Max Lucado Daily: Assured of Victory
Assured of Victory
Posted: 29 Apr 2010 11:01 PM PDT
“Our Lord God, the Almighty, rules. Let us rejoice and be happy.” Revelation 19:6-7
In the Book of Revelation . . . we, the soldiers are privileged a glimpse into the final battlefield. All hell breaks loose as all heaven comes forth. The two collide in the ultimate battle of good and evil. Left standing amidst the smoke and thunder is the Son of God. Jesus, born in a manger—now triumphant over Satan . . .
And we, the soldiers are assured of victory.
Let us march.
Matthew 2
Scholars from the East
1-2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem village, Judah territory— this was during Herod's kingship—a band of scholars arrived in Jerusalem from the East. They asked around, "Where can we find and pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews? We observed a star in the eastern sky that signaled his birth. We're on pilgrimage to worship him."
3-4When word of their inquiry got to Herod, he was terrified—and not Herod alone, but most of Jerusalem as well. Herod lost no time. He gathered all the high priests and religion scholars in the city together and asked, "Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?"
5-6They told him, "Bethlehem, Judah territory. The prophet Micah wrote it plainly:
It's you, Bethlehem, in Judah's land,
no longer bringing up the rear.
From you will come the leader
who will shepherd-rule my people, my Israel."
7-8Herod then arranged a secret meeting with the scholars from the East. Pretending to be as devout as they were, he got them to tell him exactly when the birth-announcement star appeared. Then he told them the prophecy about Bethlehem, and said, "Go find this child. Leave no stone unturned. As soon as you find him, send word and I'll join you at once in your worship."
9-10Instructed by the king, they set off. Then the star appeared again, the same star they had seen in the eastern skies. It led them on until it hovered over the place of the child. They could hardly contain themselves: They were in the right place! They had arrived at the right time!
11They entered the house and saw the child in the arms of Mary, his mother. Overcome, they kneeled and worshiped him. Then they opened their luggage and presented gifts: gold, frankincense, myrrh.
12In a dream, they were warned not to report back to Herod. So they worked out another route, left the territory without being seen, and returned to their own country.
13After the scholars were gone, God's angel showed up again in Joseph's dream and commanded, "Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him."
14-15Joseph obeyed. He got up, took the child and his mother under cover of darkness. They were out of town and well on their way by daylight. They lived in Egypt until Herod's death. This Egyptian exile fulfilled what Hosea had preached: "I called my son out of Egypt."
16-18Herod, when he realized that the scholars had tricked him, flew into a rage. He commanded the murder of every little boy two years old and under who lived in Bethlehem and its surrounding hills. (He determined that age from information he'd gotten from the scholars.) That's when Jeremiah's sermon was fulfilled:
A sound was heard in Ramah,
weeping and much lament.
Rachel weeping for her children,
Rachel refusing all solace,
Her children gone,
dead and buried.
19-20Later, when Herod died, God's angel appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt: "Up, take the child and his mother and return to Israel. All those out to murder the child are dead."
21-23Joseph obeyed. He got up, took the child and his mother, and reentered Israel. When he heard, though, that Archelaus had succeeded his father, Herod, as king in Judea, he was afraid to go there. But then Joseph was directed in a dream to go to the hills of Galilee. On arrival, he settled in the village of Nazareth. This move was a fulfillment of the prophetic words, "He shall be called a Nazarene."
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Proverbs 12:17-22
17 A truthful witness gives honest testimony, but a false witness tells lies.
18 Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
19 Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.
20 There is deceit in the hearts of those who plot evil, but joy for those who promote peace.
21 No harm befalls the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble.
22 The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful.
Honestly
April 30, 2010 — by Dave Branon
Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who deal truthfully are His delight. —Proverbs 12:22
Today is National Honesty Day in the United States. It is a little-known designation for April 30, but an important one nonetheless.
Author M. Hirsh Goldberg established National Honesty Day in the early 1990s as a way to honor the honorable and encourage honesty. He said that April 30 was selected because “April begins with a day dedicated to lying [April Fool’s Day] and should end on a higher moral note.”
Honesty Day would be a good time to review the value of this trait according to God’s Word. Honesty is not as easy as it seems—but we please God by striving for it.
An understanding of honesty begins with recognizing that God—our ultimate example—is truth (Deut. 32:4) and that He cannot lie (Num. 23:19; Heb. 6:18). Also, He hates falsehood (Prov. 6:16-19). Beyond that, all lies have as their originator Satan himself (John 8:44).
For our part, we can use these Scriptures as our guide: “A righteous man hates lying” (Prov. 13:5); love rejoices in truth (1 Cor. 13:6); lying is part of the old nature (Col. 3:9); growth means setting aside deceit (1 Peter 2:1); and speaking truth declares righteousness (Prov. 12:17).
Let’s make every day Honesty Day.
