Max Lucado Daily: Avoid Selfishness
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit. Philippians 2:3, NASB
The word…for selfishness shares a root form with the words strife and contentious. It suggests a self-preoccupation that hurts others…
Selfishness is an obsession with self that excludes others, hurting everyone.
Looking after your personal interests is proper life management. Doing so to the exclusion of the rest of the world is selfishness.
Psalm 3
Psalm 3[a]
A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom.
1 LORD, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
2 Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.”[b]
3 But you, LORD, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high.
4 I call out to the LORD,
and he answers me from his holy mountain.
5 I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.
6 I will not fear though tens of thousands
assail me on every side.
7 Arise, LORD!
Deliver me, my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.
8 From the LORD comes deliverance.
May your blessing be on your people.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 1 John 4:7-21
God’s Love and Ours
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Well-Loved
December 5, 2011 — by David C. McCasland
We love Him because He first loved us. —1 John 4:19
A friend described his grandmother as one of the greatest influences in his life. Throughout his adult years, he has kept her portrait next to his desk to remind himself of her unconditional love. “I really do believe,” he said, “that she helped me learn how to love.”
Not everyone has had a similar taste of human love, but through Christ each of us can experience being well-loved by God. In 1 John 4, the word love occurs 27 times, and God’s love through Christ is cited as the source of our love for God and for others. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (v.10). “We have known and believed the love that God has for us” (v.16). “We love Him because He first loved us” (v.19).
God’s love is not a slowly dripping faucet or a well we must dig for ourselves. It is a rushing stream that flows from His heart into ours. Whatever our family background or experiences in life—whether we feel well-loved by others or not—we can know love. We can draw from the Lord’s inexhaustible source to know His loving care for us, and we can pass it on to others.
In Christ our Savior, we are well-loved.
Loved with everlasting love,
Led by grace that love to know—
Spirit, breathing from above,
Thou hast taught me it is so! —Robinson
Nothing is more powerful than God’s love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, December 05, 2011
"The Temple of the Holy Spirit"
. . . only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you —Genesis 41:40
I am accountable to God for the way I control my body under His authority. Paul said he did not “set aside the grace of God”— make it ineffective (Galatians 2:21). The grace of God is absolute and limitless, and the work of salvation through Jesus is complete and finished forever. I am not being saved— I am saved. Salvation is as eternal as God’s throne, but I must put to work or use what God has placed within me. To “work out [my] own salvation” (Philippians 2:12) means that I am responsible for using what He has given me. It also means that I must exhibit in my own body the life of the Lord Jesus, not mysteriously or secretly, but openly and boldly. “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection . . .” (1 Corinthians 9:27). Every Christian can have his body under absolute control for God. God has given us the responsibility to rule over all “the temple of the Holy Spirit,” including our thoughts and desires (1 Corinthians 6:19). We are responsible for these, and we must never give way to improper ones. But most of us are much more severe in our judgment of others than we are in judging ourselves. We make excuses for things in ourselves, while we condemn things in the lives of others simply because we are not naturally inclined to do them.
Paul said, “I beseech you . . . that you present your bodies a living sacrifice . . .” (Romans 12:1). What I must decide is whether or not I will agree with my Lord and Master that my body will indeed be His temple. Once I agree, all the rules, regulations, and requirements of the law concerning the body are summed up for me in this revealed truth-my body is “the temple of the Holy Spirit.”
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
A Safe Place to Unload - #6496
Monday, December 5, 2011
The barber shop I used to go to was definitely a man's world, and you got more than a haircut when you went there; you got an ear full. See, something seems to happen when men sit down in that barber chair. It's as if they were administered truth serum, and they start to suddenly talk openly about their relationships, and their marriage, and their kids, and their frustrations, whether you want to hear it or not.
I guess that happens in bars, too, that's what I'm told. The barber, the bar tender, maybe the beautician; I haven't been to one in a long time. But I hear that it is that way with beauticians too. They all seem to be like safe people that you can sort of unload on. Unfortunately, I guess they can listen, but they usually can't help much. There's something in us that's looking for somewhere we can really let out what we're always holding in. You need it; I need it.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Safe Place to Unload."
Our word for today from the Word of God; it's in Hebrews 4:13-16. "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Therefore, since we have a great High Priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we possess. For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet was without sin. Let us then approach the Throne of Grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Man, that's a great passage!
See, all of us carry a heart full of emotions that we don't feel safe to share. We need to. If we don't, they just boil up inside. But we cover them, we mask them, we redirect them. Why? Well, we're afraid that the person's attitude, the one we'll tell, might change if they know what we really feel. There's this little boy or girl inside of us that's so insecure and scared, but well covered. Oh yeah, the older we get, we know how to cover it up with our mask. We're just like, "Hey, I've got it together."
And yet there's this deep anger or hurt inside that we don't want anyone else to see, and it hurts. There's a fear, there's doubt, there's an agonizing struggle with some sin, secret longings. Well, here's the good news: God already knows.
That's what this passage says. In one translation, "Everything is naked and open before Him." We can't surprise Him. You don't go to Him and hear Him say, "Oh, you're kidding! Really? I didn't know that." He already knows! And since He already knows the deepest secrets of your soul, He's the one safe place to unload. You can be scared there, you can be wounded with Him, you can be weak, you can be wiped out. For once you don't have to have it all together. You don't have to look good. You don't have to be in control. You don't have to wonder if He's going to turn His back on you.
The tragedy is we often don't take advantage of this opportunity for openness with God. We come to Him all wrapped up in some kind of prayer talk. We skirt the real issues. We refuse to put the right name on what we're feeling, because it might scare us to call it what it really is. We come all dressed up. But the Bible says we actually come naked into His presence; He knows what we really look like. So let's start our praying where we really are; not where we should be. When you do, something supernatural happens. You go to the Throne of Grace and you get mercy and grace to help. It opens up that area to God's healing power. See, honesty does that. You know the truth; the truth will set you free. You start to become what you ought to be by admitting that you're not.
So who needs the barber, or the beautician, or the bartender to confess to? We've got a Savior, and He knows you, and He feels with you, and He's walked your trail. He alone is the safe place to unload the deepest secrets of your soul.
