The priceless gift

 16 Aug 25

Today's devotional: taken from YouVersion, Life Application Study Bible Devotion


The priceless gift

People will die in their sins if they reject Christ, because they are rejecting the only way to be rescued from sin. Sadly, many are so taken up with the values of this world that they are blind to the priceless gift Christ offers. Where are you looking? Don't focus on this world's values and miss what is most valuable-eternal life with God.


“I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.””John‬ ‭8‬:‭24‬ ‭NIV‬‬

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Reflections

Die in my sins… hmm.. the MSG version reads like this “Jesus said, “You’re tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing God in all this. You’re at a dead end. If you won’t believe I am who I say I am, you’re at the dead end of sins. You’re missing God in your lives.””John‬ ‭8‬:‭23‬-‭24‬ ‭MSG‬‬. This version puts it plainly-we reached a dead end, if we make the wrong choices.


We make so many decisions a day. What to eat, what to wear, where to go, etc.. but the ultimate important decisions we make on a *daily* basis is whether we choose to follow Him or did we allow ourselves to fall into the world’s values or temptations.


What did the world promise us? Riches, status, power, branded goods, cars, good looking homes, etc. This list doesn’t end. It is all that we can wish for under the sun. However, it also reminded me of the devotional sharing during our weekly meeting on Ecclesiastes 1:1-2.


In our reading which was in ESV, KJV, it reads as vanity. “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”Ecclesiastes‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬ ‭ESV‬‬. In NIV, NLT, it reads as meaningless. ““Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.””Ecclesiastes‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬ ‭NIV‬‬. In MSG, it calls it smoke. All the above reminds me of James 4:14. “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

‭‭

So whatever the world promised us are like mist, smoke, vanity, meaningless. It is not something we can grab hold of. It will pass, most definitely. Everything is temporal and it is not something that we can bring with us even when we passed. People say no matter how great a person you may be, you lie in the grave which is the same size (well, I guess unless if you are super big size then you may need to customise one). Only our God teaches us to build treasures in heaven. The rest only says everything is nothing but didn’t explain, then what?


What’s more interesting was what was in the chinese version “在耶路撒冷作王、大卫的儿子、传道者的言语。 传道者说：虚空的虚空， 虚空的虚空，凡事都是虚空。”传道书‬ ‭1‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭CUNPSS-神‬‬. 虚空 (pronounced as Xu1 Kong1), means emptiness / nothingness. As what my colleague shared, this is very much similar to what the buddhist believes and it’s also recited in their scriptures. They too believe that everything is just nothingness and it seems like it was lifted up from our scriptures. But the difference is that buddhism teaches people to let go and go into emptiness and it didn’t tell of how to fill that void. But the Lord told us something different. He told us not to hold on to the void and the things of the world because it is all meaningless but fill our lives with love, etc. we cannot let it be empty else something will just fill us.

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