Devotion for 15 January - God's Plan

A brief prayer is offered that you can add to your daily prayers this week. The scripture is from our Sunday Service Bulletin for today.

Scripture Reading- Acts 9:1-5 [ESV]

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest ² and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. ³ Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. ⁴ And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” ⁵ And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

Devotion: God’s Plan

In our sermon today, the theme was: “Paul got it wrong, God got it right”. Before Saul’s conversion, he made his living persecuting followers of Jesus, sending most of them to jail - a terrible fate in those days. Then after his conversion, Paul became one of the most prolific evangelists of the Apostolic Age [mid-30’s to mid-50’s AD]. He started many churches and ministered to both Jews and Roman’s effectively due to his dual citizenship. In fact, he wrote more than half of the books in the New Testament. God had a plan for him that you would never believe after observing the first few years of his diligent persecution of Christians. I have heard it said that when God closes a door to you it is to save you from something bad that you’ll never know about. If you seem to be at a dead end, or your plans are all thwarted, expect that your loving God does have a positive plan for you. You have to go to Him in prayer and be patient. I’ll bet you can think of a plan you’ve had that came to naught, and if you think about it long enough you may be able to see what the good side of that outcome was. If we can listen carefully during our talks with God, He may be able to show us His plan. Be patient, God’s will for our lives is much better than anything we could ever come up with. We need His will done, in our lives.

We pray: “Lord, I pray Your will be done in my life. Amen”