Walk With Me - Devotionals

Concessions

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 10th December 2022

Passage: Luke 13:24

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One of the many 'perks' of being older is that you are often given concessions when entering exhibitions or musical events or whatever. We even travel free on pubic transport! We get used to concessions — to free TV and a winter heating allowance. It's a sign of a caring society that wants to look after its elderly citizens.

Concessions! Jesus found there were some people who wanted concessions to get them into heaven. Some would tell him how good they were at keeping the commandments or praying long prayers or giving money to the poor. They felt that these things would help them when it came to getting into God's heaven. But Jesus made no concessions on that score at all. When someone asked him if only a few people would be saved Jesus in effect said 'Yes'. Why? Because so many people thought their own good works were enough to get on God's good side as it were, whereas Jesus said the door into God's presence is narrow. You can only get through by humbly following Jesus and recognising that it is only through his saving work that we are saved. Of course good works are good, but they need to be the effects of our appreciation for what Jesus has done for us. Remember there are no concessions to get round God and into heaven. Jesus is the only way — the narrow door.

Teach me, O Lord, to follow you and thank you. Amen.

Telling The Next Generation

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 9th December 2022

Passage: Psalm 48:12-14

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It was good going back to where our parents and grandparents had lived and showing these places to our children. Some of these places are now only ruins, especially the great-grandparents' homes, but they were still interesting - part of our family heritage. The Jewish people of old just loved Jerusalem and especially the temple area. The writer of Psalm 48 pictures people going round that area taking note of every part in it so that they could tell their children what a wonderful place it was and, more importantly, what a wonderful God their God was. And God still is wonderful. He is our God and we want the 'next generation' to know that too.

Telling children about God is one of the most important jobs God gives us to do — as parents, as churches, as Christians, whether we are parents or not - and we should be excited when we do this. Psalm 48 is a really happy Psalm the writer was really excited about God and all that he did for his people. When we know the Lord Jesus as our Saviour, we should be excited about that, about him and all he has done for us. We should be excited as we live out our Christian faith and that excitement should be obvious to our younger folk too. It should be infectious. And what a story we have to tell! The story of Jesus is the greatest story ever told — let us tell it to the next generation.

Help us, Lord, to be your story-tellers to the young folk among us. Amen.

Not A Pretty Picture

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 8th December 2022

Passage: Jeremiah 17:9

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If you are like me you enjoy looking at the photographs people put up on Facebook. I think there is quite a competition among some folk to see just how dramatic they can make some of the places look — ones we know well — by using special lenses or drones. Sometimes, however, a picture comes up showing just how selfish people can be by leaving rubbish by the roadside or 'fly-tipping' at a beauty spot. Not a pretty picture!

On a more serious note, the prophet Jeremiah wrote about the lives some of his people were living and that was not a pretty picture. This led him to give God's verdict on the way people look from the' inside' - the way God sees us. The human heart — that means the real person we are - "The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked". That is certainly not a pretty picture.

Are we all like that? Well, the deceitful part is always telling us we are not all that bad, indeed we are quite good. But God tells us a different story. Without his salvation we are "dead, doomed for ever because of our many sins." Ephesians 2:1 (NLT). Not a pretty picture! But God in his mercy doesn't want to leave us like that like so much rubbish by the roadside "But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead." Ephesians 2:4-5 (NLT) It is God and only God who can change our wicked hearts through all that Jesus has done for us. A very different picture! Let's put all our hope and confidence in him alone.

The Garden

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 7th December 2022

Passage: Genesis 2:8

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As someone who likes gardening I find it interesting to see other gardens and how other gardeners plant and lay out the gardens they have. I am interested too in the different references to gardens that we find in the Bible.

The first reference in the Bible to a garden is of course to the garden of Eden which we are told God planted. In this garden he placed Adam to be his gardener. It must have been a beautiful place to work in with all kinds of plants and a fruitful orchard as well. It was also a well-watered place so it had all the makings of something very beautiful. Sadly we know what happened as Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden. And that sin has marred all of us since then. The Old Testament people of God were described by Isaiah the prophet as a garden without water (Isaiah 1:30) because they stopped doing what God wanted them to do.

In my own garden there are plenty of weeds, plenty of slugs and snails which spoil the plants and lots of other things which tend to spoil what I want to have as a beautiful space. It's kind of like the lives we live — we keep so many 'weeds' in our minds and hearts, sinful things that make us very unlike what God meant us to be in the beginning. Our Lord Jesus Christ went to a garden, Gethsemane, the night before he was put to death and there in the garden he was in agony in his soul as he knew the terrible cost he was to pay to take away the sinful weeds in the hearts and minds of his people. Only Christ can make our lives clean and beautiful again like a well-watered garden.

God's Promises

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 6th December 2022

Passage: 2 Corinthians 1:20

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We all make promises but sometimes we fail to carry them out. Perhaps that may be through no fault of our own or it may be because we just forget or find that we just don't want to keep the promises we made.

In the language of the New Testament there are two words (a noun and a verb) that refer to promises and, except for two places, these words are always referring to the promises God makes. Indeed the Old Testament and the New Testament are full of God's promises and, unlike us, God never fails to keep his promises.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the great fulfilment of all the Old Testament promises and through Christ we have "better promises" than those of the Old Testament. We have the promise of the Holy Spirit to come and live in the hearts of believers in Jesus; we have the promise of eternal life for all who believe and the promise that the Lord Jesus will come again to establish a new heaven and a new earth. God who makes all these promises — and many more - 'is faithful' (Hebrews 10:23). God is the truth itself, so he will not, indeed cannot, lie. He keeps his promises. That means when he asks you to repent and trust him for salvation, you can trust him — he promises he will do what he says. Guaranteed!

