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Jeremiah 16:17 For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes.
Jeremiah did not have a good message to deliver to the people of Israel to begin with, but the overall message was surprising to some.
We may think that God is going to turn us out and push us onto the streets because of all we do wrong, but He is looking out for us always.
God continues to love and protect us; part of that may well be teaching us to give up the bad stuff in our lives, but He aims for our betterment.
Listen to God and live with God to get the most from your life!
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Psalm 51:9 Hide Your face from my sins, And blot out all my iniquities.
When we are faithful to come to Christ and lift up our sins to Him in all honesty, He is faithful to forgive us of those sins.
He has promised us to separate us from those sins as far as the East is from the West; and He does when we bring them to Him.
But are we willing to live with the consequences of our sin as well? Are we willing to pay in kind?
Don’t go out and sin just because you know Christ has paid for it; change your life and walk with Christ!
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Proverbs 28:13 He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.
Covering your sins does not lead to prosperity, normally… I qualify that because we see many people who sin leading very wealthy lives; but that is not the prosperous life we are talking about here.
To be rich is one thing. To know God, love mercy, see life, have peace and so much more are the things I look at as prosperity.
Don’t get tied up in money and riches of earth. Turn from the earthly riches and aim for God’s calling in your life.
God will bless you in very different ways to what you normally look at; this is not a physical wealth we aim for but spiritual wealth seeking God and His ways.
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Psalm 38:18 For I will declare my iniquity; I will be in anguish over my sin.
It is never easy to admit to doing something wrong because we know then we have to face up to the consequences of that wrong-doing.
But as long as we keep our sin buried inside of our minds and hearts we keep that anguish about the sin in our hearts and minds too. That is not healthy!
Christ wants us to be honest with Him because He has shown us honesty throughout everything He has done for us.
God is just. That means He will not turn His back on us doing wrong. He also sees everything we do so hiding things is not really an option.
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Psalm 51:3 For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me.
What is sin? Does it have to be known to you before it becomes sin? No, sin is doing something wrong against God whether you realise it or not.
Knowing that it is sin is the first step. Unless we know God’s laws we will not know whether we are breaking them.
Admitting to the sin is the next step; we could try to live in denial and pretend we are not sinning but we are only fooling ourselves.
The final step is to turn away from that sin. Repentance is embracing all of the steps above and not just one of them. Be honest with God.
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Joshua 7:19 Now Joshua said to Achan, “My son, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession to Him, and tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.”
No matter how many things we think we can hide from our friends and those around us, God will open up the truth and unhide anything that needs to be shown.
Joshua had the unenviable task of picking out the guilty person based on how God told him to uncover the guilty party.
When we lie to hide things we are not just hurting ourselves with all the stress and strain we impose but also all the people around us who will have to find out the hard way.
God wants us to be honest and open with all people.
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Revelation 16:9 And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.
Who is the one you blame when things go wrong in your life? Do you turn to the people around you and apportion blame on them for not making things smoother to start with?
Or do you turn round to God and blame Him for things after the event?
Each of us will be judged according to the things we do wrong ourselves and not for the things others do wrong.
The end times will see some pretty horrific things as we can read about; and people will turn round and blame God for stuff He has not done!
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Genesis 4:13 And Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear!
Cain thought that God was being a bit excessive in the punishment He laid out for him. What do you think?
God has to be just and has to carry out His promises otherwise He would not be God. Why should we ever question what God does?
We should question it; but not to question whether God is right but to work out why God is doing what He is doing. What is it we have not seen or recognised?
When bad things happen in our lives we should not blame God but accept that both good and bad stuff does happen. Through everything God is trying to guide us so we should be trying to listen to Him throughout everything.
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Lamentations 3:39 Why should a living man complain, A man for the punishment of his sins?
What right do we have to complain about things when we know we are in the wrong?
Seems like a silly question but when we are faced with punishment or chastisement in any form we always look for a way out of it. That way out may be to try and apportion blame on someone or something else instead of us!
God knows us from the inside out and will not chastise us for something we do not do or have not done!
God is faithful and just. He carries out everything in truth and with absolute justice.
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Psalm 77:3 I remembered God, and was troubled; I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed. Selah.
How much time do you spend in a relationship just being with your partner, catching up, talking, finding out and telling? How much time do you spend in your relationship with God in the same manner?
Sometimes we are so caught up in the world we look to God and ask why He is not helping us or why we seem troubled when we look to Him.
Just maybe it is because we have not spent enough quality time with Him to unload and to reload.
God wants us to be in constant communion with Him and not to treat Him like someone on the outside. Keep God in the centre of your life!
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Psalm 4:4 Be angry, and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah.
