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October 3: Job 19:21-27
Key Verse: Job 19:21
Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.
Devotion:
Sometimes we need the people around us to affirm our trust and faith in God. What does that mean? Well, we are the ones who know what our faith means to us and we are the ones who know what God means to us; but sometimes that faith and belief can get eroded by what people around us say and do. It can be hard to keep up our faith and trust in God when those around us seem to be fighting against that faith and trust!
When our friends and family support us or contribute to our faith, our faith becomes stronger and we grow in Christ. When they are fighting that we often falter in our walk with God because we cannot put up with them being against us as well as any things going wrong in our lives! But with their love and support we seem to have no problem relying on God when we need to because we know we have the backing of those around us.
I know I have said this before, but when people start arguing within the church we often find those arguments reach out to more people than the two arguing. It often causes rifts within the whole church and certainly does not help people to keep their faith and love for God as strong as it should be! This is probably why Job was crying out – not because he lost faith in God, but because he did not want to have to put up with the nay-sayers as well as what was happening in his personal life.
Love each other and support each other – always!
Points to Ponder:
Do you love and support all people in your church?
Will you go out of your way to support someone new this week?
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October 2: Luke 9:57-62
Key Verse: Luke 9:62
Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
Devotion:
How many times have you heard someone say how much God loves you or how much we should love Him? How many of those times have they told you it would be such a wonderful life and times if you would follow Christ? How many times has someone stopped to tell you the truth about how much it will cost to follow Christ?
I may live in a country where I am free to follow God and free to talk about Him in public – but there are so many places in our world today where we are not allow to openly say we follow Christ for fear of being imprisoned or breaking some sort of law! God does not want us to think following Him is going to be a piece of cake and everything will run smoothly as soon as we do follow Him.
Jesus warned the disciples and others around Him they would have to put up with many things such as being persecuted if they chose to follow Him. They would have to face that because of the law of the land which mankind had created to suit themselves – not because it was the wrong thing to do!
Here we are reminded of just some of the costs of following Christ. We risk alienating our friends and family at times because we choose to follow Christ. We may well come up against all manner of bad things just as we know Job faced. None of these things are created by God, but by man for mankind. God wants us to buck the trend and to submit to His ways and His will in our lives instead.
Points to Ponder:
Are you willing to stand up for Jesus?
Are you willing to face persecution just because you love Jesus?
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October 1: Job 3:11-17
Key Verse: Job 3:11
Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?
Devotion:
One of the hardest things to fight is depression in our lives. No matter how many people around us say we should perk up or do this or do that, we stumble at every step we try to take and the more we stumble, the harder it is to think about walking properly in our lives again. I cannot imagine what Job was going through after losing his whole family in such a cruel way and I would not know how to respond to anyone in their situation other than by trying to tell them how much God does loves them and how much He cares for them.
No matter how deep we are in depression or how much we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, if we can understand how much God cares for us, we can overcome anything. I can recall a time when I dropped to my knees in absolute fear of what was going to happen, not so much because of my safety, but the safety of my children who were with me at the time. I know God had me there and then because I know what happened now that I lived through that time…
What did it take? Did it take someone to tell me about God at that moment? No. Did it take someone to shake me and remind me of God’s power? No. It took a moment of pure submission on my behalf where I demonstrated to God I was willing to submit to Him for our livelihoods. He did not let me down then, and He has never let me down!
Points to Ponder:
How upset do you get with things when the world is not right?
How much does it take for you to submit to God?
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July 27: Jeremiah 7:1-11
Key Verse: Jeremiah 7:6
if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm
Devotion:
We do not have to read too much from the Old Testament to figure out what God likes and what He dislikes. We have all of this written down so we can find these things out for ourselves; after all, we don’t seem to like listening to people when they tell us what we can and cannot do! But God gave us our history so we can learn the good from the bad. He gave us families to help us spread the knowledge about the good and bad – but left us with the choice we have to make by ourselves.
