Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
June 1
A Heavenly Perspective
Ask, and God will give to you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will open for you.
Matthew 7:7 (NCV)
Go back and report to John what you hear and see: "The blind receive sight, the lame walk...and the good news is preached to the poor."
This was Jesus' answer to John's agonized query from the dungeon of doubt: "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"
We don't know how John received Jesus' message, but we can imagine. I like to think of a slight smile coming over his lips as he heard what his Master said. For now he understood. It wasn't that Jesus was silent; it was that John had been listening for the wrong answer. John had been listening for an answer to his earthly problems, while Jesus was busy resolving his heavenly ones.
That's worth remembering the next time you hear the silence of God.
Matthew 1
The Genealogy of Jesus
1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
2Abraham was the father of Isaac,
Isaac the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
4Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
6and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife,
7Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah,
Abijah the father of Asa,
8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat,
Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram,
Jehoram the father of Uzziah,
9Uzziah the father of Jotham,
Jotham the father of Ahaz,
Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,
10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh,
Manasseh the father of Amon,
Amon the father of Josiah,
11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[a] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.
12After the exile to Babylon:
Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel,
Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,
13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud,
Abiud the father of Eliakim,
Eliakim the father of Azor,
14Azor the father of Zadok,
Zadok the father of Akim,
Akim the father of Eliud,
15Eliud the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Matthan,
Matthan the father of Jacob,
16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[b]
The Birth of Jesus Christ
18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[c] because he will save his people from their sins."
22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"[d]—which means, "God with us."
24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Genesis 12
The Call of Abram
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
2 "I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."
4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
June 1, 2009
Holy Fools
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READ: Genesis 12:1-5
If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. —Mark 9:23
When God spoke to Abram, he obeyed at once, departing for an unknown land based only on a promise. Childless, he trusted God to make of him “a great nation” (Gen. 12:2).
God often does His work through “holy fools”—dreamers who strike out in ridiculous faith. Yet I tend to approach my decisions with calculation and restraint.
My church in Chicago once scheduled an all-night vigil of prayer during a major crisis. At length we discussed the practicality of the event before finally putting it on the calendar. The poorest members of the congregation, a group of senior citizens from a housing project, responded the most enthusiastically. I wondered how many of their prayers had gone unanswered over the years, yet they showed a childlike trust in the power of prayer. “How long do you want to stay—an hour or two?” we asked, thinking of van shuttles. “Oh, we’ll stay all night,” they replied.
One woman in her 90s explained, “We can pray. We got time, and we got faith. Some of us don’t sleep much anyway. We can pray all night if needs be.” And so they did.
Meanwhile, a bunch of yuppies in a downtown church learned an important lesson: Faith often appears where least expected and falters where it ought to thrive. — Philip Yancey
Faith looks across the storm—it does not doubt
Or stop to look at clouds and things without.
Faith does not question why when all His ways
Are hard to understand, but trusts and prays. —Anon.
Prayer is the voice of faith.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 1, 2009
The Staggering Question
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READ:
He said to me, ’Son of man, can these bones live?’ —Ezekiel 37:3
Can a sinner be turned into a saint? Can a twisted life be made right? There is only one appropriate answer— "O Lord God, You know" ( Ezekiel 37:3 ). Never forge ahead with your religious common sense and say, "Oh, yes, with just a little more Bible reading, devotional time, and prayer, I see how it can be done."
It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we see the activity and mistake panic for inspiration. That is why we see so few fellow workers with God, yet so many people working for God. We would much rather work for God than believe in Him. Do I really believe that God will do in me what I cannot do? The degree of hopelessness I have for others comes from never realizing that God has done anything for me. Is my own personal experience such a wonderful realization of God’s power and might that I can never have a sense of hopelessness for anyone else I see? Has any spiritual work been accomplished in me at all? The degree of panic activity in my life is equal to the degree of my lack of personal spiritual experience.
"Behold, O My people, I will open your graves . . ." ( Ezekiel 37:12 ). When God wants to show you what human nature is like separated from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself. If the Spirit of God has ever given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He will only do this when His Spirit is at work in you), then you know that in reality there is no criminal half as bad as you yourself could be without His grace. My "grave" has been opened by God and "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells" ( Romans 7:18 ). God’s Spirit continually reveals to His children what human nature is like apart from His grace.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Bumpy Landings - #5841
Monday, June 1, 2009
I was on one of those early-morning airplane flights that's packed with business people. And as we landed that morning, we had one of those "two for the price of one" landings. We bumped and jumped along the runway as we landed. And suddenly that commanded the attention of all of us passengers who are usually numb from frequent travel. I thought, "I wonder what the flight attendant is going to say; this was not just a routine landing." Well, the attendant simply got on the P.A. and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, now that I have your attention, I'd like to make a few announcements..." Man, did he have our attention! I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Bumpy Landings."
Now, maybe you've been experiencing some bumpy landings lately. It could be that God is saying, "Now that I've got your attention, I'd like to make a few announcements." Often, life's bumpy landings are God's way of getting our attention to tell us things and show us things that we would otherwise never see.
My experience has been that God has three tools that He seems to use over and over again to show His glory and to shape our lives. One example is in our word for today from the Word of God in Psalm 135:5-7. God's wakeup tool here is the weather. He says, "I know that the Lord is great...The Lord does whatever pleases Him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from the storehouses."
OK, well now there's nothing random about the weather. God uses it; God designs it to accomplish His purposes and to show us His greatness. We can have the most elaborate plans, but believe me, one storm can change all that. The weather is beyond our control. So, God uses it to get our attention, to change our plans, and to accomplish His plans.
Another tool God loves to use when He's trying to get our attention is our health. Again, it's something we have little control over. It's amazing how one visit to a doctor's office can change our life. But sickness and disease aren't random either. Like the weather, they're ultimately subject to the sovereignty of Almighty God. And God accomplishes His perfect will through our health and does some amazingly beautiful things through painful times.
One other tool God uses is our finances. Again, our financial situation is often at the mercy of a lot of things we can't control, but God can and does. And our financial needs become a powerful tool in God's hands to draw us much closer to Him, to make us evaluate our priorities, and to get us to put His Kingdom first.
The weather, the money, your health: three power tools that God uses to show us His Lordship and His power, to get our attention, to restore or maybe even deepen our dependency on Him, and then to surgically remove the spiritual cancers in our life. Our God reigns, and He is using the things we can't control to get us to give Him greater control of our lives. Things aren't out of control just because you're experiencing some bumpy landings. God is actually using those bumpy landings to get your attention and then to give you some important messages from Him.