Acts 7, and Devotionals.

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Max Lucado Daily: A State of Fear

Jesus doesn’t want you to live in a state of fear.  Nor do you.  I bet you’ve never made these statements:

My phobias put such a spring in my step?

Thank God for my pessimism.

I’ve been such a better person since I lost hope!

My doctor says if I don’t begin fretting, I will lose my health!

We’ve learned the high cost of fear!  But to be clear, a dose of fright can keep a child from running across a busy road.  It’s the appropriate reaction to a burning building.

Fear itself is not a sin.  But it can lead to sin.  If we medicate fear with angry outbursts, drinking binges, or sullen withdrawals, we exclude God from the solution and make the situation worse.  Joy-sapping worries.  Day-numbing dread.

Hysteria is not from God.  2 Timothy 1:7 reminds us, “God has not given us a spirit of fear!”

Acts 7:22-43
New International Version (NIV)
22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.

23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’

27 “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28 Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’[a] 29 When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.

30 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’[b] Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.

33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’[c]

35 “This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness.

37 “This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’[d] 38 He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us.

39 “But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’[e] 41 That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. 42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:

“‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
    forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?
43 You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
    and the star of your god Rephan,
    the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile’[f] beyond Babylon.



Our Daily Bread reading and devotion

Read: John 16:7-15

7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because people do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11 and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

12 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

Are You Tuned In?

May 2, 2012 — by Cindy Hess Kasper

The Holy Spirit . . . will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. —John 14:26

When I was growing up, I stayed with my grandparents for a week or two every summer. They lived on a street that dead-ended into some railroad tracks. I would often awaken several times on my first night as the box cars rumbled by or when an engineer blew the train whistle. By the end of my visit, however, I had grown so accustomed to the noise that I could sleep straight through the night without interruption. I had tuned out the sounds.

There are other interruptions that I don’t want to tune out! I love it when my husband unexpectedly brings me a cup of coffee when I’m working at the computer. And it brings me joy when I receive an unexpected call from a friend.

Sometimes we’re tempted to tune out “divine interruptions” of the Holy Spirit instead of listening to His promptings. He may nudge us with a realization that we need to ask forgiveness for something we said or did. Or persistently remind us that we should pray for someone who is experiencing a crisis. Or convict us that we have never fully shared Jesus with a person we care about.

When the Holy Spirit indwells us, He teaches us, convicts us, comforts us, and guides us into truth (John 14:16-17,26; 16:7-8,13). Are you tuned in to the interruption of His voice?

Holy Spirit, help us hear
Your inner promptings, soft and clear;
And help us know Your still, small voice
So we may make God’s will our choice. —D. De Haan
Make the right choice: Obey the Spirit’s voice.


My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
May 2, 2012

The Patience To Wait for the Vision

Though it tarries, wait for it . . . —Habakkuk 2:3

Patience is not the same as indifference; patience conveys the idea of someone who is tremendously strong and able to withstand all assaults. Having the vision of God is the source of patience because it gives us God’s true and proper inspiration. Moses endured, not because of his devotion to his principles of what was right, nor because of his sense of duty to God, but because he had a vision of God. “. . . he endured as seeing Him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). A person who has the vision of God is not devoted to a cause or to any particular issue— he is devoted to God Himself. You always know when the vision is of God because of the inspiration that comes with it. Things come to you with greatness and add vitality to your life because everything is energized by God. He may give you a time spiritually, with no word from Himself at all, just as His Son experienced during His time of temptation in the wilderness. When God does that, simply endure, and the power to endure will be there because you see God.
“Though it tarries, wait for it . . . .” The proof that we have the vision is that we are reaching out for more than we have already grasped. It is a bad thing to be satisfied spiritually. The psalmist said, “What shall I render to the Lord . . . ? I will take up the cup of salvation . . .” (Psalm 116:12-13). We are apt to look for satisfaction within ourselves and say, “Now I’ve got it! Now I am completely sanctified. Now I can endure.” Instantly we are on the road to ruin. Our reach must exceed our grasp. Paul said, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on . . .” (Philippians 3:12). If we have only what we have experienced, we have nothing. But if we have the inspiration of the vision of God, we have more than we can experience. Beware of the danger of spiritual relaxation.


A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft

Who Does Lin Play For? - #6603

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Not long ago hardly anyone had ever heard of Jeremy Lin. Now he's everywhere. When my struggling New York Knicks finally played him, he lit up the scoreboard with these amazing performances, game after game. Now, he's not your typical professional basketball star, that's for sure. He's a Harvard grad. He's Asian-American. He's refreshingly humble. Oh, and he unashamedly loves Jesus.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Who Does Lin Play For?"

Now, he doesn't "Tebow." But he wears a bracelet that reveals where his heart is. It says, "For Jesus' name I play." Oh, sure, he plays on the New York Knicks, but he plays for Jesus. Which suggests a pretty good self-exam question to be asking, even for a sports klutz like me, "Who do I play for?" Now, that probing question demands that I stop and take stock on two fronts: whose glory am I playing for and whose approval am I playing for?

Well, our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 10:31 lays it down straight on the glory issue. It says, "...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." And in Isaiah 42:8 it says, "I am the Lord; that is My name! I will not give My glory to another..." Boy, you don't want to mess with that!

So how much of what I do is to get people to notice me; to give me strokes? That's not a question any of us can answer once and for all. We've got to answer it before every "game." Can I honestly say it's "for Jesus' name I play," that I want Him to get all the attention, all the credit? At the moment I catch myself thinking, "Hey, ain't I somethin!" I've got to aim that spotlight toward heaven and say, "No! Isn't He somethin'!" The alternative is to hijack God's glory. And He just isn't going to let that happen.

But it's not just "whose glory?" that is the issue. There's the whole "whose approval?" thing. See, I'm a firstborn child, but I'm otherwise normal. And they say we oldest kids grow up wanting to please mom and dad, and we get real good at it. And soon, well we can intuitively figure out what it will take to please a teacher, or a boss, or friends, or people in general. We're not alone, of course, in being people-pleasers, but we're pretty good at it.

Now, it's easy to become an approval junkie, playing to get people to like you, to validate you. But ultimately, it's a life of slavery. It's a life of fear. You become, to a large extent, shaped and defined by other people's expectations - a slave. Oh, and then there's the fear thing: fear of rejection, fear of not being liked, which will, at some point, keep you from doing the right thing. People-pleasing becomes the gateway drug to sinful compromise of the truth, your integrity, your purity, your convictions, your Savior's name. It's a price that's too high to pay. The Bible nails it again, "Fear of man will prove to be a snare" (Proverbs 29:25).

The Bible writer, Paul, asks disturbingly: "Am I trying to win the approval of men or of God? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10). Ouch! And then, listen to Jeremiah, "Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not" (Jeremiah 45:5).

Now, if Jeremy Lin's playing for Jesus, then he's a free man. Free from the dead-end street of stealing God's glory; free from the bondage and insecurity of trying to make everybody happy. Life is honestly a whole lot less confusing and conflicted when you've got only one person to please - the Person who loves you unconditionally, unendingly, unsparingly. Jesus, who abandoned His glory in heaven and the acclaim of angels to rescue you and me.


I'll never forget the lesson I learned the day that my young son was helping me with yard work. I was mowing, and he was doing the clipping after me. And at one point, I kind of flashed a smile his way. And a few minutes later, he came over and he shouted above all the mower noise, "Daddy, could you please do that again?" I turned down the mower and I said, "Do what again, son?" "Could you just smile at me again, Daddy? It's your smile that keeps me going."

That's what I want. I want to live for one thing - my Father's smile.