Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
September 30
A Love that Never Fails
Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:8 (NIV)
Some of you are so thirsty for this type of love. A love that never fails. Those who should have loved you didn’t. Those who could have loved you didn’t. You were left at the hospital. Left at the altar. Left with an empty bed. Left with a broken heart. Left with your question “Does anybody love me?”
Please listen to heaven’s answer. God loves you. Personally. Powerfully. Passionately. Others have promised and failed. But God has promised and succeeded. He loves you with and unfailing love. And his love—if you will let it—can fill you and leave you with a love worth giving.
So come. Come thirsty and drink deeply.
1 John 5
Faith in the Son of God
1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
6This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7For there are three that testify: 8the[a] Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Concluding Remarks
13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
16If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that. 17All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
18We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. 19We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. 20We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
21Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
1 John 5:6-13
6This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7For there are three that testify: 8the[a] Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Concluding Remarks
13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
September 30, 2008
That You May Know
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READ: 1 John 5:6-13
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. —1 John 5:13
One day, while Wim was in the marketplace in the Netherlands, he struck up a conversation with a woman who remarked that you can get to heaven by doing good works.
His attempt to explain that it is by God’s grace that we are “saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8) brought a smile as the woman repeated confidently: “and . . . by doing good works.” Then another woman volunteered, “You can hope you’ll go to heaven, but you can’t be sure.” Wim’s assertion that he did know for sure was met with a muttered, “Nobody knows for sure.”
Wim then showed the woman what 1 John 5:11-13 says. He explained: “See, it doesn’t say hope there, it says know.” Unconvinced, she said, “Like you, my pastor says that we have to have faith, but you really never know whether you’ve been good enough. You may think you have, but who can be sure?”
To some, Wim’s confidence may seem incredible. But he based his words on this statement: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works” (Eph. 2:8-9).
It’s true. We can’t be good enough. We can never do enough good things. But we can be sure of heaven if we simply believe on the Lord (Acts 16:31). — Cindy Hess Kasper
We cannot earn our way to heaven
By word or work or worth;
But if we trust in Christ to save us,
Then we’ll enjoy new birth. —Branon
We are saved by God’s mercy, not by our merit—by Christ’s dying, not by our doing.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
September 30, 2008
The Assigning of the Call
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READ:
I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church . . . —Colossians 1:24
We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, "Here am I! Send me" ( Isaiah 6:8 ).
This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, "If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!" But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed— you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.
I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Where the Spotlight Belongs - #5667 - September 30, 2008
Category: Your Most Important Relationship
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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When you speak in public settings as much as I do, you learn there are two people in that auditorium you really want on your side. One is the man in charge of the sound. Without him, no one can hear you. The other is the man in charge of the spotlight, because without him, no one can see you.
After all, I'm not that big you know, and I disappear pretty easily in a crowd. In any large event, the spotlight man really is one of the unsung heroes. I mean, you don't think about him; he's invisible for the most part, but he sure makes a difference in the program...unless he forgets where the spotlight goes. Imagine the announcer says, "And now here's our host, Guy Smiley." And as the M. C. appears on stage, the spotlight man suddenly swings that light around until it's shining right on him! You can't see the man you're supposed to be looking at because the guy with the spotlight has you looking at him!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Where the Spotlight Belongs."
The problem of the misplaced spotlight has happened over and over again, with the spotlight that is supposed to be shining on God and God alone. Now you may not have a union card, but if you're a Jesus-follower, you're a spotlight operator. The question is, who's the spotlight on?
King David must have struggled with that sometimes. He says in our word for today from the Word of God in Psalm 115:1, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name be the glory." It's interesting he says "not to us" twice isn't it? Almost as if he needs to hear himself say it again. "The glory is not supposed to go to us - not to us." God should always get all the credit.
Jeremiah asks this probing question - one which I need to listen to and maybe you do, too. He says in Jeremiah 45:5, "Should you then seek great things for yourself?" Then this sober warning, "Seek them not." God Himself soberly warns us, "I am the Lord. That is My name. And My glory I will not give to another." But listen, it's tempting to grab a little of the glory, isn't it? After you've made a good impression or done a good job, just to think, "Hey, aren't I something?" Then God weighs in with His reality check question from 1 Corinthians 4:7, "What do you have that you did not receive?" Or as 2 Corinthians 4:7 says in the Living Bible, "Our only power and success comes from God."
Could it be that you've been turning the light that's supposed to be illuminating Jesus on yourself? Pride has subtly started to creep in, you're making sure that folks hear about what you did, you're pushing, you're promoting yourself a little more, you're getting slightly addicted to the attention, to the applause. Without realizing it, you have reversed John's equation, "He must increase; I must decrease."
Throughout Scripture, throughout history, pride has been the subtle destroyer of people that God wanted to use. As soon as He started to use them, they forgot it was Him, not them, that any success is a gift from God, not an achievement by us. It's all about Jesus; it's nothing about you. And even though men can't usually see the pride in your heart like they can see the more outward sins, God can see it and He'll not tolerate it.
All the good things God has given you, all the good things God has done for you and through you are your spotlight to shine on the only Star there really is in this show - the Lord God himself.
If you've been turning that spotlight on yourself lately, it's time to put it back where it belongs. "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your Name be the glory."
