Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
March 16
Dark Nights—God’s Light
Pray for all people, asking God for what they need and being thankful to him.
1 Timothy 2:1 (NCV)
You wonder if it is a blessing or a curse to have a mind that never rests. But you would rather be a cynic than a hypocrite, so you continue to pray with one eye open and wonder:
about starving children
about the power of prayer
about Christians in cancer wards...
Tough questions. Throw-in-the-towel questions. Questions the disciples must have asked in the storm.
All they could see were black skies as they bounced in the battered boat....
[Then] a figure came to them walking on the water. It wasn't what they expected....They almost missed seeing the answer to their prayers.
And unless we look and listen closely, we risk making the same mistake. God's lights in our dark nights are as numerous as the stars, if only we'll look for them.
2 Kings 12
Joash Repairs the Temple
1 In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash [e] became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His mother's name was Zibiah; she was from Beersheba. 2 Joash did what was right in the eyes of the LORD all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him. 3 The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.
4 Joash said to the priests, "Collect all the money that is brought as sacred offerings to the temple of the LORD -the money collected in the census, the money received from personal vows and the money brought voluntarily to the temple. 5 Let every priest receive the money from one of the treasurers, and let it be used to repair whatever damage is found in the temple."
6 But by the twenty-third year of King Joash the priests still had not repaired the temple. 7 Therefore King Joash summoned Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and asked them, "Why aren't you repairing the damage done to the temple? Take no more money from your treasurers, but hand it over for repairing the temple." 8 The priests agreed that they would not collect any more money from the people and that they would not repair the temple themselves.
9 Jehoiada the priest took a chest and bored a hole in its lid. He placed it beside the altar, on the right side as one enters the temple of the LORD. The priests who guarded the entrance put into the chest all the money that was brought to the temple of the LORD. 10 Whenever they saw that there was a large amount of money in the chest, the royal secretary and the high priest came, counted the money that had been brought into the temple of the LORD and put it into bags. 11 When the amount had been determined, they gave the money to the men appointed to supervise the work on the temple. With it they paid those who worked on the temple of the LORD -the carpenters and builders, 12 the masons and stonecutters. They purchased timber and dressed stone for the repair of the temple of the LORD, and met all the other expenses of restoring the temple.
13 The money brought into the temple was not spent for making silver basins, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, trumpets or any other articles of gold or silver for the temple of the LORD; 14 it was paid to the workmen, who used it to repair the temple. 15 They did not require an accounting from those to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because they acted with complete honesty. 16 The money from the guilt offerings and sin offerings was not brought into the temple of the LORD; it belonged to the priests.
17 About this time Hazael king of Aram went up and attacked Gath and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem. 18 But Joash king of Judah took all the sacred objects dedicated by his fathers—Jehoshaphat, Jehoram and Ahaziah, the kings of Judah—and the gifts he himself had dedicated and all the gold found in the treasuries of the temple of the LORD and of the royal palace, and he sent them to Hazael king of Aram, who then withdrew from Jerusalem.
19 As for the other events of the reign of Joash, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? 20 His officials conspired against him and assassinated him at Beth Millo, on the road down to Silla. 21 The officials who murdered him were Jozabad son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer. He died and was buried with his fathers in the City of David. And Amaziah his son succeeded him as king.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
John 20:24-29 (New International Version)
Jesus Appears to Thomas
24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
March 16, 2009
Thomas Time
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READ: John 20:24-29
Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” —John 20:28
A young adult was struggling with his faith. After growing up in a home where he was loved and nurtured in a godly way, he allowed bad decisions and circumstances to turn him away from the Lord. Although as a child he had claimed to know Jesus, he now struggled with unbelief.
One day while talking to him I said, “I know that you walked with the Lord for a long time, but right now you’re not so sure about Jesus and faith. Can I suggest to you that you are in the ‘Thomas Time’ of your life?”
He knew that Thomas was one of Jesus’ 12 apostles and that he had trusted Christ openly for several years. I reminded this young man that after Jesus’ death Thomas doubted that He had really risen from the tomb. But after 8 days the Lord appeared to Thomas, showed him His scars, and told him to stop doubting and believe. Finally ready to abandon his doubts, Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:24-28).
I told this young man, “Jesus patiently waited, and Thomas came back. I think you will too. I’m praying that someday you will again say to Jesus, ‘My Lord and my God!’?”
