Max Lucado Daily: To Be With Me
To Be With Me
Posted: 19 Jun 2011 11:01 PM PDT
“After I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me.” John 14:3
Note the promise of Jesus. “I will come back and take you to be with me.” Jesus pledges to take us home. He does not delegate this task. He may send missionaries to teach you, angels to protect you, teachers to guide you, singers to inspire you, and physicians to heal you, but He sends no one to take you. He reserves this job for Himself.
Deuteronomy 21
Atonement for an Unsolved Murder
1 If someone is found slain, lying in a field in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who the killer was, 2 your elders and judges shall go out and measure the distance from the body to the neighboring towns. 3 Then the elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked and has never worn a yoke 4 and lead it down to a valley that has not been plowed or planted and where there is a flowing stream. There in the valley they are to break the heifer’s neck. 5 The Levitical priests shall step forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister and to pronounce blessings in the name of the LORD and to decide all cases of dispute and assault. 6 Then all the elders of the town nearest the body shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, 7 and they shall declare: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. 8 Accept this atonement for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, LORD, and do not hold your people guilty of the blood of an innocent person.” Then the bloodshed will be atoned for, 9 and you will have purged from yourselves the guilt of shedding innocent blood, since you have done what is right in the eyes of the LORD.
Marrying a Captive Woman
10 When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, 11 if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. 12 Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails 13 and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. 14 If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.
The Right of the Firstborn
15 If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, 16 when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. 17 He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.
A Rebellious Son
18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Various Laws
22 If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, 23 you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Psalm 117
1 Praise the LORD, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
2 For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.
Praise the LORD.[a
In Brief
June 20, 2011 — by David H. Roper
His merciful kindness is great toward us. —Psalm 117:2
I counted once and discovered that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address contains fewer than 300 words. This means, among other things, that words don’t have to be many to be memorable.
That’s one reason I like Psalm 117. Brevity is its hallmark. The psalmist said all he had to say in 30 words (actually just 17 words in the Hebrew text).
Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples! For His merciful kindness [love] is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord [faithfulness] endures forever. Praise the Lord!
Ah, that’s the good news! Contained in this hallelujah psalm is a message to all nations of the world that God’s “merciful kindness”—His covenant love—is “great toward us” (v.2).
Think about what God’s love means. God loved us before we were born; He will love us after we die. Not one thing can separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:39). His heart is an inexhaustible and irrepressible fountain of love!
As I read this brief psalm of praise to God, I can think of no greater encouragement for our journey than its reminder of God’s merciful kindness. Praise the Lord!
Let us celebrate together,
Lift our voice in one accord,
Singing of God’s grace and mercy
And the goodness of the Lord. —Sper
What we know about God should lead us
to give joyful praise to Him.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 20th, 2011
Have You Come to "When" Yet?
The Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends —Job 42:10
A pitiful, sickly, and self-centered kind of prayer and a determined effort and selfish desire to be right with God are never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is actually a sign that I am rebelling against the atonement by the Cross of Christ. I pray, “Lord, I will purify my heart if You will answer my prayer— I will walk rightly before You if You will help me.” But I cannot make myself right with God; I cannot make my life perfect. I can only be right with God if I accept the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it? I have to surrender all my rights and demands, and cease from every self-effort. I must leave myself completely alone in His hands, and then I can begin to pour my life out in the priestly work of intercession. There is a great deal of prayer that comes from actual disbelief in the atonement. Jesus is not just beginning to save us— He has already saved us completely. It is an accomplished fact, and it is an insult to Him for us to ask Him to do what He has already done.
If you are not now receiving the “hundredfold” which Jesus promised (see Matthew 19:29), and not getting insight into God’s Word, then start praying for your friends— enter into the ministry of the inner life. “The Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends.” As a saved soul, the real business of your life is intercessory prayer. Whatever circumstances God may place you in, always pray immediately that His atonement may be recognized and as fully understood in the lives of others as it has been in yours. Pray for your friends now, and pray for those with whom you come in contact now.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Taking the Sting Out of Goodbye - #6376
Monday, June 20, 2011
Well, it was my first overseas trip. I mean trip. Ten thousand miles to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and there we were at Kennedy Airport. Me, my wife, our three young children facing three weeks of Daddy being gone. We'd never had that before. That's a long time when you're a little kid. Actually, it's a long time when you're the Daddy of some little kids. Well, I headed down the jet way, and I smiled and waved goodbye. Rounded the bend to the plane and then I wasn't smiling.
But Mommy was able to take some of the sting out of our goodbyes. She reminded the kids of one important fact. This separation wasn't permanent. It wasn't the end! It was only an interruption of our being together.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Taking the Sting Out of Goodbye."
Not long ago I stood in the cold cemetery by the grave of the man who had been my last living cousin. For all of us it was of course, a sad goodbye, but not nearly as sad as it could have been because my cousin had placed his life and his eternity in the hands of Jesus. Yes, there will be a separation, but because of Jesus, because of what He did on that first Easter, the goodbye isn't forever. All of us who belong to Jesus will soon be together again. There's nothing more important in human history than what happened in a graveyard early on that morning we now call the first Easter. Jesus Christ walked out of His grave and death got demoted.
Listen to our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 15:54-56. "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Death couldn't hold Jesus. And He has said to all who belong to Him, "Because I live, you will also live." So death can't be the end for anyone who has pinned their hopes on Jesus. He's not a dead prophet. He's a living Savior!
The Bible tells us that Jesus came to "...free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (1 Corinthians 15:54-56). Because of Jesus, death doesn't have to be the end. It doesn't have to be something to fear. It's only an interruption! It's the beginning of life beyond our imagination in God's heaven.
But you can't get into God's heaven with your sin. In some of the closing words of the Bible it says, "Nothing impure will ever enter it" speaking of God's heaven. But that's why Jesus died on that awful cross. He was paying for every wrong thing that you've ever done. And now, He can erase every sin of your life from God's Book. You'll go to heaven, not because you were good, but because you were forgiven by the only One who can forgive your sin; the One who paid for it! Only Jesus did that.
You will not be asked what religion you were or how good you were. God will only want to know, "What did you do with My Son who died for you?" You have to reach out to Jesus. You have to grab Him like He's your only hope, and you could do that this very day. This could be your eternity-changing Jesus day. If you would say to Him, "Jesus, I have run my own life. I know that's wrong. I know it took Your dying to pay for it, and I believe some of those sins You paid for were mine. Today I want to give myself to You, because You are a living Savior. Beginning today I'm Yours."
I really want to encourage you to go to our website. We've got video there, we've got audio there, we've got text there. Whatever you want. But it will all help you understand better how to be sure you belong to Jesus. That website is YoursForLife.net.
The scripture says, "I have written these things to those of you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know you have eternal life." Now, there's no greater peace, no greater security than knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're going to heaven when you die. And you can know that today!