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MaxLucado.com: Grace Comes After You
God’s grace! It has a wildness about it. A white-water, rip-tide, turn-you-upside-downess about it. Grace comes after you!
Some years ago I underwent a heart procedure. I asked the surgeon,
“You’re burning the interior of my heart, right?”
“Correct.”
“You intend to kill the misbehaving cells, yes?”
“That’s my plan.”
“As long as you’re in there, could you take your little blowtorch to some of my greed, selfishness, superiority, and guilt?”
He smiled, “Sorry, that’s out of my pay grade!”
But it’s not out of God’s! We’d be wrong to think this change happens overnight. We’d be equally wrong to assume change never happens at all. It may be in fits and spurts—but it comes!
Titus 2:11 says, “The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared.”
The floodgates are open, and the water’s out. You just never know when grace will seep in. Could you use some?
Acts 17:16-34
New International Version (NIV)
In Athens
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Ephesians 6:5-9
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
Why We Work
September 3, 2012 — by Bill Crowder
Not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. —Ephesians 6:6
In the late 1660s, Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to re-design St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. According to legend, one day he visited the construction site of this great edifice and was unrecognized by the workers. Wren walked about the site, asking several of the men what they were doing. One worker replied, “I am cutting a piece of stone.” A second worker responded, “I’m earning five shillings two pence a day.” A third, however, had a different perspective: “I am helping Christopher Wren build a magnificent cathedral to the glory of God.” What a contrast in the attitude and motivation of that worker!
Why we do what we do is extremely important, particularly when it comes to our working lives and careers. That’s why Paul challenged the Ephesians to do their work, “not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men” (Eph. 6:6-7).
If we do our work merely to earn a paycheck or satisfy a supervisor, we will fall short of the highest motivation—doing our best as evidence of our devotion to God. So, why do we work? As that laborer told Wren, we work “to the glory of God.”
Be not always wanting
Some other work to do,
But gratefully perform the task
The Lord has given you. —Anon.
No matter who signs your paycheck, you are really working for God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
September 3, 2012
Pouring Out the Water of Satisfaction
He would not drink it, but poured it out to the Lord —2 Samuel 23:16
What has been like “water from the well of Bethlehem” to you recently— love, friendship, or maybe some spiritual blessing ( 2 Samuel 23:16 )? Have you taken whatever it may be, even at the risk of damaging your own soul, simply to satisfy yourself? If you have, then you cannot pour it out “to the Lord.” You can never set apart for God something that you desire for yourself to achieve your own satisfaction. If you try to satisfy yourself with a blessing from God, it will corrupt you. You must sacrifice it, pouring it out to God— something that your common sense says is an absurd waste.
How can I pour out “to the Lord” natural love and spiritual blessings? There is only one way— I must make a determination in my mind to do so. There are certain things other people do that could never be received by someone who does not know God, because it is humanly impossible to repay them. As soon as I realize that something is too wonderful for me, that I am not worthy to receive it, and that it is not meant for a human being at all, I must pour it out “to the Lord.” Then these very things that have come to me will be poured out as “rivers of living water” all around me (John 7:38). And until I pour these things out to God, they actually endanger those I love, as well as myself, because they will be turned into lust. Yes, we can be lustful in things that are not sordid and vile. Even love must be transformed by being poured out “to the Lord.”
If you have become bitter and sour, it is because when God gave you a blessing you hoarded it. Yet if you had poured it out to Him, you would have been the sweetest person on earth. If you are always keeping blessings to yourself and never learning to pour out anything “to the Lord,” other people will never have their vision of God expanded through you.
A Word
with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Life in the Backwards Seat - #6691
Monday, September 3, 2012
Our grandson's gaining weight, and is he ever going to be glad! (Unlike his grandfather who happens to find weight gain depressing.) But he's soon going to be 20 pounds. And that means his parents will turn his car seat around. No more looking out the rear window. That's a great feeling! You know, you don't have to keep looking back at where you've already been. It's all about looking at where you're going - now.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Life in the Backwards Seat."
Now, that's a change that's good news for even us grown up kids; turning your "seat" around I mean. Moving past that depressing view you get when you keep looking back at where you've been, especially when what you see is the hits, the hurts and the hard times in your past. Every time I look through that window, clouds roll in and start to cover the sun. If I look back a lot, I'll end up looking down even more.
I flew to a meeting recently and I had that same predictable experience at baggage claim. Not a missing suitcase. I'm talking about the mystery suitcase. The one that just keeps going round and round on the baggage carousel, nobody ever claims it. We just keep watching that same old bag go by again and again.
Well, sadly, too many folks live their life that way - watching the same old baggage over and over again, and triggering those all-too-familiar - and often disabling - feelings of resentment, anger, depression, "poor me," and victim-itis.
Not too long ago, my wife and I were talking with a woman who had been hurt and wounded quite a bit. And as she retold it, we could watch her visibly wilt. I had to share with her a bold and hopeful alternative from the Bible. It's one I have fallen back on so many times. It's a "catch me, I'm falling" prescription for us when the old baggage circles back on our radar.
In our word for today from the Word of God in Isaiah 43:18-19, God says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! It is springing up before you. Do you not perceive it?" Now, "Dwell." That's an interesting word. Don't live in, don't camp out on, don't stay in what happened in the past. The enemy of my soul, the devil, loves to have me living in the past, because it can't be changed. And dwelling on what can't be changed equals despair.
Now, while our enemy keeps pointing backwards, our Savior keeps pointing to what's ahead. "I'm doing a new thing" He says. But those who insist on rehashing the old things will be looking the wrong way and they'll miss God's new thing.
Now, God doesn't ask us to deny the past. But He tells us we don't have to be defined by our past. He invites us to release all the hurts - and all the hurters - to Him to leave justice and payback to Him. To open up the locked closet doors of your past, to drag all that's ugly there into the light and face it once and for all, but with Jesus standing there by your side. And then let the healing begin.
For 2,000 years, wounded people have found Jesus to be the Lord of New Beginnings. See, first, the Bible says He makes us a "new creation in Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:17) - with re-wired desires, self-worth, hopes and a passion to live pure. He says, "The old has gone; a new life has begun." That's the rebirth miracle He made possible by dying to cancel and forgive every sin you've ever committed - including mine.
Jesus forgives what no one else can forgive and He heals what no one else can heal. With Jesus running things, your life becomes what He's going to do for you and through you - rather than what others have done to you. You really can turn your seat around. It's much better to see where you're going than where you've already been. Just ask my grandson.
You may be at a point where you're ready for a new beginning - where the hurts and the failures of the past no longer will define who you are. That is when it's time for Jesus, who died for all the sin and all the hurts of the past. He heals the brokenhearted; He forgives every sin, and He is the Lord of new beginnings. If you're ready for that, say, "Jesus, I'm Yours beginning today."
Go to our website. Check out there the information I've put there about how to begin your personal re-birthing relationship with Him. YoursForLife.net. Hope has a name; the name is Jesus.