He is not forcing us to do anything, but He does give us very strong words of what may happen if we ignore His ways and His rules. It is not so much that He will bring things upon us, but that the world will be able to treat us unjustly because we will not have His protection all around us!
God does not choose to do bad things to us. We choose to walk away from Him and His ways and invite those bad things upon ourselves. We are responsible for the choices we make and the things which happen to us. But, if we choose to follow His ways and His instructions, He will be close at hand to protect us from the world and will try to guide us to avoid all those bad situations we always seem to find ourselves in!
The more we do wrong, the further away from God we get and the less protection He is able to offer us – think about it and draw closer to Him!
Points to Ponder:
Do you knowingly invite bad things into your life?
Are you walking away from God and His protection without thinking about it?
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July 25: Matthew 13:18-23
Key Verse: Matthew 13:22
The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.
Devotion:
One of the biggest things which separate us from God is living amongst other people! For some reason most of us will allow the things in life to get in the way of our happiness and in the way of our relationship with God too! We get so upset by things of the world we lose sight of God and His ways, making it an uphill struggle to try and commune with Him on a daily basis.
God has warned mankind from the beginning of time about being side-tracked and lured away from Him, and yet we continue to allow the world to interfere with everything! And, no, it is not a simple task of switching it off because we have feelings and we have this sense of looking out for other people all the time.
God wants us to be very aware of others so we can help others, but He also wants us to be very aware of His presence in our lives! No matter what goes on with life and the world around us, God is always going to be close by. We see this in the very earliest manuscripts in our bibles where Job had all manner of things happen to him and his family; but he was somehow able to keep a hold of his relationship with God throughout everything – this saw him though in the end!
Most of us will give in and be taxed by the world and its ways. Most of us will give in to temptations. Most of us will get things wrong from time to time. This is just the way we are. But God watches over us and wants us to succeed!
Points to Ponder:
How often do you get things wrong?
How often do you reach out to God?
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July 24: Matthew 13:1-9
Key Verse: Matthew 13:9
Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Devotion:
Have you ever wondered why some things in life just seem difficult whilst others are so simple? Have you compared what it is like to build something when you have the instructions and when you don’t have the instructions? Life is a whole lot easier when we have instructions to follow and we actually follow the instructions. If we don’t follow them, life is difficult, but with those instructions, life becomes easier.
Jesus was trying to illustrate this to the people by telling them a parable of a farmer sowing seeds. When the seeds landed on the right soil with the right environment, the seeds would thrive and grow into healthy crops.
The Holy Spirit is sowing seeds in our lives all the time and our past lives dictate what sort of ‘soil’ we are and how receptive we are going to be to the seeds being sown. God does not discriminate about who gets the seeds because He would like the seeds to be sown everywhere. Just like the farmer would recognise where the seeds have the best chance at growing, God knows too.
If we start listening and obeying, we are going to become more receptive to those seeds and we will have a better chance at having them germinate in our lives. It has already started with God sowing the seeds, but we have to be receptive and start listening to what He is saying to us!
Points to Ponder:
Do you listen to God’s instructions?
Or are you distracted by the world around you?
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July 22: Song of Songs 3:1-4
Key Verse: Song of Songs 3:1
All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him.
Devotion:
I love this section of passage as it talks about the perceived view of real love, not the basic intimacy we have for others or the carnal view we sometimes look at, but a love which goes much deeper and has meaning beyond normal feelings. Why would this maiden go out late at night to look for her loved one other than knowing this partner meant more to her than ‘being normal’
Whether this was a dream or what, I’m not going to speculate. What I do know is the real feeling you have when you know what love actually is. I have had relationships where I have been in love with the person and I have done things out of the ordinary to go out with said person(s) but each time I have found something lacking in the end.
