Focused

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

FOCUSED

Acts 14:15-18

We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. 16 In the past, he let all nations go their own way. 17 Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." 18 Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them.

NIV

Paul and Barnabas were telling these people that all things are worthless compared to the living God. That is all gods, all things man creates have absolutely no value in life whatsoever because none of them can save a soul. Without the living God all men will perish. But we also see here that even though men do not turn to the living God and live their own way, God still gives them a testimony of himself. Creation itself is his testimony, yet here we see man still is determined to worship man, rather than God. This is a lesson we can learn. A lesson not to get entrapped by the things of the world. We cannot make this life more important than God. Even life itself can become a god to us. If it isn’t bad enough to become so attached to things, almost to a point of worshipping to them, sacrificing all our time and energy to either get more things, or to keep all the things we already have, and thus have no time and energy for God, we spent all we have, time, energy and our resources to cling to our life, itself. God has shown us through his creation that he is the one and only source of all we have and he is the only one worthy of all our praise. He is the one who fills our hearts with joy, not all the stuff of this world. He has shown all mankind kindness by providing what we need to sustain life, yet we tend to worship our life more than we worship him. It might even be possible that we get caught up in the trap of worshipping good deeds, thinking of ourselves as being such “Good Christian” because of how we behave, and thus we are actually giving praise to ourselves even if it only in our own minds. The fact is, the truth is that God is the only important, truly important truth in our life and he and he alone should be the only reason we live. We should not sacrifice to anything or anyone except God. This does bring us to the point that if we worship him and him alone and we are living for him, and not ourselves, then our behaviors toward others should reflect his love for them. But all we do in our relationships with others should reflect God, and not us. To say or even think that we are smarter, more intelligent, more talented, or skilled, more spiritual, more anything than any other, would indicate we believe ourselves to be more then we should and in some sense worship ourselves more than we do God. Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes in protest of being considered more important than the living God. Even if we do not tear our clothes physically, we need to tear the material life spiritually, giving all praise and worship to God. Without God all else is meaningless, even life itself. Let us turn from all worthless things and keep our eyes and heart focused on Jesus.