For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat."
TO PONDER
In our verse reflection earlier this week (Monday – Genesis 2: 2-3) we learned that God didn't physically need a rest day on the Sabbath but rather used the seventh day to reflect on His toiling and all that He had created. A moment to reflect on His work of creation. Our God is indeed a busy God. He is always watching over us and walking with us. Our God is always at work. He encourages us to follow in His footsteps and keep busy.
Most of us are probably aware of the saying 'sing for your supper'. It is a saying we might label today an 'olden day' phrase alluding to wandering minstrels who performed in taverns and were paid with a meal. They worked / sang for their pay / reward.
Our message today outlines that God's plan for us is to provide for our needs through our work. Verse 10 is articulate in qualifying the fact that those who are unwilling to work, that is those that are able to, and choose not to, shall not eat. God will provide for all our needs if we use our time and talents wisely in His name and not be idle or waste our time like fools.
God wants us to be busy and productive with our time. We should be very attentive to sing for our supper. Knowing that our Lord will provide us with our every need in return for our devotion to Him.
What earthly distractions and temptations, keep you from doing God's work and willingly singing for your supper? How can you counteract them?
PRAYER: Father God - continue to walk with me so I proactively find opportunities to be busy in my earthly work for You. Father, encourage me and remind me of the total assurance in your plan to indeed provide for my every need through the work that I do in Your name. Amen
Today's devotion written by Shane Burdack, LifeWay Epping
A sluggard’s appetite is never filled,
but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.
TO PONDER
Proverbs 13 focusses on the value of correction in our lives and compares the wise soul to the foolish one.
Both the wise and the foolish have desires. After all, whether wise or foolish, we are human beings. It's not that the foolish person (or sluggard) lacks desire, in fact they wish for and crave many things. Today's verse (#4) highlights for us however, that the sluggard's desires are never fulfilled. The foolish person will never have contentment in their desires because they are solely of a material possession / nature. Desires of a material nature will only fuel the desire to accumulate more. True happiness is never achieved.
Whereas the wise soul bases their desires on spiritual things (aligned with God and the position He holds in our lives). Just like the wise man who built his house upon the solid foundation of rock - the Word of God - (Matthew 7: 24-27).
As brothers and sisters in Christ, we need no more. A life centred on our Lord and Saviour is the answer. We are to use all our God given talents including the material possessions that we have been gifted to please God. This doesn't mean we will not be subjected to pain and suffering on our earthly journey with our Lord, but we will be fully satisfied, with both our earthly accomplishments, as well as God's promise that awaits us. Diligence in spiritual things leads to spiritual riches and blessings.
Do you ever crave for more? How can you be more Christ-like with some of your God given talents or material possessions granted to you from your Heavenly Father?
PRAYER:My Lord and saviour. Grant me the wisdom to know and understand that my desires will be fully satisfied if they are centred on You. Help me to always use the gifts and talents you have entrusted me with for Your Glory. In Jesus name I pray. Amen
Today's devotion written by Shane Burdack, LifeWay Epping
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
TO PONDER
Lifeline in Australia is an exceptional national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with 24-hour, 7 day per week crisis support. It is Australia’s leading suicide prevention service. Lifeline is a connection point for those who desperately need someone to talk to in an absolute time of need.
As Christian’s, we equally have a lifeline connection to our Father in Heaven who is eagerly waiting to talk to us in prayer at absolutely any time of the day or night. To remain in Jesus (as our verse tells us to do), requires our connection with Him through our faith and prayer life.
A healthy prayer life is one where we speak to our Heavenly Father regularly (like we talk with a friend). Prayer should not be reserved only for times of major crisis. Additionally, our faith and an active prayer life should mean we expect our prayers to be answered - just as we are reminded of in our verse for today.
Like the critical connection we see in the vineyard between the vine and the branches (John 15:5), how can we (the branches), produce fruit and please God if we are not connected to the vine (Jesus).
Our lifeline connection to Jesus is all we need.
What fruit have you born in recent days that shined the light of God into the world? What fruit can you bear today or tomorrow?
