Max Lucado Daily: Try Again
Try Again
“We worked hard all night and caught nothing.” Luke 5:5 NASB
Do you know the feeling of a sleepless, fishless night? Of course you do. For what have you been casting? . . .
Faith? “I want to believe, but . . .”
Healing? “I’ve been sick so long . . .”
A happy marriage? “No matter what I do . . .”
You’ve sat where Peter sat. And now Jesus is asking you to go fishing. He knows your nets are empty. He knows your heart is weary . . . But he urges, “It’s not too late to try again.”
Deuteronomy 12
The One Place of Worship
1 These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land. 2 Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. 3 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
4 You must not worship the LORD your God in their way. 5 But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; 6 there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, what you have vowed to give and your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. 7 There, in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the LORD your God has blessed you.
8 You are not to do as we do here today, everyone doing as they see fit, 9 since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the LORD your God is giving you. 10 But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety. 11 Then to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name—there you are to bring everything I command you: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, and all the choice possessions you have vowed to the LORD. 12 And there rejoice before the LORD your God—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites from your towns who have no allotment or inheritance of their own. 13 Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. 14 Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.
15 Nevertheless, you may slaughter your animals in any of your towns and eat as much of the meat as you want, as if it were gazelle or deer, according to the blessing the LORD your God gives you. Both the ceremonially unclean and the clean may eat it. 16 But you must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water. 17 You must not eat in your own towns the tithe of your grain and new wine and olive oil, or the firstborn of your herds and flocks, or whatever you have vowed to give, or your freewill offerings or special gifts. 18 Instead, you are to eat them in the presence of the LORD your God at the place the LORD your God will choose—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites from your towns—and you are to rejoice before the LORD your God in everything you put your hand to. 19 Be careful not to neglect the Levites as long as you live in your land.
20 When the LORD your God has enlarged your territory as he promised you, and you crave meat and say, “I would like some meat,” then you may eat as much of it as you want. 21 If the place where the LORD your God chooses to put his Name is too far away from you, you may slaughter animals from the herds and flocks the LORD has given you, as I have commanded you, and in your own towns you may eat as much of them as you want. 22 Eat them as you would gazelle or deer. Both the ceremonially unclean and the clean may eat. 23 But be sure you do not eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat. 24 You must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water. 25 Do not eat it, so that it may go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is right in the eyes of the LORD.
26 But take your consecrated things and whatever you have vowed to give, and go to the place the LORD will choose. 27 Present your burnt offerings on the altar of the LORD your God, both the meat and the blood. The blood of your sacrifices must be poured beside the altar of the LORD your God, but you may eat the meat. 28 Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the LORD your God.
29 The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, 30 and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” 31 You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
32 See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.[b
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Psalm 13; Colossians 3:1-4
Psalm 13[a]
For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Colossians 3
Living as Those Made Alive in Christ
1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Stolen Thoughts
June 9, 2011 — by Mart De Haan
How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? —Psalm 13:1
When my wife and I were traveling in another state, someone broke into our car after we stopped for lunch. With one look at the shattered glass, we realized that we had forgotten to put our GPS (global positioning system) out of sight.
With a quick check of the backseat, I concluded that the thief also got my laptop, passport, and checkbook.
Then came the surprise. Later that evening, after phone calls and hours of growing worries, the unexpected happened. When I opened my suitcase, tucked between my clothes was what I thought I had lost. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Only then did I recall that I had not put the items in the backseat after all. I had stuck them in the suitcase, which had been safely stored in the trunk of our car.
Sometimes, in the emotion of the moment, our minds play tricks on us. We think our loss is worse than it is. We may feel like the songwriter David who, in the confusion of the moment, thought God had forgotten him.
When David later recalled what he knew rather than what he feared, his sense of loss turned into a song of praise (Ps. 13:5-6). His renewed joy foreshadowed what is now ours to recall: Nothing can rob us of what is most important if our life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
When sorrows assail us or terrors draw nigh,
His love will not fail us, He’ll guide with His eye;
And when we are fainting and ready to fail,
He’ll give what is lacking and make us prevail. —Anon.
Rest your assurance on God’s love in your heart—
not on the fear in your mind.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 9th, 2011
Then What’s Next To Do?
