August 11: Matthew 18:15-20
Key Verse: Matthew 18:15
‘If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
Devotion:
One of my biggest gripes for people quoting Matthew 18:20 is people taking it as meaning when more than one person gates together to talk about Jesus, He will be with them... Well, that is not exactly what Christ was saying here. If we look at the preceding verses we realise He is talking about more than one witness being together to discuss what has gone wrong or what others have done wrong!
Christ wants us to make sure we don’t turn on others just because we don’t believe they have done something the right way. We cannot judge others – Christ has warned us against this. What we need to do is to go about things the right way. First, discuss it with the person involved; if they listen and change their ways, then you have done right by them and by God. If they don’t listen, then we should bring another person into the discussion so they see you are not just blaming them.
If they still do not listen, then things should be escalated until such time as it is brought before God in an official way. This is the point where Christ is saying He is going to be with us. Up to this point we have been trying to act on Christ’s behalf; but when that does not work, we have to get serious and involve Him!
God wants us to be able to sort things out between ourselves because we learn more by doing so and we can always be a friendly face instead of the long arm of the law being involved from the start! Take time to talk things over. Take time to work things out. Whatever we do here in our lives will be taken with us to Heaven – if we judge others falsely, that comes with us! If we do things right, that comes with us too!
Points to Ponder:
How often do you just blame others?
Will you try to do it Christ’s way next time?
August 10: Matthew 18:1-5
Key Verse: Matthew 18:3
And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Devotion:
As we grow older we change the way we behave and the way we live; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Jesus was telling the disciples how they should be more like children to make sure they gain access to Heaven. Now, we could take this as we have to misbehave as children do or to be as innocent as children – I know I was not so innocent as a child!
When Jesus brought the child amongst them, I’m pretty sure He would have chosen a child who was behaving! God wants us to have the innocence of children but the maturity of adults. He wants us to have the faith of children and not the pride and arrogance of adults. As we grow us, we lose the innocence we used to have as we continue to get side-tracked by the trappings of the world – we wander away from God.
Children normally will gather around adults or follow after them because they learn this is the safest place for them to be. As we grow closer to God and have Christ more in our lives, we should know we are safest when closest to Him too.
But it doesn’t stop there, because as we grow up into adults it then becomes our turn to look after the children who look to us in faith – both physically and spiritually. We do need to be the adults, but with the innocence and faith of children wanting to be with their parents. We should be more like children seeking our Father in Heaven, looking for every chance to be close to Him!
Points to Ponder:
How were you as a child?
Will you act more like a child and seek your Heavenly Father?
August 9: Psalm 147:13-14
Key Verse: Psalm 147:13
He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your people within you.
Devotion:
After all the Jews went through, from being under slave rule in Egypt to wandering through the desert, they knew how to depend on God. But, as time went by, they grew cold because they were too comfortable living with all the good things God continued to give them. God does indeed look after us, but we must always acknowledge all He is doing in our lives at all times.
The psalmist writes of the strength, power, peace and good living the people of Israel enjoyed living under God. You would think they would be praising God continually for everything – but we get far too used to the good life and we take it for granted. These are the dangerous times because we are no longer giving God the glory for what He is doing for us.
If we know God is helping us in any way, we should be telling the people around us how wonderful God is for what He is doing. How else are they going to learn of the virtues of our God unless we tell them. If they don’t know God, how will they get to learn of the amazing things He does and the love we share with Him?
God wants us to tell of His greatness, to encourage others to seek Him and to show they too can experience the peace and good life we have in Him if they too seek Him each day. There is the catch – we should be willing to seek Him out at all times and to share Him at all times. Christ came into the world to do many things, one of which was to remind us of the greatness of our God!
Points to Ponder:
Do you know what God does for you each day?
How many people did you tell of the great things God did for you today?
August 8: John 6:41-51
Key Verse: John 6:50
But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.
Devotion:
I can imagine the commotion when Jesus was talking to the people and telling them how He is the Bread of Life come from Heaven! It is bad enough trying to tell people about Christ being the Son of God nowadays even after we have been given God’s Word through our bibles. People just don’t tend to believe things unless they have some sort of physical proof – and so many people take things much too literally!
Christ is not a loaf of bread! People need to get their heads round this before they can move on, so talking with such sayings to people who do not yet know Christ does tend to get them more mixed up than give them hope. But if we start with the symbolism about how we can physically eat bread to physically live, then we can move on to the spiritual side of living and give them the hope God wants them to have.
The Jews had a history of believing their relatives where stories were passed down through generations about how God guided them through the desert and how they survived part of that time living on nothing more than the manna God supplied for them. They tended to believe this because they were told these stories from generation to generation. This is what we should be doing with God’s Word too – passing it down generation to generation!
If we are willing to spend a bit of time explaining why Jesus is the Bread of Life, then we too can pass these stories on to our children and so forth. Christ came to break the trend of people changing to stories and living with their own rules and regulations instead of the commandments set down by God. We have this all written down in our bibles now so we can pass on the knowledge – but we still need to explain things so people can understand the truth; after all the truth may be hard to accept at first!
Points to Ponder:
Do you take time to explain God’s Word to people?
Will you pass on God’s Word to another generation?