PRAYER: Dear Lord. Please help me to grow my lifeline connection to you through my faith and prayer life. You indeed are the vine and I am your branch. Help me to bear your fruit. Amen
Today's devotion written by Shane Burdack, LifeWay Epping
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
TO PONDER
We all need a rest day in today’s busy world. God did not need a rest day because he was tired from creating the sun, moon, night, day, the earth, the waters and all the living animals on earth. On the seventh day He rested so He could find satisfaction in His toil (as yesterday’s verse from Ecclesiastes instructed us to do), as His creating work was done. God provided a pattern for men and women regarding the structure of time (a seven day-week), and to give an example of the blessing of rest to us on the seventh day.
God sanctified the seventh day because it was a gift to us for rest and replenishment, and most of all because the Sabbath is a shadow of the rest available through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
We should be thankful and praise God daily for everything He has done for us as Christians, and for all that He provides us. The Sabbath day however is even more special for us, as we have the opportunity to worship God and praise Him with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Additionally, we get to rest from our own toiling and avocation in this world.
In a world where there is a push for a shorter working week and additional annual leave, how might you be able to devote some of your increased leisure time to God?
PRAYER:Dear Lord. I thank you for providing the world with a pattern regarding the structure of time. Helping and guiding me through every seven days – by carving out segments during the week to perform the work you provide for me, giving me treasured leisure time and then gifting me with rest, replenishment and the opportunity to worship with my fellow believers on the Sabbath day. Help me to use my leisure time wisely. Amen
Today's devotion written by Shane Burdack, LifeWay Epping
A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God
TO PONDER
Eat, drink and be merry! This is a phrase that many Christians don't like to associate with as the 'merry' has connotations of drunkenness. It is a phrase you often hear around the Christmas season where people can get tangled in the web of festivities; eating and drinking too much.
Today's text instructs us to ….eat and drink and find satisfaction in our own toil.
The message in verse 24 is provided in the context that all we do can seem meaningless, particularly where our toil is primarily to accumulate income and possessions in this life. We are all familiar with the phrase 'you cannot take it with you'.
As Christian's however, all that we do should be done for the glory of God and to help grow his Kingdom here on earth. Our own personal assets and positions, together with the different talents and skill-sets we have (earthly treasures) are indeed gifts from God that we need to use and share in a 'God-like' fashion. Hence if our focus is indeed mirrored on being 'Christ-like' in everything we do and say, then we can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in our own toil.
Reflect on your toil of recent days and how you can be satisfied in what you did. How might it have pleased God?
PRAYER:Heavenly Father. Help me to live a 'Christ-like' life centred on you so I can eat and drink and find satisfaction in my toil for you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Shane Burdack, LifeWay Epping
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
TO PONDER
I know this verse comes fro the Old Testament. I know this verse predates Jesus incarnation, death, and resurrection. And yet it is in Jesus where God has shown us, more clearly than anywhere else what he wants of us.
Don't you think acting justly, showing mercy, and walking in humility in the will of God the Father, would be three defining traits or characteristics one might use to describe Jesus?
I know the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) bracelets and merchandise kind of fell out of favour in the early 2000's, and probably for good reason. And yet, there is something to the idea of stopping in a moment of decision and taking time to think about what Jesus would do, or rather, what Jesus would have you do in that moment.
The great thing is that the more we stop to do it, the more naturally we find ourselves automatically responding in a Christlike way. Before long, responding like Jesus becomes our default position and others have the opportunity to see Christ, more clearly in and through us.
So, act rightly and justly, love and embrace every opportunity to show mercy and forgiveness, and walk humbly in the Will of God for you and your life, and just see what God can do with a life lived like that.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father. You have made it perfectly clear, in your word and also through your son Jesus, what life as your child is supposed to look like. I ask your forgiveness for the times when I have made it look like something else and also ask that you would help me to act justly, show mercy, and walk humbly with you each day. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle
Better the poor whose walk is blameless
than the rich whose ways are perverse.
TO PONDER
This kind of wisdom seems to have been lost to many people in developed western countries and cultures. We seem to be increasingly enamoured by those who make it big in the world of business, despite the number of people they might have taken advantage of along the way. We seem to spend a lot of time as a society (generally speaking) scrolling on our phones listening to those who have a large social media following, simply because they found a way to get paid for having an opinion.
Our television screens are full of shows like, 'The Real Housewives of...' franchise or 'Love Island', or even 'Survivor', which ultimately encourage their participants to stab one another in the back and to create as much drama as possible by acting towards one another in ways that none of us would welcome or tolerate in our own home or families (at least I hope we wouldn't).
