Colossians 3:9
Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices
Devotion:
How often do you tell a white lie to get away from doing something or to get away from taking the blame for something you have done? I have always tried to make sure I tell the truth, but I know there are many times when I have not told the truth just because it was more suitable for me to not do so! This is the life we are trying to leave behind as we move forward with God in our lives – but it is not as easy as dropping off our dirty laundry at the cleaners and getting on with our lives!
Whenever I say something like that I stop and think about what I have said, not because it is profound or anything, but because of the gravity of what I have just dared to write down on paper! It also makes me think of the people who have jobs where they cannot help but get dirty during their work; my mind goes back to movies I have seen about people who have worked in coal mines and they have come home looking rather blackened with the coal dust. Nothing that a good wash cannot take away – but that image sticks in my mind!
God is so much more than the dirt we carry round in our lives. He is so much more than the residue we have on us because of the lives we live. Whether we live those lives by choice or just because we don’t have a choice, God is still there and still able to take ultimate care of us! There is no sin greater than the forgiveness and faithfulness of our God. There is nothing we can do which will prevent God from being here for us. Yes, we have a choice to ask God into our lives or not, but He is still there, waiting!
So let us put aside the lies of this world for as long as we can, starting here and now. I know this may not last too long for many of us because of the world we are surrounded by, but we can at least start again. Jesus was faithful to go to that cross so our sins could be forgiven once and for all. He has already done that so we do not have to continue on in our sins any longer. Be brave. Ask God to help you change.
Points to Ponder:
How often do you lie?
Will you try start afresh again?
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May 19: Psalm 66:10-12
Key Verse: Psalm 66:12
You let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.
Devotion:
None of us like to think we have to go through tough times, but sometimes we do have to face challenges in order to grow stronger; just like we have to do exercise in order to get fitter, we have to do spiritual exercise in order to be spiritually stronger too. But then we also have to face hardships in life in order to know how to cope with them – something none of us want to do!
The Children of Israel had to go through a long period in the desert before they were able to reach the land God had promised them – but that was probably nothing compared to the time they spent in slavery in Egypt. God did not cause any of these things to happen. These all happened because of what man was doing. It could be said this current pandemic is all down to what mankind was doing… we are largely responsible for things like this because we are trying to understand the world a bit better – so we test things we ought not to be testing without proper protection… but we make mistakes and we all get to pay for those mistakes!
But, no matter how much we go through and no matter how much we do things wrong, God is always there. We may push Him into a corner because we want to get on and do something we ought not to be doing, but God is still there. He has every right to punish us for the things we experiment with, but He does not. He waits patiently for us to realise our mistakes and turn back to Him for he comfort and abundance He wants us to have.
There are times when I get so carried away with work and all things computerised that I forget to knuckle down and spend time with God. He does not punish me for those times but waits patiently for me to get round to it… This morning is the repercussion of one such time when I did not knuckle down to do my Bible study and devotionals – so this one comes out a bit later than normal! But I know God is still with me every day – because He is faithful, always!
Points to Ponder:
How often do you do things you ought not to?
Was God still there when you turned back to Him?
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May 18: Psalm 66:1-4
Key Verse: Psalm 66:2
Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious.
Devotion:
One thing which strikes me each week on Sundays is the longing I have to get back into a building with lots of people and just lift up our voices to God! I really do miss being able to meet together under one roof and worship our awesome God. We don’t have a church building of our own, we meet in a community centre so we have to put up and take down absolutely everything each week – which is hard work, but now I realise just how worth it it actually is!
I love the simplicity of our new way of doing church now because I know it can reach so many more people who would not want to come together for fear of being found out or the fear of other people judging them… Our church slogan has always been “Come as you are” which does not just mean people can turn up to church in their joggers and T-shirts, but also means we can come to church in whatever broken state we are in.
Whatever your church is looking like nowadays, just know that God is still with us and God continues to listen to whatever songs, praise, prayers or just talking we lift up to Him! We do not have to be in a proper state before we lift up our praise or our prayers. We don’t have to get ourself straight or clean before we come to worship God. God knows what we are like, He knows what is in our hearts and He knows what is possible for us to achieve! Trust Him!
And the best part is we do not only have to meet up on Sundays! We can meet with God every moment of every day – because He is with us every second of our lives. This may well make some people cringe because they know what they are doing wrong, but we can still come to Him and give it all into His welcoming arms! It breaks my heart to know people are missing out of having a full and wonderful relationship with God!
Points to Ponder:
What did you do for church yesterday?
What will you do with God today?
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May 17: Acts 17:22-31
Key Verse: Acts 17:28
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Devotion:
Can you imagine the conversation between Paul and God about going to preach among the Greeks! I think Paul may well have questioned why he should be the one who had to go to these religious people and try to convert them toward Christianity. When we look back in the history book we find a myriad of gods whom the Greeks worshipped – almost one for every occasion… But what amazes me more is how the leaders would be able to pull the wool over the people’s eyes as they told them of new gods they would have to worship for various things!
And yet this is what we see in our modern society just as much, the difference being the gods of this world are so many and so diverse now they are no longer called gods, but in reality they are. I’m not going to name and shame anyone and any god, but there are bound to be some things in our own lives which we hold up high and treat as gods… think this through before defending yourself!
Paul was bold enough to stand up before the people and pull them up on this – how they reacted was probably quite expected. Some jeered and scoffed, but some stopped and thought about what they heard and wanted to hear more. Were they just thinking of how they could have another god to add to their list or whether they actually wanted to hear the truth, I don’t know.
But what I do know is that if we are willing to tell people of our God and show them what it is like to be a Christian, then God is faithful to work in their hearts and allow them to see the truth if they are willing to stop and listen with their hearts. I like to think the Greeks had a lot of head knowledge of the other gods but not the heart knowledge, but when we look around us at the passion people have for some pretty strange things in life nowadays, I fear they believed in their hearts their gods would answer them. We need to be urgent and honest about our God!
Points to Ponder:
Do you like to tell people about Christ?
Will you step forward and ask someone if you can pray for them today?
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May 16: Isaiah 25:1-5
Key Verse: Isaiah 25:4
You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall
Devotion:
After so many words against people around the Mediterranean this chapter in our bibles gives the basic needs for each of us – to praise the Lord! No matter how many bad words and prophecies against people who were working against God, God is still here loving and supporting those who want Him to do exactly that!
It is because of God’s perfect faithfulness this is all possible and has continued to follow on from the prophecies promised to us so many years ago and still coming true! It is God who has allowed the collapse of cities who refuse to follow Him, not because He got so angry with us that He had to destroy us, but because we brought the destruction upon ourselves through our actions which clearly showed everyone we were not following God!
But to those who are willing to come to Him with open and humble hearts are able to receive bucket loads of love and support. Those amongst us who need it most are given the love and support they need – I know because I have been there and have come out wondering just how any of this love and support was possible. I know what I do wrong and I know I am not worthy in myself; but I know He has promised to include me as one of His own just because I have put my faith and trust in Him! How Awesome!
The more we are willing to make God a part of our lives, not just on Sundays but actively in your life, the more you will be able to see how much He is able to do in your life. I love this verse highlighted today because God is our refuge when we are poor and needy. He is our shelter when life is like a storm bashing against us. He is our shade from the relentless sun of sin beating down on us. He is the wall which stands between us and the ruthless factor around us. God does not take away those bad things because they are man-made and still exist, but He can shield us!
Points to Ponder:
Do you feel overwhelmed at all?
Are you willing to ask God to be your protecting wall?