Max Lucado Daily: We Can’t Surprise God
We Can’t Surprise God
Posted: 02 Sep 2010 11:01 PM PDT
“A person is made right with God not by following the law, but by trusting in Jesus Christ.” Galatians 2:16
God is not stumped by an evil world. He doesn’t gasp in amazement at the depth of our faith or the depth of our failures. We can’t surprise God with our cruelties. He knows the condition of the world . . . and loves it just the same. For just when we find a place where God would never be (like on a cross), we look again and there he is, in the flesh.
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.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring [r] I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD. 9 Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.
Abram in Egypt
10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you."
14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels.
17 But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. "What have you done to me?" he said. "Why didn't you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!" 20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Mark 7:1-13
Mark 7:1-13 (NIV)Mk 1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2 saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?" 6 He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: "'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.' 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men." 9 And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' 11 But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), 12 then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
Loopholes
September 3, 2010 — by Julie Ackerman Link
Your Word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You. —Psalm 119:11
Five-year-old Jenna was not having a good start to her day. Every attempt to arrange the world according to her liking was having the opposite result. Arguing didn’t work. Pouting didn’t work. Crying didn’t work. Finally her mother reminded her of the Bible verse she had been learning: “Your Word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Ps. 119:11).
Apparently Jenna had been thinking about this verse, because she was quick to answer: “But Mom, it doesn’t say that I won’t sin; it says that I might not sin.”
Her words are all too familiar. I often hear similar arguments in my own mind. There’s something very appealing about loopholes, and we look for them wherever there’s a command we don’t want to obey.
Jesus addressed this problem with religious leaders who thought they had found a loophole in their religious laws (Mark 7:1-13). Instead of honoring their parents with financial or material support, they dedicated all their possessions to God, thereby limiting their use. Although their disobedience was not blatant, Jesus said their behavior was unacceptable.
Whenever we start looking for loopholes, we stop being obedient.
Lord, help us to submit to You,
To follow and obey,
Instead of finding loopholes to
Defend our sinful way. —Sper
Even though we make excuses for not obeying God,
He still calls it disobedience.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
September 3rd, 2010
Pouring Out the Water of Satisfaction
He would not drink it, but poured it out to the Lord —2 Samuel 23:16
What has been like “water from the well of Bethlehem” to you recently— love, friendship, or maybe some spiritual blessing ( 2 Samuel 23:16 )? Have you taken whatever it may be, even at the risk of damaging your own soul, simply to satisfy yourself? If you have, then you cannot pour it out “to the Lord.” You can never set apart for God something that you desire for yourself to achieve your own satisfaction. If you try to satisfy yourself with a blessing from God, it will corrupt you. You must sacrifice it, pouring it out to God— something that your common sense says is an absurd waste.
How can I pour out “to the Lord” natural love and spiritual blessings? There is only one way— I must make a determination in my mind to do so. There are certain things other people do that could never be received by someone who does not know God, because it is humanly impossible to repay them. As soon as I realize that something is too wonderful for me, that I am not worthy to receive it, and that it is not meant for a human being at all, I must pour it out “to the Lord.” Then these very things that have come to me will be poured out as “rivers of living water” all around me ( John 7:38 ). And until I pour these things out to God, they actually endanger those I love, as well as myself, because they will be turned into lust. Yes, we can be lustful in things that are not sordid and vile. Even love must be transformed by being poured out “to the Lord.”
If you have become bitter and sour, it is because when God gave you a blessing you hoarded it. Yet if you had poured it out to Him, you would have been the sweetest person on earth. If you are always keeping blessings to yourself and never learning to pour out anything “to the Lord,” other people will never have their vision of God expanded through you.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Everyday Stuff, Never Everyday Again - #6170
Friday, September 3, 2010
My wife and her family were out for a swim in a nearby river. They had invited their pastor to go with them. He was pretty much a pool swimmer - a lake swimmer - and he was unfamiliar with the river currents that can make swimming a little more challenging than usual. Pastor wasn't aware of the whirlpool in that water near the bluffs that overlooked the river. He got too close, and suddenly he got sucked into that swirling water. Their pastor was in serious trouble. And since everyone was swimming, they didn't immediately see the danger he was in. He'd already gone down twice when he finally managed to get off one yell for help. My father-in-law responded immediately and he went in for the rescue, and he saved his pastor's life that day.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Everyday Stuff, Never Everyday Again."
My father-in-law was not a professional lifeguard. Had he waited for one that day when his pastor's life was at stake, his pastor would have died. But this was a man who knew that he was the one that was there, and the responsibility for the rescue rests with the one who is where the dying person is. Especially when it comes to the people near us who are going down spiritually; dying spiritually because they don't know the Savior who's the only one who can rescue them from the death penalty for their sins.
Once you realize the ultimate reason why you are where you are, your everyday activities will never be everyday again. Consider the example of the young woman in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Kings 5:2-3 . It's the story of a young Jewish girl who has been taken captive by the Syrians and forced to become a servant girl in the home of a Syrian military commander. She's clearly a victim of unfair circumstances that are beyond her control. She's in a situation that had to be lonely, she's ripped from her home, forced to live in another country, and we can be pretty sure she's in a place she doesn't want to be. But none of that makes her forget why she is where she is. In the course of her everyday chores, she has the opportunity to save a life...and she does.
Her master, General Naaman, has developed leprosy. He'll die from it unless he can find a cure which, humanly, does not exist. But the Bible tells us, "She said to her mistress, 'If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.'" She realizes she is in a unique position to save this man's life because she knows the dying person and she knows the only one who can save him. Now, if you belong to Jesus Christ, that is exactly the position God has put you in with the people you go to school with, the people you work with, the people you live close to, the people you recreate with, the people in your family.
When you go where you go each day to do what you do, you go on an eternal rescue mission! Jesus put you there so you can take some of those people to heaven with you. Every day, you're there to show by your life the difference that Jesus makes and to capture every God-given opportunity to tell them how they can belong to Him. And suddenly your everyday takes on eternal significance.
That Syrian commander did not die because someone who worked for him cared enough to tell him how he could live. Imagine if that girl had been too shy or too scared to speak up about the answer she knew. He silence would have been his death sentence. And so it is for the people near you who don't know Jesus. Your silence could mean their death sentence, because you know the Jesus who is their only hope. They don't know Him, but they do know you. And, humanly speaking, you're their best chance - maybe their only chance - of ever belonging to Jesus...of ever being in heaven.
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