Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
October 2
Reasons for Joy
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
Philippians 4:4 (NKJV)
“How’s life?” someone asks. And we who’ve been resurrected from the dead say, “Well, things could be better.” Or “Couldn’t get a parking place.” Or “My parents won’t let me move to Hawaii,” Or “People won’t leave me alone so I can finish my sermon on selfishness.”…
Are you so focused on what you don’t have that you are blind to what you do?
You have a ticket to heaven no thief can take,
an eternal home no divorce can break.
Every sin of your life has been cast to the sea.
Every mistake you’ve made is nailed to the tree.
You’re blood-bought and heaven-made.
A child of God—forever saved.
So be grateful, joyful—for isn’t it true? What you don’t have is much less that what you do.
3 John 1
1The elder,
To my dear friend Gaius, whom I love in the truth.
2Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. 3It gave me great joy to have some brothers come and tell about your faithfulness to the truth and how you continue to walk in the truth. 4I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
5Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you. 6They have told the church about your love. You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. 7It was for the sake of the Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans. 8We ought therefore to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth.
9I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us. 10So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.
11Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God. 12Demetrius is well spoken of by everyone—and even by the truth itself. We also speak well of him, and you know that our testimony is true.
13I have much to write you, but I do not want to do so with pen and ink. 14I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.
Peace to you. The friends here send their greetings. Greet the friends there by name.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
James 4:13-17
Boasting About Tomorrow
13Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
October 2, 2008
For A Limited Time
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READ: James 4:13-17
You do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. —James 4:14
On a crisp October morning, our local newspaper featured a stunning photo of sun-drenched aspen trees whose leaves had turned autumn gold. The caption read: FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. The irresistible invitation to take a drive through the mountains to savor the brilliant colors conveyed the urgency of doing it quickly. Autumn leaves that are golden today are often gone tomorrow.
Our opportunities to obey God’s promptings are also fleeting. James warned against an arrogance that assumes endless days will be available to carry out our good intentions. “You do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. . . . Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (4:14,17).
Is there an act of kindness or encouragement that God has urged you to do for someone in His name? How long has it been since that first prompting? With so many demands on our time, the urgent tasks demand our attention while the important things can be postponed. But a time will come when even the important can no longer be done.
When we follow God’s urging with our action now, today will be golden. — David C. McCasland
If God is prompting you today
To help someone who has a need,
Don’t hesitate, the time is short;
Tomorrow is not guaranteed. —Sper
Doing what’s right today means no regrets tomorrow.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 2, 2008
The Place of Humiliation
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READ:
If You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us —Mark 9:22
After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they really are, where it is neither beautiful, poetic, nor thrilling. The height of the mountaintop is measured by the dismal drudgery of the valley, but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We see His glory on the mountain, but we never live for His glory there. It is in the place of humiliation that we find our true worth to God— that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we are always at some heroic level of intensity, simply because of the natural selfishness of our own hearts. But God wants us to be at the drab everyday level, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship with Him. Peter thought it would be a wonderful thing for them to remain on the mountain, but Jesus Christ took the disciples down from the mountain and into the valley, where the true meaning of the vision was explained (see Mark 9:5-6 , Mark 14-23 ).
"If you can do anything . . . ." It takes the valley of humiliation to remove the skepticism from us. Look back at your own experience and you will find that until you learned who Jesus really was, you were a skillful skeptic about His power. When you were on the mountaintop you could believe anything, but what about when you were faced with the facts of the valley? You may be able to give a testimony regarding your sanctification, but what about the thing that is a humiliation to you right now? The last time you were on the mountain with God, you saw that all the power in heaven and on earth belonged to Jesus— will you be skeptical now, simply because you are in the valley of humiliation?
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Clear Direction in a Thick Fog - #5669
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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I had to make a 6:30 A.M. flight, and my dear wife was the lucky one who got to drive me to the airport. As I staggered to the car about 5:00 in the morning, I said, "Where's the sun?" Obviously, even the sun was on a later flight. But what made the drive really challenging wasn't the absence of sun, it was the presence of fog. I'm talking thick fog here, all the way to the airport. Our visibility was really limited. The traffic reporter on our news station said that it would be difficult even driving roads you knew like the back of your hand. And believe me, the road to the airport is one we know all too well. As we traveled toward the turnpike exit that leads to the airport, the fog got really thick and disorienting. We were in the right lane with almost no sense of exactly where we were, when suddenly we saw the sign - "Turnpike." That was our turn, but we were practically right on it when we realized where we were. My wife turned just in time, and I even made my plane. As we got on that ramp, she said, "It's a good thing I didn't trust my instincts. It just didn't feel like we were at this point." She only had a second to decide whether to trust her instincts or the sign. I'm glad she trusted the sign.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Clear Direction in a Thick Fog."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Isaiah 50:10-11, "Let him who walks in the dark (or drives in the fog, maybe), who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God." When you can't see where you're going, trust the Lord; go the way He's been pointing you to go, proceed on what God has said to you.
But some people unfortunately respond to the fog by trying to figure out their own way to go. Listen to the next verse, "But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze." God says, "If you want to follow your feelings, follow your instincts instead of the direction I'm pointing you in," here's the result of doing it your way. He says, "This is what you shall receive from My hand. You will lie down in torment." Ouch!
You may be going through a time right now where the fog is thick, it's dark, it's disorienting, it's confusing. In times like these, it's tempting to suddenly grab the steering wheel of your life to try to make some things happen - to get control of things. And it's in those times that we tend to make some of the biggest mistakes of our life. We can't wait for the Lord, we can't trust what His Word has told us, and we start figuring it out our own way. Which like our instincts on that foggy morning, will take us the wrong way and maybe cost us the destination we were aiming for.
But on that foggy morning, there was a sign, pointing us in the right direction. It didn't feel right. It went against our natural instincts, but it was right and our feelings were wrong. Because we trusted the sign, we made it. That's what God is trying to get you to do during this dark, uncertain time. Trust Him and the direction He's already pointed you in.
He's made promises that you have to hang onto now, even when because of the fog you can't see them working. So claim the promises He gave you when it was light, refuse the compromises and the shortcuts that seem so tempting right now. Don't trust your roller coaster emotions which have lied to you and led you into mistakes so many times before.
In the words of a great old saint, "Don't doubt in the darkness what God has told you in the light." His Word, His calling, His promise have not changed even though it's gotten dark. God's great plan is still at work, still right on time. Don't panic and take a detour from His best.
In that heavy fog, we got where we needed to go by trusting the sign, not our feelings. That's how you're going to come out of the fog at the place you need to be, by distrusting what your feelings are saying and trusting the clear direction of what God says.
