Daily Devotion July 17

July 17: Matthew 10:34-39

KJV Key Verse: Matthew 10:35
35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Devotion:
We get to hear a lot about Christ showing love that goes beyond our imagination, about Him healing the sick and comforting the poor; what we do not hear too much of is how He comes to divide families. That may seem counter intuitive thinking about Christ causing division within families and friends but when we look at why we begin to understand why He said these things.

We are sinners, which is never nice to think about but we are. We do things wrong and we continue to mess up. As we mess up we look for excuses to try and cover up the mistakes we make and we use the people around us to help cover things up; whether we want to be honest enough to admit that or not, we do. It is hard not to. In order for us to be able to make a difference in our circumstances, Christ is saying He will set us against each other as we begin to realise we are doing things wrong. When we back away from something because we see it as wrong, our friends may be upset with us for not supporting them in doing things wrong. Again, very human!

When we make a stand against wrongful things we get on the wrong side of the people around us because they may see something they are doing wrong because we have uncovered things for ourselves. They may take a view we are causing the pain instead of seeing they are doing this to themselves; just as we try to blame others for what we do wrong, we also blame others for showing us up!

Christ wants us to make sure we keep God first and foremost, just as He gave Moses the Ten Commandments with the first two being aimed at giving Him His rightful place of glory in our lives, so He gave us the same direction through Christ. If we are going to love each other as much as we love ourselves, then we had better start being honest with ourselves so we can be honest with others. That will give us the courage to be honest with God and change our lives even when our friends and families do not want to!

Points to Ponder:
Do you obey your family?

Do you obey Christ?