Feb 9: Psalm 81:8-14

Key Verse: Psalm 81:9
You shall have no foreign god among you; you shall not worship any god other than me.

Devotion:
The psalmist recounts God’s feeling for mankind here, something we get to understand when we do have a relationship with Him. The closer we draw to Him the more we are able to understand this love and jealousy He has toward us; and hopefully, the more we get to understand just how important it is to love God with everything and to worship Him alone!

When we try to listen to God and open our hearts to His will in our lives, He teaches us His ways and tries to direct us down the best possible path in our lives. It’s the listening part which we seem to have problems with. We get carried away with everything the world has to offer us and lose track of what God is saying in our lives. The more we listen to the world the harder we find it listening to God!

He is the one who has done so much for mankind and for His chosen people. He is the one who allowed His Son to die on the cross for our sakes. He is the one who guides and, strengthens us and directs our every move – so long as we allow Him to!

When we don’t listen we go in the ways of the world and find out the hard way things are not as they seem. Our enemies are all around us and they will take hold of us if we do not have a guard against them in our lives. That guard is God!

Points to Ponder:
Who directs your life?

How is it going with them directing your life?

Feb 8: 1 Kings 11:4-13

Key Verse: 1 Kings 11:9
The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.

Devotion:
What was your first thought when reading through these verses? Was it a sense of disbelief of how Solomon could turn his back on God even though God had done so much for him and been so close and even direct with him? Or was it a feeling he was only human and what could we expect? I put it to you God is speaking directly to you through those very thoughts!

Solomon had go so involved with the world, his wives, their ways and now was giving in to peer pressure. He had been given great wisdom by God, but he was turning his back on that very wisdom to follow after human traits by trying to please his wives instead of God. I’m not saying we should turn our back on our families, but if our family loves us they will allow us to worship God in full!

God is a jealous God and will not allow us to go off worshipping other gods without something happening. God had promised Solomon things and was going to keep those promises; but he would have to know the things he had done were now going to affect his offspring instead – they would have to face losing the kingdom because of his own actions!

God continues to support us and all the promises He has made to us will always stand; but there will be consequences to all of our actions we do in our lives. For those things we do against Him, we will see the consequences unless we turn back and ask for His forgiveness.

Points to Ponder:
Do you do things which God has said not to?

Will you ask for His forgiveness?

Feb 7: 1 Kings 10:1-10

Key Verse: 1 Kings 10:10
And she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

Devotion:
I have never really looked at this interaction between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon too closely before… but something struck me when I was reading it today: The Queen was from a very different background to Solomon and clearly ruled in a very different manner to Solomon. What she saw of Solomon and Israel was a bit too much for her to fully understand; the only thing she could come up with in the end was to leave Solomon with such an abundance of spices and precious stones that Israel has never seen the like of again!

Once again, Solomon did not ask for the riches and praise. His request from God was for wisdom to rule the people and that wisdom is what he shared with the Queen. Whatever the Queen asked of Solomon, he was able to answer the questions and shed wisdom over all the queries.

This got me thinking about us and God’s ways. We have ways of thinking and ways of behaving which somewhat dictate the habits we get into and the lifestyles we live. When something new and incredible is introduced to us we have a hard time trying to get our heads round it. If we ask for wisdom in the same way as Solomon did, we will get a better understanding of God’s ways!

We can receive all of this wisdom and understanding; in return we can give what we have in our lives. We may have riches which are measured in terms of earthly riches: these can be used in church to make the gospel more accessible to others – give what you can!

Points to Ponder:
Do you struggle to measure up to God?

Why not just give what you can?