Our society seems to be increasingly happy to idolise and look up to immoral and perverse behaviour, and looks at those of us who still want to live acording to and upholding the teachings of Jesus simply as old fashioned killjoys, who just don't know how to have a good time.
But if that's how your life as a Christian feels to you, then I don't think you're doing it right. Sure, there are times when walking the way of Jesus is hard, we should expect that, he said that it would be. And yet, there is also great freedom in walking through life as a disciple of Jesus. There is freedom to experience life in a different way. Not where we do whatever we want, but where we get to be who we were supposed to be, when we experience life the way it was meant to be experienced, in it's fulness and within the parameters in which we were designed to experience it, in a relationship with the one true and living God. That is not a dull life, if you earnestly seek to follow the plans God has for you each day, it can be a life of adventure and mind-blowing encounters of God at work in the world at almost every turn.
PRAYER:Lord God, I know that I often wake up and set off to achieve my own plans for the day. Right now, I place my day in your hands and ask that you would help me see your agenda for my day and help me to walk in it and see you at work in and through my life. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle.
In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.
TO PONDER
One of the things that makes me most frustrated as a Christian, is when I see other Christians behaving badly. Part of me thinks that if you are going to put a 'Jesus fish' bumper sticker on your car, then you really should be prepared to act like Jesus behind the wheel. If you participate online in 'christian' forums and social media debates, then your words had better sound like Jesus and show his love and compassion rather than joining in with the judgemental attitudes that are usually presented in such places.
That kind of bad behaviour, and others like it, really get me fired up because it actually gives people reasons to dismiss and distrust Christians as hypocrites, people who say or believe one thing, but behave another way entirely.
Jesus also had a problem with hypocrites and it might not surprise you to know that most of the people he labelled hypoccrites were those who held positions of authority within the Jewish faith; the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes and Teacher of the Law.
I think Paul, writing this letter to Titus, has sound advice still for us today. Don't let your behaviour discredit Jesus and those who follow him. If you are going to talk the talk, you also need to walk the walk, or no one will believe a word you say. However, when our words and actions match up with each other, then those who want to oppose us will be the ones finding they don't really have a leg to stand on.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, you came down from heaven and not only taught us about the kingdom of heaven, but you showed it to us in the way you lived and died for others. Please help my life to match up with what I say and believe, so that I can be a credible witness to your work in my life. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle
I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity.
I will maintain my innocence and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.
TO PONDER
The words of today's verse are words of Job to some of his so called 'friends', who are convinced that the calamity that has befallen Job must be the result of some wrongdoing that Job has committed against God. And yet, Job, having a clear conscience, insists they are wrong and he steadfastly maintains his innocence.
Integrity is a great tool against the accusations of the evil one. throughout the history of Christendom, the devil has often been called, "the accuser". We all know how an accusation makes us feel when we know it is correct. We feel a pang of guilt, maybe even shame and we can't help but acknowledge the reality of it.
It's a different story when the accusations are false though, isn't it. If someone accuses us of something we know we have not done, we usually respond with some form of righteous indignation, not unlike Job in today's verse.
When we regularly act with integrity, we minimise the ammunition that the accuser has to throw at us. Even if he does find a little mud to sling your way, it is easier to deal with. but I know plenty of Christians, who are buried under such a huge pile of accusations, that even the message of Jesus grace and forgiveness can sometimes have a hard time being heard under all the lies and accusations that have stuck and taken hold over the years. It's not uncommon to have conversations with Christians who, close to death, doubt their own salvation and want one last opportunity to confess their sins. They say things like, "pastor, you don't know the terrible things I have done, how can I be sure God has forgiven me?"
Our own integrity can help minimise this effect, but at moments like this, the real antidote is the faithfulness and integrity of God who promises that those who put their faith and trust in his Son, WILL be saved. God does not go back on his promises. If God has promised it, it must be true. No matter how many accusations have stuck to us in our lifetime, The promise of God is that he will remove our transgressions from us - as far as the East is from the West.
There is therefore now no condemnation, for those who are in Christ Jesus. The devil will undoubtedly still look for and find chinks in your integrity and try to burden and condemn you for them. Remember that in Jesus, none of those accusations will condemn you for you are his.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, help me always to know that even when I fail to live the way you have set for me, that your grace and mercy enables me to get back up and keep moving and not to be buried under the accusations and guilt that the accuser might throw my way. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle