20140511

It is regrettable that in one’s life, devotion is on things rather than on God and His glory. In our world, there are many people who are very devoted to celebrities. These people admire them and elevate them to a status of near holy adoration. There are also other people who are devoted to sports teams, political figures, ideologies, cars, etc. This kind of devotion is all around us in our world. Some of these devotions are good while most of them are not. Good examples of devotion can be found in the love of a mother for her children and of a father for his family. Bad examples can be found in extreme devotion to fashion, houses, money, and possessions. It is in our nature to become obsessed with things and hence focus our devotion on them.

When one looks at one’s own heart to see what is important, what does one find there? What is the devotion of most of these things that are found? Though there are things that require greater amounts of time than worship and adoration of God (for example, sleep), what is most critical? What are the most important ones that should require our utmost attention?

The Bible speaks of a devotion which is of a different kind. When we look up these “devotion” teachings we find the following:
“Devote yourselves to prayer” (Col. 4:2a).
“Rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer” (Rom. 12:12 NASB).
“They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42).

These “devotion” verses tell us that our prayer is not to be just a little segment of our lives, where the extent of our praying is for finding a car park lot or when one is not feeling well. Rather, prayer is to permeate all of our Christian lives. We should pray about virtually any-thing and everything, even in the writing of this article. We have our “to do” lists and hopefully trying to complete each one of them. But for prayer, one is not able to tick it off and say “I have done it today.” No, there is always room to grow more devoted in the area of prayer. We are after all talking intimately to God our Father in our prayers!

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.