July Devotios

25 July 2017

Do not harden your hearts

Hebrews 3:15 As it is said, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

Usually this verse is used by many as a gospel sermon for inviting an unbeliever to the Lord and it is not wrong. But if we read the complete chapter and in fact the complete book of Hebrews this verse is addressed to those believers who heard the gospel message, surrendered their hearts to God and later whose faith has grown cold. The Hebrews Christians to whom this book was addressed were going through severe persecution under the roman government and so some of their faiths were wavering and growing cold because of the discouragement they were going through. Like them it is easy for our faith also to grow cold when our prayers are not being answered for a long time, if we are going through suffering either physical or emotional and if we are down in the ditches of discouragement. But through this verse God's word is warning us to not to harden our hearts when we hear His voice during these times of faith crisis. God gave a promise to us in His word that He will never leave us nor forsake us. So even during our times of low faith He keeps sending us reminders of His presence with us and His love for us. He sends a loved one to encourage us, He sends a devotion on our way, He sends someone to preach us a sermon, He speaks to us through a verse and sometimes He even reminds us of His presence through the nature around us. But if we chose to ignore and harden our hearts then we will move more and more away from God and eventually will end up even leaving our faith.

All the people of Israel were led out of egypt by God through Moses but not everyone could enter the promised land.Some fell away in the wilderness because of their unbelief Hebrew 3:16-19. It is not how you start that matters the most but how you end is more important. Many start their faith journey with great colors but if one small thing goes wrong they give up. Some times that one mistake or that one wrong thought or that one small sin will make us fall down and take us away from God but are we willing to go back to God and ask Him forgiveness? Yesterday while listening to a sermon by Mr.Ravi Zacharias I heard him mention these words 'what is worse is not falling down but staying there on the ground after falling' . It is so true, when we fall down in our faith walk and remain there it is only going to make things more worse. It will only make us more and more disappointed and make us wallow in self pity. It is true that when we sin against God our conscience makes us feel guilty and we feel so ashamed to ask forgiveness even from God but  please do not remain there. The truth is it is our pride that stops us from asking forgiveness, so make a deliberate effort and get up and run into the arms of the Lord. He is already waiting there for you and He is willing to forgive you and give you a second chance yet again.

Now if you are someone who still do not believe in the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior please note, right now God is standing at the door of your heart and knocking at it. Please stop resisting the convictions of the Holy Spirit in your heart and surrender yourself to God. Faith is not delusional and it is not some fairy tale. It is not a belief but it is a personal relation with God.The gospel message is absolute and true. Jesus Christ came into this earth as a human and He died on the cross as a ransom for our sins (yours and mine) and He rose again on the third day. Because He is born into this world as a human He understands perfectly what we go through, all our fears, doubts, confusions and temptations everything, because He offered Himself on the cross as a substitute for us, our sins are forgiven and because He rose again we also dont have to fear death but can have eternal life. He was a perfect man and a perfect God

Some things our human heart cannot comprehend but just because we cannot understand them it doesn't mean they are not true or they do not exist. Heaven and hell are true and God gives us the choice to chose. So today I dare you to kneel down on the side of your bed before you go to sleep tonight and pray this small prayer. Dear Lord Jesus, I want to trust you, I am having a hard time believing this gospel message but I want to know the truth. Please reveal yourself to me and lead me into the truth. Please forgive me of my sins and come into my heart. In Jesus name Amen.

Trust me, if you pray this prayer your life is never going to be the same after that.

15 July 2017

Wisdom from above

James 3:17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

Wisdom, knowledge and understanding all these words are used interchangeably by some but their meaning is very different from each other. By studying and doing research we can increase our knowledge, understanding is a mental process of comprehension or can say intelligence and wisdom is making a sensible decision or judgement based on knowledge and experience. In our spiritual journey wisdom plays an important role especially for those who are leading other believers and are spiritual teachers.
Recently I went through an incident wherein the words of some people which in actual terms were very appropriate and correct were actually timed wrong. What they spoke or told me is correct and they had best intentions in heart but my emotional state at that time was not ready for such words, I wanted to be surrounded by silence to process things on my own, I wanted little bit of space and solitude to lay my heart before God and allow Him to scrutinise it and show me where I went wrong. And this experience was in contrast with another experience I had a couple of months before. When I shared some concerns with my dear friend she was busy at that time so instead of replying immediately she prayed for me (and later she told it was a quick prayer in her journey back home from office). But during this interval God gave me understanding on what was going on in my heart and I was able to understand to an extent of why those things that concerned me happened. So even before she could reply I told her that God gave me some revelations on those concerns. And these two experiences made me realise the importance of having wisdom and discernment when speaking to or dealing with others. Especially when the person is not present face to face we need Godly wisdom to understand and assess their situation. This wisdom cannot be attained by mere study or any research or any intelligence or even by our experience, it has to come from God alone. What applies to one situation and one person does not apply to another situation or to another person if they are going through similar things. If we have the wisdom of God we will have the understanding of what the other person is going through at that time and we will have the knowledge to speak the right words at the right time or even have the understanding to remain silent and pray for them.

In today's verse James, the brother of our Lord Jesus talks about such Godly wisdom or wisdom that comes from above. Such wisdom is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere James 3:17 in contrast to wordly wisdom which is earthly, unspiritual and demonic James 3:15. We need to check our words and attitudes against these scriptures when counseling others or speaking to others.Is our intention pure? Is our intention to correct them or guide them or lead them solely for the benefit of them or to prove our spiritual superiority? It is very easy to forget that we are also sinners saved by grace and that it is just His grace that brought us this far and think we are much more spiritual than the other person and fall into spiritual pride. Are our words for peace and are we gentle in the way we are handling the situation or are we just trying to shove down our ideas and being judgemental and legalistic? Are we considering the emotional state of the person and be merciful to them or are we trying to sprinkle salt on the wound? Dig up things and hurt them more? Are we open to reason and sincere and impartial? However best our intentions may be and however theologically correct our words may be if we time our words wrong it will only hurt the other person more. I did hear and read about people who moved out of churches and even faith because of such untimely and wrong words of counsel.  So sometimes it is better to remain silent and uplift that person before God in prayer rather than try to give our words of wisdom to them.

It is not very easy to possess such wisdom but God's word says God will give us wisdom if we ask Him James 1:5, For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; Proverbs 2:6 and it is better to have wisdom than gold and to get understanding rather than chose silver Proverbs 16:16, wisdom is better than jewels Proverbs 8:11, wisdom is better than might  Ecclesiastes 9:16 and wisdom is better than weapons of war Ecclesiastes 9:18. God's word also instructs us to get wisdom and insight Proverbs 4:5. So let us ask God for wisdom, knowledge and understanding to live a life that is pleasing to Him and to speak words that will bless others.

As apostle Paul mentioned in Colossians 1:9 my prayer too for all us is, we may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.