Devotionals

Jonah 2:8
“Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.”

An idol is anything that we are attached to, devoted to or addicted to that becomes a substitute for a true relationship with the living God. The story of Jonah is one that always captures our attention, but our Scripture for the day is one of the key verses in the whole of this short book.

The heart of the story is whether or not Jonah was willing to be obedient to God. He had been asked by God to go and preach to the evil people of Ninevah, but in his rebellion against the word of the Lord, Jonah set off in the other direction and boarded a ship to Tarshish. When a terrible storm threatened the safety of everyone on board, the crew threw Jonah, the man who was running away from God, overboard.

And in the belly of the fish that swallowed him, Jonah came to his senses and spoke out to God the profound words we are reading today, “those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” A worthless idol is anything which turns our heart from God and makes us run away from Him. Many are the circumstances that people can end up in as a result of disobedience and running away from what people know to be right and true. Even seemingly innocent things can be a deceptive idol if they rob us of the time which we should be spending in coming close to God.

I’m conscious as I write this Seed that there may be many people who are suddenly being convicted of the sin of idolatry – never having seen before how idolatry is not necessarily bowing down to a false image – but filling our thoughts, words and deeds, the sum total of which amounts to running away from the Lord.

The good news of the Jonah story is that in his precarious condition, he quickly repented. The result Was that God gave Jonah a second chance to do what God had asked him to do in the first place. God is a gracious God – He longs to give us a second chance, but sometimes He allows very difficult things to happen in our lives to get our attention, so that we may turn once again to Him.

Prayer: Thank You, Lord, that You helped Jonah to see the truth of his situation and gave Him a second chance. Help me, Lord, to examine my own heart and see if there is anything that I have made an idol of, so that I may, through repentance and a change of heart, experience once again the grace of God. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

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“Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations, with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.” Psalm 89:50-51, NIVThis is a season in history u…

Psalm 89:50-51, NIV
“Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations, with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.”

This is a season in histo…

“Do not remember against us our former iniquities; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.” Psalm 79:8, NIVWhen people turn their back on God and walk away from His plan and purposes for their lives, there are consequ…

Psalm 79:8, NIV
“Do not remember against us our former iniquities; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.”

When people turn their back on God and walk away from His plan and purposes for their lives, there are consequences. Not because God is vindictive, but because He loves us so much that He wants us to be reminded of who He is and of how much He loves us. Sometimes, when people have deliberately and consistently run away from the place of God’s blessing, they have to come to a place of being ‘very low’ in order for them to come to their spiritual senses and realise what they have done.

In telling the story of the prodigal son, Jesus was using this very human story to teach profound spiritual principles. He was telling the people both what the consequences are of running away from God and then, in stark contrast to how the Pharisees would be thinking, how the Father scans the horizon to lavish love on the son who was lost – not to reward his homecoming with punishment. Being brought very low can sometimes be the essential first step in a long journey of return, forgiveness and eventual restoration to the place of sonship.

This is the heart of God – if we persist in being wilfully rebellious, He does not protect us from being brought very low, because He knows that unless someone is brought face to face with the reality of where they are and what they are doing, they will never turn their hearts once again back to their Father. Sometimes, unless we face how much we have fallen in time, we will eliminate ourselves from the blessings of fellowship with the Father in eternity.

Over the years I have spent thousands of hours with people who have been brought low and have faced the brick wall caused by their own behaviour – but what joy when they have realised that this is the place where they have really met with the heart and character of a loving God, often for the first time. The Father has enveloped them in his loving arms and laid out a feast of love to celebrate their return.

It’s hard, sometimes, to watch people on a path that will inevitably lead to them being brought low. It can be easy to think that this is always the enemy’s doing, and no doubt he rejoices when people hit rock bottom. But man’s desperation is God’s opportunity and whenever that happens we need to be there to help people rediscover how much Father God loves them – that is the heart of healing. No-one is beyond the love and the mercy of God.

