Max Lucado Daily: You are Unique
You are Unique
Posted: 20 Oct 2010 11:01 PM PDT
Each of us is an original. Galatians 5:26, The Message
There are certain things you can do that no one else can. Perhaps it is parenting, or constructing houses, or encouraging the discouraged. There are things that only you can do, and you are alive to do them.
In the great orchestra we call life, you have an instrument and a song, and you owe it to God to play them both sublimely.
Matthew 12
Lord of the Sabbath
1At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath."
3He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? 6I tell you that one[a] greater than the temple is here. 7If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,'[b] you would not have condemned the innocent. 8For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."
9Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"
11He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."
13Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
God's Chosen Servant
15Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place. Many followed him, and he healed all their sick, 16warning them not to tell who he was. 17This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
18"Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
19He will not quarrel or cry out;
no one will hear his voice in the streets.
20A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
21In his name the nations will put their hope."[c]
Jesus and Beelzebub
22Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. 23All the people were astonished and said, "Could this be the Son of David?"
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Proverbs 18:9-12
9 One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.
10 The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.
11 The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it an unscalable wall.
12 Before his downfall a man's heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.
Safe Room
October 21, 2010 — by Marvin Williams
The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. —Proverbs 18:10
In some homes, owners have built safe rooms—special places where they can go for protection should someone break into the house.
In Proverbs 18:10, Solomon reminded God’s people that God is their “safe room” and that they could find total security in Him.
In verses 10 and 11, he described two types of security to which some people run: the name of the Lord and wealth. The name or character of God is described as a “strong tower.” As a captured city might take refuge in a fortified tower, so the righteous could run to the Lord and find complete safety.
On the other hand, the wealthy imagined their riches as a high point of safety. Solomon sought to tell his readers that money might give a sense of security but it would be a false security that could lead to laziness, pride, and destruction. Yet people who are humble and find their complete security in the unchanging and holy character of God will find true safety.
Wealth may not be your particular “safe room.” You might tend to run instead to something or someone else when adversity comes. But we all need to learn to depend daily on the Lord and find a high point of safety in the safe room of His name.
It’s often easier to trust
In what our eyes can see,
But God asks us to look to Him
For our security. —Sper
The name of the Lord is our safe room.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 21st, 2010
Impulsiveness or Discipleship?
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith . . . —Jude 20
There was nothing of the nature of impulsive or thoughtless action about our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into a panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the lines of our own nature, not along the lines of God’s nature. Impulsiveness is a trait of the natural life, and our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple. Watch how the Spirit of God gives a sense of restraint to impulsiveness, suddenly bringing us a feeling of self-conscious foolishness, which makes us instantly want to vindicate ourselves. Impulsiveness is all right in a child, but is disastrous in a man or woman—an impulsive adult is always a spoiled person. Impulsiveness needs to be trained into intuition through discipline.
Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on water is easy to someone with impulsive boldness, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is something altogether different. Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he “followed Him at a distance” on dry land (Mark 14:54). We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises—human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people—and this is not learned in five minutes.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
All The Good Stuff You're Missing - #6204
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Many years ago, one of the 20th Century's great Christian leaders, Peter Deyneka, was immigrating to America on a long Atlantic voyage with only a few coins in his pocket. When he got hungry, he reached into this little bag he'd brought with him to eat the same thing every meal - a few dry crusts of bread and some water. He was pretty hungry when his ship finally docked in New York; not to mention pretty sick of bread crusts. That's when he realized something that he'd wished he had understood at the beginning of the voyage - three full meals a day had been included in his fare. They were all included in his ticket!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "All The Good Stuff You're Missing."
That young traveler had been living at a much lower level than he needed to live! He had no idea all the good things he had gotten when he got his ticket. When God looks at His children, sailing through life, He sees a lot of us living the same way - under-living. Not realizing how we could be living and all the good stuff we got when we opened our lives to Jesus Christ.
Biblical passages like Ephesians 3 , beginning with verse 12, our word for today from the Word of God, spell out what's included in your ticket. Paul writes: "In Him (that's in Jesus) and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence...I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being (okay, so there's supernatural inner strength that comes when Jesus comes in)...I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power...to know this love that surpasses knowledge" (you got this indescribable love and security when you got Jesus). He goes on to say, "that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
Imagine all the resources of God Himself downloadable by you - His wisdom for your questions, His power for your difficulties, His love for your lonely times, His peace for your troubled times. We don't have to live like these stressed out, strung out, weighed down people we often are! Dry bread crusts when we've got all the resources of God at our disposal!
Those resources are accessed through serious prayer. And we under-live because we under-pray. We over-worry and overwork and get overwhelmed because we under-pray. I mean really pray. One model of prayer that moves heaven to your need is found in Acts 4 , where the apostles have been threatened by the same Jewish leaders who engineered the death of Jesus. The apostle's response? They gather the believers together and raise "their voices together in prayer to God. 'Sovereign Lord,' they said, 'You made the heaven and the earth and the sea.'"
They go on to celebrate the fact that all that's happening is under God's sovereign power and will. Finally, after focusing only on the greatness of their God, they ask Him for boldness and supernatural power. The place where they prayed was shaken, the Holy Spirit showed up big-time, and they told everybody about Jesus.
And there's the pattern for aiming all of God's power at your situation; at your need. First, focus on your big, big God, not your big, big problem. Then, trust Him for the big, big things you need. But always put your praise before your please, your worship before your request. When you take a little time to celebrate the awesomeness of the God you belong to, the God you're trusting in, you start to access all those great resources that came with your ticket. You don't have to live the way you have been living! You've got so much to draw on since the day you let Jesus in! Don't wait until you reach your heavenly destination to realize how you could have been living all along!
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