Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
December 9
Love Doesn’t Boast
Love does not boast, it is not proud.
1 Corinthians 13:4 (NIV)
The humble heart honors others.
Is Jesus not our example? Content to be known as a carpenter. Happy to be mistaken for the gardener. He served his followers by washing their feet. He serves us by doing the same. Each morning he gifts us with beauty. Each Sunday he calls us to his table. Each moment he dwells in our hearts. And does he not speak of the day when he as “the master will dress himself to serve and tell the servants to sit at the table, and he will serve them” (Luke 12:37)?
If Jesus is so willing to honor us, can we not do the same for others? Make people a priority. Accept your part in his plan. Be quick to share the applause. And, most of all, regard others as more important than yourself. Love does. For love “does not boast, it is not proud.”
From: A Love Worth Giving
Copyright (W Publishing Group, 2002)
Max Lucado
1 Chronicles 15
The Ark Brought to Jerusalem
1 After David had constructed buildings for himself in the City of David, he prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched a tent for it. 2 Then David said, "No one but the Levites may carry the ark of God, because the LORD chose them to carry the ark of the LORD and to minister before him forever."
3 David assembled all Israel in Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the LORD to the place he had prepared for it. 4 He called together the descendants of Aaron and the Levites:
5 From the descendants of Kohath,
Uriel the leader and 120 relatives;
6 from the descendants of Merari,
Asaiah the leader and 220 relatives;
7 from the descendants of Gershon, [a]
Joel the leader and 130 relatives;
8 from the descendants of Elizaphan,
Shemaiah the leader and 200 relatives;
9 from the descendants of Hebron,
Eliel the leader and 80 relatives;
10 from the descendants of Uzziel,
Amminadab the leader and 112 relatives.
11 Then David summoned Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and Uriel, Asaiah, Joel, Shemaiah, Eliel and Amminadab the Levites. 12 He said to them, "You are the heads of the Levitical families; you and your fellow Levites are to consecrate yourselves and bring up the ark of the LORD, the God of Israel, to the place I have prepared for it. 13 It was because you, the Levites, did not bring it up the first time that the LORD our God broke out in anger against us. We did not inquire of him about how to do it in the prescribed way." 14 So the priests and Levites consecrated themselves in order to bring up the ark of the LORD, the God of Israel. 15 And the Levites carried the ark of God with the poles on their shoulders, as Moses had commanded in accordance with the word of the LORD.
16 David told the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brothers as singers to sing joyful songs, accompanied by musical instruments: lyres, harps and cymbals.
17 So the Levites appointed Heman son of Joel; from his brothers, Asaph son of Berekiah; and from their brothers the Merarites, Ethan son of Kushaiah; 18 and with them their brothers next in rank: Zechariah, [b] Jaaziel, Shemiramoth, Jehiel, Unni, Eliab, Benaiah, Maaseiah, Mattithiah, Eliphelehu, Mikneiah, Obed-Edom and Jeiel, [c] the gatekeepers.
19 The musicians Heman, Asaph and Ethan were to sound the bronze cymbals; 20 Zechariah, Aziel, Shemiramoth, Jehiel, Unni, Eliab, Maaseiah and Benaiah were to play the lyres according to alamoth , [d] 21 and Mattithiah, Eliphelehu, Mikneiah, Obed-Edom, Jeiel and Azaziah were to play the harps, directing according to sheminith . [e] 22 Kenaniah the head Levite was in charge of the singing; that was his responsibility because he was skillful at it.
23 Berekiah and Elkanah were to be doorkeepers for the ark. 24 Shebaniah, Joshaphat, Nethanel, Amasai, Zechariah, Benaiah and Eliezer the priests were to blow trumpets before the ark of God. Obed-Edom and Jehiah were also to be doorkeepers for the ark.
25 So David and the elders of Israel and the commanders of units of a thousand went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD from the house of Obed-Edom, with rejoicing. 26 Because God had helped the Levites who were carrying the ark of the covenant of the LORD, seven bulls and seven rams were sacrificed. 27 Now David was clothed in a robe of fine linen, as were all the Levites who were carrying the ark, and as were the singers, and Kenaniah, who was in charge of the singing of the choirs. David also wore a linen ephod. 28 So all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the LORD with shouts, with the sounding of rams' horns and trumpets, and of cymbals, and the playing of lyres and harps.
29 As the ark of the covenant of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David dancing and celebrating, she despised him in her heart.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
1 Kings 3:4-14
4 The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.
5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you."
6 Solomon answered, "You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7 "Now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.
8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.
9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?"
10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this.
11 So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice,
12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.
13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for--both riches and honor--so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.
14 And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life."
December 9, 2009
When Life Is Too Big
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READ: 1 Kings 3:4-14
O Lord my God, You have made Your servant king instead of my father David, but I am a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. —1 Kings 3:7
As a young man, Jimmy Carter was a junior officer in the US Navy. He was deeply impacted by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the mastermind of the US nuclear submarine fleet.
