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August 2: Ephesians 4:7-16
Key Verse: Ephesians 4:16
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Devotion:
Have you ever wondered why Jesus chose the disciples which he chose? Why were they not all the same? Why were they not all priests or priests in learning? Why were they the local lads? Christ chooses a wide range of people to do the things they do. He chooses people to be the apostle, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, but He also chooses the work people who do the physical jobs...
We need a wide range of people to work together to form a community. We don’t need a police force who will tell us ever step we need to make. We don’t need an army to bully us into doing things. We don’t need rich people to pay for everything... We need a wide range of different people all with very different skills to come together and work as one body!
Jesus chose the disciples based on what he knew they would become and what they could do – even though they did not know it yet! Jesus continues to choose people to work for and with Him. Some of those people will raise your eyebrows and some may even make you run in the opposite direction... But when you get to see what they can do for God, then you will see why God chose them!
I am say I have met a whole range of people who do some serious work for God. They take the name of Jesus with them in ways you would not think possible. They reach out to the people who make you run the other way. They know they are not good enough, but they know that with Christ they can do remarkable things.
Points to Ponder:
Who is the most surprising Christians you have met?
Will you stand firm in God’s teaching and step forward to help today?
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August 1: John 6:25-29
Key Verse: John 6:27
Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.’
Devotion:
Have you met someone who was truly different from anybody else? I’m not talking about in physical appearance, but the way they behave and the way they are. I’m talking about meeting someone who you thought was so different from everybody else they made a big impression on you. Jesus was that type of person, someone who made a very big impression on everyone He met because He was so different to everybody else.
We could start with the way He was willing to meet with anyone and everyone, or we could start with the way He wanted people to be well and so healed them... Or we could look back at all the things He did differently and wonder why He was the way He was...
Jesus was this way because He knew God personally – That's difficult for us to understand because we know Him as being God. Jesus was so very different because He wanted people to see there was a very different way of living, one which did not have to revolve around the ways of this world, but to revolve around what God wants in our lives.
Jesus wants us to see the difference between living in this world and living with God. If we are content with the ways of the world we will get no further than the ways of this world. But if we strive to find out the ways of God, then we will grow up to see God’s ways which will give us something very different to aim for. Jesus was trying to tell the people they should act on what they believe, and hopefully that would be believing in God and following His ways!
Points to Ponder:
Do you think your life revolves around God or the world?
Would you ever be content with anything less than God’s ways after knowing Him?
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July 31: Luke 9:51-56
Key Verse: Luke 9:54
When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?’
Devotion:
When the time was right, Jesus set out to return to Jerusalem – the place where people wanted to kill Him! Jesus knew what was going to happen but He also knew this was the only way He could save us from our sinful lives. When they stopped along the way, they sent messengers ahead who would do the booking so to speak. They did not have phones or anything like that, so if they wanted to stay with anyone they would still have to call ahead, but manually!
When the messengers got to the Samaritan village, the people there did not want to welcome Jesus and the disciples. They may have heard in the past about the king wanting to kill Jesus and even though they would have heard the king was dead, they would not know if Jesus was still on the most wanted list. They would be the ones who would get into trouble for harbouring Jesus and His followers if this was so.
James and John took offence and wanted God to rain down fire and brimstone of the village because they had refused (unknowingly) the Son of God. Jesus rebuked them for thinking this way and that is what I would like to focus on today. When we find or hear of people who do something against God, we get cross with them and we often wish bad things on them...
Jesus is not like that. He was trying to teach the disciples how to love everyone – yesterday we touched on that a bit. Jesus wanted them to remember His commandment to love their neighbours. As they went into the village, these people would be their neighbours. We may find it hard to love anyone in these circumstances, but Jesus did not and does not.
Points to Ponder:
Do you wish bad things on people who work against you?
Would you consider loving them instead?
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July 30: Matthew 25:31-40
Key Verse: Matthew 25:40
The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Devotion:
Some of us will look back on our lives and wonder when we did anything for God, or we may even feel guilty we have not participated in events organised by other Christians... But God looks a whole lot deeper into your life than you realise. Here we are reminded God is watching us in our lives with other people – not because He has to keep an eye on us to make sure we don’t do anything wrong, but because His people are all around us!
We often forget how much of the population belongs to God because many people just don’t act like we think they should if they were Christians! We have our ways of seeing the world and others have their own way of looking at the world. God sees it for what it is – something we often overlook.
