Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
October 1
Your Whispering Thoughts
God, examine me and know my heart; test me and know my nervous thoughts.
Psalm 139:23 (NCV)
Imagine considering every moment as a potential time of communion with God. By the time your life is over, you will have spent six months at stoplights, eight months opening junk mail, a year and a half looking for lost stuff (double that number in my case), and a whopping five years standing in various lines.
Why don't you give these moments to God? By giving God your whispering thoughts, the common becomes uncommon. Simple phrases such as "Thank you, Father," "Be sovereign in this hour, O Lord," "You are my resting place, Jesus" can turn a commute into a pilgrimage. You needn't leave your office or kneel in your kitchen. Just pray where you are. Let the kitchen become a cathedral or the classroom a chapel. Give God your whispering thoughts.
2 John 1
1The elder,
To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth - 2because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever:
3Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, will be with us in truth and love.
4It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. 5And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 6And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
7Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. 9Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. 11Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work.
12I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
13The children of your chosen sister send their greetings.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Proverbs 1:8-19
Exhortations to Embrace Wisdom
Warning Against Enticement
8 Listen, my son, to your father's instruction
and do not forsake your mother's teaching.
9 They will be a garland to grace your head
and a chain to adorn your neck.
10 My son, if sinners entice you,
do not give in to them.
11 If they say, "Come along with us;
let's lie in wait for someone's blood,
let's waylay some harmless soul;
12 let's swallow them alive, like the grave, [a]
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;
13 we will get all sorts of valuable things
and fill our houses with plunder;
14 throw in your lot with us,
and we will share a common purse"-
15 my son, do not go along with them,
do not set foot on their paths;
16 for their feet rush into sin,
they are swift to shed blood.
17 How useless to spread a net
in full view of all the birds!
18 These men lie in wait for their own blood;
they waylay only themselves!
19 Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain;
it takes away the lives of those who get it.
October 1, 2008
Cardboard Kids
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READ: Proverbs 1:8-19
My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. —Proverbs 1:10
When Mike Wood began to advertise his sign company, he didn’t know how useful his work would become. Some of his signs were life-size cardboard pictures of kids, which he put close to the street.
Besides advertising his business, the signs had another effect. Motorists thought the cutouts were real children and began to drop their speed. Now Mike sells the cardboard kids to parents who want to slow down speeding drivers in their area. Mike said, “We truly hope that some of our standups help to control speeding in neighborhoods around the country.”
Parents work at protecting their children from physical danger. But there are other dangers as well. Solomon, the writer of Proverbs 1, was concerned about the people who would pose spiritual danger to his son. He warned him about those who would entice him to do evil (vv.10-14) and told him, “Do not walk in the way with them, keep your foot from their path; for their feet run to evil” (vv.15-16).
We need to protect our children by teaching them God’s Word and training them to avoid evil influences. Busy streets are hazardous for our children, but the enticement of taking an evil path is far more dangerous. — Anne Cetas
Children are a heritage,
A gift from God above;
He asks you to protect and care
And nourish them with love. —Hess
Tomorrow’s world will be shaped by what we teach our children today.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 1, 2008
The Place of Exaltation
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READ:
. . . Jesus took . . . them up on a high mountain apart by themselves . . . —Mark 9:2
We have all experienced times of exaltation on the mountain, when we have seen things from God’s perspective and have wanted to stay there. But God will never allow us to stay there. The true test of our spiritual life is in exhibiting the power to descend from the mountain. If we only have the power to go up, something is wrong. It is a wonderful thing to be on the mountain with God, but a person only gets there so that he may later go down and lift up the demon-possessed people in the valley (see Mark 9:14-18 ). We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life— those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life, and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength. Yet our spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mountain. We feel that we could talk and live like perfect angels, if we could only stay on the mountaintop. Those times of exaltation are exceptional and they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware to prevent our spiritual selfishness from wanting to make them the only time.
We are inclined to think that everything that happens is to be turned into useful teaching. In actual fact, it is to be turned into something even better than teaching, namely, character. The mountaintop is not meant to teach us anything, it is meant to make us something. There is a terrible trap in always asking, "What’s the use of this experience?" We can never measure spiritual matters in that way. The moments on the mountaintop are rare moments, and they are meant for something in God’s purpose.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Freedom No One Can Take - #5668 - October 1, 2008
Category: Your Most Important Relationship
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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Some of the ugliest scenes from the 20th Century come from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. And some pretty inspiring scenes come from that as well. One of the most famous accounts of those awful years was written by a Jewish psychiatrist named Victor Frankl - a survivor of the concentration camps. Frankl told of how the Jews there had almost every freedom stripped from them: they were imprisoned, they were awakened any hour of the day or night, treated like slave labor, humiliated, always facing the specter of death. But he lived to tell us about the one freedom they learned no one could take away from them - the freedom he saw in many of those who survived the horror. It's the one freedom that could make you a survivor.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Freedom No One Can Take."
Twenty centuries ago another Jewish man wrote about his suffering, from a Roman prison and the attitude that sustained him through it all. It's that one freedom that nothing can take away from you: no tragedy, no treatment by others, no divorce, no disease, no loss. It's the freedom to choose your attitude. Dr. Frankl said that that was the freedom he and others exercised in that concentration camp; a freedom beyond the reach of their Nazi guards. It was a freedom the Apostle Paul found in Jesus Christ.
He had lost all his other freedoms as a prisoner chained to a guard 24 hours a day. But the prison didn't choose his attitude. Your prison, your pain doesn't have to choose yours either. Paul chose joy. You can, too.
What's the secret of choosing joy when everything else is falling apart? From his prison, Paul gives us our word for today from the Word of God, Philippians 1:3-4, "I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for you, I always pray with joy." Secret number one of choosing joy...focusing on others instead of yourself. Paul would have sunk to despair if he concentrated on his misery. Instead, he concentrated on the people he loved, praying for them, thinking about them, reaching out to them. It's one way you can choose joy, too.
And then in Philippians he says, "I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel" (Philippians 2:12). Because Paul was out of commission, many others had gone out preaching the Good News. He goes on to say, "The important thing is that...Christ is preached" (v. 18). Secret number two of choosing joy: focusing on the good that's coming out of this bad situation. Ask God for that kind of insight, to look beyond the obvious losses in your situation to the ways He's using, or can use, this situation to bring about something good.
One other way Paul shows us to choose joy in a depressing situation: focus on your Savior who's your anchor. In Philippians 3:10, he says, "I want to know Christ." Almost everything else has been taken from him, but nothing can stop Paul from pursuing his lifelong passion for knowing Jesus a little bit better every day. The fact is that when a lot of other things are taken from you, you may be able to pursue your Savior as never before, if you make that choice. So many people have discovered in hurting times that you never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got.
You may be in a hurting time right now and you didn't get to choose your situation. But, like the man in the concentration camp and the apostle in the prison cell, you can choose your attitude. You don't ever have to say you're doing pretty well "under the circumstances." What are you doing under those?
Being on top of your circumstances is a choice! To focus on the people you love, on the good that's coming from this situation, on the Savior you want to know better. That's why the prisoner Paul calls you in his joyful prison letter to "rejoice in the Lord always! I will say it again, rejoice!" (Philippians 4:4).