One of my favourite places to write devotions and to read my Bible is on my bed where there is little to distract me from my purpose.
Taking anger or other pent up feeling to bed with you will not give you a restful night’s sleep; but giving all of your problems and unloading your anger before bed will help.
Spend time alone with God and talk things over with Him; do not keep them to yourself or think that God will do things all the time.
Yes God is here always, but He does wait for you to offer things to Him and to ask of Him.
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Matthew 23:9 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.
Do you look at a verse like this and say that we should not call anyone Father because God says so, or do you look at this and say Jesus told off the Scribes and Pharisees for lifting themselves up?
I think that if you don’t think about both then you may have missed the point of Christ saying what He did!
God’s word is here for us to learn from, so we need to learn from what has happened to others and see how that applies to our own lives nowadays.
Don’t look at the Bible as being a set of things that happened for the people at the time it was written about – look at it as instructions for the past, present and future.
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John 5:44 How can you believe, who receive honour from one another, and do not seek the honour that comes from the only God?
In order for us to enjoy the love, joy and peace that comes from God we do have to listen to and obey Him in the first place!
If we are going to continually seek the praise from people around us instead of looking to God all the time then the only praise we will receive is from the people around us.
That praise and honour will be hollow because it comes from mortal man; seek the everlasting and honourable praise from our God and King.
Make sure we listen to all He has to tell us from the words given to Moses through to those delivered to John for our futures!
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Proverbs 25:27 It is not good to eat much honey; So to seek one’s own glory is not glory.
What happens when you eat too much of something? I’m not talking about eating too much lunch or Christmas dinner but eating nothing but honey for a few days or something similar.
Whilst we may kid ourselves we could eat our favourite food for a week, we would get sick of eating a single thing in the end; but rich foods would not take that long!
Seeking our own glory is about as good as eating nothing but honey… the more we eat it the less we think of it until we are sick of it and despise it.
Don’t get caught up in judging yourself but take in all God gives you for it is good!
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Proverbs 26:12 Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
If we are going to try measure our own goodness or self-worth through our own knowledge then we will either come to the conclusion we are the best thing in the world or we are a total failure.
If we try to set our own examinations we will either set questions we already know the answer for or set impossible questions; it just does not make sense!
We need an external measurement or comparison which normally means listening to someone else’s judgement of us.
God has given us the Bible as our measuring stick but also given us the Bible as our solution finder when we see we have failed. Trust God’s Word.
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2 Corinthians 10:12 For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.
How would you go about checking to see if you measured up to expectations? In school we go through exams. At work we go through reviews. So where do we start in spiritual terms?
If we start by comparing ourselves to others we are going to get stuck in a rut where we are striving to lift up ourselves to be as good as others all the time.
If we start by comparing ourselves to Christ we may well get depressed and give up on ourselves.
What we should do instead is to raise our awareness of God’s commandments and direction so we can aim to be what he asks us to be – individuals trusting and believing in Him!
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1 Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
When Samuel was called to visit the house of Jesse to anoint the next King he looked at the brothers of David and saw good strong men just like Saul.
God does not require the six-pack or the muscles popping out. God requires a heart dedicated to serving Him.
It is how we use what God has given us that counts; not how much we have exercised or managed to build up for ourselves.
God looks at our potential based on what we have inside of us. God plans for the future realm which is spiritual and not just for the physical realm of now.
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John 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
If we were to follow the Old Testament only or the New Testament only, we would miss out on so much of the truth and how God worked with the people in Spirit as well.
Worshipping God with sacrifices because of laws broken will allow us to get to know God and obey Him. But to know Him properly we have to get to know Him in spirit as well.
Trusting the unseen God to work with us in ways we cannot understand is something many people find very hard to accept simply because we cannot see Christ in work physically.
Trusting in all three persons of the Trinity allows us to grow in strength with our God in many more ways than we thought possible to start with!
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Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.
What do you think of people who constantly tell lies? What do you think of someone who constantly steals things?
When we do things against other people we are also doing those things against God. Each of us is a child of God and so we need to make sure we keep our eyes focused on Him.
When we do things wrong we upset a whole lot more than just the people around us, we upset God, we upset the people watching and the people involved.
But lifting up our prayers with humble hearts is like someone singing a gentle melody to Him. God loves it!
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1 Corinthians 14:1 Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.
Continue to look for that love which Christ has shown to us and which Christ promotes; it is truthful and leads to many things.
Is desire then so bad? Desire is another powerful emotion which allows us to focus our minds on things, but can be a distraction if we allow it to be.
Desiring the good things which Christ wants us to focus on is good because we focus more on His needs and not our own wants.
The apostle tells the people of Corinth they should focus on the spiritual gifts so they can see what Christ has in store for them and for others. Follow Christ, with everything!