- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 798
September 26: James 5:13-16
Key Verse: James 5:15
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
Devotion:
How often do you pray? I'm not talking about saying your prayers just before you go to be or when you wake up, but praying when there is a special need. The disciples had learned from Jesus they should pray at all times, especially when there was a need for someone or even themselves. God has said He is going to continue to look out for us, but we should not take Him for granted!
If we just accept God is going to look out for us and go about life expecting Him to do everything, our faith will grow weak and or faith will fade. We do need reminders in our lives so we can remember the important things. As I was talking to a friend yesterday, I was talking about how things did not go my way in 2019 and by the end of our talk he was convinced God had a reason for it all – was it because I had become too used to accepting God was always there?
God wants us to remember Him in prayer. If we are in trouble, we should be calling out to Him for help. If we have reason to be happy, we should be singing out in praise! In other words, no matter what is happening in our lives, we need to remember how much God is doing and acknowledge Him in everything.
The more we acknowledge God, the more we will begin to recognise how much He does for us and how much more we should be praying! We should also not be hiding our lives from everyone else, but sharing our faith and lives with others so they can be encouraged by what God does, be it for them or for us. Let us all sing praises to God and cry out for help, louder and always!
Points to Ponder:
How often do you pray?
Do you cover everything in prayers?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 819
September 25: Luke 10:1-7
Key Verse: Luke 10:7
Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
Devotion:
Sometimes we only think of the twelve disciples when we think of the people Jesus sent to go and spread the gospel, but here we are reminded of the many others he sent to prepare the way. He sent them out in pairs so they would be able to support each other knowing two witnesses are better than one.
But He also gave them specific instructions about how they should go out. They were not to get dressed up in the smartest suits and go to teach people, but to simply take what they had and go forward. This meant no big suitcase of clothes or food or anything, just what they were carrying. They were instructed not to stop along the way and get side-tracked by talking to people, but to aim for their destination!
They were also not taking bags of money but would have to rely on the people around them giving them food and supplies as they needed them – not to build up wealth by earthy means, but to build up spiritual wealth and share it! They were also told they would have to work hard and put up with a lot of opposition!
God sends all of us out to spread the gospel in whatever way we can – not to build up all the technical wizardry and plan everything to the last cent, but to go and depend on others to help you! God wants us to focus on the gospel and not on worldly possessions so others will not get distracted by what we do, but also see the word for what it is. The gospel truth.
Points to Ponder:
Do you try too hard when talking to others about Christ?
Will you try to keep it simple and allow God to convict people instead?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 726
September 24: Psalm 150:1-6
Key Verse: Psalm 150:6
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Devotion:
I'm sure there's a song based on this Psalm, but I could be getting mixed up with another Psalm... I wonder how many of the Psalms were written to music and sung rather than being said as poems... How often do you take time out of your day to praise God for what He is doing in your life?
So many times we get carried away with our lives and forget about thanking God and praising Him for everything He does. When things don't go according to our plans we get upset and stop praising Him – what we should be doing is looking for the things to praise Him about, even when we feel the world is turning against us.
David had to take time out and praise God on several occasions because he got carried away with his life. But, each time he was reminded by a prophet or priest, he would take time out and praise God; often writing down the words in Psalms. Maybe we should take a leaf out of his book and write down the praiseworthy things which we see in our lives. Maybe then we will be able to recognise just how much God does for us!
Don't wait for the world to change before you pray. Don't wait for the people around you to change so you can thank God. Start by thanking Him and praising Him, then you will see the things He continues to do in your life and you will be able to praise Him every day! Why not make a song and dance of it so others can see how much God does for you – encourage them to see how much God can do for them too!
Points to Ponder:
Do you wait until Sunday before praising God?
Stop what you are doing and think of 10 things to praise God for!
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 773
September 23: Luke 6:6-11
Key Verse: Luke 6:9
Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?’
Devotion:
I wonder, have you used Sunday as an excuse to not do something you had promised to do, or not done what you promised because it is Sunday! We tend to use excuses of all kinds to get out of doing things we promise others just because we are feeling lazy or we don't want to do what we promised!
