Daily Devotion January 30

January 30: Judges 13:8-14

KJV Key Verse: Judges 13:14
  She may not eat of any thing that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing: all that I commanded her let her observe .

Devotion:
Do you think life is easier when you are being told exactly what to do? Do you like to be led? Or do you think life is much easier when you can do your own thing and don’t have to listen? Whichever way we look at life we will always find that it is not as easy as we thought when the time comes for us to do the work. Hearing about the work to be done or thinking up the work which has to be done ends up being the easy part; actually doing what is required is the hard part.

But we do like to know what has to be done, whether we are doing the inventing or other people are laying down the law for us to follow… God has given us the law and we have failed. I talk not as a person to judge anyone or even myself but as a people who have tried to follow God in our own ways and have failed. Is it because we have not followed the law and have fallen short of the mark? No, that is the easy route for us to take… blame it on something we have done wrong so we can say sorry and move on again!

Here in the story of how Samson was to be born we are told of two people who were given explicit instruction on what to do before they would have a child. God wanted to make sure that when the child was born there was nothing in the way to trip him or his parents up. The Angel of the Lord came and told them what to do to get ready for the birth. The hard part was yet to come. The instructions had been given and now the work had to start.

The hard part of following God is not the hearing about it, the realising what we do wrong, the saying sorry… all these are necessary steps… the hard part is following Christ and doing what He says we need to do next. If it is to wait, then wait. If it is to speak, then speak. If it is to teach, then teach. Whatever we are being asked to do we need to do and do it humbly, obediently and we need to do it with love.

Points to Ponder:
Are you listening?

Are you doing?