Today's Devotional

September 28, 2004

Subject:  You Need Devotion 

Acts 2:5 - "And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven."

1 Timothy 4:13 - "Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine."

1 Timothy 4:15 - "Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all."

As the old Earth, Wind and Fire song said, we need devotion.  Your devotion is going to determine your direction in life.  However, to what kinds of things do we need devotion and why?  Sadly, I believe that many of us have devotions that we don't even realize.  By definition, we are devoted to those things that we give attention to.  For instance, we have a presidential election taking place soon here in the United States.  Most voters support staunchly one candidate.  Well as it works out, many give more attention to the person that they "don't" want in office more than the person that they do.  How do they do this?  Well by finding out how bad the other guy is.  First it begins honestly by trying to establish the candidates position, but very soon it gets into finding out how much dirt we can find out about this guy.  Therefore, many people end up voting against someone rather than voting for someone because they are now devoted to ensuring that this person "not" get into office.

See devotion really is simple in that we will exhaust most of our energy in the direction of those things that we are devoted to.  Where do we spend most of our time?  That's where our devotion is.  The Jews at the day of pentecost were devout.  Their devotion put them in the right place at the right time to receive Christ on that day.  Paul further exhorts us in the area of devotion.  We should be devoted to reading, encouragement and to doctrine for there is much benefit in all three.  Tomorrow we will look at the first of these; reading.

Be devoted.

 Carlen