Max Lucado Daily: God Rescued Us
“Happy are they whose sins are forgiven, whose wrongs are pardoned.” Romans 4:7
To qualify for bankruptcy, you have to admit you are broke . . .
And to go to heaven, you have to admit you are hellbound.
That’s a tough one . . . Not easy for a decent guy to admit he’s a sinner. Hard for a pretty good girl to confess spiritual destitution . . . If we are saved it is because God rescued us and not because we learned to swim.
1 Samuel 10
1 Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s head and kissed him, saying, “Has not the LORD anointed you ruler over his inheritance?[a] 2 When you leave me today, you will meet two men near Rachel’s tomb, at Zelzah on the border of Benjamin. They will say to you, ‘The donkeys you set out to look for have been found. And now your father has stopped thinking about them and is worried about you. He is asking, “What shall I do about my son?”’
3 “Then you will go on from there until you reach the great tree of Tabor. Three men going up to worship God at Bethel will meet you there. One will be carrying three young goats, another three loaves of bread, and another a skin of wine. 4 They will greet you and offer you two loaves of bread, which you will accept from them.
5 “After that you will go to Gibeah of God, where there is a Philistine outpost. As you approach the town, you will meet a procession of prophets coming down from the high place with lyres, timbrels, pipes and harps being played before them, and they will be prophesying. 6 The Spirit of the LORD will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person. 7 Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.
8 “Go down ahead of me to Gilgal. I will surely come down to you to sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, but you must wait seven days until I come to you and tell you what you are to do.”
Saul Made King
9 As Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed Saul’s heart, and all these signs were fulfilled that day. 10 When he and his servant arrived at Gibeah, a procession of prophets met him; the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he joined in their prophesying. 11 When all those who had formerly known him saw him prophesying with the prophets, they asked each other, “What is this that has happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?”
12 A man who lived there answered, “And who is their father?” So it became a saying: “Is Saul also among the prophets?” 13 After Saul stopped prophesying, he went to the high place.
14 Now Saul’s uncle asked him and his servant, “Where have you been?”
“Looking for the donkeys,” he said. “But when we saw they were not to be found, we went to Samuel.”
15 Saul’s uncle said, “Tell me what Samuel said to you.”
16 Saul replied, “He assured us that the donkeys had been found.” But he did not tell his uncle what Samuel had said about the kingship.
17 Samuel summoned the people of Israel to the LORD at Mizpah 18 and said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I brought Israel up out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the power of Egypt and all the kingdoms that oppressed you.’ 19 But you have now rejected your God, who saves you out of all your disasters and calamities. And you have said, ‘No, appoint a king over us.’ So now present yourselves before the LORD by your tribes and clans.”
20 When Samuel had all Israel come forward by tribes, the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot. 21 Then he brought forward the tribe of Benjamin, clan by clan, and Matri’s clan was taken. Finally Saul son of Kish was taken. But when they looked for him, he was not to be found. 22 So they inquired further of the LORD, “Has the man come here yet?”
And the LORD said, “Yes, he has hidden himself among the supplies.”
23 They ran and brought him out, and as he stood among the people he was a head taller than any of the others. 24 Samuel said to all the people, “Do you see the man the LORD has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people.”
Then the people shouted, “Long live the king!”
25 Samuel explained to the people the rights and duties of kingship. He wrote them down on a scroll and deposited it before the LORD. Then Samuel dismissed the people to go to their own homes.
26 Saul also went to his home in Gibeah, accompanied by valiant men whose hearts God had touched. 27 But some scoundrels said, “How can this fellow save us?” They despised him and brought him no gifts. But Saul kept silent.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Exodus 4:1-9,17
Signs for Moses
1 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you’?”
2 Then the LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A staff,” he replied.
3 The LORD said, “Throw it on the ground.”
Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the LORD said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 “This,” said the LORD, “is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.”
6 Then the LORD said, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, the skin was leprous[a]—it had become as white as snow.
7 “Now put it back into your cloak,” he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.
8 Then the LORD said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. 9 But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.”
The Tales Of Two Sticks
September 27, 2011 — by Albert Lee
You shall take this rod in your hand, with which you shall do the signs. —Exodus 4:17
Conventional wisdom questions how much can be accomplished with little. We tend to believe that a lot more can be done if we have large financial resources, talented manpower, and innovative ideas. But these things don’t matter to God. Consider just a couple of examples:
In Judges 3:31, a relatively unknown man named Shamgar delivered Israel from the Philistines single-handedly. How? He won a great victory by killing 600 Philistines with nothing more than an oxgoad (a stick sharpened on one end to drive slow-moving animals).
