Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
June 8
The Foundation of Courage
I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.
Hebrews 8:12 (NIV)
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1 NIV).
"[God] justifies those who have faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26 NIV).
For those in Christ, these promises are not only a source of joy. They are also the foundations of true courage. You are guaranteed that your sins will be filtered through, hidden in, and screened out by the sacrifice of Jesus. When God looks at you, he doesn't see you; he sees the One who surrounds you. That means that failure is not a concern for you. Your victory is secure. How could you not be courageous?
John 4
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[m])
10Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
17"I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ[n]?" 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
Many Samaritans Believe
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers.
42They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."
Jesus Heals the Official's Son
43After the two days he left for Galilee. 44(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.
46Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
48"Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."
49The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
50Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live."
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."
53Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.
54This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Psalm 139
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.
1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, [a] you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
June 8, 2009
A Life Remembered
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READ: Psalm 139:1-16
That we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. —2 Corinthians 1:4
Daddy, help me.” Those were the last words Dianne and Gary Cronin heard their daughter say as she struggled to breathe. Kristin, 14 years old, died suddenly—just 2 days after saying she didn’t feel well. A strep infection attacked her body on Thursday. By Saturday, she was pleading with her daddy to help her.
Before Kristin died, I was scheduled to speak at her family’s church in Soldotna, Alaska. In God’s timing, I stood before the congregation the day after her funeral.
Kristin was one of those vivacious teens who loved Jesus and lived for Him—and whose sudden death leaves us with a million questions.
Because I went through a similar loss of my own teenage daughter a few years ago, I was able to offer some advice to this stunned and grieving church. First, I said, we must recognize God’s sovereignty. Psalm 139:16 reminds us that Kristin’s life was the exact length God intended. Second, I asked the church never to forget her family. Whether it’s 2 months or 5 years later, the family will never “get over” losing Kristin. They will never stop needing Christians who care and remember.
In times like this, don’t forget that God is in control and that He wants us to be a comfort to others. — Dave Branon
When we sustain a heartbreaking loss,
When grief overwhelms our soul,
The Savior who gave Himself on the cross
Reminds us that He’s in control. —D. De Haan
In every desert of despair God has an oasis of comfort.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 8, 2009
What’s Next To Do?
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READ:
If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them —John 13:17
Be determined to know more than others. If you yourself do not cut the lines that tie you to the dock, God will have to use a storm to sever them and to send you out to sea. Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened. If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself— begin to have spiritual discernment.
When you know that you should do something and you do it, immediately you know more. Examine where you have become sluggish, where you began losing interest spiritually, and you will find that it goes back to a point where you did not do something you knew you should do. You did not do it because there seemed to be no immediate call to do it. But now you have no insight or discernment, and at a time of crisis you are spiritually distracted instead of spiritually self-controlled. It is a dangerous thing to refuse to continue learning and knowing more.
The counterfeit of obedience is a state of mind in which you create your own opportunities to sacrifice yourself, and your zeal and enthusiasm are mistaken for discernment. It is easier to sacrifice yourself than to fulfill your spiritual destiny, which is stated in Romans 12:1-2. It is much better to fulfill the purpose of God in your life by discerning His will than it is to perform great acts of self-sacrifice. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice . . ." ( 1 Samuel 15:22 ). Beware of paying attention or going back to what you once were, when God wants you to be something that you have never been. "If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know . . ." ( John 7:17 ).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Healing Edge - #5846
Monday, June 8, 2009
When one of our kids would be going through a sick spell, I used to tell them that they needed to get lots of sleep. That's because "when you're asleep, the good soldiers come out and fight those bad soldiers that are making you sick." Okay, so it's not exactly advanced microbiology, but it works for me. Actually, one of the amazing things about these bodies God has given us is how our body kicks into action when it's been invaded by an infection. All those antibodies go to work and those white blood cells start coming out in force. In fact, one way doctors look for infection is to check your blood for the elevated presence of white blood cells. They start multiplying fast when the "bad soldier" germs try to take you out.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Healing Edge."
There's this infection that every human being on this planet is fighting; actually it's a spiritual infection. This spiritual cancer is called "sin" in the Bible, and it can kill your future, your reputation, your marriage, your joy, your closeness to God. And, if it isn't cured, it can ultimately kill you forever by keeping you out of God's heaven.
But for all of us who are carrying this deadly infection inside us, God has some awesome news. He has "good soldiers" that are more powerful than the forces of sin. In Romans 5:20, our word for today from the Word of God, He says, "Where sin increased, grace increased all the more." What an incredible promise! God always has more grace than we have sin, no matter what we've done.
Grace is God's undeserved, unconditional love. We're hung up on trying to do things to please people, to get them to like us, to get them to accept us. But there's nothing you're going to do that's going to impress a sinless, holy, infinite God. But because we're stuck on this "deserving" thing, we're sure God will have nothing to do with us when we've blown it royally. If His love and forgiving is based on our performance, we're done for. But it's not. It's based on His grace, which is all about what He's like and nothing about what we're like. And His sin-fighting agent, called grace, always outruns and outguns human sin. There's more healing grace than there is sinful infection...always.
That doesn't mean you go on sinning so you can abuse God's grace and take advantage of His love. In fact, if you really have Jesus in your heart, you won't be able to indefinitely stand doing the things that He died to keep you from doing. But God's "more grace than there is sin" equation means that there is no one in your life who is beyond God's grace. So keep praying for them; keep loving them. There is no sin that cannot be forgiven...no prodigal who can't come home. And it is never too late to be forgiven. Just look at the dying thief Jesus forgave on the cross.
Today could be your personal day to experience that healing grace of God for yourself. No matter what you've done, Jesus died to pay for it and to forgive it, if you'll give yourself to Him - if you'll trust Him to be your personal Rescuer from your personal sin. You don't have to carry the guilt; you don't have to carry the death sentence of your sin one more day. If you want to begin your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you need to tell Him this very day. "Jesus, I was made by you. I was made for you. I have lived for me. I'm done with that. I believe you died for the sins I have done against you, and you walked out of your grave, so you're alive today. I'm putting all my trust in you to rescue me from my sin. I am yours."
I'll tell you, if you say that to Him, you have just taken down the wall between you and God and begun life's most important relationship. Actually, there's a lot of information about that at our website. It's all about how to begin life's most important relationship. And I'd invite you to check it out at your first convenience today. It's YoursForLife.net.
His grace is greater than the sins of a lifetime. That's why it's amazing grace. Grace for you.
