2 Chronicles 14 Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

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Max Lucado: God's Remodeling Project

Let God do His work in you!  Let His grace trump your arrest record, critics, and guilty conscience.  See yourself for what you are-God's personal remodeling project.  No longer defined by failures but refined by them.  Trusting less in what you do and more in what Christ did.  Convinced that God is just warming up in this overture called life, that hope has its reasons and death has its due date.
Grace.  Let it, let him, so seep into the crusty cracks of your life that everything softens. Then let it, let him, bubble to the surface, like a spring in the Sahara, in words of kindness and deeds of generosity!  Not perfect, but closer to perfection than you've ever been.  This happens when Grace happens.
From GRACE

2 Chronicles 14

And Abijah rested with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David. Asa his son succeeded him as king, and in his days the country was at peace for ten years.

Asa King of Judah

2 Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. 3 He removed the foreign altars and the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles.[d] 4 He commanded Judah to seek the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and to obey his laws and commands. 5 He removed the high places and incense altars in every town in Judah, and the kingdom was at peace under him. 6 He built up the fortified cities of Judah, since the land was at peace. No one was at war with him during those years, for the Lord gave him rest.

7 “Let us build up these towns,” he said to Judah, “and put walls around them, with towers, gates and bars. The land is still ours, because we have sought the Lord our God; we sought him and he has given us rest on every side.” So they built and prospered.

8 Asa had an army of three hundred thousand men from Judah, equipped with large shields and with spears, and two hundred and eighty thousand from Benjamin, armed with small shields and with bows. All these were brave fighting men.

9 Zerah the Cushite marched out against them with an army of thousands upon thousands and three hundred chariots, and came as far as Mareshah. 10 Asa went out to meet him, and they took up battle positions in the Valley of Zephathah near Mareshah.

11 Then Asa called to the Lord his God and said, “Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. Lord, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.”

12 The Lord struck down the Cushites before Asa and Judah. The Cushites fled, 13 and Asa and his army pursued them as far as Gerar. Such a great number of Cushites fell that they could not recover; they were crushed before the Lord and his forces. The men of Judah carried off a large amount of plunder. 14 They destroyed all the villages around Gerar, for the terror of the Lord had fallen on them. They looted all these villages, since there was much plunder there. 15 They also attacked the camps of the herders and carried off droves of sheep and goats and camels. Then they returned to Jerusalem.


Our Daily Bread reading and devotion

Read: Luke 15:1-7

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

15 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

T-Ball Faith

January 2, 2013 — by Randy Kilgore

The joy of the Lord is your strength. —Nehemiah 8:10

Whoever dreamed up T-ball is a genius: Every kid on the field gets a taste of the fun and joy of the game before they taste the disappointment of striking out.

In T-ball, a baseball is placed on a rubber tee about waist-high to the 5- and 6-year-old batters. Players swing until they hit the ball and then run. On my first night as a coach, the very first batter hit the ball far into the outfield. Suddenly every player from every position ran to get the ball instead of staying where they were supposed to. When one of them reached it, there was nobody left in the infield for him to throw it to! All the players were standing together—cheering with unrestrained exuberance!

Those who have recently come to know Jesus as Savior have an unrestrained joy that is a delight to be around as well. We rejoice with them, and so do the angels in heaven! (Luke 15:7). New Christians are in love with God and excited about knowing Him and learning from His Word.

Those who’ve been Christians for a long time may get discouraged with the struggles of the Christian life and forget the joy of new-found faith. So take the opportunity to rejoice with those who’ve come to faith. God can use them to inspire you to renew your own commitment to Jesus.

Rejoice, O soul, your debt is paid,
For all your sins on Christ were laid;
We’ve been redeemed, we’re justified—
And all because the Savior died. —D. DeHaan
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation. —Psalm 51:12


My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
January 2, 2013

Will You Go Out Without Knowing?