Everyone who asks receives . . . —Luke 11:10
Ask if you have not received. There is nothing more difficult than asking. We will have yearnings and desires for certain things, and even suffer as a result of their going unfulfilled, but not until we are at the limit of desperation will we ask. It is the sense of not being spiritually real that causes us to ask. Have you ever asked out of the depths of your total insufficiency and poverty? “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God . . . ” (James 1:5), but be sure that you do lack wisdom before you ask. You cannot bring yourself to the point of spiritual reality anytime you choose. The best thing to do, once you realize you are not spiritually real, is to ask God for the Holy Spirit, basing your request on the promise of Jesus Christ (see Luke 11:13). The Holy Spirit is the one who makes everything that Jesus did for you real in your life.
“Everyone who asks receives . . . .” This does not mean that you will not get if you do not ask, but it means that until you come to the point of asking, you will not receive from God (seeMatthew 5:45). To be able to receive means that you have to come into the relationship of a child of God, and then you comprehend and appreciate mentally, morally, and with spiritual understanding, that these things come from God.
“If any of you lacks wisdom . . . .” If you realize that you are lacking, it is because you have come in contact with spiritual reality— do not put the blinders of reason on again. The word ask actually means “beg.” Some people are poor enough to be interested in their poverty, and some of us are poor enough spiritually to show our interest. Yet we will never receive if we ask with a certain result in mind, because we are asking out of our lust, not out of our poverty. A pauper does not ask out of any reason other than the completely hopeless and painful condition of his poverty. He is not ashamed to beg— blessed are the paupers in spirit (see Matthew 5:3).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Singing in the Rubble - #6369
Thursday, June 9, 2011
I think the images of that horrific earthquake in Haiti will be with us for a long, long time. For a while there we were looking for any hope we could get, because it was just all about so much death and disaster. You remember that when it seemed that no one else could still be alive in all those collapsed buildings, a boy thought he heard a voice from the rubble of a bank building. The husband of a woman who worked there had been frantically trying to find his wife. When the boy told that man about what he had heard, that husband went for a nearby rescue team from California. And they found her! Buried deep in there, and they found her singing. Over a week after that quake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, a woman was still alive. And when she wasn't singing, they said she was praying, "Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!" And when they brought out this miracle lady, yep, she just kept on singing. Actually loudly, the rescuers said.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You about "Singing in the Rubble."
Again, that defiant quakeproof faith was on display for all the world to see on television. That is a faith rooted in a man named Jesus, who has sustained His children through life and through death across the centuries.
I know this Jesus, too. My prayer is that I, too, can hold Him so tightly in my personal quakes that I can also sing in the rubble, because nothing validates the reality of a living Savior more than having His peace when your world's come down around you. All eyes are on you at a time like that.
Our word for today from the word of God is about God's first century ambassadors, Paul and Silas, and it's found in Acts 16:25 (there's an earthquake here, by the way). They had been brutally beaten, unjustly imprisoned and locked up in stocks. But it says, "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them." That was right before a violent earthquake that helped liberate Paul and Silas and drove their jailer to ask them how to know the Jesus who gave them songs at midnight.
This is the peace Jesus promised to His friends the night He would be arrested; the night their world would collapse. He said, "Peace I leave with you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." "I have told you these things so that in Me you might have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 14:27; 16:33).
If you have this Jesus, you can have this peace, even when there seems to be no reason. In the Bible's words, "The peace of God...transcends all understanding" (Philippians 4:7). One Haitian rescued from a collapsed school was asked what he was saying to himself in those long hours when he didn't know if he would live or die. He said, "As a Christian, I'm saying, 'Jesus, my life is in Your hands.'"
You know, I wonder if you could say that, that you've placed your life in the hands of Jesus? There comes a time when we realize that all the places we look for answers have not answered our questions, and all the places we have looked for love and satisfaction have left us empty and disappointed. It's at a point like that that we find our way to the cross where Jesus died to bring us together with God by paying for our sin.
I still remember the moment when I said, "Jesus, I'm Yours." Do you have a moment like that? If you haven't, let this be the day you do that. Let this be the day that you say, "Jesus, I want to pin all my hopes on You" so that you can begin to have the peace that withstands every quake.
If you'd like to know more about how to begin a relationship with Him, go to our website. It's YoursForLife.net.
Our kids used to go to sleep singing a little chorus that says, "Safe am I, safe am I, in the hollow of His hands." You know living or dying, working or out of work, healthy or deathly sick, loved or all alone, if you belong to Jesus, you really are safe.
I pray that God will give me the grace to sing in the rubble.
