MaxLucado.com: Our Feet in His Hands
Oct 25, 2012 10:01 pm
Today's MP3
“Jesus poured water into a bowl and began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel wrapped around Him.” (John 13:5)
We say, “No! Don’t wash their feet, Jesus. Tell them to wash Yours!” Do we object because we don’t want to see God washing feet? Or do we object because we don’t want to do the same?
Logic says, “Put up your fists.” Jesus says, “Fill up the basin.”
Logic says, “She doesn’t deserve it.” Jesus says, “You’re right, but you don’t, either.”
I don’t understand how God can be so kind to us, but he is. He kneels before us, takes our dirty feet in his hands, and washes them. Not from our dirt, but from our sins. And the cleansing isn’t just a gesture; it’s a necessity. We cannot cleanse our own filth. We cannot remove our own sin. Our feet must be in His hands.
Would you let him wash your feet today?
From A Gentle Thunder
1 Chronicles
Reuben
5 The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel (he was the firstborn, but when he defiled his father’s marriage bed, his rights as firstborn were given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel; so he could not be listed in the genealogical record in accordance with his birthright, 2 and though Judah was the strongest of his brothers and a ruler came from him, the rights of the firstborn belonged to Joseph)— 3 the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel:
Hanok, Pallu, Hezron and Karmi.
4 The descendants of Joel:
Shemaiah his son, Gog his son,
Shimei his son, 5 Micah his son,
Reaiah his son, Baal his son,
6 and Beerah his son, whom Tiglath-Pileser[i] king of Assyria took into exile. Beerah was a leader of the Reubenites.
7 Their relatives by clans, listed according to their genealogical records:
Jeiel the chief, Zechariah, 8 and Bela son of Azaz, the son of Shema, the son of Joel. They settled in the area from Aroer to Nebo and Baal Meon. 9 To the east they occupied the land up to the edge of the desert that extends to the Euphrates River, because their livestock had increased in Gilead.
10 During Saul’s reign they waged war against the Hagrites, who were defeated at their hands; they occupied the dwellings of the Hagrites throughout the entire region east of Gilead.
Gad
11 The Gadites lived next to them in Bashan, as far as Salekah:
12 Joel was the chief, Shapham the second, then Janai and Shaphat, in Bashan.
13 Their relatives, by families, were:
Michael, Meshullam, Sheba, Jorai, Jakan, Zia and Eber—seven in all.
14 These were the sons of Abihail son of Huri, the son of Jaroah, the son of Gilead, the son of Michael, the son of Jeshishai, the son of Jahdo, the son of Buz.
15 Ahi son of Abdiel, the son of Guni, was head of their family.
16 The Gadites lived in Gilead, in Bashan and its outlying villages, and on all the pasturelands of Sharon as far as they extended.
17 All these were entered in the genealogical records during the reigns of Jotham king of Judah and Jeroboam king of Israel.
18 The Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh had 44,760 men ready for military service—able-bodied men who could handle shield and sword, who could use a bow, and who were trained for battle. 19 They waged war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish and Nodab. 20 They were helped in fighting them, and God delivered the Hagrites and all their allies into their hands, because they cried out to him during the battle. He answered their prayers, because they trusted in him. 21 They seized the livestock of the Hagrites—fifty thousand camels, two hundred fifty thousand sheep and two thousand donkeys. They also took one hundred thousand people captive, 22 and many others fell slain, because the battle was God’s. And they occupied the land until the exile.
The Half-Tribe of Manasseh
23 The people of the half-tribe of Manasseh were numerous; they settled in the land from Bashan to Baal Hermon, that is, to Senir (Mount Hermon).
24 These were the heads of their families: Epher, Ishi, Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah and Jahdiel. They were brave warriors, famous men, and heads of their families. 25 But they were unfaithful to the God of their ancestors and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. 26 So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria (that is, Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria), who took the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh into exile. He took them to Halah, Habor, Hara and the river of Gozan, where they are to this day.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Joshua 2:1-14
Rahab Hides the Spies
2 And Joshua the son of Nun sent[a] two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there. 2 And it was told to the king of Jericho, “Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.” 3 Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.” 4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, “True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. 5 And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.” 6 But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof. 7 So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords. And the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out.
8 Before the men[b] lay down, she came up to them on the roof 9 and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. 10 For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.[c] 11 And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. 12 Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign 13 that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” 14 And the men said to her, “Our life for yours even to death! If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the Lord gives us the land we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.”
Even Her?
October 26, 2012 — by Dave Branon
Was not Rahab the harlot also justified? —James 2:25
Imagine looking through your family tree and finding this description of your ancestor: “A prostitute, she harbored enemies of the government in her house. When she was confronted by the authorities, she lied about it.”
What would you do about her? Hide her story from anyone inquiring about your family? Or spotlight and praise her in the legends of your family’s story?
