Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
January 19
What Are Your Strengths?
We all have different gifts, each of which came because of the grace God gave us.
Romans 12:6 (NCV)
There are some things we want to do but simply aren't equipped to accomplish. I, for example, have the desire to sing. Singing for others would give me wonderful satisfaction. The problem is, it wouldn't give the same satisfaction to my audience....
Paul gives good advice in Romans 12:3: "Have a sane estimate of your capabilities" (PHILLIPS).
In other words, be aware of your strengths. When you teach, do people listen? When you lead, do people follow? When you administer, do things improve? Where are you most productive? Identify your strengths, and then.... major in them.... Failing to focus on our strengths may prevent us from accomplishing the unique tasks God has called us to do.
2 Samuel 11
David and Bathsheba
1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then [a] she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
6 So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house.
10 When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven't you just come from a distance? Why didn't you go home?"
11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!"
12 Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home.
14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."
16 So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. 17 When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.
18 Joab sent David a full account of the battle. 19 He instructed the messenger: "When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, 20 the king's anger may flare up, and he may ask you, 'Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth [b] ? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?' If he asks you this, then say to him, 'Also, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.' "
22 The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say. 23 The messenger said to David, "The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance to the city gate. 24 Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."
25 David told the messenger, "Say this to Joab: 'Don't let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.' Say this to encourage Joab."
26 When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. 27 After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the LORD.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Matthew 5:38-42 (New International Version)
An Eye for an Eye
38"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'[a] 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
January 19, 2009
Impossible?
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READ: Matthew 5:38-42
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I tell you not to resist an evil person. —Matthew 5:38-39
When Nobel Chairman Gunnar John delivered his presentation speech for Martin Luther King’s 1964 Peace Prize, he quoted Jesus: “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:39). As Mr. John noted: “It was not because he led a racial minority in their struggle for equality that Martin Luther King achieved fame. . . . [His] name will endure for the way in which he has waged his struggle.”
In 1955, King had led a year-long, peaceful boycott to protest segregation on buses. He paid a high price. His home was bombed, and he was assaulted and arrested. He never retaliated. Eventually he was murdered.
How contrary Dr. King’s peaceful example stands to my fleshly nature! I want justice now. I want retribution. I want others to pay for their wrongdoing, especially when it’s directed at me. What I do not want is to turn the other cheek and invite them to take another swing.
Haddon Robinson comments on the lofty standards Jesus set forth in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7), calling them “goals . . . not impossible ideals. [Jesus] wants His disciples to strive toward these goals to master a new kind of life.”
Amid the injustices of life, may we have the courage, faith, and strength to turn the other cheek. — Tim Gustafson
So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend—though it be blood—to spend and spare not—
So send I you to taste of Calvary. —Clarkson
Š 1968 Singspiration.
It takes true strength to refuse to retaliate.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
January 19, 2009
Vision and Darkness
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READ:
When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him —Genesis 15:12
Whenever God gives a vision to a Christian, it is as if He puts him in "the shadow of His hand" (Isaiah 49:2). The saint’s duty is to be still and listen. There is a "darkness" that comes from too much light-that is the time to listen. The story of Abram and Hagar in Genesis 16 is an excellent example of listening to so-called good advice during a time of darkness, rather than waiting for God to send the light. When God gives you a vision and darkness follows, wait. God will bring the vision He has given you to reality in your life if you will wait on His timing. Never try to help God fulfill His word. Abram went through thirteen years of silence, but in those years all of his self-sufficiency was destroyed. He grew past the point of relying on his own common sense. Those years of silence were a time of discipline, not a period of God’s displeasure. There is never any need to pretend that your life is filled with joy and confidence; just wait upon God and be grounded in Him (see Isaiah 50:10-11 ).
Do I trust at all in the flesh? Or have I learned to go beyond all confidence in myself and other people of God? Do I trust in books and prayers or other joys in my life? Or have I placed my confidence in God Himself, not in His blessings? "I am Almighty God . . ."— El-Shaddai, the All-Powerful God (Genesis 17:1). The reason we are all being disciplined is that we will know God is real. As soon as God becomes real to us, people pale by comparison, becoming shadows of reality. Nothing that other saints do or say can ever upset the one who is built on God.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Which List Is Your Name On? - #5746
Monday, January 19, 2009
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I had the opportunity not too long ago just to an amazing exhibit - it's the Titanic exhibit. It's been in a lot of museums in the United States over the last several years. Actually, what they have done is they have re-created the Titanic's grand staircase, and they've got a simulation of one of the ship's cabins, they have artifacts that were retrieved right from the watery grave around the Titanic. As you enter the exhibit, they give you this ticket with the name of one of the ship's passengers or crewmen on it. I was one of the crewmen. At the end of the tour there's this large wall. It's got two lists of names; there's a long list, and there's a short list. Next to each name is one of four designations: first class, second class, third class, and crew. But no matter what your class, your name ultimately appears on one of those two lists, which are under one of two headings: "Saved"..."Lost."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Which List Is Your Name On?"
Tragically, the short list is the one that says "saved." The long list is the names of the "lost." As you read the Bible, you begin to realize that all of humanity is divided into those same two lists: "saved" and "lost." There's no third list. You're on one or the other.
Our word for today from the Word of God is one of those passages that helps us determine which list we're on. And, perhaps surprisingly, we determine whether we're saved or lost, not God. John 3:36 says, "Whoever believes in the Son (that's Jesus Christ, God's Son) has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." That's saved or lost. Earlier in the same chapter, God says, "Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" (John 3:18). Saved. Lost.
One thing is very clear. Which list your name is on depends totally on your personal response to Jesus Christ. That's because He's the One that God sent to rescue us from the death penalty of all the things we've done wrong. Nobody else died in our place, so nobody else can save us. We tend to divide people up by what class they're in, what race they are, what religion they're from. But God only sees two kinds of people: saved and lost.
And today could be your day to move from one list to the other. What sentences us to being "lost" forever is that we simply, in the words of the Bible, "do not believe" in Jesus. You don't have to openly reject Him, you can just passively miss Him. And "believing" in the Bible doesn't mean just agreeing with Jesus or giving mental assent. It's grabbing Him to pull you into the lifeboat and holding onto Him like He's your only hope. He is. And it may be you've never really put yourself completely into His hands to be your Rescuer from your sin.
This could be your day to do that. You just tell Jesus that you're putting all your trust in Him to save you from a spiritual death penalty that you could never save yourself from. You're doing that based on what He did on the cross for you; taking your place...being your substitute...carrying your penalty.
Tell Him, "Lord, I'm ready to turn from the sin that nailed you to that cross and let you drive from now on. At the moment you put your total trust in Him, you have become someone with guaranteed eternal life who can say from this day on, "I know when I die, I am going to heaven because the sin that would keep me out has been erased by Jesus Christ."
If you're ready to begin a relationship with Him; if you're ready to secure a place in heaven forever, I hope you'll go visit our website. We've really put information there that will help you know you belong to Him. The website is YoursForLife.net. Or I'd be glad to send you the little booklet Yours For Life if you'll just call for it. It's a toll free call. It's 877-741-1200.
At the moment you open your heart to Jesus, you have literally in the Bible's words, "crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24). Forever, God will move your name from "lost" to "saved."
