Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
January 13
Working to Please God
Work as if you were serving the Lord, not as if you were serving only men and women.
Ephesians 6:7 (NCV)
What if everyone worked with God in mind? Suppose no one worked to satisfy self or please the bottom line but everyone worked to please God.
Many occupations would instantly cease: drug trafficking, thievery, prostitution, nightclub and casino management. Certain careers, by their nature, cannot please God. These would cease.
Certain behaviors would cease as well. If I’m repairing a car for God, I’m not going to overcharge his children. If I’m painting a wall for God, you think I’m going to use paint thinner?
Imagine if everyone worked for the audience of One. Every nurse, thoughtful. Every officer, careful. Every professor insightful. Every salesperson, delightful. Every teacher, hopeful. Every lawyer, skillful.
Impossible? Not entirely. All we need is someone to start a worldwide revolution. Might as well be us.
2 Samuel 6
The Ark Brought to Jerusalem
1 David again brought together out of Israel chosen men, thirty thousand in all. 2 He and all his men set out from Baalah of Judah [f] to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, [g] the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark. 3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart 4 with the ark of God on it, [h] and Ahio was walking in front of it. 5 David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the LORD, with songs [i] and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.
6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. 7 The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.
8 Then David was angry because the LORD's wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and to this day that place is called Perez Uzzah. [j]
9 David was afraid of the LORD that day and said, "How can the ark of the LORD ever come to me?" 10 He was not willing to take the ark of the LORD to be with him in the City of David. Instead, he took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. 11 The ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months, and the LORD blessed him and his entire household.
12 Now King David was told, "The LORD has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God." So David went down and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. 13 When those who were carrying the ark of the LORD had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. 14 David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, 15 while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
16 As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.
17 They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings [k] before the LORD. 18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD Almighty. 19 Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.
20 When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!"
21 David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD's people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. 22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor."
23 And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Habakkuk 1
1 The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet received.
Habakkuk's Complaint
2 How long, O LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, "Violence!"
but you do not save?
3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
January 13, 2009
The Bible’s School Of Prayer
ODB RADIO: Listen Now | Download
READ: Habakkuk 1:1-4
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. —Job 7:11
To call God and us unequal partners is a laughable understatement. And yet by inviting us to do kingdom work on earth, God has indeed set up a kind of odd-couple alliance. God delegates work to human beings so that we do history together, so to speak. Clearly, the partnership has one dominant partner—something like an alliance between Microsoft and a high school programmer.
We know well what happens when human beings form unequal alliances: the dominant partner tends to throw his weight around and the subordinate mostly keeps quiet. But God, who has no reason to be threatened by us, invites a steady and honest flow of communication.
I sometimes wonder why God places such a high value on honesty in our prayers, even to the extent of enduring unjust outbursts. I am startled to see how many biblical prayers seem ill-tempered. Jeremiah griped about unfairness (20:7-10); Habakkuk accused God of deafness (1:2); Job conceded, “What profit do we have if we pray to Him?” (21:15). The Bible teaches us to pray with blistering honesty.
God wants us to come to Him with our complaints. If we march through life pretending to smile while inside we bleed, we dishonor the relationship. — Philip Yancey
Give Him each perplexing problem,
All your needs to Him make known;
Bring to Him your daily burdens—
Never carry them alone! —Adams
The best thermometer of your spiritual temperature is the intensity of your prayer. —Spurgeon
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
January 13, 2009
Have You Ever Been Alone with God? (2)
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READ:
When He was alone . . . the twelve asked Him about the parable —Mark 4:10
His Solitude with Us. When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship— when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us. Notice Jesus Christ’s training of the Twelve. It was the disciples, not the crowd outside, who were confused. His disciples constantly asked Him questions, and He constantly explained things to them, but they didn’t understand until after they received the Holy Spirit (see John 14:26).
As you journey with God, the only thing He intends to be clear is the way He deals with your soul. The sorrows and difficulties in the lives of others will be absolutely confusing to you. We think we understand another person’s struggle until God reveals the same shortcomings in our lives. There are vast areas of stubbornness and ignorance the Holy Spirit has to reveal in each of us, but it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone. Are we alone with Him now? Or are we more concerned with our own ideas, friendships, and cares for our bodies? Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with Him.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Mirror Difference - #5742 - January 13, 2009
Category: Your Most Important Relationship
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
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Not long after I got up this morning, I looked in the bathroom mirror - it wasn't very pretty. My hair had exploded during the night! (What I have!) There were whiskers that needed shaving; there were several repairs that need to be made. Maybe you have the same kind of experience when you look in the mirror in the morning. You ask yourself, "How in the world could six hours do so much damage?" Usually, what you see in the mirror involves more than just information (Oh man! Look at that skin! Look at that hair!) No, no, no, it calls for transformation! You see what you really look like and you got to work on it!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Mirror Difference."
When God talks about His Word, He uses some interesting analogies: it's a lamp, it's a washing, it's a hammer, and it's a mirror! And it's supposed to have the same effect on our lives that a mirror has on our appearance!
Here's how God describes it in James 1:22 and the verses that follow in our word for today from the Word of God: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, not forgetting what he has heard but doing it, he will be blessed in what he does."
That's a great picture. One man looks in the mirror, sees the work that needs to be done, and says, "Oh, what do you know!" and walks away looking the same. The other man sees what needs to be done and goes to work on it! And so it is with each of us as we open our Bible and we read what God has to say there. We're supposed to read, not just for information, but for transformation.
It isn't just about you reading the Bible; it's about you letting the Bible read you! Until you've done that each day, you've missed the point of reading the Bible in the first place. It's not just doing your Christian duty. Why look in the mirror if you're not going to change anything? Why look in the Bible if you're not going to change anything? Some people are working on a "Read Through the Bible" program and that can be a great exercise. But remember, it's not about how much you read. It's about how much you obey!
There is nothing more vital to your following Christ than getting personal direction from Him each day through His words. You may be reading the Bible, but are you letting the Bible read you? Before you read, ask God, the Author of what you're about to read, to take His words and help you apply them to something specific that you're going to face this very day. Those verses in James talk about "not forgetting" what you discovered. So in order to do that, why don't you begin to keep a Jesus-journal where you write two things each day: what God said to you, and you put it in your own words - not in Bible words, and what you're going to do differently today because of what you read!
Many years ago, I began the discipline of keeping that Jesus-journal; probably one of the greatest single things that happened in my life in Christ. To be able to go back and see what He said to you; be able to look at it tonight and see how you did that day on acting on what you saw in the Bible mirror. It's a great way to process and permanetize what God is saying in your life. Remember, He said do what it says, otherwise you are deceiving yourselves.
That's the road to spiritual consistency, to steady growth, and to experiencing the reality of Jesus every day; not just the belief about Him. Look in God's spiritual mirror every morning and do something about what God shows you in that mirror. If you do, I'll guarantee you, you are going to be looking better all the time!
