Sun.’s Devo - The Truth

Read: 1 Samuel 1:1-2:21; John 5:1-23; Psalm 105:37-45; Proverbs 14:28-29
Infertility in our day is devastating enough but it was even worse in those days. A woman’s whole worth was in her offspring…mainly a son. Hannah did the only thing she knew to do and that was pray. There were no fertility doctors or medical breakthroughs. She needed a miracle and God gave her one. She got pregnant and had Samuel. She kept her promise and gave him to the Lord which had to be the hardest thing she had ever done. She only got to see him once a year and she was giving him to a man who had raised two sons who had turned out totally wicked. Eli’s son’s, Hophni and Phinehas were bad to the bone. They were priests who ate the meat that people brought to the Lord and tomorrow we will read how they also had sex with women who sat at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. Hannah did not give her son, Samuel to Eli as much as she gave him to the Lord. God watched over Samuel and he did not turn out like Eli’s other sons. Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord and loved the Lord and learned to hear his voice.
In John, Jesus healed a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed. That sounds like a silly question, but some people like their illness and own it. The man’s answer was an excuse of why he couldn’t be healed. Jesus cut to the chase and told him to stand up and take up his mat and walk. It was the Sabbath, so this broke the law of the Pharisees about the Sabbath, giving them one more reason to hate him. The man didn’t even know that it was Jesus who healed him until he met up with Jesus later. Jesus told him to stop sinning or something worse would happen to him.
Jesus healed many people because of the compassion in his heart toward hurting people. They had the choice to follow him or not. But Jesus warned them if they didn’t follow him and went back to their sins, they would also lose their healing. The same is true today. People can be healed of cancer, but if they keep doing the things that brought the cancer in the first place, it will return. We have a commandment to walk in truth. Once we know truth, we are held accountable for it.
Lord, help us to walk in your truth and not get slack or give up.