Daily Devotion

August 16, 2006

Psalms 106:35 But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works.

The children of Israel spent decades in an unfriendly desert. Their lives were hard and uncertain. We could almost excuse their sin of seeking security by making alliances with surrounding neighbors, or by wanting to make gods that could be seen, even though they could not be heard; but could their difficult lifestyle really constitute an excuse to their sin of idolatry? When they arrived in the land that flowed with milk and honey, instead of obeying what Yehovah had told them and staying separate from the evil practices of idolatry, they mingled with it, and assimilated it. It was not the harshness of the wilderness that caused Israel to sin, but the natural human hankering for evil.

It is so easy to find excuses not to be all we need to be for God. It is so easy to blame personal conditions and circumstances; and in most cases your friends will also excuse you because in excusing you, they excuse themselves. But the question is: will God excuse us?  Will God excuse us when we have at our disposal, at the fingertips of prayer, the wise advice from His Words and the power of the Holy Spirit that can move mountains at our request?

Let us ponder these things and remember that we will stand alone before God without the support of well-meaning friends, or the props of excuses we so often indulge in. Let us be today all that we can be for the Lord; not looking for excuses as to why we can’t obey what God asks of us, but rather searching for the reasons why we should.

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Patrick Lumbroso
For past issues of the daily devotion go to my blog at:
htt\p://hearthstoneministries.blogspot.com/