Good day to each of you and welcome back to another devotion. If you have been reading these writings online or as a printout, you may have noticed a bit of a theme. We come to the final of what are referred to as ‘THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS’. What I hope you notice with today’s is how all of these seem to have one main thread that holds them together, that being this last one, which is PRIDE! Whether anger, lust, gluttony, sloth, greed or envy, each of them has one thing in common, that being ‘SELF’. They are all about ‘ME’ and how to gratify ‘MY’ needs or desires in ‘MY’ life. None of these are of any concern for my fellow man and what he or she truly needs to live as God designed. This is all centered around pride for self and and the satisfaction ‘I’ want for the moment or a lifetime.

          Pride in the dictionary has at least the following meaning; “a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.” Pride is not considered negative until it crosses the line of arrogance, but for this study we will limit ourselves to the sin referred to in God’s Word.

          In Christianity, Pride (also referred to as Vanity or arrogance) is the “essentially competitive and excessive belief in one’s own abilities that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God, or the worth which God sees in others”; for example:

          “In his Pride the wicked does not seek Him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God” (Psalm 10:4). Pride is many times the downfall or the reason for the sins of mankind. Any time we take our eyes off the Lord and HIS WILL as written in HIS WORD, we become the center of all our universe and God is no longer the reason we live. This is wrong on many levels. 1 John 2:16 states, ”For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world” (RSV).

          It is not God’s Will for us to serve self and let others go by the wayside. We are to rather imitate Christ as the scriptures say, “It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:26-28 RSV). We either serve God and His Will or we serve self by our own standards.

          God bless until our next time…….

Posted: March 7th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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          Welcome back and I pray you are continuing to be faithful in service to our Great God. Today we continue with a new study, this one is on “GREED”. From a dictionary, a world view, the word has at least the following meaning;

          “excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves” and “reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins) [syn: avarice]. 

          What it is: Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual things of God. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness. Why do people do it? Quite possibly because we live in the most pampered, consumerist society since the Roman Empire. As a people, we are spoiled and we are teaching our children that it is O.K. to want more ’stuff’ and all the while ignore the teachings of God in His Word.

          In Luke 12:15 Jesus Himself speaks and said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” Jesus uses a word in the Greek that is often translated as covetous. The two words are often interchangeable. Greed takes place when a person takes their spiritual eye off of the things of God and service to Him, and begin to look with the physical eye at what the world has to offer. Forgetting what price God and Christ paid to give us the salvation available, we begin to accept things of much less value. Greed is one of the original ten commandments and is still one of those areas Christ tells us to beware of in life on this side of the cross.

          In Luke 12:22-23 Jesus says, (22) “And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. (23) For the life is more than the food, and the body than the raiment.” (ASV)

          The physical part of each of us is temporary, yet we put so much into preserving it with things the world has to offer. The spiritual part of us is forever and too often we fail to give it the attention it needs and deserves from God’s design. Greed is looking at that physical part and avoiding the spiritual. When we stand before God’s Throne to be judged, HE will not ask how much stuff we have accumulated, but rather how faithful we were to His Word and His Son.

          God Bless until next time….

Posted: February 25th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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Welcome back and today we look at the subject of ‘SLOTH’, or in simple English, ‘Laziness’. I am sure each of us have had times in our lives when we were ‘lazy’, and no doubt with good reason. If you put in many hours at work or just had a difficult time in life that took a lot of your energy, you may have become a ‘couch potato’ for a short period of time. This is not what we are talking about in our time together today. Our thoughts today have to do with those who have the physical ability to do work but simply decline to get busy or involved. They would rather live off of the efforts of others than to do an honest day’s work and sweat to earn their keep and their next meal. Read more »