Max Lucado Daily: Don’t Waste the Moments
Don’t Waste the Moments
Posted: 28 Dec 2010 10:01 PM PST
Carefully build yourselves up in this most holy faith by praying in the Holy Spirit, staying right at the center of God’s love. Jude 20, The Message
Imagine considering every moment as a potential time of communion with God. By the time your life is over, you will have spent six months at stoplights, eight months opening junk mail, a year and a half looking for lost stuff… and a whopping five years standing in various lines.
Why don’t you give these moments to God?
Exodus 2
The Birth of Moses
1 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
Moses Flees to Midian
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Deuteronomy 4:1-10
Deuteronomy 4:1-10 (NIV)Dt 1 Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. 2 Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you. 3 You saw with your own eyes what the Lord did at Baal Peor. The Lord your God destroyed from among you everyone who followed the Baal of Peor, 4 but all of you who held fast to the Lord your God are still alive today. 5 See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. 6 Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." 7 What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? 8 And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? 9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. 10 Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when he said to me, "Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children."
Common Standards
December 29, 2010 — by Julie Ackerman Link
What great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments? —Deuteronomy 4:8
In the frenzied early days of the Internet, Web developers were making up their own rules. The result was confusion. Among the problems was that what looked good on one computer was unreadable on another. This caused developers to refer to the Internet as the wild, wild Web, an allusion to the days of the wild, wild West in the US when law and order were pretty much nonexistent. To bring order out of chaos, Web developers started calling for others to agree on common standards.
Their plea reminds us of why it was important for the Israelites to have laws to live by when they left Egypt (Deut. 4:1). Without them, there would be anarchy. With them, however, they would have a system that was so superior that it would demonstrate to other nations the greatness of their God (v.8).
Today, to bring order out of the chaos of our sinful, selfish world, believers submit to the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2), who Himself is the fulfillment of the law (Matt. 5:17). When we submit to the standard established by Christ and love others as God loves us, we will live in peace with one another and thus provide a witness to the world of how great God is.
Let us go forth, as called of God,
Redeemed by Jesus’ precious blood;
His love to show, His life to live,
His message speak, His mercy give. —Whittle
The world will know by our love for God and others
that He is great.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
December 29th, 2010
Deserter or Disciple?
From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more —John 6:66
When God, by His Spirit through His Word, gives you a clear vision of His will, you must “walk in the light” of that vision (1 John 1:7). Even though your mind and soul may be thrilled by it, if you don’t “walk in the light” of it you will sink to a level of bondage never envisioned by our Lord. Mentally disobeying the “heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19) will make you a slave to ideas and views that are completely foreign to Jesus Christ. Don’t look at someone else and say, “Well, if he can have those views and prosper, why can’t I?” You have to “walk in the light” of the vision that has been given to you. Don’t compare yourself with others or judge them— that is between God and them. When you find that one of your favorite and strongly held views clashes with the “heavenly vision,” do not begin to debate it. If you do, a sense of property and personal right will emerge in you— things on which Jesus placed no value. He was against these things as being the root of everything foreign to Himself— “. . . for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12:15). If we don’t see and understand this, it is because we are ignoring the underlying principles of our Lord’s teaching.
Our tendency is to lie back and bask in the memory of the wonderful experience we had when God revealed His will to us. But if a New Testament standard is revealed to us by the light of God, and we don’t try to measure up, or even feel inclined to do so, then we begin to backslide. It means your conscience does not respond to the truth. You can never be the same after the unveiling of a truth. That moment marks you as one who either continues on with even more devotion as a disciple of Jesus Christ, or as one who turns to go back as a deserter.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Delete Button You Can't Reach - #6253
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
So many times, the latest technology becomes a great blessing and a great curse. For example, are cell phones a blessing or a curse? Yes. It's great that I can reach anyone or they can reach me basically anytime or anywhere. And it's terrible that people can reach me anytime, anywhere. How about e-mail? Fast, efficient communication from wherever you are to wherever they are. But then there's "spam" - the e-mail equivalent of junk mail. You can wake up to dozens of new e-mails, including a bunch you really don't want. But there's this button on your computer that really comes in handy. It just says "delete." If you don't like what you're getting, delete. If you don't want to keep something, delete. If you wrote something you decide you don't want to send, delete. One key stroke and what you don't want is gone.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Delete Button You Can't Reach."
Here's the problem. Because we live in a world where it's so easy to delete, we may start thinking we can delete things that, in fact, are not going to go away. Like the consequences of our actions for example. The payback for the things we've done wrong. The judgment of Almighty God for making ourselves number one instead of Him. There are some things you just can't delete. Delay, maybe. Delete, never.
That's guaranteed, actually, by God Himself in our word for today from the Word of God in Galatians 6:7 . It's one of the laws of the universe, and no one is so smart or even religious enough to escape it. God says, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." Sow corn, you'll get corn whether you want corn or not. Sow wheat, you'll get wheat. Sow sin, you'll get judgment; consequences here and eternal consequences forever.
Any farmer can tell you that you don't reap the harvest as soon as you sow the seed. But make no mistake. The harvest is delayed but it's inevitable. In the case of our disobedience toward God, the Bible spells out the harvest in these chilling words: "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23 ). That death is life here without the God who makes life work and life after death without God in a place called hell.
There are short-term "undeletable" consequences for sin. Deceit today, discredited and un-trusted tomorrow. Indulging your lust today, scarred relationships and disgusting bondage tomorrow. Sex outside of marriage today, the real thing ruined tomorrow. Trash talk today, loss of respect and reputation tomorrow. But far worse than those consequences is the eternal death penalty that our sin carries with it. No religion on earth, and no amount of your goodness can possible delete your sin from God's book. Only the One whose laws we've broken can delete your sin and cancel your hell. The delete button for human sin is beyond human reach.
The Bible declares our only hope in these words: "Christ carried our sins in His body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24 ). When Jesus said "Father, forgive them" from His cross, He was including you. If you abandon all other hope of being forgiven and pin all your hopes on Him. The Bible says He is "a God...who pardons sin" and who will "hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:18-19 ). Imagine. Every sin, every wrong thing you've ever done, deleted by one stroke of God's hand because you reached out to Jesus, His Son, and you said, "Rescue me. You're my only hope, Jesus!"
If that's what you want, then I'd love to help you take this step into a love relationship with Jesus. Let me invite you to our website. That's really why it's there. We've just simply put it there to provide a simple explanation of how to get started with Him. Just go to yoursforlife.net. Or maybe you'd just like to receive my free booklet, called Yours For Life. It has the same information in it. You can call for it toll-free at 877-741-1200.
The awful harvest for your sin was taken by Jesus on the cross, so you could make the greatest trade in the world - eternal death for eternal life.