Meet Rahab. If what we read about her in Joshua 2 were all we knew, we might lump her in with all of the other renegades and bad examples in the Bible. But her story doesn’t stop there. Matthew 1:5-6 reveals that she was King David’s great-great grandmother—and that she was in the lineage of our Savior, Jesus. And there’s more. Hebrews 11:31 names Rahab as a woman of faith who was saved from the fall of Jericho (see Josh. 6:17). And in James 2:25, her works of rescue were given as evidence of her righteous faith.
God’s love is amazing that way. He can take people with a bad reputation, transform their lives, and turn them into examples of His love and forgiveness. If you think you’re too bad to be forgiven or if you know someone else who feels that way, read about Rahab and rejoice. If God can turn her into a beacon of righteousness, there’s hope for all of us.
Redemption’s price our Savior paid
When all our sins on Him were laid;
He took our guilt, He bore our shame
That we may glorify His name. —D. DeHaan
Whether our sins are great or small,
Jesus is able to forgive them all.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 26, 2012
What is a Missionary?
Jesus said to them again, ’. . . As the Father has sent Me, I also send you’ —John 20:21
A missionary is someone sent by Jesus Christ just as He was sent by God. The great controlling factor is not the needs of people, but the command of Jesus. The source of our inspiration in our service for God is behind us, not ahead of us. The tendency today is to put the inspiration out in front— to sweep everything together in front of us and make it conform to our definition of success. But in the New Testament the inspiration is put behind us, and is the Lord Jesus Himself. The goal is to be true to Him— to carry out His plans.
Personal attachment to the Lord Jesus and to His perspective is the one thing that must not be overlooked. In missionary work the great danger is that God’s call will be replaced by the needs of the people, to the point that human sympathy for those needs will absolutely overwhelm the meaning of being sent by Jesus. The needs are so enormous, and the conditions so difficult, that every power of the mind falters and fails. We tend to forget that the one great reason underneath all missionary work is not primarily the elevation of the people, their education, nor their needs, but is first and foremost the command of Jesus Christ— “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations . . .” (Matthew 28:19).
When looking back on the lives of men and women of God, the tendency is to say, “What wonderfully keen and intelligent wisdom they had, and how perfectly they understood all that God wanted!” But the keen and intelligent mind behind them was the mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the divine guidance of God being exhibited through childlike people who were “foolish” enough to trust God’s wisdom and His supernatural equipment.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Rooster in Your Heart - #6730
Friday, October 26, 2012
Honestly, I had a tough time sleeping when I was in Singapore some years ago. It was my first time overseas. It was hot all the time there; it's sub-equatorial. And I found myself lying awake almost all night long. I was there with another guy. We were ministering together there, teaching in seminars there. So, since we couldn't sleep, we ended up talking and talking, and the ceiling fan over our heads made about one revolution per minute, so it wasn't doing much good.
Finally about 3:00-3:30, just about time you get to sleep, a little cooler at that point, and you wouldn't know it, you just doze off and suddenly you'd hear a rooster crowing right there in downtown Singapore. The roosters didn't care; they were still crowing. You could hear then right after that, all the sounds of Singapore waking up...thank you Mr. Rooster, I just got to sleep. Now, I didn't grow up on a farm. So this was my first opportunity to listen each morning to the power of a rooster's wakeup call, whether I wanted to wake up or not.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Rooster in Your Heart."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 26. It's a familiar account of the denial of Jesus by His main man, Simon Peter. And in verse 73, we come upon the third time Peter is going to deny his Lord. "After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, 'Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away.' Then he began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, 'I don't know the man!' Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken, 'Before the rooster crows you'll disown me three times.' And he went outside and wept bitterly."
It appears here that Peter betrayed Jesus twice before and didn't deal with what he had done. He managed to get through that okay. But the third time, the Bible says, "He went out and wept bitterly." In fact, the Greek means he went out and wept bitterly and loudly. You could hear this man sobbing aloud after what he had done.
And it was the sound of the rooster that triggered repentance. In a sense, that rooster did to Peter what roosters often do; he woke Peter up. Now, Jesus told us the Holy Spirit would specialize in wakeup calls. He said in John 16, "When the Holy Spirit has come, He will convict the world of sin." When you betray your Lord in some sin or some compromise, there is - in a sense - a rooster calling in your heart saying, "Wake up! Look what you're doing! Do you know how this makes your Savior feel?" It's like an arrow to the heart.
The question is, "What do you do when the Holy Spirit's conviction says, 'What have you done?'" It's possible that the rooster's been crowing in your heart lately; things you've been doing in secret or when you're with that person that maybe you never should have been associated with. Or maybe when you've compromised the truth, or you've neglected your family again, you've hurt the people you love again, you rationalize what you should be repenting of.
Peter graduated from spiritual treason to spiritual greatness after his denial. Why? He let God break his heart over his sin. He responded emotionally to the stabbing pain in his heart. Do you? Spiritual disaster begins when you begin to quench the Spirit; you ignore the call that should wake you up.
Today, through this program, the rooster's crowing again. It's the Holy Spirit saying, "You're breaking Jesus' heart." It's time you shed some tears over it, as He is. It's the cry of a rooster that means a new day is dawning. The conviction of the Holy Spirit can begin a whole new day in your life if you'll wake up.