Help me, dear Lord, to be honest and true
In all that I say and all that I do;
Give me the courage to do what is right,
To bring to the world a glimpse of Your light. —Fasick
People who trust God’s Word should be people whose word can be trusted.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
April 30, 2010
Spontaneous Love
Love suffers long and is kind . . . —1 Corinthians 13:4
Love is not premeditated—it is spontaneous; that is, it bursts forth in extraordinary ways. There is nothing of precise certainty in Paul’s description of love. We cannot predetermine our thoughts and actions by saying, “Now I will never think any evil thoughts, and I will believe everything that Jesus would have me to believe.” No, the characteristic of love is spontaneity. We don’t deliberately set the statements of Jesus before us as our standard, but when His Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard without even realizing it. And when we look back, we are amazed at how unconcerned we have been over our emotions, which is the very evidence that real spontaneous love was there. The nature of everything involved in the life of God in us is only discerned when we have been through it and it is in our past.
The fountains from which love flows are in God, not in us. It is absurd to think that the love of God is naturally in our hearts, as a result of our own nature. His love is there only because it “has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit . . .” ( Romans 5:5 ).
If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we really don’t love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of our love, which flows naturally from His nature within us. And when we look back, we will not be able to determine why we did certain things, but we can know that we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us. The life of God exhibits itself in this spontaneous way because the fountains of His love are in the Holy Spirit.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Why Going to Heaven is So Easy - and So Hard - #6080
Friday, April 30, 2010
Children can be so refreshing. They tell it like it is, and they often see it like it is better than we grownups do. Our little granddaughter was asking questions about Jesus for several months. One thing her parents had repeatedly explained to her was how Jesus cleans our hearts from the sins we've done. Because she's young, Mom and Dad didn't push her; they just responded to her natural questions. Well, eventually, she told her daddy that she was, in her words, "afraid of sin." That's not a bad thing to be afraid of. The next day she said, "Daddy, I want to ask Jesus in my heart." And in her simple, childlike way, that's exactly what she did. Not long afterwards, she joyfully said, "Grandma, I have Jesus in my heart." Grandma told her what a happy thing that was. Then Grandma began to talk about how Mommy has Jesus in her heart, Daddy has Jesus in his heart, her Grandma and Granddad, her aunt and uncle. Suddenly she began to shake her head. She said, "No, no, no! Only children have Jesus!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why Going to Heaven is So Easy - and So Hard."
I'm grateful that Jesus made it clear that He's for everyone, old and young and everyone in between. But there's something Jesus did say about belonging to Him that actually validates some of the spirit of our little granddaughter's insight. His words, recorded in Matthew 18:2-3, our word for today from the Word of God, give to us so-smart grownups something to think about.
The Bible says, "He called a little child and had him stand among them. And He said, 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Now when Jesus makes something a requirement for going to heaven when we die, we need to pay attention. We need to try to understand what He's saying.
Instead of children having to be grownup to begin a relationship with Jesus, we grownups have to become like little children. What does that mean? A little child instinctively knows that he needs someone bigger. A child looks for the hand of someone bigger, the help of someone bigger, the direction of someone bigger. And a child operates on the basis of simply trusting that someone bigger who loves them. They'll trustingly go wherever that person takes them, trustingly believe whatever that person tells them. And it is that kind of total trust and total dependency on Jesus Christ that gets you into "the kingdom of heaven."
John 3:16, one of the foundation verses of the Bible, says "whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." And that means abandoning any other hope of having your sins forgiven because only Jesus died to pay for them. But that's a problem for us grownup people. Our pride keeps us from admitting that all our goodness is useless as currency to get us into heaven. If your goodness was enough, Jesus would have never gone through the agony of that cross. And over the years we learn "un-trust," because of how humans are. So we'll agree with Jesus, but we won't throw ourselves on Jesus as our only hope. The reason it's so easy to go to heaven is also the reason it's so hard...you just put all your trust in Jesus.
Often, in His love, God will send or allow a situation that's totally beyond our control. He'll allow us to hit a wall so we'll realize what children realize so instinctively. We desperately need someone bigger. We need heaven's Prince who died in our place. The question is not, "Do you agree with Jesus?" or "Do you like Jesus?" Have you ever grabbed Jesus with both hands as your only hope of getting right with God? If not, in Jesus' words, "you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Today, you can change that, and in so doing change where you will spend eternity. It's a matter of reaching up for Jesus' hands with the simple trust of a little child reaching for the hand of his Daddy. I'd love to help you take that step if that's what you want to do. I've got a simple explanation of how to begin with Jesus at our website. I want to direct you there and hope you'll go there at your first chance today. It's YoursForLife.net. Or you can call for a printed copy of Yours For Life toll free at 877-741-1200.
Isn't it time to look to Jesus and say, "I can't, You can, and I'm Yours"? When you do, you're finally safe all the way from here to heaven.