He went out, not knowing where he was going —Hebrews 11:8

Have you ever “gone out” in this way? If so, there is no logical answer possible when anyone asks you what you are doing. One of the most difficult questions to answer in Christian work is, “What do you expect to do?”You don’t know what you are going to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing. Continually examine your attitude toward God to see if you are willing to “go out” in every area of your life, trusting in God entirely. It is this attitude that keeps you in constant wonder, because you don’t know what God is going to do next. Each morning as you wake, there is a new opportunity to “go out,” building your confidence in God. “. . . do not worry about your life . . . nor about the body . . .” (Luke 12:22). In other words, don’t worry about the things that concerned you before you did “go out.”

Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do— He reveals to you who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you “go out” in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised one iota by anything He does?

Believe God is always the God you know Him to be when you are nearest to Him. Then think how unnecessary and disrespectful worry is! Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to “go out” in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to “go out” through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.


A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft

Storm Surge - #6778

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

So an angry girl named Sandy came storming up the Eastern Seaboard - the largest Atlantic hurricane ever up to that point. It was sort of like a Halloween snowstorm that happened the previous year that dumped a crazy two feet of snow onto Connecticut, where I just happened to be. And Sandy, then, did what "Snowy" had done the year before; made a whole lot of folks change their plans.

Planes didn't fly and trips weren't happening. Gazillions of "important" meetings and appointments were cancelled. Even the Stock Exchange and the U. N. bowed to Miss Sandy. She pushed the Presidential candidates off center stage and cancelled potentially decisive campaign events in the final week of a nail-bitingly close election.

Yup, storms change your plans. Suddenly, you have no control over events. The question is, do we ever have control over events? When you consider that God decides if we take our next breath, our fiercely defended "control" of our lives, that's just the illusion of control.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Storm Surge."

The sheer power - the uncontested authority of a major storm, they're really just intense reminders of a bedrock fact that we tend to forget: God's in charge and we're not. Job observed that it's God who "loads the clouds with moisture" and "scatters His lightning with them. At His direction they swirl around over the face of the whole earth to do whatever He commands them." Why? It says, "So that all men He has made may know His work, He stops every man from his labor" (Job 37:7-12). Okay, God's God, we're not. Just ask Hurricane Sandy.

Storms aren't random - whether they're the meteorological kind, or they're medical, or marital, or the hurricane of a broken relationship, a broken dream, a broken heart. And our word for today from the Word of God, Nahum 1:3 tells us that, "The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and the storm."

Now, here's what I know from the times "severe weather" has hit my life and the lives of people I love. You start asking important questions then that you'd never ask if it weren't for the storm; questions that make you stop and think about what's really important and what really isn't. You face issues you might not face otherwise, and the storm pushes to the front some of the basics that you've pushed to the edges.

Most importantly, the storm that's blowing you around can actually blow you Home to the God of the storm. Because, sadly, we just keep doing what we want to do with our life until there's something we can't fix, or we can't change, or we can't control. So your storm may be your wake-up call to change your plans, to take your clenched hands off the wheel and let the One who should have been driving all along take you where you were created to be.

John Newton, the author of "Amazing Grace," was a slave trader until a violent storm hit his ship and he cried out to Jesus to save him from his sin. That's why he could say, "I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see." It was the loss of my baby brother that brought my dad, and my mom, and me to see our need of Jesus. So many could testify that the worst thing that ever happened to them turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to them, because it drove them into the life-changing arms of Jesus.

Strangely, we often see better in a storm. Often, that's when we finally see that Man hanging on the cross and realize the sin He was paying for was mine. Battered and confused, we finally open our soul to the love that we've been looking for all our lives. And we find in Jesus what the Bible calls "an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19). The howling winds leave us, not lost, but found and finally at peace. In the arms of the One who speaks "Peace, be still!" to the storm in your soul.

Maybe you're ready for that inner peace that Jesus died to give you and the security of knowing that you belong to the only Man who ever walked out of His grave under His own power. He'll walk into your life at your invitation. You want to know how to begin with Jesus? Would you go to our website today, YoursForLife.net, and you'll find out there. And you will finally find your way Home.