Max Lucado Daily: The Choice is Ours
“You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” 1 Peter 1:23 NIV
We are free either to love God or not. He invites us to love Him. He urges us to love Him. He came that we might love Him. But, in the end, the choice is yours and mine. To take that choice from each of us, for Him to force us to love Him, would be less than love . . .
He leaves the choice to us.
Judges 21
Wives for the Benjamites
1 The men of Israel had taken an oath at Mizpah: “Not one of us will give his daughter in marriage to a Benjamite.”
2 The people went to Bethel,[g] where they sat before God until evening, raising their voices and weeping bitterly. 3 “LORD, God of Israel,” they cried, “why has this happened to Israel? Why should one tribe be missing from Israel today?”
4 Early the next day the people built an altar and presented burnt offerings and fellowship offerings.
5 Then the Israelites asked, “Who from all the tribes of Israel has failed to assemble before the LORD?” For they had taken a solemn oath that anyone who failed to assemble before the LORD at Mizpah was to be put to death.
6 Now the Israelites grieved for the tribe of Benjamin, their fellow Israelites. “Today one tribe is cut off from Israel,” they said. 7 “How can we provide wives for those who are left, since we have taken an oath by the LORD not to give them any of our daughters in marriage?” 8 Then they asked, “Which one of the tribes of Israel failed to assemble before the LORD at Mizpah?” They discovered that no one from Jabesh Gilead had come to the camp for the assembly. 9 For when they counted the people, they found that none of the people of Jabesh Gilead were there.
10 So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children. 11 “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.” 12 They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.
13 Then the whole assembly sent an offer of peace to the Benjamites at the rock of Rimmon. 14 So the Benjamites returned at that time and were given the women of Jabesh Gilead who had been spared. But there were not enough for all of them.
15 The people grieved for Benjamin, because the LORD had made a gap in the tribes of Israel. 16 And the elders of the assembly said, “With the women of Benjamin destroyed, how shall we provide wives for the men who are left? 17 The Benjamite survivors must have heirs,” they said, “so that a tribe of Israel will not be wiped out. 18 We can’t give them our daughters as wives, since we Israelites have taken this oath: ‘Cursed be anyone who gives a wife to a Benjamite.’ 19 But look, there is the annual festival of the LORD in Shiloh, which lies north of Bethel, east of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebonah.”
20 So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, “Go and hide in the vineyards 21 and watch. When the young women of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, rush from the vineyards and each of you seize one of them to be your wife. Then return to the land of Benjamin. 22 When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Do us the favor of helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war. You will not be guilty of breaking your oath because you did not give your daughters to them.’”
23 So that is what the Benjamites did. While the young women were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them.
24 At that time the Israelites left that place and went home to their tribes and clans, each to his own inheritance.
25 In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Psalm 90:1-12
BOOK IV
Psalms 90–106
A prayer of Moses the man of God.
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
7 We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
10 Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 If only we knew the power of your anger!
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
12 Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Grandfather’s Clock
September 8, 2011 — by Dennis Fisher
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. —Psalm 90:12
In 1876, Henry Clay Work wrote the song “My Grandfather’s Clock.” The song describes a grandfather’s clock that faithfully ticks its way through its owner’s life. Childhood, adulthood, and old age are all viewed in relationship to his beloved timepiece. The refrain says:
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life’s seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
But it stopped, short,
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
The relentless ticking of the clock reminds us that our time on earth is limited. Despite the joys and pains of life, time always marches on. For the believer, our time on earth is an opportunity for gaining wisdom. The psalmist writes, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).
One way of numbering our days is to ask ourselves these kinds of questions: How can I become more like Christ? Am I reading the Word regularly? Am I devoting time to prayer? Am I meeting together with other believers? The way we answer these questions is an indicator of the progress we’re making in gaining wisdom and becoming more like Christ.
No matter the phase of life—childhood, youth, middle age, or our senior years—life always affords us opportunities to grow in faith and wisdom. Numbering our days is the wise response to life’s inevitable progress.
How are you progressing on your journey?