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you that all your promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Gratitude

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 5th December 2022

Passage: Colossians 3:16

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One of the favourite hymns we sing in church begins with the words "My heart is filled with thankfulness to Him...". It is by Getty and Townend and in its three verses it shows the whole range of God's salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. The least we can do when we are Christians is to show thankfulness gratitude to God for all he has given to us. That is why Paul urged the colossian Christians to sing God's praises — and so should we; we have so much to be grateful for.

One of the old hymns has a chorus which urges us to "Count your blessings, name them one by one... and it will surprise you what the Lord has done" (by Fanny Crosby). There is a very good reason why the hymn-writer wrote those words. We can become so used to the many good things our Lord has done for us and given to us that we just take them for granted. What a shock we would get if a preacher told us there was no hope for sinners like us! But of course there is in Jesus, and our hearts should be filled with gratitude. Or what a surprise we would get if we were told all the food has run out. But that doesn't happen for most of us. We are blessed and should be thankful. Praise the Lord!

May our hearts be full to overflowing with thankfulness to you, O God. You have given us so very much in your grace. Amen.

Must Haves

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 4th December 2022

Passage: Matthew 6:8

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Long before the beginning of December the shops are full of Christmas goods. So often you notice things that the sellers say we "must have", making us feel we will be missing out on something very special if we don't get it. Very often of course, we don't need the shops to tell us what we 'must have'. We are good at deciding for ourselves — there are all sorts of things we think we must have. If we see someone with the latest fashion or with some new gadget it's easy to decide that we must have it. But do we really need it?

There is a dividing line between what we want (must have) and what we need. Our Heavenly Father knows what we need. As Jesus said, he knows what we need before we ask him and he will help us get what we need. God also knows what we want (must have?) and he challenges us to take a good look at ourselves and ask 'do I really need that?'

As Christians I think it is right for us to take seriously the challenge of how we live. Our lifestyle is a testimony to the way we trust God and have a caring attitude to other people, especially to the many needy people in the world around us or in other parts of the world. If we keep getting' must haves' we will have nothing left to give to the 'have-nots'!

Give us eyes to see the needs of others, dear Lord, and a generous heart. Amen.

Joy

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 3rd December 2022

Passage: Nehemiah 8:10

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Many people think that joy and Christianity don't often go together. Christians may be looked on as killjoys, austere, judgemental and unattractive characters. Maybe we have ourselves to blame for that.

That however is not how it should be — it is not the Bible's portrait of a Christian. The Bible tells us that God is a God of joy (Psalm 104:31) and that there is joy in his presence (Psalm 16:11). Christian people share in this joy because they have confessed their sins, repented of them and have received mercy and forgiveness from God himself so they share in this joy — joy that is "inexpressible and full of glory" (1 Peter 1:8).

If joy is missing from our faith then we really have some serious thinking to do. A joyless Christian has been described as 'a libel on his Master' because we have forgotten all that he has done for our salvation. God rejoices in his believing people and we rejoice in God and should be 'an Allelujah from head to foot' as one of the early Christians said!

Dear Lord, forgive me when my life has been so preoccupied by worldly concerns that I have not rejoiced in the God of my salvation. Amen.

Religion That God Our Father Accepts As Pure And Faultless (James 1:27, NIV)

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 2nd December 2022

Passage: Micah 6:8

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God is the best judge of our religion. In the Old Testament book of Amos, the prophet described the people as being very religious and described all their religious actions. Yet God said about it all "I hate, I despise your religious feasts." (Amos 5:21) Why? Because their religion was a sham. The people were just one-day-a-week worshippers and the rest of the week they forgot all about God, they trampled the poor and were thoroughly ungodly. It's not that they didn't know how God wanted them to live — as Micah tells us in the verse above. God had shown them the kind of worshippers he wanted them to be. The New Testament gives us the same message: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (James 1:27, NIV). "If we are true servants of Jesus Christ, we will keep our eyes open (as he did) to human need, and our ears cocked to pick up cries of anguish" (John Stott). A true test of our Christianity is a real everyday love for our Saviour Jesus Christ and an open heart towards the needs of other people whether they are near us or far away. We cannot claim to love God if we have no love for our neighbour and no desire for justice and righteousness to flourish in the world.

Gracious God, give me a heart to love and serve you well, Amen.

Renewable Energy

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 30th November 2022

Passage: Hebrews 4:12

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Renewable energy is something that is often in the news. There is a whole industry built around harnessing the forces of nature that will give us power, light and comfort, without using fossil fuels that can run out and whose use leads to carbon emissions which pollute the atmosphere and hasten climate change. So wind and tides and the sun give us renewable energy.

There is an interesting group of words which we find in the Bible which tell us about the wonderful energy of God — energy that is powerful and effective in so many ways. One of these 'energy' words is used to tell us about the word of God — it is full of living power. God's energy is always effective.

The Bible itself is the Word of God and it is full of living power in the way that it speaks to people in thousands of different languages and people's lives are changed wonderfully when they believe it. You find that from the very first page of the Bible, where we are told, "God said..." and the whole of creation came into being. God's word is always powerful and effective. And we can say that his word is like renewable energy — it doesn't run out, it is always the same and you can trust that word with your very life.

We thank you, dear Lord, for your Word. Help me to believe it and trust it as your guide for my life. Amen.