Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
December 26
Words of Promise
God has given a son to us. . . . His name will be Wonderful Counselor, Powerful God. . . Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 (NCV)
Every Christmas I read this reminder that came in the mail several years ago:
If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist. But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Savior.
Christmas cards. Punctuated promises. Phrases filled with the reason we do it all anyway.
He became like us, so we could become like him.
Angels still sing and the star still beckons.
He loves each one of us like there was only one of us to love.
From: When God Whispers Your Name
Copyright (Word Publishing, 1996)
Max Lucado
Psalm 100
A psalm. For giving thanks.
1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his [a] ;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Philippians 2:5-11 (New International Version)
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
December 26, 2009
The Hope That Banishes Hopelessness
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READ: Philippians 2:5-11
God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. —Galatians 6:14
When atheistic communism was a world-menacing power, it proclaimed that there is no God and that faith in any future life is a deceptive illusion. Leonid Brezhnev had been the Soviet dictator, the embodiment of Marxist unbelief. But something happened at his funeral that contradicted atheism. George H. W. Bush, then vice president of the US, was the country’s official representative at the solemn, formal ceremony.
He reported that while the casket was still open, Brezhnev’s widow stared motionless at her husband’s body. And just before the soldiers were about to close the lid, she reached inside and made the sign of the cross over his chest. What a desperate and significant gesture! That widow evidently hoped that what her husband had vehemently denied might somehow be true.
Thankfully, we can have hope beyond this earthly life! All we need to do is embrace by faith the saving message of the cross: Jesus died for our sins and rose again so that we might live eternally with Him. Do you believe? Then join with the apostle Paul in affirming that “we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe” (1 Tim. 4:10). — Vernon C. Grounds
The cross is my hope for eternity—
No merit have I of my own;
The shed blood of Christ my only plea—
My trust is in Jesus alone. —Christiansen
Calvary’s cross is the only bridge to eternal life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
December 26, 2009
'Walk in the Light'
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READ:
If we walk in the light as He is in the light . . . the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin —1 John 1:7
To mistake freedom from sin only on the conscious level of our lives for complete deliverance from sin by the atonement through the Cross of Christ is a great error. No one fully knows what sin is until he is born again. Sin is what Jesus Christ faced at Calvary. The evidence that I have been delivered from sin is that I know the real nature of sin in me. For a person to really know what sin is requires the full work and deep touch of the atonement of Jesus Christ, that is, the imparting of His absolute perfection.
The Holy Spirit applies or administers the work of the atonement to us in the deep unconscious realm as well as in the conscious realm. And it is not until we truly perceive the unrivaled power of the Spirit in us that we understand the meaning of 1 John 1:7 , which says, ". . . the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." This verse does not refer only to conscious sin, but also to the tremendously profound understanding of sin which only the Holy Spirit in me can accomplish.
I must "walk in the light as He is in the light . . ."— not in the light of my own conscience, but in God’s light. If I will walk there, with nothing held back or hidden, then this amazing truth is revealed to me: ". . . the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses [me] from all sin" so that God Almighty can see nothing to rebuke in me. On the conscious level it produces a keen, sorrowful knowledge of what sin really is. The love of God working in me causes me to hate, with the Holy Spirit’s hatred for sin, anything that is not in keeping with God’s holiness. To "walk in the light" means that everything that is of the darkness actually drives me closer to the center of the light.