(Has God spoken to you lately if not click to listen to God's teaching?)
Max Lucado Daily: How Quickly We Forget
Oh how quickly we forget. So much happens through the years. So many changes within. So many alterations without. And somewhere, back there, we leave Him. We don’t turn away from Him—we just don’t take Him with us. Assignments come. Promotions come. Budgets are made. Kids are born, and Christ—the Christ Jesus is forgotten.
Has it been a while since you stared at the heavens in speechless amazement? Has it been a while since you realized God’s divinity and your carnality? He is still there. He has not left. Do yourself a favor. Stand before Him again. Or better, allow Him to stand before you.
A man is never the same after he simultaneously sees his despair and Jesus’ grace. To see the despair without the grace is destructive. To see the grace without the despair is futility. But to see them both is conversion!
from Six Hours One Friday
Isaiah 27
Deliverance of Israel
27 In that day,
the Lord will punish with his sword—
his fierce, great and powerful sword—
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea.
2 In that day—
“Sing about a fruitful vineyard:
3 I, the Lord, watch over it;
I water it continually.
I guard it day and night
so that no one may harm it.
4 I am not angry.
If only there were briers and thorns confronting me!
I would march against them in battle;
I would set them all on fire.
5 Or else let them come to me for refuge;
let them make peace with me,
yes, let them make peace with me.”
6 In days to come Jacob will take root,
Israel will bud and blossom
and fill all the world with fruit.
7 Has the Lord struck her
as he struck down those who struck her?
Has she been killed
as those were killed who killed her?
8 By warfare[c] and exile you contend with her—
with his fierce blast he drives her out,
as on a day the east wind blows.
9 By this, then, will Jacob’s guilt be atoned for,
and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:
When he makes all the altar stones
to be like limestone crushed to pieces,
no Asherah poles[d] or incense altars
will be left standing.
10 The fortified city stands desolate,
an abandoned settlement, forsaken like the wilderness;
there the calves graze,
there they lie down;
they strip its branches bare.
11 When its twigs are dry, they are broken off
and women come and make fires with them.
For this is a people without understanding;
so their Maker has no compassion on them,
and their Creator shows them no favor.
12 In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, Israel, will be gathered up one by one. 13 And in that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 2 Timothy 2:1-10
English Standard Version (ESV)
A Good Soldier of Christ Jesus
2 You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men[a] who will be able to teach others also. 3 Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. 5 An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. 6 It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. 7 Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.
8 Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
Living Testament
March 13, 2013 — by Dennis Fisher
Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel. —2 Timothy 2:8
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| Watchman Nee |
“Christ is the Son of God who died for the redemption of sinners and was resurrected after three days. This is the greatest truth in the universe. I die because of my belief in Christ—Watchman Nee.”
Tradition says that the apostle Paul also was martyred for his faith in Christ. In a letter written shortly before his death, Paul exhorted his readers: “Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel, for which I suffer trouble . . . ; but the Word of God is not chained” (2 Tim. 2:8-9).
We may not be called upon to be martyred as witnesses to the reality of Christ—as millions of His followers through the centuries have been—but we are all called to be a living testament of Jesus’ work on our behalf. No matter the outcome, from a heart of gratitude for God’s gracious gift we can tell others what Jesus has done for us.
The Christ of God to glorify,
His grace in us to magnify;
His Word of life to all make known—
Be this our work, and this alone. —Whittle
Let your life as well as your lips speak for Christ.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
March 13, 2013
God’s Total Surrender to Us
For God so loved the world that He gave . . . —John 3:16
Salvation does not mean merely deliverance from sin or the experience of personal holiness. The salvation which comes from God means being completely delivered from myself, and being placed into perfect union with Him. When I think of my salvation experience, I think of being delivered from sin and gaining personal holiness. But salvation is so much more! It means that the Spirit of God has brought me into intimate contact with the true Person of God Himself. And as I am caught up into total surrender to God, I become thrilled with something infinitely greater than myself.
To say that we are called to preach holiness or sanctification is to miss the main point. We are called to proclaim Jesus Christ (see 1 Corinthians 2:2). The fact that He saves from sin and makes us holy is actually part of the effect of His wonderful and total surrender to us.
If we are truly surrendered, we will never be aware of our own efforts to remain surrendered. Our entire life will be consumed with the One to whom we surrender. Beware of talking about surrender if you know nothing about it. In fact, you will never know anything about it until you understand that John 3:16 means that God completely and absolutely gave Himself to us. In our surrender, we must give ourselves to God in the same way He gave Himself for us— totally, unconditionally, and without reservation. The consequences and circumstances resulting from our surrender will never even enter our mind, because our life will be totally consumed with Him.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Say It In My Language - #6828
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
So I'm settling into my hotel room when I'm out of town, and I'm going to turn on the TV probably to get a little of the local flavor. I especially like to watch the local weather and the local news. That's pretty much what I do at home. If I'm in the U. S. listening to the local news and weather, well that's easy. It gets kind of frustrating sometimes in another country.
Like I was in Amsterdam for a major conference, and I did what I just described there. I turned on the TV as I was unpacking in my hotel room, and I saw a man communicating earnestly. He was telling viewers everything they should know: the local news, the weather for tomorrow. Of course I couldn't understand a word he was saying; it was all in Dutch, and it was frustrating. He knew it, I wanted to know it, but the information was not in a language I could understand. You may know some folks who feel the same way toward you.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Say It In My Language."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts chapter 2, where we have a communications miracle called Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in Christians beginning at this point, and the disciples are preaching on the street corner in Jerusalem. The problem is the disciples don't speak many languages; they have their own language they speak. The audience is very multilingual, representing many language groups, and Hebrew just isn't going to "cut it" to get across to most of them. Listen to what happened.
In verse 1, "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place." Verse 4, "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language." And then it says later on in verse 11, the people say, "We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own languages."
Well, that was the key. They were impressed that they heard the Good News in their own language. In one sense, that was a special miracle for a special occasion. But it's still true that our message has no effect until a person hears it in a language he can understand.
We have people right around us that we're trying to share Christ with, but we're sort of like that Dutch newsman I heard. We're giving the information, but the person who needs it just doesn't understand it in the language we're giving it in.
Maybe we've got a language problem. You see, when you become a Christian, right away you start hanging around the church and picking up a wonderful Christian vocabulary. We get used to expressing Christ in religious terms, but they are terms that a lost person just doesn't understand.
There may be someone close to you right now and they're rejecting Christ. Maybe they've never heard about Him in their language. They don't understand all our church talk - our Christianese. They need to hear the Gospel expressed in the language of sports, or business, or music if that's their thing, or gardening, or parenting, or computers, or the language of the medical profession, something they can relate to. It's lazy just to say it in the religious jargon you're most comfortable with. Think about that lost person. Learn to think "lost".
Walk a mile in his shoes, actually in his vocabulary. Look at his interests. Look at how the truth of the Gospel could be communicated and illustrated in his terms. When a missionary goes to the mission field, they don't just transmit the Gospel, they translate the Gospel. That's why they go to language school before they go to the mission field. We need to translate the message. This is information upon which their eternity depends.
I sat in that Dutch hotel room and I murmured, "Say it in my language, will you?" There's someone near you who doesn't have Christ who's waiting for words they can understand. Would you say it in their language?
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