Max Lucado Daily: Follow Me
Follow Me
Posted: 24 May 2010 11:01 PM PDT
“‘Follow Me,’” [Jesus] told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.” Matthew 2:9, NIV
You gotta wonder what Jesus saw in Matthew . . .
Whatever it was, it must’ve been something. Matthew heard the call and never went back. He spent the rest of his life convincing folks that the carpenter was the King. Jesus gave the call and never took it back. He spent his life dying for people like Matthew, convincing a lot of us that if he had a place for Matthew, he just might have a place for us
John 14
The Road
1-4 "Don't let this throw you. You trust God, don't you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father's home. If that weren't so, would I have told you that I'm on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I'm on my way to get your room ready, I'll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I'm taking."
5Thomas said, "Master, we have no idea where you're going. How do you expect us to know the road?"
6-7Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You've even seen him!"
8Philip said, "Master, show us the Father; then we'll be content."
9-10"You've been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don't understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, 'Where is the Father?' Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren't mere words. I don't just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.
11-14"Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can't believe that, believe what you see—these works. The person who trusts me will not only do what I'm doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I've been doing. You can count on it. From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I'll do it. That's how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I'll do.
The Spirit of Truth
15-17"If you love me, show it by doing what I've told you. I will talk to the Father, and he'll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can't take him in because it doesn't have eyes to see him, doesn't know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!
18-20"I will not leave you orphaned. I'm coming back. In just a little while the world will no longer see me, but you're going to see me because I am alive and you're about to come alive. At that moment you will know absolutely that I'm in my Father, and you're in me, and I'm in you.
21"The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that's who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him."
22Judas (not Iscariot) said, "Master, why is it that you are about to make yourself plain to us but not to the world?"
23-24"Because a loveless world," said Jesus, "is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him—we'll move right into the neighborhood! Not loving me means not keeping my words. The message you are hearing isn't mine. It's the message of the Father who sent me.
25-27"I'm telling you these things while I'm still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I'm leaving you well and whole. That's my parting gift to you. Peace. I don't leave you the way you're used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don't be upset. Don't be distraught.
28"You've heard me tell you, 'I'm going away, and I'm coming back.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I'm on my way to the Father because the Father is the goal and purpose of my life.
29-31"I've told you this ahead of time, before it happens, so that when it does happen, the confirmation will deepen your belief in me. I'll not be talking with you much more like this because the chief of this godless world is about to attack. But don't worry—he has nothing on me, no claim on me. But so the world might know how thoroughly I love the Father, I am carrying out my Father's instructions right down to the last detail.
"Get up. Let's go. It's time to leave here."
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: John 5:1-9
1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.
3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
4
5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"
7 "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."
8 Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,
Becoming Whole
May 25, 2010 — by David C. McCasland
Do you want to be made well? —John 5:6
John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer prizewinning novel The Grapes of Wrath begins with a scene in drought-ravaged Oklahoma during the Great Depression. With the crops dying and the land choked by dust, the women watched the men to see if they would break under the strain. When they saw the men’s will to carry on, they took heart. Steinbeck writes, “Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.” The issue was not happiness, prosperity, or satisfaction, but wholeness. This is the great need of us all.
In the King James Version of the Bible, the word whole is often used to describe Jesus’ work of physical healing. When the Lord encountered a man who had been an invalid for 38 years, He asked, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:5-6 kjv). After Jesus healed the man, He challenged him to also embrace spiritual wholeness: “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you” (v.14).
If we only want something Jesus can do for us, our relationship with Him will be limited. When we want Jesus Himself, He brings completeness to our lives. Christ wants, first and foremost, to make us whole.
I thank Thee for Thy precious Word
Where Thou didst make me see
My sinful self, my helpless soul,
Made whole by trusting Thee. —Anon.
Only Jesus can give wholeness to a broken life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
May 25, 2010
The Good or The Best?
