Sun.’s Devo - May God Increase

Read: Judges 19:1-20:48, John 3:22-4:3, Ps. 104:24-35, Pr. 14:22-24 I dislike reading this story more than any other story in the Bible. It shows how awful women were treated back then. How can a man give his wife or concubine over to be gang raped all night then tell her to ‘get up it’s time to leave’ the next morning when she’s passed out at the door. Only, she was dead. I find myself glad she died. How do you live with such memories. She would have needed a life-time of counseling to get through that. To me, the man should have been held responsible, along with the Benjamites. But the first sentence explains why this happened, “there was no king in Israel.” God was suppose to be their king and they didn’t acknowledge Him as their king so they did what they thought was right. Apart from God, nothing is right. They lost 40,000 men and Benjamin lost 50,000 men in battle. If only we could understand what John understood about ministry. It is not about us and numbers. John was losing popularity and people were going to Jesus to be baptized. When someone brought this to John’s attention he explained how much more important Jesus was than himself. He rejoiced in his part of building Jesus’ ministry to the detriment of his own. John got the principle of the kingdom. Jesus must increase in our lives and we must decrease. Lord, may we live with the attitude of John. May you increase and us decrease.