God has not promised us anything which He has not been willing to deliver on – we can depend on all His promises all of the time. When Jesus was in the synagogue on the Sabbath, He was not going to stop healing others who needed it just because it was the Sabbath. He was not going to use the Sabbath as an excuse to not show His love for others!
We tend to give in to excuses when it suits us and use those excuses to get out of doing things when it suits us – as if we are living on both sides of the fence! Jesus made sure everyone was going to witness His healing of this man on the Sabbath because the Pharisees were doing what they could to try and trick Him into working on the Sabbath... twisting God's law into something it was not meant to be!
God wants us to continue doing good at all times, continue loving others at all times and continue giving Him the glory at all times too. This includes doing things on Sundays, not to show people they should work on Sundays, but to show them we follow God above any rules written down! God does not want His own commandments to be used against Him!
Points to Ponder:
What do you do on Sundays as well as going to church?
Do you go out of your way to help others on Sundays?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 760
September 22: Psalm 119:33-37
Key Verse: Psalm 119:36
Turn my heart towards your statutes and not towards selfish gain.
Devotion:
This chapter is roughly in the middle of our modern bibles and is the longest chapter too. It is a series of stanzas of a great poem talking about God's Word and what we should be doing with it – rather fitting it is in the middle of the bible!
If we take a look at the whole bible, we may well get a bit discouraged because it is a long book and is hard to take in because it separates us from God. God is Holy and cannot abide sin, our bibles are a reminder of this fact and continue to teach us what we do wrong in our lives. We can either take it as a book which tells us of all the ways we have done things wrong, or we can look at it as a book which describes all the ways our forefathers have done things wrong!
If we take it personally, we will get discouraged and we may well give up trying to follow it before we get this far in the book. But if we allow it to teach us of all the things which have gone wrong in the world, and aim to not follow in the path of those wrong-doings, then we stand a much greater chance of sticking with things!
We can follow the words of this stanza and plead with God to teach us what has gone wrong and how we can avoid doing the same things in our own lives. We can ask Him to protect us from the evil in the world and allow the word to guide us where we should go rather than what we have done wrong. Always look at the positive side and gain strength from it rather than allow it to beat you into submission!
Points to Ponder:
Do you have a positive attitude?
Will you allow God to guide you through His Word?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 770
September 21: Proverbs 3:1-6
Key Verse: Proverbs 3:3
Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them round your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.
Devotion:
How many times have you come up with a plan only to see it fail because you did not account for some 'unseen' circumstance? As a computer programmer, I try to make sure my code is going to stand up to all sorts of things which can go wrong, but there always seems to be something I have not thought of which someone else tries and it breaks the program!
Life is a bit like that too – we try to cover all our bases to make sure our lives are as good as we can hope for, but there is always something which we have not accounted for which sees us fail just when we think we should work things out.
God did not just have to guess what could happen for a few years (like our lives) but had to account for everything man was going to do for thousands of years. He had to make sure there was a way mankind could be saved no matter how many things we try and no matter how many things we get wrong!
He gave us His word it would all work out and has seen that through with the promise we will be saved. He even made sure this was all written down thousands of years before we were born! He made sure we would have a way out of the corner we backed ourselves into. All He asked of us was to trust in Him, believing what He did was for our sake and believing He would come again to take us to be with Him.
Points to Ponder:
How often do you fail at things?
Will you look to God and trust in what He has done for you?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 758
September 20: Mark 9:33-37
Key Verse: Mark 9:34
But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.
Devotion:
How many times have you stretched the truth so you can be 'better' than everyone else? I can remember doing this on multiple occasions when I was young, and then thinking I would grow out of it as I got older... but the temptation is always there to stretch the truth so we can seem better than we are!
When the disciples did not want to admit what they were arguing about, it was because of this situation – they were trying to prove they were better than others. Instead of pulling them up about it and telling them off, Jesus simply told them what they should have been doing. Another trait we should learn and follow Jesus with!
We don't have to tell people off all the time so they can 'learn the right way,' we should be showing them the right way and allowing them to make the choice. Jesus wanted the disciples to learn from example and not from being constantly told off for doing things wrong. We have enough people in our lives who tell us what not to do, but not enough people who are willing to show us the right ways of doing things to encourage us in the right path.