As you walk down the road today, think what you would do if the people you walk past were known to you to be Christians... would you be acting differently to how you are now? What if they are closet Christians, hiding from the world because they are scared to own up? What if they were greater prayer warriors than you? We don’t actually know people from the inside like God does – we pick up on how they act!
God wants us to go out there and treat every person as if they were His child; He wants us to go out and love the people around us as if they were our brothers and sisters. God knows their heart just as He knows your heart. If we treated each other as if they were our actual brothers and sisters, then maybe the world would be a better place!
Points to Ponder:
Is the first person you see today a Christian?
Will you treat them as a fellow Christian even if they are not?
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July 29: Psalms 10:12-15
Key Verse: Psalms 10:15
Break the arm of the wicked man; call the evildoer to account for his wickedness that would not otherwise be found out.
Devotion:
As Christians we all like to say how much God helps the helpless and the needy, but how much do we do to help them? As humans we all like to wish bad things happen to bad people – but what would Jesus do if He were here living as your neighbour.
Our daily prayers should be to praise God for everything He is doing in our lives and to worship Him for the same! Then we should be asking Him to look out for the people who need Him most; those who are needy, those who have nobody else to help them and those who have been left behind. As Christians we can go a long way to help these same people out – Christ will use us to help them if we allow Him to guide us and show us how.
Wicked people tend to shy away from God because they are either hiding stuff or they don’t want to mix with good people because they will be shown up for who they really are. I’m not saying Christians are righteous or without the need for help, but if you are like me, you accept all that God has given you and you try to help others out when you know they are in need. I still get things wrong and I know I have issues – but God allows me to work even with those issues!
Let us not ask God to bring bad things on the evil people but rather to shine light around them so they will either be encouraged to go toward the light or at the least leave the dark and shadows behind for a season. Let us not wish bad things on people we perceive as bad, but to bring God’s light into their lives so they can see what good can do in their lives too...
Points to Ponder:
Have you helped anyone out today?
Will you pray for someone you think has issues today?
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July 28: Psalm 7:14-17
Key Verse: Psalm 7:16
The trouble they cause recoils on them; their violence comes down on their own heads.
Devotion:
Whilst we can all tell of a time or times when someone evil has got good rewards, we can probably all tell of the time soon afterward when that person or people got into trouble for doing what they were doing! We may think of the world as being a place where the bad people get their just deserts at some stage or another, but the truth is the world does not level itself out but tends toward chaos instead.
It is God who is the great leveller. God is righteous and just. This means He will take account of the bad things which people do because they do these things to His children and He will allow them to face the consequences of their actions. He will also take notice of the good people do to His children and give us a reward which He deems appropriate for out actions.
When we harbour bad people or unjust ways, we must expect bad things to follow at some stage; not because God will head bad things on us, but because the bad we have been collecting will spill into our lives and into the lives of the people around us. If we try to bury those bad things by hiding them from others, we are only fooling ourselves because God knows exactly what we have been up to and He never forgets!
But, the most amazing thing is God’s love which covers all manner of things in our lives. Because we know God is righteous and just, we should sing of His praises and allow others to know of His righteousness and justice. The more we allow others to see the truth, the more likely they will be to do things which fall in line with that justice...
Points to Ponder:
Do you praise God for the just things He does?
Do you praise God for keeping justice in this world?
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July 27: Psalm 7:3-5
Key Verse: Psalm 7:5
then let my enemy pursue and overtake me; let him trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in the dust.
Devotion:
What happens when things go against you and you don’t like what is happening to you? Typically we call out for help or we shut down – just two of the extremes we take when things go bad! But, when you know you have done wrong, are you willing to accept the consequences for what you have done wrong? I think the answer here is going to depend on what you think you have done wrong and also on what you think you are entitled to!
We do tend to have this puffed-up idea of what we are entitled to, and we expand on those entitlements when things start to go wrong – in other words, we expand on what we think we should be able to do without getting the blame... or, if we look at it another way, we blame others!
One of the easiest things to do is to blame someone when you see something going wrong in their life – why else would things go wrong unless they have done something wrong?!? Well, God doesn’t work like that. His love for us goes far and beyond what we have done wrong or what we are going to do wrong. He allowed Jesus to come to our aid before we did anything wrong – before we were even born!
But when we do things wrong, and we sin against God – what do we do about it. It takes a whole lot of courage to admit to your mistakes and a large dose of strength to accept you are at the centre of the problem! It takes a larger amount of strength to accept the consequences of our actions. God wants to be able to help us out whenever things go wrong – but He also wants us to be real and accept the fact we do get it wrong at times!