Don’t spend your time—invest it.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
September 8th, 2011
. . . casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God . . . —2 Corinthians 10:5
Determinedly Demolish Some Things. Deliverance from sin is not the same as deliverance from human nature. There are things in human nature, such as prejudices, that the saint can only destroy through sheer neglect. But there are other things that have to be destroyed through violence, that is, through God’s divine strength imparted by His Spirit. There are some things over which we are not to fight, but only to “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord . . .” (see Exodus 14:13). But every theory or thought that raises itself up as a fortified barrier “against the knowledge of God” is to be determinedly demolished by drawing on God’s power, not through human effort or by compromise (see 2 Corinthians 10:4).
It is only when God has transformed our nature and we have entered into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin— Jesus Christ conquered that in His redemption of us. The conflict is waged over turning our natural life into a spiritual life. This is never done easily, nor does God intend that it be so. It is accomplished only through a series of moral choices. God does not make us holy in the sense that He makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that He has made us innocent before Him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make. These choices are continually opposed and hostile to the things of our natural life which have become so deeply entrenched— the very things that raise themselves up as fortified barriers “against the knowledge of God.” We can either turn back, making ourselves of no value to the kingdom of God, or we can determinedly demolish these things, allowing Jesus to bring another son to glory (see Hebrews 2:10).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Illusion of Winning - #6434
Thursday, September 8, 2011
I met a fellow the other day, and he said, "Ron, my name is Bill." I guess it was the mood I was in. I said, "Oh no! I already have enough bills in my life." What's wrong with me? Well, maybe you've felt that way. I mean, what I said was probably true for both of us.
Did you ever find out that you had more bills than you thought? You know, you've written all the bills you thought you had, and yet you still have a little left in your checkbook. You say, "Hey, I think I'm finally winning this financial battle" and then suddenly discover some unopened envelope with, of course, bills, or a stack in a drawer that you forgot to pull out; or maybe just a financial surprise in today's mail.
Suddenly you don't feel as comfortable--as well off--as you did. You thought you were paid up, but your obligations were greater than you realized. Well, you had no business feeling well off, not with how much you still owed. You know, you and I have other obligations, more important obligations, and we might be feeling a whole lot better off than we really are.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Illusion of Winning."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the book of Amos, which you were probably just discussing over breakfast today. But in those Minor Prophets in the Old Testament are some very challenging words.
Amos 6:1 - "Woe to you who are complacent in Zion." Okay, first of all, what's this Zion business? Well, let's get that settled. Zion is God's mountain in the Old Testament. It's that mountain upon which the temple was built. And if you were on Mt. Zion, you would have felt very spiritually safe, surrounded by priests who were passing you on every side, a lot of sacred music you could hear, sacred places to visit, lots of believers all around you. And right on Zion it's easy to feel like the whole world is going with God. But He reminds them in the book of Amos that they're surrounded by enemies.
Now, today's Zion is the Christian world that you and I are so involved in: Christian TV, and websites, and seminars, and music, and conferences. We've got our own music, we've got a lot of heroes of our own, we're in the headlines, we sit in our church and we feel like we're winning. You know, I attend sometimes the National Religious Broadcaster's Convention--there's 5,000 people there. Man, when you're there you feel like you're winning the world. But we're not.
The Wall Street Journal once pointed out that if you're in the evangelical sub-culture you know all its heroes, all its radio programs, all the books. If you're not in the evangelical world, you don't even know that it exists. Could it be that we're complacent in Zion? That we're talking mostly to ourselves? The lost people around us are I guess you could say "loster" and farther from Christ and the church than they've ever been. And there are more of them than there have ever been. It is the illusion of winning because we feel so strong when we're in our Zion spots.
We've still got a massive job to do; an obligation--a bill unpaid to the world for which Christ gave His life. Paul said in Romans 1, he was "obligated to the lost; to not be ashamed of the Gospel--to get it to them." This isn't a time for feeling well off. It's a time for us to take risks, to launch out in new ways to reach our neighbors, to evaluate our church and our ministry in terms of its impact on the lost people for whom Jesus died and for whom He weeps. We shouldn't be looking at our crowds or how many of ourselves we're talking to, but how many lost people we're talking to. What percentage are they? Not how many found people we're talking to.
And it's a personal issue. Am I, as one follower of Christ, sitting back and enjoying all of Zion's goodies and feeling like I'm doing something? Or am I daily entering into the battle for the lives of the people around me?
Listen, we will celebrate when we get to heaven. That will be enough time. Right now it's time to reach the lost through every possible means while there's still time.