Prayer: Thank You, Lord, that even when people are brought very low, Your love for them never fails. And that You are always scanning the horizon looking for the moment when people turn again to You. Help us, Lord, always to be agents of Your love and mercy to show them Your heart in their time of need. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

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“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-…

Matthew 11:28-30, NIV
“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

There is sometimes a difference between the burdens we choose to carry and the burdens which God equips us to be able to carry! God’s burdens are light, meaning that they fit perfectly with our gifting, our ability, our situation and our destiny. Whereas the things that we choose to carry can sometimes be ones that God has not prepared for us, or, even, ones that the enemy has loaded on our backs! It is these which cause us the greatest personal pressure, stress and distress.

We need to learn not to pick up unnecessary things, maybe because of pride, and how to exercise Holy Spirit discernment to recognise false burdens from the enemy of souls and not accept them as our responsibility. We then need not to be afraid of the things that the Lord does give us to do – for if it is truly He who has given them to us, then we can be sure that He has also equipped us to be able to carry that responsibility effectively.

An ‘easy yoke’ in our Scripture for today is one that perfectly fits the shoulders of the ox for which it was made. Not all oxen are the same and a skilled carpenter would carefully shape the yoke to fit the physique of the ox to which it would be fitted. As a carpenter, Jesus knew what He was talking about and this particular illustration would have been well understood by his hearers. An ox was capable of a massive amount of hard and heavy work – but only if the yoke was ‘easy’, meaning well-fitted. An ill-fitting yoke caused pressure and pain.

In these scriptures Jesus is saying come to Him and let Him decide what you should be carrying – let Him be the Carpenter who has shaped your yoke to fit you and knows exactly what You should be carrying!. There are times in my own life when I have felt excessive stress from the loads I was carrying and I have simply come to the Lord and talked to Him about each one. Invariably, at those times, there were things that I had unnecessarily been carrying and, on occasions, things that were clearly enemy inspired. I needed to do some pruning of the things that were causing the stress, so that I could more effectively carry the loads, even heavy ones, that God had made me to carry.

Prayer: Thank you Jesus that you have made and equipped me to be a carrier of loads that are perfectly fitted to who I am. But help me to recognise those things that You have not asked me to carry so that I can avoid being wrongfully heavy laden. I choose today to come to You that I may rest on who You are and discover afresh what You want me to be and to do. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.

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“You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven, but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for…

Psalm 73:24-26, NIV
“You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven, but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.”

It’s been my privilege to minister and pray with quite a few people as they have walked through their last days on earth and approached their moment of eternal destiny, as they ‘cross the river’ which separates time from eternity. When flesh fails, for those who know the Lord, God is all they want! The things of earth have grown ‘strangely dim’ in the ‘light of His glory and grace’ as I have so often sung in the words of the chorus, Turn your eyes upon Jesus’.

But when flesh has failed, as it surely will, we will inevitably leave behind the treasure that has been accumulated on life’s journey. Our material possessions are distributed according to our will for another generation of beneficiaries to use and to enjoy. But there is an inheritance that we leave behind which is never mentioned in the will and yet is the only inheritance that can yet reap blessing and benefit in heaven – the inheritance that has been sown into the world as a result of the lives we have lived.

The spiritual treasure that we leave behind, which cannot be counted by the executors of anyone’s estate, will continue to reap a harvest for years and generations to come. When people think of you after you have gone, what will be their lasting impression? Will they remember the depth and the integrity of your spiritual life and be challenged to walk closer to the Saviour?

When the Apostle Paul was writing his letters in prison he had no idea that what he was writing would one day become part of the New Testament – but what he left behind was powerful evidence of the living reality of his everyday walk with Jesus. Generations have been blessed by the spiritual treasure he left behind. Like Paul, we should all be concerned about whether the spiritual treasure we leave behind will be an eternal blessing to the succeeding generations.

Prayer: Thank You, Lord, for the lives of those who impacted me for good and for God. Thank you for their living testimony. Help me, Lord, to always be aware of the influence my life can have on others as I seek to serve You with all of my heart. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.

http://blog.ellel.org/ {Click Here to read Peter Horrobin`s blog

“Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.”Psalm 66:16, NIVReverence and awe are primary constituents of holy fear. It is only those who revere God and who worship Him in awe and wonder, whose ears are truly ope…