Max Lucado Daily: Live to Please God
Live to Please God
Posted: 22 Oct 2010 11:01 PM PDT
Teach me how to live to please you, because you are my God. Psalm 143:8, The Message
If God has called you to be a Martha, then serve! Remind the rest of us that there is evangelism in feeding the poor and there is worship in nursing the sick.
If God has called you to be a Mary, then worship! Remind the rest of us that we don’t have to be busy to be holy. Urge us with your example to put down our clipboards and megaphones and be quiet in worship.
Job 26
Job
1 Then Job replied:
2 "How you have helped the powerless!
How you have saved the arm that is feeble!
3 What advice you have offered to one without wisdom!
And what great insight you have displayed!
4 Who has helped you utter these words?
And whose spirit spoke from your mouth?
5 "The dead are in deep anguish,
those beneath the waters and all that live in them.
6 Death [a] is naked before God;
Destruction [b] lies uncovered.
7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.
8 He wraps up the waters in his clouds,
yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
9 He covers the face of the full moon,
spreading his clouds over it.
10 He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters
for a boundary between light and darkness.
11 The pillars of the heavens quake,
aghast at his rebuke.
12 By his power he churned up the sea;
by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.
13 By his breath the skies became fair;
his hand pierced the gliding serpent.
14 And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him!
Who then can understand the thunder of his power?"
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: John 7:14-24
14 Not until halfway through the Feast did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach.
15 The Jews were amazed and asked, "How did this man get such learning without having studied?"
16 Jesus answered, "My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me.
17 If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
18 He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.
19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?"
20 "You are demon-possessed," the crowd answered. "Who is trying to kill you?"
21 Jesus said to them, "I did one miracle, and you are all astonished.
22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a child on the Sabbath.
23 Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath?
24 Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment."
First Impressions
October 23, 2010 — by Bill Crowder
Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment. —John 7:24
A while back, Our Daily Bread published an article I wrote about a young woman who wore a T-shirt that said, “Love Is for Losers.” In it, I commented on what a sad message that was, and I wrote about the hurt this motto represented.
To my surprise, one of our readers gave that message a completely different slant. She sent a note informing me that her daughter and her daughter’s friends—all tennis players—wear shirts with that slogan. In tennis, a “love” score is zero. If your score in a game is “love,” you lose—so in tennis, love really is for losers. That mom’s note gave me a new perspective on that saying.
This incident reminded me how easy it is to make wrong first judgments. Based on incomplete or inaccurate information, we can jump to wrong conclusions and make poor value judgments about people and situations. And that can cause great hurt to others.
Speaking to people who had misjudged Him, Jesus warned, “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:24). We need to be careful that our judgments are backed up by the right information (the truth) and the right attitude (the compassion of Christ). Try this motto: “Righteous judgment is for winners.”
Don’t judge too quickly what you see;
Treat lightly first impression;
Misunderstandings multiply
Without right information. —Sper
A snap judgment has a way of becoming unfastened.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 23Rd, 2010
Nothing of the Old Life!
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new —2 Corinthians 5:17
Our Lord never tolerates our prejudices— He is directly opposed to them and puts them to death. We tend to think that God has some special interest in our particular prejudices, and are very sure that He will never deal with us as He has to deal with others. We even say to ourselves, “God has to deal with other people in a very strict way, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right.” But we must learn that God accepts nothing of the old life! Instead of being on the side of our prejudices, He is deliberately removing them from us. It is part of our moral education to see our prejudices put to death by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him. There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender.
When we are born again, the Holy Spirit begins to work His new creation in us, and there will come a time when there is nothing remaining of the old life. Our old gloomy outlook disappears, as does our old attitude toward things, and “all things are of God” (2 Corinthians 5:18). How are we going to get a life that has no lust, no self-interest, and is not sensitive to the ridicule of others? How will we have the type of love that “is kind . . . is not provoked, [and] thinks no evil”? (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). The only way is by allowing nothing of the old life to remain, and by having only simple, perfect trust in God— such a trust that we no longer want God’s blessings, but only want God Himself. Have we come to the point where God can withdraw His blessings from us without our trust in Him being affected? Once we truly see God at work, we will never be concerned again about the things that happen, because we are actually trusting in our Father in heaven, whom the world cannot see.
