Good morning. It’s Thursday, March 26th, aka National Epilepsy Awareness Day.

🥳 Congratulations on starting today with God, and thank you for letting us be a part of it.

📖 Verse Of The Day

— Haggai 2:13

🧠 Devotional

In the book of Book of Haggai, God’s people were rebuilding the temple, but even though they were doing the right things on the outside, their hearts were still not fully right with Him.

So God has Haggai, a prophet, ask the priests two simple questions:

First question:

“Haggai 2:12

If someone carries consecrated meat in their clothing and it touches other food, does that food become holy?”

The priests answered, “No.”

Second question:

“Haggai 2:13

If someone who is unclean touches that same food, does it become unclean?”

“Yes,” the priests replied, “it becomes defiled.”

In the first question, meat that has been set apart for God is carried in someone’s clothing, and when that clothing touches other food, it does not make that food holy.

In the second question, a person who is unclean touches that same kind of food, and it does make the food unclean.

God is using these questions to show that you cannot become right just by being around or doing what is right, but what is wrong does spread and affect everything it touches, which means if your heart is not right, everything you do is still affected by it.

So why is this?

Because sin comes naturally from us, but holiness does not. We are already sinful by nature, so sin spreads easily through everything we do, but holiness has to come from God, not from us, as Gospel of Mark 7:20 says, “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.”

And this is exactly why Book of Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

This might be hard to understand at first, but you see it everywhere. Sickness spreads, but health does not. Germs spread, but cleanliness does not just pass from one thing to another. In the same way, what is wrong in us spreads, but what is right has to be given.

So Jesus wants us to understand this. Holiness does not spread just by being around it, but sin does, which is why your heart has to be made right first.