Jesus wants us to not build ourselves up to show others they are not as good as us, but to lower ourselves to a position where we can lift others up and show them how good they could be if they chose to be! This is what Christ does to and for us all the time!
Points to Ponder:
Do you tell people off all the time?
Will you try to build someone up today instead?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 739
September 19: James 3:13-18
Key Verse: James 3:15
Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
Devotion:
Why would the writer describe ambition as demonic? That's what many people will take away from verses like this, but it is far from the truth. Let us take this in context of what Jesus had taught the disciples about how they should behave; about the most important rules to follow...
Jesus said the most important thing is to love God with your whole being, and then to love your neighbour as yourself... which pre-supposes you have learned to love yourself because you have found the love of Christ... What is ambition? To better yourself beyond what you think is going to happen! Or something like that!
If we have genuinely learned to love God, the loving ourselves becomes second nature and then following Jesus' command to love other the same way follows... But these verses are not talking about acts like that, they are considering people lifting themselves above and before the others around them – which does not fall in line with loving others as you love yourself. To follow Christ's commands mean we need to have a great love for God, for ourselves and for the people around us – which mean we should be treating those around us like we want to be treated.
Earthly envy or ambition is loving ourselves above all else, above God and above the people around us – this is not real love and is called earthly wisdom or love here. When we focus internally instead of externally, we lose focus on God's love and build up false pictures of our own love which turn out to be envy, greed and pride... Allow God's love to spread through your life so you can share it with the people around you!
Points to Ponder:
How far does your love for yourself go?
Will you share more of God's love with others today?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 784
September 18: Isaiah 43:8
Key Verse: Isaiah 43:8
Lead out those who have eyes but are blind, who have ears but are deaf.
Devotion:
No matter what we have done wrong, no matter how much we have got things wrong, God always wants us to come back to Him and to admit our sins. It is the world and the things around us which trap us and stop us from seeing the truth. If we were all able to shut out the noise of the world, we would be able to hear the sound of God calling us!
The first thing I noticed after I moved back to a village in the countryside after living in London for a few years was the quiet and dark nights! I could hear the animals in the forest. I could hear the bats flying round at night. I could hear things instead of them being drowned out by the continual rumble of traffic noise from the highway I lived a few yards from!
God wants us to be able to hear Him and to know we are loved in so many ways by Him. If someone did not first tell us of this great news, we may well have continued to listen to the traffic and think that was normal! If someone did not tell us of the light of Christ, we may well have continued to be blinded by the hustle and bustle of the city!
Yes, we all need to stop focusing on the world and spend a bit more time seeking God; but we also need to tell others about Him so they will know they have to seek Him out too. If we don't mention God in our lives, people will not know He exists because of the deafening and blinding ways of the world...
Points to Ponder:
Do you focus on the city lights and ways?
Will you try to share Christ's light with someone today?
- Details
- Written by: DJ Dave
- Hits: 758
September 17: Psalm 14:1-3
Key Verse: Psalm 14:3
All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.
Devotion:
You may be forgiven for not liking what you read in these verses, after all it sounds very much like the scriptures are against us... When God gave the commandments to Moses to give to the people, it was not Him setting up a trap through which He could reject everyone because none of us can keep all the laws... the commandments were given to us to show us we have no hope without God. King David must have gone through this in his heart quite a few times because he knew he had done many things wrong – but he also knew in his heart God was willing to forgive if we come to Him with humble hearts.
No matter how much we think we have done everything right, there has always been times in our lives where we have thought the wrong thing or said the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. God wanted us to know He sees and hears everything and so nothing will escape His judgement.
But He also wanted us to know there was going to be an ultimate sacrifice which would cover all of our wrong-doings, no matter how bad they were. When Jesus came to live amongst us, He made sure people understood this and He also made sure they understood we have a choice to make. If we choose to go against God, then we are actively choosing to say Jesus was not good enough to cover our sins...
I am thankful Jesus came to live amongst us in human form so He could take on the sins of the whole world being our perfect sacrifice – once and for all. I know I have done things wrong in my life, but I also know Jesus is willing to forgive me because He promised me He would when I come to Him and ask for forgiveness!
Points to Ponder:
Do you still feel guilty?
Have you asked Jesus to forgive you?