In Exodus, when God asked Moses to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, Moses was afraid the people wouldn’t listen to him or follow him. So God said, “What is that in your hand?” (4:2). Moses replied, “A rod.” God went on to use that rod in Moses’ hand to convince the people to follow him, to turn the Nile River into blood, to bring great plagues on Egypt, to part the Red Sea, and to perform miracles in the wilderness.
Moses’ rod and Shamgar’s oxgoad, when dedicated to God, became mighty tools. This helps us see that God can use what little we have, when surrendered to Him, to do great things. God is not looking for people with great abilities, but for those who are dedicated to following and obeying Him.
If you use what little you may have
To serve the Lord with all your heart
You will find that He can do great things
When you begin to do your part. —Sper
Little is much when God is in it.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
September 27th, 2011
The "Go" of Renunciation
. . . someone said to Him, ’Lord, I will follow You wherever You go’ —Luke 9:57
Our Lord’s attitude toward this man was one of severe discouragement, “for He knew what was in man” (John 2:25). We would have said, “I can’t imagine why He lost the opportunity of winning that man! Imagine being so cold to him and turning him away so discouraged!” Never apologize for your Lord. The words of the Lord hurt and offend until there is nothing left to be hurt or offended. Jesus Christ had no tenderness whatsoever toward anything that was ultimately going to ruin a person in his service to God. Our Lord’s answers were not based on some whim or impulsive thought, but on the knowledge of “what was in man.” If the Spirit of God brings to your mind a word of the Lord that hurts you, you can be sure that there is something in you that He wants to hurt to the point of its death.
Luke 9:58 . These words destroy the argument of serving Jesus Christ because it is a pleasant thing to do. And the strictness of the rejection that He demands of me allows for nothing to remain in my life but my Lord, myself, and a sense of desperate hope. He says that I must let everyone else come or go, and that I must be guided solely by my relationship to Him. And He says, “. . . the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
Luke 9:59 . This man did not want to disappoint Jesus, nor did he want to show a lack of respect for his father. We put our sense of loyalty to our relatives ahead of our loyalty to Jesus Christ, forcing Him to take last place. When your loyalties conflict, always obey Jesus Christ whatever the cost.
Luke 9:61 . The person who says, “Lord, I will follow You, but . . .,” is the person who is intensely ready to go, but never goes. This man had reservations about going. The exacting call of Jesus has no room for good-byes; good-byes, as we often use them, are pagan, not Christian, because they divert us from the call. Once the call of God comes to you, start going and never stop.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
A Better Way to Make Matches - #6447
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
If you're in the manufacturing business and you plan to stay in it, there is an important function you must not neglect. They call it quality control. You know that someone needs to be checking what's coming up that assembly line to see what kind of finished product you're getting, not just how many you're getting. Imagine if there was a machine that turned out four broken items out of every ten that it produced. Would you say that machine needs some work, or maybe you need a whole new machine? Well, actually there is such a machine, and we just keep it cranking and it keeps losing four out of ten.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Better Way to Make Matches."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians 5:2-3. It gives us the standard for a Christian's relationships. "Live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. But among you..." Okay, now there's a flip side here; something that could ruin all that. "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or any kind of impurity or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people."
Well, the standard for a Christian's relationship obviously is Christ's love; love that's unselfish; that seeks your best, not mine. It's willing to sacrifice, and it's certainly pure. Then what messes up that kind of relationship between men and women? A sexual agenda.
Now, consider the machine called the American dating machine. It's actually a match-making machine. It basically trains men and women to think of each other as romantic catches or physical conquests. And four out of ten matches made by that machine break, they end in divorce.
Something's wrong with the machine. Something's wrong with what we're looking for in our relationship with the opposite sex. There must be a better way to make matches, and there is. It puts friendship before romance. Christian love, unselfish and pure grows best when a man and woman start with a friendship, not a romance. I'll tell you what, it's hard to make a romance into a friendship. That's why many people end up married to a stranger and then unmarried to that stranger.
But it's a beautiful thing when a friendship grows naturally into a romance. And I think Christian men and women can model a better way to make matches. We don't have to go for the lies and the broken things in our culture. Christian parents can teach Christian kids a better way. Groups where men and women don't have to pair up so quickly, where there can be mixed combinations where three men and two women, or any kind of mixture can go out. It doesn't have to be this couple thing all the time.
Relationships with no physical agenda where both men and women can relax and not have to play that physical cat and mouse game, "How far are we going to go?" Where they can be natural with each other--be real, to help each other be more like Jesus.
Couldn't we work toward a better goal than everybody pairing up; a kingdom of men and women who want to be friends, not lovers? Out of that can come some really strong marriages, because, you know what? Marriage isn't the ultimate sexual conquest, it's the ultimate friendship. So, start practicing now.