Max Lucado Daily: Blind Ambition
Success at all cost. Becoming a legend in one’s own time. Climbing the ladder. King of the mountain. Top of the heap. We call it blind ambition!
We make heroes out of people who are ambitious. We hold them up as models for our kids. And rightly so, for this world would be in bad shape without people who dream of touching the heavens. Ambition is a gift in the soul which creates disenchantment with the ordinary.
But left unchecked it becomes an insatiable addiction to power and prestige. The husband who feeds his career with twelve-hour days, the social-conscious mother who never misses a chance to serve on a committee. “It’s all for a good cause,” she fools herself.
Blind ambition. Distorted values. God won’t tolerate it. Blind ambition is a giant step away from God and a step closer to catastrophe!
From God Came Near
Jude 1
Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,
To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for[a] Jesus Christ:
2 Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.
The Sin and Doom of Ungodly People
3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about[b] long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
5 Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord[c] at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
8 In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. 9 But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”[d] 10 Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct—as irrational animals do—will destroy them.
11 Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.
12 These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”[e] 16 These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.
A Call to Persevere
17 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.[f]
Doxology
24 To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— 25 to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
Footnotes:
Jude 1:1 Or by; or in
Jude 1:4 Or individuals who were marked out for condemnation
Jude 1:5 Some early manuscripts Jesus
Jude 1:9 Jude is alluding to the Jewish Testament of Moses (approximately the first century a.d.).
Jude 1:15 From the Jewish First Book of Enoch (approximately the first century b.c.)
Jude 1:23 The Greek manuscripts of these verses vary at several points.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Job 2:3-13
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”
4 “Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. 5 But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
6 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.”
7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. 8 Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.
9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
10 He replied, “You are talking like a foolish[a] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
11 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.
Footnotes:
Job 2:10 The Hebrew word rendered foolish denotes moral deficiency.
December 26, 2013 — by Julie Ackerman Link
They sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great. —Job 2:13
After 20 children and 6 staff members were murdered in a Connecticut school, the entire nation was stunned that such a horrific thing could happen. Everyone focused on the tragedy and the questions surrounding it: What kind of person would do such a thing, and why? How can we prevent it from happening again? How can we help the survivors? Amid the chaos, an unlikely group moved in and made a difference.
From Chicago came dogs— specially trained golden retrievers that offered nothing except affection. Dogs don’t speak; they simply offer their presence. Children traumatized by the violence opened up to them, expressing fears and emotions they had not spoken to any adult. Tim Hetzner of Lutheran Church Charities said, “The biggest part of their training is just learning to be quiet.”
As we learn from the book of Job, people in grief do not always need words. Sometimes they need someone to sit silently with them, to listen when they need to speak, and to hug them when their sorrow turns to sobs.
God may not intervene to change circumstances and He may not explain suffering, but He comforts us through the presence of other believers (Col. 4:8).
He’s with us in the valley,
Amid the darkest night
He tells us in our sorrow;
Faith will give way to sight. —D. DeHaan
Listening may be the most loving and Christlike thing you do today.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
December 26, 2013
“Walk in the Light”
If we walk in the light as He is in the light . . . the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin —1 John 1:7
To mistake freedom from sin only on the conscious level of our lives for complete deliverance from sin by the atonement through the Cross of Christ is a great error. No one fully knows what sin is until he is born again. Sin is what Jesus Christ faced at Calvary. The evidence that I have been delivered from sin is that I know the real nature of sin in me. For a person to really know what sin is requires the full work and deep touch of the atonement of Jesus Christ, that is, the imparting of His absolute perfection.
The Holy Spirit applies or administers the work of the atonement to us in the deep unconscious realm as well as in the conscious realm. And it is not until we truly perceive the unrivaled power of the Spirit in us that we understand the meaning of 1 John 1:7 , which says, “. . . the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” This verse does not refer only to conscious sin, but also to the tremendously profound understanding of sin which only the Holy Spirit in me can accomplish.
I must “walk in the light as He is in the light . . .”— not in the light of my own conscience, but in God’s light. If I will walk there, with nothing held back or hidden, then this amazing truth is revealed to me: “. . . the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses [me] from all sin” so that God Almighty can see nothing to rebuke in me. On the conscious level it produces a keen, sorrowful knowledge of what sin really is. The love of God working in me causes me to hate, with the Holy Spirit’s hatred for sin, anything that is not in keeping with God’s holiness. To “walk in the light” means that everything that is of the darkness actually drives me closer to the center of the light.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thick Ice - #7034
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Let me give you a little weather preference test; as if we get to vote. Why don't you rank these one, two, three from the best to the worst: rain, snow, ice. I just gave you my ranking. Rain is no problem. I grew up in the Midwest; and I lived in the Northeast and so I can handle snow. Even when you have to walk or drive, there's at least like something to dig into. But ice? Oh, man, ice storms can leave some very nice things behind. Every branch, limb, and home is glistening with this beautiful coating of ice. But it is a pain if you've got to go anywhere. Reminds me of an old song, "Freeze a Jolly Good Fellow."
Well, anyway, we had some major league ice storms this past winter, and I went out one morning and I found my car entombed with this thick, hard armor of ice. I could have just tried to chip it away. In fact I started to do that. But I would have either damaged the car or damaged its' owner. So I decided to work smart. I let the car run for a while, and I warmed it up from the inside. You know what happened. A few minutes later that ice came off pretty easily.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Thick Ice."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts chapter 16. It's kind of about ice around a heart. See, the ice around a car is hard to penetrate, but the ice around a person is even harder. Maybe you can think of a person that you're concerned for right now who's pretty hard. Maybe some person who's got an affect on your future or your security, and there's ice around them.
Well, almost everyone has at least one impossible person in their world; one person whose ice you just can't seem to get through. Let's look at God's way of getting through the ice. For example, in Acts 16:14 , the missionary Paul comes upon a woman named Lydia, a prominent merchant in her town, and it says, "The Lord opened her heart to respond."
Back in the Old Testament Saul didn't want to be the first king of Israel until it says in 1 Samuel 10:9 , "The Lord changed his heart." Proverbs 21:21 it says, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. He directs it like a water course wherever He pleases." See, God is in the heart changing business; the heart warming business.
Think about the person in your world who's hard to reach. It might be a defiant or a wandering child, or an unresponsive mate. Maybe you've got a hard-to-talk-to boss, or employee, or a coworker, or fellow student, or a person who will be making the decisions that could greatly affect your church or your ministry; maybe someone who seems as if he or she won't ever give Jesus a chance. Well, God's method of melting the ice is the same as mine for de-icing my car. Warm that person up from the inside, change their heart, soften their heart, turn their heart your direction.
Malachi 4:6 says, "He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers." So often we try all kinds of things to convince people, and nag them, and politic with them, and lobby them. But recently I've been learning the power of a simple but powerful prayer, "Lord, change his heart; change her heart. Warm them on the inside. Turn their heart your direction, my direction. Move them to be open to what You want."
Many of us have made getting through human ice a lot harder by under-praying in this area. Why don't you focus your praying on the hearts of key people? Ask God to remove the blinders, to give you favor, to neutralize prejudices, to create openness. We would probably have a lot less conflict and a lot more success if we'd spend more time talking to God about a person than we do talking to the person or about the person.
And remember, God is a heart warmer, a heart softener, a heart changer. Pray as if He is. It works with a frozen car or a frozen person. When they've been warmed on the inside it's a lot easier to get through that ice. And believe me, no one can thaw out a heart like God can.
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