If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left —Genesis 13:9
As soon as you begin to live the life of faith in God, fascinating and physically gratifying possibilities will open up before you. These things are yours by right, but if you are living the life of faith you will exercise your right to waive your rights, and let God make your choice for you. God sometimes allows you to get into a place of testing where your own welfare would be the appropriate thing to consider, if you were not living the life of faith. But if you are, you will joyfully waive your right and allow God to make your choice for you. This is the discipline God uses to transform the natural into the spiritual through obedience to His voice.
Whenever our right becomes the guiding factor of our lives, it dulls our spiritual insight. The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. In this passage, it would seem that the wisest thing in the world for Abram to do would be to choose. It was his right, and the people around him would consider him to be a fool for not choosing.
Many of us do not continue to grow spiritually because we prefer to choose on the basis of our rights, instead of relying on God to make the choice for us. We have to learn to walk according to the standard which has its eyes focused on God. And God says to us, as He did to Abram, “. . . walk before Me. . .” ( Genesis 17:1 ).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Leaving No One Behind - #6097
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Ted is an ex-Marine. I guess once a Marine, always a Marine. Right? You know - Halls of Montezuma, Shores of Tripoli, Semper Fi. Since his days in the Corps, Ted's gone on to become very successful in business, but he keeps getting invited back to talk to Marine recruits as an inspirational speaker. And in the process, he tells them about a rescuer who came for him in the Marines and saved him - Jesus Christ. And I love what he tells them - "One thing about Marines - we always go back for our own, and that's why I'm here today. I'm going back for my own."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Leaving No One Behind."
Those Marines really listen to Ted, because he's one of their own. That's sort of a law of life, isn't it? We tend to listen to our own kind; maybe when we would listen to no one else. Especially when it comes to the rescuer that my friend tells the Marines about. More and more, people aren't going to listen to some "Christian professional" tell them about Jesus - even though their lives depend on understanding Jesus. It's going to have to be one of their own...like you.
Jesus understood that approach to rescuing spiritually dying people. He used that approach Himself in our word for today from the Word of God. Jesus has gone into Samaria to reach the Samaritans, and since the Jews and Samaritans basically couldn't stand each other, how is this Jewish rabbi going to reach them? He's going to send one of their own to go back and get her own - even though she is known for her immorality, her relationships with many men, her string of marriages and divorces.
First, she meets Jesus at a well where she discovers who He really is. Then, in John 4, beginning with verse 28, the Bible says: "Leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 'Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?' They came out of the town and made their way toward Him...Many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the woman's testimony..." Well, they listened to her when she talked about Jesus because she was one of their own.
That's what makes you so eternally important to your coworkers, your fellow-students, your neighbors, your teammates - you're one of them. They'll be more likely to listen to you talking about a personal relationship with Jesus than to any preacher or evangelist or radio guy. Well, you may say, "but I'm not trained...I've got a lot of problems...I don't know enough." Excuse me, but have you thought about the one Jesus sent as His ambassador to the Samaritans?
See, what qualifies you is two things: you've met Jesus, and you're one of them. He's placed you where you are not just to get grades or get paid or get comfy. He's put you there to take some of those people to heaven with you! How are you doing?
The best one to reach a lost farmer is another farmer...the best one to reach a lost mom is another mom...for a lost teacher, a teacher...a lost soccer player, a soccer player. How about a lost businessman? It will take a businessman, and so on. But so many people die without ever knowing what Jesus could have done for them. They die without a chance at heaven - because the Christian close to them never told what they knew. That is a death sentence by silence.
You don't have to tell them about Christianity, about church, about your religion, or about a list of Christian beliefs. Just do what the Samaritan woman did - stick to Jesus. She just said, "Come, see a Man!" But don't take them to a well - take them to the Cross and show them how much Jesus loves them. Their best hope of heaven isn't some outreach program or some great speaker. Their best hope is you, because you are already there. You're in their world. Be a spiritual "Marine." Go back for your own, and don't leave any of them behind.