I know my love for God goes beyond those feeling I have had for others in the past, but that is probably not the love this maiden is talking about. I believe this maiden is talking about the love one person has for another which goes beyond a casual relationship, or one which we think is real because we are choosing to look the other way over the shortcomings we know about.
God would prefer us to be with the one perfect person – but getting two people together at the right time and place is not always likely. We allow various feelings get in the way of what is real and what God wants. We get confused by physical feelings and desires. Sometimes we just have to put up with our shortcomings and get through life!
Points to Ponder:
Do you have the perfect partner?
Have you tried to give more than you take?
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July 20: Micah 2:1-5
Key Verse: Micah 2:3
Therefore, the Lord says: “I am planning disaster against this people, from which you cannot save yourselves. You will no longer walk proudly, for it will be a time of calamity.
Devotion:
One of the things which has always fascinated me about the stories from the bible is how people would continually ignore warnings! But when you are on the other side of the fence and you have multiple warnings about your life or your health, you may ignore them thinking it could never happen to you!
We live in a world where all manner of things go wrong because of what people do to each other.
Only recently we have had a global disruption to all manner of IT infrastructure because of the mistakes made by someone and the ignorance of others who refuse to accept responsibility. We have world leaders who refuse to accept what they are doing is wrong and so the rest of us suffer!
God does not turn a deaf ear or blind eye to these things and will give people warnings before catastrophe happens on way or another. More likely caused by people because they ignore the warnings!
Go loves us and will bend over backward for us… but if we continue to ignore Him we have no way of knowing where He wants us to be so we are not affected by the global disruptions and goings on! Listen and learn from God alone!
Points to Ponder:
Do you continue to ignore people?
Do you continue to ignore God too?
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July 18: Matthew 11:28-30
Key Verse: Matthew 11:28
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Devotion:
This is one of my favourite passages in the bible, one which we often forget about during rough and tough times. It is normally only after the event when we can look back on the times we have struggled, the times when we have thought the world was treading all over us, and we can then see how God played a big part in the courser of events when we trusted Him!
I look back at the time when I was in hospital and recount the times with friends and family only to see the despair and torrid time they all went through back then. I knew God was with me and I knew He was going to do what is best and so I left the decision making to Him. When the Doctors came to me and asked if they should go ahead with the operations knowing there was a great change of failure, my choice was always yes, because God had it!
When I look back and see the timing of the events, how the right people were in the right place at the right times; I see God’s hands in ever step of the way. It wasn’t me making a selfish choice but me placing my trust in Christ knowing that if it was His decision to take me home I would be there very soon!
When the world feels like it is breaking up around us, we need to allow God to guide us and keep us; don’t drown in the worries of the world because we can’t change the world, but we can depend on God!
Points to Ponder:
Do you try to change the world around you?
Or do you try to listen to God and simply obey?
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July 17: Matthew 11:26-27
Key Verse: Matthew 11:25
At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.
Devotion:
As Jesus was teaching the disciples, He saw how they were having their eyes and hearts opened through their believing in what He was teaching them. Jesus marvelled at this and praised His Father in heaven for allowing this to be so. He had seen how the teachers of the law, the scribes and the Pharisees had learned so much but had not accepted the truth in their hearts. They were simply living out the law and trying to earn a place in heaven through what they were doing.
Jesus wanted them, and us, to see that it is more of a relationship we attain with God and maintain through our belief and our faith. As we grow in God and allow the Spirit of God to guide and teach us, we learn directly from Him just as a child learns from their parent(s).
God had given this knowledge to Jesus even though He was then in human form so He would be able to share that way of living with God with us all. Jesus had to be the example through which we could understand this is all possible even though we are sinners and should be eternally separated from God because of our sin. Jesus had stepped up and placed His own life on the line to pay for our sins.
When we accept this we become children of God and He can then allow the Holy Spirit to commune with us and guide us every step of the way from that moment on. That is God’s amazing gift to us!
Points to Ponder:
Do you accept Jesus as the Son of God?
Are you allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you?