Max Lucado Daily: Eternal Happiness
Eternal Happiness
Posted: 23 Jun 2011 11:01 PM PDT
“God has planted eternity in the hearts of men.” Ecclesiastes 3:10, TLB
You will never be completely happy on earth, simply because you were not made for earth. Oh, you will have your moments of joy. You will catch glimpses of light. You will know moments or even days of peace. But they simply do not compare with the happiness that lies ahead.
Deuteronomy 25
1 When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. 2 If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, 3 but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes. If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes.
4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
5 If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. 6 The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
7 However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” 9 his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” 10 That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.
11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
13 Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. 14 Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. 15 You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. 16 For the LORD your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.
17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. 18 When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. 19 When the LORD your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Job 2
1 On another day the angels[a] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. 2 And the LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
3 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”
4 “Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. 5 But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
6 The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.”
7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. 8 Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.
9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
10 He replied, “You are talking like a foolish[b] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
11 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.
Because
June 24, 2011 — by Jennifer Benson Schuldt
Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? —Job 2:10
One day, my toddler exclaimed, “I love you, Mom!” I was curious about what makes a 3-year-old tick, so I asked him why he loved me. He answered, “Because you play cars with me.” When I asked if there was any other reason, he said, “Nope. That’s it.” My toddler’s response made me smile. But it also made me think about the way I relate to God. Do I love and trust Him just because of what He does for me? What about when the blessings disappear?
Job had to answer these questions when catastrophes claimed his children and demolished his entire estate. His wife advised him: “Curse God and die!” (2:9). Instead, Job asked, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (v.10). Yes, Job struggled after his tragedy—he became angry with his friends and questioned the Almighty. Still, he vowed, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (13:15).
Job’s affection for his heavenly Father didn’t depend on a tidy solution to his problems. Rather, he loved and trusted God because of all that He is. Job said, “God is wise in heart and mighty in strength” (9:4).
Our love for God must not be based solely on His blessings but because of who He is.
Shall we accept the good from God
But fuss when trials are in sight?
Not if our love is focused on
The One who always does what’s right. —Sper
Focusing on the character of God
helps us to take our eyes off our circumstances.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 24th, 2011
Reconciling Yourself to the Fact of Sin
This is your hour, and the power of darkness —Luke 22:53
Not being reconciled to the fact of sin— not recognizing it and refusing to deal with it— produces all the disasters in life. You may talk about the lofty virtues of human nature, but there is something in human nature that will mockingly laugh in the face of every principle you have. If you refuse to agree with the fact that there is wickedness and selfishness, something downright hateful and wrong, in human beings, when it attacks your life, instead of reconciling yourself to it, you will compromise with it and say that it is of no use to battle against it. Have you taken this “hour, and the power of darkness” into account, or do you have a view of yourself which includes no recognition of sin whatsoever? In your human relationships and friendships, have you reconciled yourself to the fact of sin? If not, just around the next corner you will find yourself trapped and you will compromise with it. But if you will reconcile yourself to the fact of sin, you will realize the danger immediately and say, “Yes, I see what this sin would mean.” The recognition of sin does not destroy the basis of friendship— it simply establishes a mutual respect for the fact that the basis of sinful life is disastrous. Always beware of any assessment of life which does not recognize the fact that there is sin.
Jesus Christ never trusted human nature, yet He was never cynical nor suspicious, because He had absolute trust in what He could do for human nature. The pure man or woman is the one who is shielded from harm, not the innocent person. The so-called innocent man or woman is never safe. Men and women have no business trying to be innocent; God demands that they be pure and virtuous. Innocence is the characteristic of a child. Any person is deserving of blame if he is unwilling to reconcile himself to the fact of sin.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Chewing Your Food Properly - #6380
Friday, June 24, 2011
There's at least one important principle of advertising we need to consider today, and that is you have to demonstrate the need for your product in order to sell it. I'll tell you someone who was good at it some years ago in one of the classic commercials. It was Alka-Seltzer, one of those old commercials I still remember. They would show some irresponsible eater who consumed some nightmare menu, and then the camera just made him look all distorted, like one of those trick mirrors.
I still remember the one with that poor guy holding his stomach and he's going in and out of focus, and he says, "I ate too much. I ate too fast. I ate too much. I ate too fast." Actually a lot of us don't really eat our food, we inhale it, we gobble it, we basically gulp it. And sometimes we lose it because of the way we ate it. Just because you ate it doesn't mean it's going to do you any good.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Chewing Your Food Properly."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Joshua 1:8. Joshua is facing the great challenge of his life. He's preparing to enter the Promised Land--this great leadership challenge of taking God's people in. Here's God word to him, "Do not let this Book of the Law (the Bible, that is) depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful."
Now, if you dig into this verse, you find that there's an implied eating image here. We started out talking about how we eat, and this verse is about that. In fact, the Hebrew word for meditate is literally the word that's used to describe a cow chewing its cud. Now, I don't know what all cows are good at, but I know that they are the world's best chewers. Man, you've got to hand that to them. They just keep on chewing it!
Well, God says, "I want you to keep chewing on what you get out of My Book." He wants us to do that with our daily intake from the Bible. Frankly, most of us don't. We just sort of stuff in some verses, "I ate too fast." And we never think about them again. That has two results. Even though we're reading the Bible, there's no real growth. We stay spiritually undernourished with a superficial faith. Secondly, if you keep stuffing in the Bible without chewing it properly, you get indigestion. The Bible starts to be dull and boring, and you say, "I'm not getting anything out of it."
Well, of course not! You're not chewing it. That's how you get the good out of spiritual food. How do you chew spiritual food? Let me quickly give you seven steps in chewing your spiritual food. Compare it with what you're doing now.
Number one, take in only a few verses--bite-size chunks.
Two, go over them a few times.
Three, look for a connection to something that you're going to face today.
Fourthly, pray back to God that connection that you found. Ask for Him to help you make that verse literally a part of that situation that day.
And then fifth, write down what you digested. As you write it, it will deepen your understanding and it will deepen your commitment to Him.
And then six, consciously refer back to it throughout the day; keep going back to that sentence, that phrase out of the Bible.
And finally, go to sleep that night reviewing your word for today from the Word of God and how well you activated it.
This command is followed by a great promise. If you do it, you'll be prosperous and successful. In-gesting the Bible - it isn't enough. You only get its value if you di-gest it. So, when it comes to your daily Bible breakfast, chew your food properly.