(Has God spoken to you lately if not click to listen to God's teaching?)
Max Lucado Daily: Insufficient Funds
Insufficient funds! What an ominous phrase. In the great gallery of famous phrases, “insufficient funds” hangs in the same hallway with “the IRS will audit your account.” “A root canal is necessary,” and “Let’s stop dating and just be friends.”
You’re overdrawn! You gave more than you had to give. You spent more than you had to spend. And guess who has to cough up some cash? What do you do if you don’t have any money? What do you do if you have nothing to deposit but an honest apology and good intentions? You pray that some wealthy soul will make a huge deposit in your account.
If you’re talking about your financial debt, that’s not likely to happen. If you’re talking about your spiritual debt, it already has. Your heavenly Father has covered your shortfall. In God’s house you are covered by the roof of His grace!
from The Great House of God
Romans 9:1-15
New International Version (NIV)
Paul’s Anguish Over Israel
9 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen.
God’s Sovereign Choice
6 It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”[b] 8 In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. 9 For this was how the promise was stated: “At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.”[c]
10 Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”[d] 13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”[e]
14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”[f]
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 1 Timothy 6:6-12
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
Final Charge to Timothy
11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Money Talk
April 15, 2013 — by Dave Branon
Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God. —1 Timothy 6:17
Marilyn and Steven had been married just a few years, and money was tight. But as she looked at their threadbare bedspread, she wanted to replace it. So she decided she would buy a new one with a credit card—hoping to somehow find the money to pay it off.
Her devotional reading for the day surprised her when it pointed her to Proverbs 22:27, “If you lack the means to pay, your very bed will be snatched from under you” (niv). Marilyn decided not to go into debt for a new bedspread that day.
Decisions about the way we spend our money are a personal matter between us and the Lord and can be difficult to make. But God hasn’t left us without help. He tells us: “Honor the Lord with your possessions” (Prov. 3:9), and “You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matt. 6:24 niv).
With such truths in mind, we look further in His Word for help to use money wisely. We find this: “Beware of covetousness” (Luke 12:15). Another says, “The borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7). And in 1 Timothy we read, be “ready to give, willing to share” (6:18).
Money is a big issue. God, who provides for all our needs, can show us how to use it to bring Him honor.
Lord, sometimes money and finances are
overwhelming. It’s hard to know what decisions
to make, so please lead me and give the wisdom
to use my finances in a way that pleases You.
Never let gold become your god.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
April 15, 2013
The Failure To Pay Close Attention
The high places were not removed from Israel. Nevertheless the heart of Asa was loyal all his days —2 Chronicles 15:17
Asa was not completely obedient in the outward, visible areas of his life. He was obedient in what he considered the most important areas, but he was not entirely right. Beware of ever thinking, “Oh, that thing in my life doesn’t matter much.” The fact that it doesn’t matter much to you may mean that it matters a great deal to God. Nothing should be considered a trivial matter by a child of God. How much longer are we going to prevent God from teaching us even one thing? But He keeps trying to teach us and He never loses patience. You say, “I know I am right with God”— yet the “high places” still remain in your life. There is still an area of disobedience. Do you protest that your heart is right with God, and yet there is something in your life He causes you to doubt? Whenever God causes a doubt about something, stop it immediately, no matter what it may be. Nothing in our lives is a mere insignificant detail to God.
Are there some things regarding your physical or intellectual life to which you have been paying no attention at all? If so, you may think you are all correct in the important areas, but you are careless— you are failing to concentrate or to focus properly. You no more need a day off from spiritual concentration on matters in your life than your heart needs a day off from beating. As you cannot take a day off morally and remain moral, neither can you take a day off spiritually and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely His, and it requires paying close attention to keep yourself fit. It also takes a tremendous amount of time. Yet some of us expect to rise above all of our problems, going from one mountaintop experience to another, with only a few minutes’ effort.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, April 15, 2013
Over our lifetime I did a lot of the driving. But this time, I was the passenger and I was being driven to the airport from a speaking assignment. It's a good thing I was the passenger. I glanced over at this little amusement area by the side of the road. We just zipped by it, but I saw a water slide, a miniature golf course, and then I was really startled by what I saw. There was a giant, plastic water faucet and it was hanging, suspended above the ground with water falling out of it. It was not attached to anything, or so you could see it anyway. There was no water source anywhere nearby; it was just hanging there.
Now, if I had been driving, my insurance company would have probably gotten a call that day. Here was this faucet, apparently connected to nothing, running a steady flow of water. I still don't understand how they did it, but I do understand how you and I can.
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| Magic Faucet |
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "There's the Faucet, Where's the Pipes?"
Jesus made a promise to His disciples that could not be fulfilled at the time He gave it. But He can now; that's the good news. And if you'll claim it, you can keep running even when there are no pipes. Our word for today from the Word of God, John 7:37, "On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.' By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not yet been given."
Jesus is saying here, "When my Holy Spirit comes, my followers will have a spiritual fountain in them that will never run dry." That Spirit came at Pentecost, and has come into people's lives on the day they open up to Jesus Christ. If you've done that, then the Holy Spirit is in you. And Jesus said that the supply of resource will come from within like that faucet I saw in mid air. It wasn't connected to any conventional water supplies. "Look, Ma, no pipes!" But it was pouring out water. There was an inner source that would keep it supplied, even when there were no outside sources helping.
That's a good picture of you right now. Maybe the conventional sources of support, the pipes in your life, just aren't there for you right now. Maybe your job just dried up, or your credit, your key support people. Maybe you're just in a situation where you feel isolated or overwhelmed. Maybe you're dried up, and earth has nothing that can help you right now. People, even those who would like to help you, really can't do much. You're suspended in mid air with no visible means of support or supply right now. But the security of a Christian is never around him anyway; it's in him Jesus said.
God will supply what man cannot supply, but He'll supply it from the inside. That's why Paul could be as confident and content in a prison as he was at the peak of his popularity. He reached in for His resource, not around him. You never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got, and maybe that's where you are right now. Or maybe you have been coming up empty because you have never plugged into the resource that Jesus Christ brings into your life when you give your life to Him.
Jesus met a woman at a well one day who had come every day to get water from the well. And He said, "Are you tired of being thirsty again?" It turned out He was talking about all the relationships with guys that had never satisfied her soul thirst. He said, "I will put inside of you a spring that will well up into everlasting life. When Jesus comes in, you have met the One you were made by and made for. And you can be His. You can belong to Him and have that endless stream from heaven into your life and into your soul. When everyone else has let you down - one love that will be unloseable.
He proved it when He died on the cross for you. If you've never begun a relationship with Him; if you've never known what it is to not be thirsty again in your soul, I'd ask you to join me at our website YoursForLife.net and find out how to have that source of peace and satisfaction no matter what is happening around you.