Psalm 105 bible reading and devotionals.

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MaxLucado.com: A Spiritual Heart Transplant

Grace!

The bank gives us a grace period.  The seedy politician falls from grace.

Musicians speak of a grace note.  We use the word for hospitals, baby girls, kings and premeal prayers.  We talk as though we know what grace means.

You turn the page of your Bible and look at the words.  You might as well be gazing at a cemetery.  Lifeless, stony.  Nothing moves you.  But you don’t dare close the book, no sirree.  You dare not miss a deed for fear that God will erase your name.

God’s grace has a drenching about it.  Grace comes after you.  It re-wires you.  From insecure to God secure.  From regret riddled to better-because-of-it.  From afraid to die to ready to fly.

As Paul said in Galatians 2:20:  “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

You might call it a spiritual heart transplant!

From GRACE

Psalm 105

1 Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;
    make known among the nations what he has done.
2 Sing to him, sing praise to him;
    tell of all his wonderful acts.
3 Glory in his holy name;
    let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
4 Look to the Lord and his strength;
    seek his face always.
5 Remember the wonders he has done,
    his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
6 you his servants, the descendants of Abraham,
    his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
7 He is the Lord our God;
    his judgments are in all the earth.
8 He remembers his covenant forever,
    the promise he made, for a thousand generations,
9 the covenant he made with Abraham,
    the oath he swore to Isaac.
10 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree,
    to Israel as an everlasting covenant:
11 “To you I will give the land of Canaan
    as the portion you will inherit.”
12 When they were but few in number,
    few indeed, and strangers in it,
13 they wandered from nation to nation,
    from one kingdom to another.
14 He allowed no one to oppress them;
    for their sake he rebuked kings:
15 “Do not touch my anointed ones;
    do my prophets no harm.”
16 He called down famine on the land
    and destroyed all their supplies of food;
17 and he sent a man before them—
    Joseph, sold as a slave.
18 They bruised his feet with shackles,
    his neck was put in irons,
19 till what he foretold came to pass,
    till the word of the Lord proved him true.
20 The king sent and released him,
    the ruler of peoples set him free.
21 He made him master of his household,
    ruler over all he possessed,
22 to instruct his princes as he pleased
    and teach his elders wisdom.
23 Then Israel entered Egypt;
    Jacob resided as a foreigner in the land of Ham.
24 The Lord made his people very fruitful;
    he made them too numerous for their foes,
25 whose hearts he turned to hate his people,
    to conspire against his servants.
26 He sent Moses his servant,
    and Aaron, whom he had chosen.
27 They performed his signs among them,
    his wonders in the land of Ham.
28 He sent darkness and made the land dark—
    for had they not rebelled against his words?
29 He turned their waters into blood,
    causing their fish to die.
30 Their land teemed with frogs,
    which went up into the bedrooms of their rulers.
31 He spoke, and there came swarms of flies,
    and gnats throughout their country.
32 He turned their rain into hail,
    with lightning throughout their land;
33 he struck down their vines and fig trees
    and shattered the trees of their country.
34 He spoke, and the locusts came,
    grasshoppers without number;
35 they ate up every green thing in their land,
    ate up the produce of their soil.
36 Then he struck down all the firstborn in their land,
    the firstfruits of all their manhood.
37 He brought out Israel, laden with silver and gold,
    and from among their tribes no one faltered.
38 Egypt was glad when they left,
    because dread of Israel had fallen on them.
39 He spread out a cloud as a covering,
    and a fire to give light at night.
40 They asked, and he brought them quail;
    he fed them well with the bread of heaven.
41 He opened the rock, and water gushed out;
    it flowed like a river in the desert.
42 For he remembered his holy promise
    given to his servant Abraham.
43 He brought out his people with rejoicing,
    his chosen ones with shouts of joy;
44 he gave them the lands of the nations,
    and they fell heir to what others had toiled for—
45 that they might keep his precepts
    and observe his laws.
Praise the Lord.[c]


Our Daily Bread reading and devotion

Read: James 1:12-21

12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.[a] 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

Hearing and Doing the Word

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

The Hidden Door

September 5, 2012 — by Dave Branon

Blessed is the man who endures temptation. —James 1:12

It wasn’t the first time it happened in sports, and it certainly won’t be the last. But perhaps mentioning it again can help keep us from making a similar shameful error.

A college coach—one noted for his Christian character—resigned in disgrace after it was discovered that he had violated rules clearly spelled out by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. One magazine article concluded: “His integrity was one of the great myths of college football.”

This was certainly an embarrassing time for the coach, but here’s the most sobering part: It can happen to any of us. The temptation to go behind the hidden door of secrecy in our lives and do things that dishonor the Lord haunts us all. Indeed, we are all capable of turning our own integrity into a myth—of turning our testimony for Jesus into a sham. No matter what the temptation, we are all vulnerable.

