Daily Devotion January 25

January 25: John 8:12-19

KJV Key Verse: John 8:16
And yet if I judge , my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.

Devotion:
Jesus had to defend Himself over His own word! He had to tell the people who supposedly knew it all what the truth was! It is very easy to get trapped in our bibles and lose sight of God. That may be a bit of a shocking thing to say and no doubt people will have something to say about that, but take a look at how the church was going back then and even maybe look at some of the churches around you? The people had lost sight of the real relationship between them and God and had become very legalistic in their lives; that is not what God is about!

Jesus wants a personal relationship with each of us because that is the only way we will really get to know Him and to know His ways. If all we look at is the law then we may well become very law abiding people and lose sight of our relationship with Christ, just as the Pharisees had done back then. Yes God’s Word does tell us exactly what we need to know and it does describe how we need to be in a proper relationship with God… but we are human…

Our minds look for things that are not necessarily the best way forward but they look that way because our minds build up pictures of what life should be like. It is only when we step back and look at the whole picture that we may regain sight of the relationship with God we actually need to have. I am not saying that we should all put down our bibles and go it alone – certainly not. We need God’s Word to continue leading us into the relationship with Him, but we need to look at all of the bible and not just the parts we like the sound of.

We may read a passage from the Old Testament and wonder how God could ever let that happen or how God could ever ask people to do the things He did… we may never understand why He asked them to go and kill other people or wipe out other races, but we need to know all of this in order to bring understanding to the rest of the bible. We need to know that we don’t know it all and our faith will be called upon time and time again. We need to know Jesus is the way the truth and the life. But we need to be in a relationship with God, not in a book of rules and regulations.

Points to Ponder:
Do you ignore the law?

Do you fully trust Christ?