Points to Ponder:
Are you always right?
Who do you blame when you do something wrong?
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July 26: Matthew 20:20-28
Key Verse: Matthew 20:21
“What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”
Devotion:
How many times have you told God what you want? I’m not talking about the things we can ask for, for healing or for comfort... I’m talking about the times when we demand something because we think it is right! I know I have gone above and beyond normal prayers once in a while to tell God what I want, but the real peace comes from waiting on God and listening to what He wants from us in the long term.
We tend to think about the here and now far too often and not the long-term picture which God is looking at. Our span of attention or focus is on the short-term things we can comprehend and think about. I am no good at games such as chess because I cannot think through the logistics of many moves ahead – instead I focus on the short term moves and I most often end up losing because of this!
God always looks at the long-term picture and tries to show us the path we should be taking for the long-term life we have ahead of us. Yes, He is concerned with the short-term because this is where we live; but His focus is on the long-term goal of us making it to Heaven with Him! If we are able to stop and listen to Him more often, we are going to get a life which runs closer to the one He has lined up for us – the issue really is how hard we are willing to listen!
Sometimes we demand things which are not possible – but because God has such love for us, He tries to cater for our needs when it is possible (for Him and not for us I might add!) There is no limit to what God can do – but there are limits to what He is willing to do because of the billions of other people in this world! We can’t ask Him to exterminate a country just because we don’t like it! Those are potentially His children too – even if we do not get the chance to witness to them.
Points to Ponder:
Do you demand things from God?
Will you consider His will in your life today?
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July 25: Psalm 145:1-7
Key Verse: Psalm 145:4
One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts.
Devotion:
The psalmist writes of just a few of the reasons to worship and praise God – the more we get to know God and the more we live with Him in our lives, the more we can join in with the praise and worship because we will see the reasons too! And it should not just be on the days where something goes right, but every day of our lives because every day is another day gifted to us by God!
I don’t think we will ever get to understand just how much God does – even when we get to Heaven and see all the glory which awaits us. His acts will continue to amaze us and to surprise us – even when we expect them! No matter how many times we say He answers our prayers, we still get excited (or at least I do) when we have a prayer answered... because we cannot comprehend why a God would care for us!
The verse I have focussed on here is the passing of the knowledge of and about God from one generation to another. Back in the early days of the Israelites, they would tell their stories over and over again to their children so they would know of the things God has done for them. Nowadays we tend to rely on things like the internet to pass on that knowledge – gone are the days of writing things down so it seems!
It is important we pass on our love of God to the people around us, whether they be our friends and families or others just willing to stop and talk. The more we praise and worship our God, the greater our zeal becomes, and the more others will be intrigued by this love we have for our God. The more people are intrigued, the more willing they will be to stop and listen – this is when we can pass on the love we have to others!
Points to Ponder:
Do others see your love for God through what you say?
Do others see your love for God through what you do?
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July 24: Psalm 27:13-14
Key Verse: Psalm 27:14
Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
Devotion:
No matter how much someone tells you, the way you will expand your faith is through answered prayers. This may sound like a chicken and egg situation where we have to have faith to pray and we pray so we can see our faith come to fruition! But, like most things in life, you have to have a starting point somewhere!
I can remember learning to swim as a small child. I started off in the paddling pool and slowly graduated to the big pool – but where I could stand. My friends had learned before me and they would run and jump into the deep end... it looked like they were having more fun than me jumping into the shallow end! So I had to take the final step and be brave enough to do my first jump into the deep end... The rest is history!
The same can be said about our prayer life... when we start off with our prayers, we probably don’t ask for too much and we don’t expect much of an answer. Our level of faith at this stage is quite shallow. When we see our prayers get answered, it is like realising we can swim – even though the water is shallow enough to stand up in. We pray for things we know we can probably do ourselves, or we can rely on someone else to do. But, as we see those prayers answered, we go a bit deeper until we start asking for things we know are not possible through our own doing.
This is when our faith grows – when we see God answering those difficult, improbable or impossible things! Our faith is exercised by us asking in the first place. The more we get used to asking God, the more we realise He answers and the greater our reliance on our faith is... until we get to that stage when we expect God to answer all our prayers. That is when others see great faith in us and are encouraged to do the same!
Points to Ponder:
How often do you pray?
How often do you expect God to answer?