So, how do we avoid giving in? We acknowledge the universality of temptation (1 Cor. 10:13). We recognize the dangerous results of giving in to sin (James 1:13-15). We keep accountable to fellow believers (Eccl. 4:9-12). And we plead with God for help not to fall (Matt. 26:41). Only God’s grace and power can keep us from falling and pick us up when we do.

The devil is clever, deceiving us all,
He cunningly causes the strongest to fall;
But we his sly methods are sure to discern
By making God’s warnings our daily concern. —D. De Haan
Each sin has its door of entrance; let’s keep that door closed.


My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
September 5, 2012

Watching With Jesus

Stay here and watch with Me —Matthew 26:38

Watch with Me.” Jesus was saying, in effect, “Watch with no private point of view at all, but watch solely and entirely with Me.” In the early stages of our Christian life, we do not watch with Jesus, we watch for Him. We do not watch with Him through the revealed truth of the Bible even in the circumstances of our own lives. Our Lord is trying to introduce us to identification with Himself through a particular “Gethsemane” experience of our own. But we refuse to go, saying, “No, Lord, I can’t see the meaning of this, and besides, it’s very painful.” And how can we possibly watch with Someone who is so incomprehensible? How are we going to understand Jesus sufficiently to watch with Him in His Gethsemane, when we don’t even know why He is suffering? We don’t know how to watch with Him— we are only used to the idea of Jesus watching with us.

The disciples loved Jesus Christ to the limit of their natural capacity, but they did not fully understand His purpose. In the Garden of Gethsemane they slept as a result of their own sorrow, and at the end of three years of the closest and most intimate relationship of their lives they “all . . . forsook Him and fled” (Matthew 26:56).

“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit . . .” (Acts 2:4). “They” refers to the same people, but something wonderful has happened between these two events— our Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension— and the disciples have now been invaded and “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Our Lord had said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you . . .” (Acts 1:8). This meant that they learned to watch with Him the rest of their lives.


A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft

When You Know An Ugly Secret - #6693

Wednesday, September 5, 2012


When you're a little kid, they're pretty rough on you if you tell on somebody else. Remember? Oh, maybe that happened to you. Oh, the names they call you when you do that are not particularly complimentary: tattle-tale, traitor; depending on your generation - rat fink. Those are the nice names. It gets worse than that. Kids almost get to feeling that telling about something wrong is worse than doing something wrong. That's not true.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When You Know an Ugly Secret."

Well, our word for today from the Word of God is from 1 Samuel 3. It's about a man named Eli. He was the main man at the temple in those days, and unfortunately for Eli, even though he wasn't carrying out any gross sin that we know about, his sons were like out-of-control. They would have been the media scandal of the day, because they used their position as priests at the temple to take money for themselves, and to take women for themselves. And God passes His verdict as we look at 1 Samuel 3, beginning at verse 11.

"And the Lord said to Samuel: 'See, I'm about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family - from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them."

Did you notice that? God says, "I'm going to judge Eli because of the sin, not that he did, but that he knew about." See, with God, knowledge equals responsibility. Now, that's not just in God's scales of justice. Remember way back at the Watergate hearings and how they kept hammering home the question, "What did you know?" And, "When did you know it?"

People who know about a violation of the law and don't do anything about it can be convicted of charges like conspiracy, or obstruction of justice. See, God insists that you take action if you know about wrong that's being done. The Bible says, "He that covers sin will not prosper."

Think how much embarrassment has come to the cause of Christ because of scandals involving Christian leaders, TV evangelists, pastors, and how much of that could have been avoided if people who knew about sin had acted on that knowledge. Often we just bury the secret. Why? Sometimes it's blind loyalty, but sin's going to grow like a cancer. And it will be discovered, but by then the damage will be irreparable. Sometimes it's because of vested interest; we're afraid of what we might lose. But look at Eli. You'll lose a lot more if you don't.

There's a pattern for doing this in Matthew 18, beginning at verse 15. First, you go to the person one-on-one with the sin that you know about. Talk to them about it. If that doesn't work, you go with one or two others. Then Jesus said you go to the church or whatever large group is appropriate. And finally, if they don't respond, Jesus said you cut off fellowship from them, so they'll come to their senses. You do no one a favor when you know about sin and you don't deal with it.

What happens when you don't deal with it, when you don't confront it, is that you are condemning the one who is doing it to greater consequences, and you condemn others to being hurt by that covered-up sin. Oh, and you condemn yourself to judgment from God for covering it up. The longer you wait, the worse the fallout's going to be. So, don't be guilty of obstructing justice - God's justice that is. Remember, when you know an ugly secret, knowledge equals responsibility.