Max Lucado Daily: Impossible
Impossible
Posted: 31 May 2011 11:01 PM PDT
“With God nothing will be impossible.” Luke 1:37
In our world of budgets, long-range planning and computers, don’t we find it hard to trust in the unbelievable. Don’t most of us tend to scrutinize life behind furrowed brows and walk with cautious steps? It’s hard for us to imagine that God can surprise us. To make a little room for miracles today, well, it’s not sound thinking . . .
We forget that “impossible” is one of God’s favorite words.
Deuteronomy 6
Love the LORD Your God
1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.[c] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
10 When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
13 Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. 14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; 15 for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. 16 Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah. 17 Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. 18 Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors, 19 thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said.
20 In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?” 21 tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 Before our eyes the LORD sent signs and wonders—great and terrible—on Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. 23 But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land he promised on oath to our ancestors. 24 The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. 25 And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 1 John 1:5-10
Light and Darkness, Sin and Forgiveness
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all[a] sin.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
Hidden Sin
June 1, 2011 — by Cindy Hess Kasper
O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hidden from You. —Psalm 69:5
Chuck had slowed to a stop when his car was hit from behind and was pushed into the vehicle ahead of him. A sickening, crunching sound indicated that additional vehicles had collided behind them.
As Chuck sat quietly for a moment, he observed that the vehicle directly behind him was pulling out into traffic. Obviously hoping to avoid an encounter with police, the escaping driver neglected to notice he had left something behind. When the police arrived, an officer picked up the hit-and-run driver’s license plate from the ground and said to Chuck, “Someone will be waiting for him when he arrives home. He won’t get away with this.”
Scripture tells us: “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23), as this man who fled the accident discovered. We may sometimes be able to hide our sin from the people around us, but nothing is ever “hidden from [God’s] sight” (Heb. 4:13). He sees each of our failures, thoughts, and motivations (1 Sam. 16:7; Luke 12:2-3).
Believers are given a wonderful promise: “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). So don’t let unconfessed, so-called “hidden” sins come between you and God (vv.6-7).
We cannot hide from God
No matter how we try;
For He knows all we think and do—
We can’t escape His eye. —Hess
Sin may be hidden from others, but never from God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 1st, 2011
The Staggering Question
He said to me, ’Son of man, can these bones live?’ —Ezekiel 37:3
Can a sinner be turned into a saint? Can a twisted life be made right? There is only one appropriate answer— “O Lord God, You know” (Ezekiel 37:3). Never forge ahead with your religious common sense and say, “Oh, yes, with just a little more Bible reading, devotional time, and prayer, I see how it can be done.”
It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we see the activity and mistake panic for inspiration. That is why we see so few fellow workers with God, yet so many people working for God. We would much rather work for God than believe in Him. Do I really believe that God will do in me what I cannot do? The degree of hopelessness I have for others comes from never realizing that God has done anything for me. Is my own personal experience such a wonderful realization of God’s power and might that I can never have a sense of hopelessness for anyone else I see? Has any spiritual work been accomplished in me at all? The degree of panic activity in my life is equal to the degree of my lack of personal spiritual experience.
“Behold, O My people, I will open your graves . . .” (Ezekiel 37:12). When God wants to show you what human nature is like separated from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself. If the Spirit of God has ever given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He will only do this when His Spirit is at work in you), then you know that in reality there is no criminal half as bad as you yourself could be without His grace. My “grave” has been opened by God and “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells” (Romans 7:18). God’s Spirit continually reveals to His children what human nature is like apart from His grace.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Saturated But Not Strong - #6363
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
You know, I've been told so many times in my life, "Go take a hike," so I finally did. Well, this particular summer I was at a lovely Christian conference center in California called Forest Home. One day when I wasn't speaking, they had a nature hike. They had a fellow called Father Nature who took us out (you didn't know there was a Father Nature I'll bet) and he showed us the four different kinds of nature zones they had on their property.
There was the river bed; the desert section, and so on. It's rather amazing from a scientific standpoint. And he showed us two kinds of trees: First, there were these beautiful White Alder trees. They grow lushly by the river bed and they wave their leaves. And he said they can evaporate up to 400 gallons of water a day!
Now, the roots of the White Alder are very shallow. They get plenty of water and therefore they have shallow roots. But when the floods come, oop, we've got a problem. He showed us the desert zone trees, and the ones in the desert survive on 40 gallons of water a year sometimes. How come? They use everything they get, and their roots are deep. Guess which one is still standing after a violent storm? Yeah, the one with the roots.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Saturated But Not Strong."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God is about those roots. Not so much the roots of trees in the desert or trees by the river bed, but God's trees--that would be you and me. Colossians 2:6-7 - "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness." Now, this describes the point of entry into a relationship with Christ. It says, "...just as you received Christ."
Do you remember when you opened your life to Christ how dependent you were on Him; how hungry you were to get into His Word; how boldly and frequently you prayed; how trusting you were? Well, you see, this verse is necessary to talk to us about our roots because we have a tendency to get lazy about those spiritual roots.
See, in many ways, we American Christians, are the White Alder tree that I described earlier--the one that has all that nourishment that evaporates up to 400 gallons of water a day, lives by the river bed, saturated but with weak roots. See, we're saturated with Christian resources. We've got Christian radio, and websites, and books, and TV, and Bible studies, and seminars, and conferences, and we're waving and we're celebrating. But we're depending on meetings and feelings, and events, and miracles, and experiences. We've got weak roots and we're vulnerable to the storm.
Now, you talk to Christians in the desert places like China, for example, and they know where their roots are: consistent, personal Bible study every day; fervent prayer; deep roots in the church; always learning...always growing. But we get lazy here in our spiritual rain forest. It takes a heavy hit to show us that what we have is broad but not very deep, and maybe then it's too late.
You know, maybe it's time now for us to see that our roots need to be growing, not just our leaves. Do you know some things about the Lord that you didn't know a month ago? Have you given Him some new ground that He didn't have a month ago? Are you praying in fresh, new ways? Are you going by the book and not by your feelings? Is your relationship with God mostly vertical...not horizontal, just when you're with His people?
Well, you could be saturated but not strong. You have to build your roots. Then when the storm or the drought comes, you'll stand tall through it all.
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