Could you be in a “Thomas Time”—finding it hard to feel close to Jesus, perhaps even doubting Him? Jesus is waiting for you. Reach out for His nail-scarred hand. — Dave Branon
There can be times when our minds are in doubt,
Times when we ask what our faith is about;
But we can believe Him, we know that He cares—
Our God is real, as the Bible declares. —Fitzhugh
A child of God is always welcomed home.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
March 16, 2009
The Master Will Judge
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READ:
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ . . . —2 Corinthians 5:10
Paul says that we must all, preachers and other people alike, "appear before the judgment seat of Christ." But if you will learn here and now to live under the scrutiny of Christ’s pure light, your final judgment will bring you only delight in seeing the work God has done in you. Live constantly reminding yourself of the judgment seat of Christ, and walk in the knowledge of the holiness He has given you. Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One carnal judgment of another person only serves the purposes of hell in you. Bring it immediately into the light and confess, "Oh, Lord, I have been guilty there." If you don’t, your heart will become hardened through and through. One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It is not only God who punishes for sin, but sin establishes itself in the sinner and takes its toll. No struggling or praying will enable you to stop doing certain things, and the penalty of sin is that you gradually get used to it, until you finally come to the place where you no longer even realize that it is sin. No power, except the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, can change or prevent the inherent consequences of sin.
"If we walk in the light as He is in the light. . ." ( 1 John 1:7 ). For many of us, walking in the light means walking according to the standard we have set up for another person. The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Language They Speak - #5786
Monday, March 16, 2009
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My life was profoundly affected by the example of five American missionaries who died trying to get the Gospel to a Stone Age tribe in Ecuador who had never heard the name of Jesus. They were actually murdered by the tribe that was then known as the Aucas. Amazingly, the wife of one of those missionaries and the sister of another actually went to the tribe that had killed their loved ones to tell them about Jesus. Today, some of the murderers of the missionaries are the pastors of the Auca, or Waorani, church. It's an amazing story.
I had the unforgettable privilege a few years ago of going to the Ecuadorian jungle to tape a radio program about what happened there. And I met Mincaye, one of the killers, one of the pastors. I learned that those missionary women had difficulty translating the Bible into the native language because this tribe had no word for, actually no concept of, "forgive." But the message somehow had gotten through to Mincaye. Here's what he said: "What we did to those missionaries was a terrible thing. But one day soon I will see them in heaven because Jesus has washed our hearts."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Language They Speak."
A spiritual rescuer had come to people to whom the word "forgive" meant nothing. But God's messenger to them did what effective missionaries have always done. She found a way to say it in words the people could understand. We can do no less for the spiritually dying people around us.
Obviously, the need to translate Christ's message is hard to miss in a foreign setting where there is a clearly different linguistic language. But the need to translate the Jesus-story is easy to miss when our neighbors and friends speak the same linguistic language we do, but a different cultural language. The words of our Christian "tribe" simply have no meaning, or the wrong meaning, to the lost "tribe" right next to us. Many lost people assigned to us by God have no better understanding of "born again," or "saved," or "accepting Christ" than Mincaye had of "forgive."
In our word for today from the Word of God, we discover one big reason thousands of people from all over the world came to Jesus in the first outreach ever held by the Christian Church. It was Jerusalem, it was Pentecost, and according to Acts 2:6, "Each one heard them (that is the apostles) speaking in his own language."
Now that was a special miracle from God, but it underscores that people must hear Christ's message in a language they can understand, which our church language - which I call Christianese - is not. Maybe you've been transmitting the Good News about Jesus and getting little or no response. Could it be that they're stumbling over your vocabulary? You can't just transmit the Good News; you have to translate it into everyday, non-religious words.
In Jesus' parable of the four soils, three of which produced little or no good harvest, we see the major difference between those three soils and the soil that produced great fruit. In each case, Jesus explains that "this is the man who hears the word." But where there was a great harvest, Jesus said, "This is the man who hears the word and understands it" (Matthew 13:23).
This is life-or-death information we have to deliver. We cannot afford to have our lost family and friends miss it because we said it in words they don't understand. It's time to move beyond the comfort of our Christianeze to communicate the message people cannot afford to miss. The words we use can be decisive for each of us in our personal rescue mission for Jesus.
You're God's missionary where you are. If you make the effort to translate the Good News into the language of the person who needs it, you can be part of a life-giving miracle!