Max Lucado Daily: Goodness and Mercy
Goodness and Mercy
Posted: 07 Jun 2011 11:01 PM PDT
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23:6, NKJV
What a huge statement. Look at the size of it! Goodness and mercy follow the child of God each and every day! Think of the days that lie ahead. What do you see? Days at home with only toddlers? God will be at your side. Days in a dead-end job? He will take your hand. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me—not some, not most, not nearly all—but all the days of my life.
Deuteronomy 11
Love and Obey the LORD
1 Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. 2 Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; 3 the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; 4 what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea[a] as they were pursuing you, and how the LORD brought lasting ruin on them. 5 It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. 7 But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the LORD has done.
8 Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 9 and so that you may live long in the land the LORD swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. 11 But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. 12 It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.
13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— 14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.
16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. 17 Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. 18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
22 If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow—to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him— 23 then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. 24 Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No one will be able to stand against you. The LORD your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.
26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— 27 the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; 28 the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. 29 When the LORD your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses. 30 As you know, these mountains are across the Jordan, westward, toward the setting sun, near the great trees of Moreh, in the territory of those Canaanites living in the Arabah in the vicinity of Gilgal. 31 You are about to cross the Jordan to enter and take possession of the land the LORD your God is giving you. When you have taken it over and are living there, 32 be sure that you obey all the decrees and laws I am setting before you today.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Revelation 2:1-7
To the Church in Ephesus
1 “To the angel[a] of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Good For Nothing
June 8, 2011 — by Joe Stowell
Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. —Revelation 2:4
My wife, Martie, is a great cook. Sitting down after a busy day to enjoy her culinary delights is a real treat. Sometimes after dinner she runs errands, leaving me alone with the choice of grabbing the remote or cleaning up the kitchen. When I’m on my good behavior, I roll up my sleeves, load the dishwasher, and scrub the pots and pans—all for the joy of hearing Martie’s grateful response, which is usually something like, “Wow, Joe! You didn’t have to clean up the kitchen!” Which gives me a chance to say, “I wanted to show you how much I love you!”
When Jesus reproved the church at Ephesus for abandoning their “first love” (Rev. 2:4), it was because they were doing a lot of good things, but not out of love for Him. Although they were praised for their perseverance and patience, from Christ’s point of view, they were being “good” for nothing.
Good behavior should always be an act of worship. Resisting temptation, forgiving, serving, and loving each other are all opportunities to tangibly express our love for Jesus—not to get a star next to our name or a pat on the back.
When was the last time you did something “good” out of love for Jesus?
For many, love is just a word,
A passing phase, a brief emotion;
But love that honors Christ our Lord
Responds to Him with deep devotion. —Hess
Love in deed is love indeed!
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 8th, 2011
What’s Next To Do?
If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them —John 13:17
Be determined to know more than others. If you yourself do not cut the lines that tie you to the dock, God will have to use a storm to sever them and to send you out to sea. Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened. If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself— begin to have spiritual discernment.
When you know that you should do something and you do it, immediately you know more. Examine where you have become sluggish, where you began losing interest spiritually, and you will find that it goes back to a point where you did not do something you knew you should do. You did not do it because there seemed to be no immediate call to do it. But now you have no insight or discernment, and at a time of crisis you are spiritually distracted instead of spiritually self-controlled. It is a dangerous thing to refuse to continue learning and knowing more.
The counterfeit of obedience is a state of mind in which you create your own opportunities to sacrifice yourself, and your zeal and enthusiasm are mistaken for discernment. It is easier to sacrifice yourself than to fulfill your spiritual destiny, which is stated in Romans 12:1-2. It is much better to fulfill the purpose of God in your life by discerning His will than it is to perform great acts of self-sacrifice. “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice . . .” (1 Samuel 15:22). Beware of paying attention or going back to what you once were, when God wants you to be something that you have never been. “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know . . .” (John 7:17).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Destination Sickness - #6368
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
I once met a man with a painful illness, and actually we were in a very beautiful place. He owns a charming inn and it's furnished in every room with this great antique collection. It's quite a place to stay. Let's call him Art. Now, his inn is probably one of the most highly praised inns in the country, and it's not just another place to stay. I mean it gets rave reviews in every tourist book you read.
One night when my wife and I were privileged to stay there, he wandered in and talked to us about some of the success he'd had on Wall Street in a previous career. But he said, "You know, after I achieved everything I wanted to on Wall Street, I was looking for something. And I thought, 'Yeah, I know. I want an inn, in a real charming place.'"
And he got the best. He restored it to its early 19th-Century charm; he worked real hard on it. And you know what else he told us that night? He said, "Now I'm looking for something else. I want to turn this over to my son." Seems like he was always looking for something else, and maybe you are too. You might have the same illness that Art has.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Destination Sickness."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ecclesiastes 3:11 written by Solomon. Now, here's a man who, like our friend who owned the quaint inn, pursued one dream after another. And every time he came up saying, "I'm still looking for something." He called everything he had accomplished, whether it was the monuments he built, the palace he built, the women he had experienced, the riches that he had, the intelligence he had, he called it "chasing the wind." And in the same book where he says that, his personal diary--Ecclesiastes, he says in verse 11, our word for today from the Word of God, an explanation for why man is incurably dissatisfied. He says, "God has set eternity in the hearts of men."
See, there's this infinite vacuum inside of you and me that cannot be filled with anything finite. A business won't do it; your lifetime dream of what you wanted to own won't do it. There's an incurable need for a life center that does not have an end. We have eternity in our hearts; we've got to have something eternal there. And we have destination sickness. It's that feeling you get of restlessness when you get where you wanted to go, but you don't get what you wanted to find.
After a career in tennis and then a divorce that followed, the famous Chris Evert said in an interview years ago, "My husband and I would often sit down at breakfast with everything we had and say, 'There must be something more.'" Well, there is. Jesus said, "I have come so you may have far more life than you've ever had before." It could be that you, like that restless inn keeper, always end up looking for something. Well, I want to tell you today, the something is someone. You've tried to find peace in a successful career, or the right house, or car, or clothes, or family, or relationships, or pleasure, but you just can't fill that hole.
Well, let me invite you to the only place where your search will end--where millions of people have come to the end of their search...including me--the cross where Jesus Christ died for you. See, He died to remove the sin-wall between you and the God who was made to live in that vacuum in your heart. Jesus dealt with the cause of God being missing in all of our lives. It's our sin. It's our self-will. It's our breaking His laws. It's our running our life our way instead of His way. And then He walked out of His grave under His own power, so He's alive to walk into our lives and change them, and fill that hole in your heart. It doesn't have to be there any longer. Why waste any more years or days looking where there are no answers and no ultimate fulfillment?
Tell Him today, "Jesus, You're the end of my search. You died for me; You're alive today. I'm sorry for my sin; forgive me. I am Yours." So many people have gone to our website to find help in knowing how to make sure they've begun that relationship with Jesus. I want to encourage you to do that today, and you'll be able to hear there or read there some information that will really help. It's YoursForLife.net.
Look, you can try some other destinations that won't fill that hole, or you can come home today; home to the One who made you for Himself.
