Max Lucado Daily: Who Can We Trust
Who Can We Trust
Posted: 12 Oct 2010 11:01 PM PDT
We can come before God’s throne where…we can receive mercy and grace to help us when we need it. Hebrews 4:16
Don’t we need someone to trust who is bigger than we are? Aren’t we tired of trusting the people of this earth for understanding? Aren’t we weary of trusting the things of this earth for strength? A drowning sailor doesn’t call on another drowning sailor for help… He knows he needs someone who is stronger than he is.
Jesus’ message is this: I am that person.
Trust Me.
Job 19
Job
1 Then Job replied:
2 "How long will you torment me
and crush me with words?
3 Ten times now you have reproached me;
shamelessly you attack me.
4 If it is true that I have gone astray,
my error remains my concern alone.
5 If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me
and use my humiliation against me,
6 then know that God has wronged me
and drawn his net around me.
7 "Though I cry, 'I've been wronged!' I get no response;
though I call for help, there is no justice.
8 He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;
he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
9 He has stripped me of my honor
and removed the crown from my head.
10 He tears me down on every side till I am gone;
he uproots my hope like a tree.
11 His anger burns against me;
he counts me among his enemies.
12 His troops advance in force;
they build a siege ramp against me
and encamp around my tent.
13 "He has alienated my brothers from me;
my acquaintances are completely estranged from me.
14 My kinsmen have gone away;
my friends have forgotten me.
15 My guests and my maidservants count me a stranger;
they look upon me as an alien.
16 I summon my servant, but he does not answer,
though I beg him with my own mouth.
17 My breath is offensive to my wife;
I am loathsome to my own brothers.
18 Even the little boys scorn me;
when I appear, they ridicule me.
19 All my intimate friends detest me;
those I love have turned against me.
20 I am nothing but skin and bones;
I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth. [d]
21 "Have pity on me, my friends, have pity,
for the hand of God has struck me.
22 Why do you pursue me as God does?
Will you never get enough of my flesh?
23 "Oh, that my words were recorded,
that they were written on a scroll,
24 that they were inscribed with an iron tool on [e] lead,
or engraved in rock forever!
25 I know that my Redeemer [f] lives,
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. [g]
26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet [h] in [i] my flesh I will see God;
27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
28 "If you say, 'How we will hound him,
since the root of the trouble lies in him, [j] '
29 you should fear the sword yourselves;
for wrath will bring punishment by the sword,
and then you will know that there is judgment. [k] "
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Mark 2:13-17
13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.
14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.
16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Approachable
October 13, 2010 — by David C. McCasland
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. —Mark 2:17
When people ask Michael St. Jacques, a Franciscan brother, what he’s wearing, he says, “It’s called a habit.” He wears the distinctive brown robe for a definite reason. St. Jacques told Hemispheres magazine, “We have the choice to wear it, and a lot of us make a real effort to because it acts as a magnet. People tell me things they’ve never told anyone. Complete strangers will confess something they did 30 years ago and ask if God can forgive them.” You might say that Michael is clothed in “approachability.”
Throughout the Gospels, we find that all types of people approached Jesus wherever He went. They came to be taught, helped, healed, accepted, and forgiven. When some criticized Jesus for associating with tax collectors and sinners, people they considered undesirable, Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Mark 2:17).
Do people see us as aloof or accessible? When we become so focused on our own plans that we have no time for others, we are not clothed with the spirit of Christ.
When the Savior lives through us, His open arms invite people to open their hearts and unburden their souls.
Our world around us surges—duties vie
For all our time, our energies, our care;
But greater duty urges; don’t pass by
A hurting heart whose burden we may share. —Gustafson
Being available for the needs of others honors Christ.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 13th, 2010
Individual Discouragement and Personal Growth
. . . when Moses was grown . . . he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens —Exodus 2:11
Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After he launched his first strike for God and for what was right, God allowed Moses to be driven into empty discouragement, sending him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared to Moses and said to him, ” ’. . . bring My people . . . out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ’Who am I that I should go . . . ?’ ” (Exodus 3:10-11). In the beginning Moses had realized that he was the one to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in his individual perspective, but he was not the person for the work until he had learned true fellowship and oneness with God.
We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and yet when we start to do it, there comes to us something equivalent to Moses’ forty years in the wilderness. It’s as if God had ignored the entire thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged, God comes back and revives His call to us. And then we begin to tremble and say, “Who am I that I should go . . . ?” We must learn that God’s great stride is summed up in these words— “I AM WHO I AM . . . has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). We must also learn that our individual effort for God shows nothing but disrespect for Him— our individuality is to be rendered radiant through a personal relationship with God, so that He may be “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). We are focused on the right individual perspective of things; we have the vision and can say, “I know this is what God wants me to do.” But we have not yet learned to get into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
How Your Life - And Your Death - Can Really Count - #6198
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
It was one of those unexpected phone calls that leaves you stunned. Our friend Curt, one of the most experienced private pilots we know, had crashed two hours earlier. He was landing on a grass strip near his home, a strip where he's landed hundreds of times. This time he somehow went into a skid that propelled his plane right into a tree. The plane caught fire and then it exploded and our friend Curt was in heaven. As a beloved leader in our community, his death rocked a lot of people, including me. Because of a collapsed wheel, he had been in a crash 14 months earlier actually; one which should have been fatal but from which he escaped with serious but survivable injuries. I can't tell you how grateful I am that he didn't die then. See, something very important happened between those two crashes.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How Your Life - and Your Death - Can Really Count."
It was my privilege to be asked by Curt's wife to talk about his faith at the funeral and the powerful changes that had taken place since that first crash. The word for that day from the Word of God is our word today. It's like a scale on which you can weigh the significance of your life and what you're living it for. Philippians 1:20-21 - "I eagerly expect and hope that...Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Now, we all need to honestly fill in the blank, "For to me to live is _________." See, the true answer - not the spiritual answer - might be, "For me to live is my business, my sports, my home, my kids, my success, my family, my friends, my education, my dream. Or maybe you should just put the name of the most important person in your life in that blank to fill it in honestly. Here's the problem: if you're living for any of those things, to die is to lose it all. It's only when for you "to live is Christ" that to die will be gain.
When our friend Curt went down the first time, I'm not sure what he was living for. He was always a good man, but I think he would have said he wasn't always God's man. But after that crash he said, "God spared me for a reason." And he concluded that one major reason was for him to live for Christ in such a way that the people he cared about, the people who looked to him, would want his Jesus so they could be in heaven with him someday. He began to live in such a way that "Christ would be exalted" by his life. And because he did, Christ was really exalted by his death.
In the past months, Curt had boldly told so many people in his large circle of influence about the Christ who died for him and for them. So it was only logical that his funeral would do the same thing - to give those he had touched the opportunity he had had - a wakeup call from a plane crash that would bring them into a vital relationship with Jesus Christ. But if you haven't lived to show Christ to people, your death really can't lift Him up. The death of a man or a woman who has really lived passionately for Christ can have such incredible meaning - helping others be in heaven with you. But a life not lived for Christ just can't have that kind of meaning. Death destroys every reason for living but one - living for Jesus and what matters to Him.
If Curt were here today, I believe he would tell you, "Don't wait to surrender your life and your influence to Jesus Christ. You never know how many days you have left to make your life count for something that will last forever." And, for sure, Jesus would tell you that. In fact, I believe He is - right now. "Someday" isn't soon enough to give everything you've got to Jesus. It needs to be this day.