The devotional I mentioned at the beginning (end of last week?) of the week comes from the NIV Women of Faith Study Bibly, New International Bible. You can see the listing for it on Amazon, here. I purchased it a few years ago from Walmart and I actually hadn't really paid much attention to the devotionals in it until recently. There are 52 devotionals each focused on a different theme. The theme of the study I mentioned was actually called Broken Relationships.
The main story it has you focus on is Saul and his disobedience of God in 1 Samuel Chapter 15. If you're not familiar with the story it's a good one to read through and think about.
The main questions it has you discuss are:
- Ways you save the best of yourself
- How you take blame off of yourself and how that affects your relationship with God
- What your relationship with God is like, have you ever focused more on the outward appearance of your relationship with Him (ouch! that's a tough one to think about) than your actual relationship
- Do you make excuses for your sin rather than ask for forgiveness
- And how does that affect your relationship with God
It also asks you to think about true repentance vs. asking for forgiveness because you know you should (i.e. just saying I'm sorry without really meaning it). How often do we use I'm sorry. I know there are time I truly mean it, but how many other times do I utter those words and they are half empty?
Obviously I've only really even scratched the surface on this devotional. I've thought about the other questions but man are they tough ones to answer. And truly I think they take time to think about. I'm keeping a sort of devotional workbook in the blank worksheet pages of my Bible. I'd like to be able to read back through the devotionals later and see what I took from it the time before. I think it will make it even more interesting later on.
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