Shortly after Carter’s inauguration as President, he invited Rickover to the White House for lunch, where the admiral presented Carter with a plaque that read, “O, God, Thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.” That prayer is a useful perspective on the size and complexity of life and our inability to manage it on our own.
Solomon too knew that life could be overwhelming. When he succeeded his father, David, as king of Israel, he confessed his weakness to God, saying, “O Lord my God, You have made Your servant king instead of my father David, but I am a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in” (1 Kings 3:7). As a result, he asked for the wisdom to lead in a way that would please God and help others (v.9).
Is life feeling too big for you? There may not be easy answers to the challenges you are facing, but God promises that, if you ask for wisdom, He will grant it (James 1:5). You don’t have to face the overwhelming challenges of life alone. — Bill Crowder
Each day we learn from yesterday
Of God’s great love and care;
And every burden we must face
He’ll surely help us bear. —D. De Haan
Recognizing our own smallness can cause us to embrace God’s greatness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
December 9, 2009
The Opposition of the Natural
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READ:
Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires —Galatians 5:24
The natural life itself is not sinful. But we must abandon sin, having nothing to do with it in any way whatsoever. Sin belongs to hell and to the devil. I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and to God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence, and my self-will. This is where the battle has to be fought. The things that are right, noble, and good from the natural standpoint are the very things that keep us from being God’s best. Once we come to understand that natural moral excellence opposes or counteracts surrender to God, we bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us would debate over what is filthy, evil, and wrong, but we do debate over what is good. It is the good that opposes the best. The higher up the scale of moral excellence a person goes, the more intense the opposition to Jesus Christ. "Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh . . . ." The cost to your natural life is not just one or two things, but everything. Jesus said, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself. . ." ( Matthew 16:24 ). That is, he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.
The natural life is not spiritual, and it can be made spiritual only through sacrifice. If we do not purposely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural to us. There is no high or easy road. Each of us has the means to accomplish it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of sacrificing, and thereby performing His will.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Darkness Behind You, Sunlight Ahead - #5978
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Our daughter and son-in-law and two grandsons were driving through the Midwest a while back and not liking the drive very much. For most of that day's drive, they were in the thick of a powerful storm system (maybe you've done that), with drenching rain, and more significantly, a lot of dangerous lightning until they got to Springfield, Missouri. When our daughter called us, they were heading south out of Springfield and liking the trip a lot more. She said, "You cannot believe how ugly it looks behind us. The sky and the lightning back there look angry and foreboding, but the road ahead of us is clear and bright!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Darkness Behind You, Sunlight Ahead."
With so much darkness behind them and a much better road ahead, believe me, our family had no desire to turn around and head back into what they had come from. Why would anyone do that? Including someone Jesus has delivered from spiritual darkness and put on a much brighter road?
If you've given your heart to Jesus Christ, then you've experienced the miracle described in our word for today from the Word of God. Colossians 1:13 says that God "has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves." Rescued. Imagine someone rescued from a burning or collapsed building. Can you imagine them going back into the wreckage they were just rescued from? And yet that's exactly what many of us Jesus-followers do. We head back into the darkness from which Christ has delivered us.
That day our family experienced the dark clouds behind them and the bright road ahead is a picture of your own, what I call, "B.C./A.D." experience. That's your time "before Christ" and your life since the moment you began your relationship with Him. It's not just the world's history that's divided into B.C. and A.D. - it's the personal history of all of us who have been rescued from our sin by Jesus Christ.
But could it be that you've been heading back to some aspect of the "B.C. - the before Christ" you, back in the direction of what God calls "the dominion of darkness"? The old lying, the old habit, the old crowd, the old selfishness or bad mouth, the old anger, or the old depression. Somehow you've made a U-turn on the Jesus-road and started back toward that time before you met Jesus.
Maybe you're forgetting how ugly, dark and stormy it was back there. Or maybe you were raised in a Christian environment. You never experienced much of Satan's enslaving darkness, and you're just tempted to try a little. Sin has some very attractive packages, but that's all it is - a package. Once you open it, you find what's inside is a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of bondage, and a lot of loneliness. And it costs you the greatest anchor you've got in your life: the wonderful sense of the closeness of Jesus and the peace that only He can give you.
Paul says, Jesus "gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness" (Titus 2:13). How can we drift back into the things He died to get us out of? I can't think of a greater insult to the Man who died for you. Because of Jesus, you were able to drive out of the storm, out of the darkness, out of eternal danger. Don't go back there. Everything you were made for, everything you need is on the Jesus-road ahead of you. Keep driving toward His light. That ugly sky behind you will soon be just a shrinking shadow in your rear view mirror.