Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
August 31
No Nonsacred Moments
We are God's workers, working together.
1 Corinthians 3:9 (NCV)
It's a wonderful day indeed when we stop working for God and begin working with God....
For years I viewed God as a compassionate CEO and my role as a loyal sales representative. He had his office, and I had my territory. I could contact him as much as I wanted. He was always a phone or fax away. He encouraged me, rallied behind me, and supported me, but he didn't go with me. At least I didn't think he did. Then I read 2 Corinthians 6:1: We are "God's fellow workers" (NIV).
Fellow workers? Co-laborers? God and I work together? Imagine the paradigm shift this truth creates. Rather than report to God, we work with God. Rather than check in with him and then leave, we check in with him and then follow. We are always in the presence of God.... There is never a nonsacred moment!
2 Timothy 3
Godlessness in the Last Days
1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
6They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 8Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth—men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.
Paul's Charge to Timothy
10You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
John 19
Jesus Sentenced to be Crucified
1Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face.
4Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, "Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him." 5When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, "Here is the man!"
6As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, "Crucify! Crucify!"
But Pilate answered, "You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him."
7The Jews insisted, "We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God."
New International Version (NIV)
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John 19:16-18
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16Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
The Crucifixion
So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18Here they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
August 31, 2009
Reminders Of Love
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READ: John 19:1-7, 16-18
God is love. —1 John 4:8
After the US entered World War II in 1941, Estelle tried to talk her boyfriend Sidney out of joining the Army. But he enlisted and began his training in April of the following year. For the next 3 years he wrote her love letters—525 in all. Then in March 1945, she learned that her beloved fiancé had been killed in combat.
Although Estelle did eventually marry, the memories of her first love lived in her heart. To honor that love, she published a book of Sidney’s wartime correspondence more than 60 years later.
Like those letters, the Lord has left us with reminders of His love—the Scriptures. He says: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you” (Jer. 31:3).
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love” (John 15:9).
The Bible also tells us that “Christ . . . loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Eph. 5:25).
“[Jesus] gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us” (Titus 2:14).
“God is love” (1 John 4:8).
Read God’s Word often and be reminded that Jesus loves you and died for you. — Anne Cetas
With lovingkindness I have drawn you,
Proving that My love is true;
Do not neglect to read of that love,
Written in My Word for you. —Verway
Nothing can compare to the love of God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
August 31, 2009
"My Joy . . . Your Joy"
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These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full —John 15:11
What was the joy that Jesus had? Joy should not be confused with happiness. In fact, it is an insult to Jesus Christ to use the word happiness in connection with Him. The joy of Jesus was His absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice to His Father— the joy of doing that which the Father sent Him to do— ". . . who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross . . ." ( Hebrews 12:2 ). "I delight to do Your will, O my God . . ." ( Psalm 40:8 ). Jesus prayed that our joy might continue fulfilling itself until it becomes the same joy as His. Have I allowed Jesus Christ to introduce His joy to me?
Living a full and overflowing life does not rest in bodily health, in circumstances, nor even in seeing God’s work succeed, but in the perfect understanding of God, and in the same fellowship and oneness with Him that Jesus Himself enjoyed. But the first thing that will hinder this joy is the subtle irritability caused by giving too much thought to our circumstances. Jesus said, ". . . the cares of this world, . . . choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful" ( Mark 4:19 ). And before we even realize what has happened, we are caught up in our cares. All that God has done for us is merely the threshold— He wants us to come to the place where we will be His witnesses and proclaim who Jesus is.
Have the right relationship with God, finding your joy there, and out of you "will flow rivers of living water" ( John 7:38 ). Be a fountain through which Jesus can pour His "living water." Stop being hypocritical and proud, aware only of yourself, and live "your life . . . hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3 ). A person who has the right relationship with God lives a life as natural as breathing wherever he goes. The lives that have been the greatest blessing to you are the lives of those people who themselves were unaware of having been a blessing.
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A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Girl Watching - God's Watching - #5906
A Word With You - Your Relationships
Monday, August 31, 2009
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The American male is led to believe that "girl-watching" is just part of being a man. A lot of girls are all too aware that they are being watched, and they're not at all happy about how they're being watched. Like the young woman my wife and I saw recently at a festival. She was wearing a shirt with an arrow on the front that pointed up to her head. The shirt said just three little words by the arrow, "I'm up here!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You about "Girl Watching - God's Watching."
That teenage girl was sending a much-needed message, "Keep your eyes where they belong! I'm a person, not a body, thank you!" It's actually a message the Creator of women would more than agree with. A woman is depersonalized, sexualized, and trivialized by the way many men look at them, and she is the creation of a holy God; a Father in heaven. And you know how fierce a Father is about protecting His daughter!
The Old Testament saint, Job, the man whose integrity God acclaimed to Satan, understood that how a man looks at a woman is an important part of his integrity. And it matters to God. In Job 31:1 , our word for today from the Word of God, he says, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl." That's a covenant every man should make, especially if he belongs to Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God.
Today the Biblical commandment to "flee the evil desires of youth" (2 Timothy 2:22 ) is as hard to obey as it's ever been. Advertising, fashions, TV, movies, and the internet almost program a man to look at a woman sexually - focusing attention on that which is intended by God for only the man she's married to. But the fact that it's hard to have righteous eyes doesn't make it any less God's imperative.
Men in Jesus' day, even the very religious, apparently thought they were doing okay if they didn't do something immoral with a woman. Then Jesus introduced the radical idea that you can sin sexually without ever touching a woman just by the way you look at her. He said, "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." That makes far more of us men adulterers than we believed - men in need of the forgiving and the cleansing of the Savior, Jesus.
Unfortunately, too many women (including Christian women) have bought into a fashion culture that actually entices men to focus on a woman's body. God clearly commands women: "Your beauty should not come from outward adornment...instead it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit" (1 Peter 3:3-4 ). Many a woman who's disgusted with being looked at as a sex object is actually dressing in a way that encourages it.
We men who want "pure eyes" need the help of our spiritual sisters. If what you're wearing is too short, too tight, too low, or not enough, you become part of the problem instead of part of the answer. And remember what every fisherman knows: the bait determines the catch! Offer physical bait and you'll end up with men who only care about that, not men who care about you.
Both men and women have fallen for a casualness about sex that robs it of its God-given beauty. Like snow, it's beautiful when it's fresh and clean but it's ugly when it's trampled and soiled. Godly men, make that covenant with your eyes not to look lustfully at a girl. Godly women, dress for respect, not attention like the temple of God that you are.
The song the children sing still has a lot to say, "Be careful, little eyes, what you see...for the Father up above is looking down in love; so be careful, little eyes, what you see."