Max Lucado Daily: No More Pain
No More Pain
“There will be no more death, sadness, crying, or pain, because all the old ways are gone.” Revelation 21:4
Folks, if you’re expecting to be given a fair shake in your life, forget it! You won’t be. You’re going to face illness. And your body is going to wear out. You may be the victim of someone else’s mistake. But you can get through those tough times if you prepare your heart now, living to know and serve the Savior who loves you and died so that you might have an eternal home free of pain and sorrow.
Mark 7:14-37 (New International Version, ©2011)
14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” [16] [a]
17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Jesus Honors a Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith
24 Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre.[b] He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25 In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
28 “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”
30 She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Jesus Heals a Deaf and Mute Man
31 Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.[c] 32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.
33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. 34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). 35 At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
36 Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. 37 People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Job 42:1-6
Job 42
Job
1 Then Job replied to the LORD:
2 “I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”
A Dream Of Answers Forgotten
March 14, 2011 — by Mart De Haan
I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. —Job 42:5
A friend quit two jobs to become a full-time caregiver when his adult son was seriously hurt in a car accident. That same year his wife of over 30 years contracted a terminal illness and died.
Since then, he says he has no answers when his son asks “why” this happened to them. But he told me of a reassuring dream he had along the way. He dreamed that he was in a place that was awash with sunlight. There were crowds of people around him, and a man was answering all of his “why” questions. Each answer made so much sense that he clearly understood why he was not to know the answers now. Then he was with his son in the dream. But when he tried to help him with his questions, he couldn’t remember the answers. But even that seemed okay. And then he woke up.
My friend’s experience reminds me of another friend of God who suffered with unanswered questions (Job 7:20-21). Only when God finally broke His silence and gave Job a vision of Himself in the wonder of creation did Job find something that was better than answers (42:1-6). Only then did Job find peace in knowing that our God has good and even wonderful reasons to trust Him.
What God is doing you may not know now,
But someday you’ll understand why;
Questions that taunt you and trouble your mind
Will one day have heaven’s reply. —Hess
What’s better than answers to our why questions?
Trusting a good God who has His reasons.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
March 14th, 2011
Yielding
. . . you are that one’s slaves whom you obey . . . —Romans 6:16
The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.
If a child gives in to selfishness, he will find it to be the most enslaving tyranny on earth. There is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the bondage of the nature created by yielding. For example, yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust, and although you may hate yourself for having yielded, you become enslaved to that thing. (Remember what lust is— “I must have it now,” whether it is the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind.) No release or escape from it will ever come from any human power, but only through the power of redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One who can break the dominating power in your life, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. “. . . He has anointed Me . . . to proclaim liberty to the captives . . .” (Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1).
When you yield to something, you will soon realize the tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, “Oh, I can give up that habit whenever I like,” you will know you can’t. You will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy to sing, “He will break every fetter,” while at the same time living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of slavery in any person’s life.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Saturating the Saturated - #6306
Monday, March 14, 2011
You know, after about a week of rain, you start to forget what the sun looks like. We've just been through a week like that, and it was like pouring as I was driving home. And, that's what it had been doing for a whole week actually. You didn't even have to listen for the weather forecast; I think they just had it on a tape. You know, you knew what it was going to be the next day. Well, I glanced at this office complex of a major insurance company that's along the road on the way home. And what to my wondering eye should appear, but sprinklers! Yeah, all their lawn sprinklers were out and going full blast, watering a not very thirsty lawn. After a week of torrential rain, the sprinklers were on! They were like saturating what was already saturated.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Saturating the Saturated."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans chapter 15, and I'm reading about the magnificent obsession of the Apostle Paul. Verse 20, "It has always been my ambition to preach the Gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Rather, as it is written, those who were not told about Him will see, and those who have not heard will understand." Now, Paul obviously here has a magnet inside of him that is drawing him. It's pulling him toward people who do not yet know Christ. He talks about those places where Christ is not known.
You know, these days you don't have to go very far to find the places where Christ is not known: the dry places, the un-rained on places, the un-watered places, the unsaturated. I mean, our society has basically been divided like a river over recent years. On one side of that river, are Christians who've got more Christian stuff than Christians have ever had: Christian TV, and radio, and Internet, and books, and seminars, and concerts. There's so much going on spiritually! In a way we're the most spiritually saturated believers in history.
Now, far across that river, on the opposite bank, are people who don't know Christ - the majority of people around us. There have probably never been so many lost people in this country who have known so little about Jesus as people today; who've cared so little about the Bible, who've lived so totally oblivious to God. In a sense, they are dying of spiritual thirst.
So, the people with the water, and the people with the thirst, have unfortunately never been farther apart. Martin Marty, the church historian, said in the Wall Street Journal, "If you're part of the evangelical subculture, it's your whole life. You go to church, buy the religious books, watch the television programs." But he says, "If you're not part of the subculture, you don't even know it exists."
Well, one reason is that all the sprinklers are being aimed at the already saturated. We can sit in the comfort of our Bible studies, and our Christian websites, and recordings, and videos, and drink it all in and feel like we're winning the battle. But the people we're next to every day are dying right in front of our eyes. All we've soaked up just drowns us unless we lay it on the line, take some risks, and get involved with lost people where they are, like our Lord did.
Where are the Christians who will say with the Apostle Paul, "I'm here for lost people, not just to sit in my comfort zone." Where are the churches who will not just aim their resources at watering God's people, but who will risk their buildings and their reputations, and their budgets, and their lives to build a bridge to their lost community? Not just to be a place to take care of the already rescued, but to be a life saving station for their community.
Listen, we'll celebrate later. We've got a war to win now. Haven't we saturated ourselves enough?
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