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Max Lucado Daily: Sheep Can’t Sleep
Millions of Americans have trouble sleeping! You may be one of them. Only one other living creature has as much trouble resting as we do. They are woolly, simpleminded, and slow…sheep. Sheep can’t sleep! For sheep to sleep, everything must be just right. No predators. No tension in the flock. Sheep need help. They need a shepherd to “lead them” and help them “lie down in green pastures.” Without a shepherd, they can’t rest.
Without a shepherd, neither can we! Psalm 23:2 says, “He, (the Shepherd) makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.” Who’s the active one? Who’s in charge? The Shepherd! With our eyes on the Shepherd, we’ll get some sleep. Isaiah 26:3 reminds us of the promise, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You.”
Zephaniah 2
Judah and Jerusalem Judged Along With the Nations
Judah Summoned to Repent
2 Gather together, gather yourselves together,
you shameful nation,
2 before the decree takes effect
and that day passes like windblown chaff,
before the Lord’s fierce anger
comes upon you,
before the day of the Lord’s wrath
comes upon you.
3 Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
you who do what he commands.
Seek righteousness, seek humility;
perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the Lord’s anger.
Philistia
4 Gaza will be abandoned
and Ashkelon left in ruins.
At midday Ashdod will be emptied
and Ekron uprooted.
5 Woe to you who live by the sea,
you Kerethite people;
the word of the Lord is against you,
Canaan, land of the Philistines.
He says, “I will destroy you,
and none will be left.”
6 The land by the sea will become pastures
having wells for shepherds
and pens for flocks.
7 That land will belong
to the remnant of the people of Judah;
there they will find pasture.
In the evening they will lie down
in the houses of Ashkelon.
The Lord their God will care for them;
he will restore their fortunes.[f]
Moab and Ammon
8 “I have heard the insults of Moab
and the taunts of the Ammonites,
who insulted my people
and made threats against their land.
9 Therefore, as surely as I live,”
declares the Lord Almighty,
the God of Israel,
“surely Moab will become like Sodom,
the Ammonites like Gomorrah—
a place of weeds and salt pits,
a wasteland forever.
The remnant of my people will plunder them;
the survivors of my nation will inherit their land.”
10 This is what they will get in return for their pride,
for insulting and mocking
the people of the Lord Almighty.
11 The Lord will be awesome to them
when he destroys all the gods of the earth.
Distant nations will bow down to him,
all of them in their own lands.
Cush
12 “You Cushites,[g] too,
will be slain by my sword.”
Assyria
13 He will stretch out his hand against the north
and destroy Assyria,
leaving Nineveh utterly desolate
and dry as the desert.
14 Flocks and herds will lie down there,
creatures of every kind.
The desert owl and the screech owl
will roost on her columns.
Their hooting will echo through the windows,
rubble will fill the doorways,
the beams of cedar will be exposed.
15 This is the city of revelry
that lived in safety.
She said to herself,
“I am the one! And there is none besides me.”
What a ruin she has become,
a lair for wild beasts!
All who pass by her scoff
and shake their fists.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Romans 1:18-25
God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Imaginary Friend?
June 14, 2013 — by Dennis Fisher
Abraham believed God . . . and he was called the friend of God. —James 2:23
Not long ago, I heard about this billboard along the highway: “God is an imaginary friend—choose reality. It will be better for all of us.”
Obviously, the bold statement compares Christians to children whose vivid imaginations invent a make-believe companion. But is that what God is—an imaginary friend?
Actually, the evidence favors His reality. Ponder these ideas: The creation of the world shows there is a Designer behind the universe (Rom. 1:18-20). The conscience indicates a Lawgiver behind each human’s sense of right and wrong (Rom. 2:14-15). The creativity we express in music and art reflect the same attribute that the Creator possesses (Ex. 35:31-32). Christ reveals what God is like in human form (Heb. 1:1-4). And the communion or fellowship of the Spirit in the Christian heart manifests the reality of God (Gal. 5:22-23).
The Bible tells us there will be those who deny the reality of God (2 Peter 3:4-6). But James reminds us of His reality and how an Old Testament believer befriended Him: “‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ And he was called the friend of God” (James 2:23). Have you met the redeeming God? He gave His Son to become your real, eternal Friend (John 15:15).
I’ve found a Friend, O such a Friend!
He loved me ere I knew Him;
He drew me with the cords of love,
And thus He bound me to Him. —Small
The dearest friend on earth is but a mere shadow compared to Jesus. —Chambers
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 14, 2013
Get Moving! (1)
Abide in Me . . . —John 15:4
In the matter of determination. The Spirit of Jesus is put into me by way of the atonement by the Cross of Christ. I then have to build my thinking patiently to bring it into perfect harmony with my Lord. God will not make me think like Jesus— I have to do it myself. I have to bring “every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). “Abide in Me”— in intellectual matters, in money matters, in every one of the matters that make human life what it is. Our lives are not made up of only one neatly confined area.
Am I preventing God from doing things in my circumstances by saying that it will only serve to hinder my fellowship with Him? How irrelevant and disrespectful that is! It does not matter what my circumstances are. I can be as much assured of abiding in Jesus in any one of them as I am in any prayer meeting. It is unnecessary to change and arrange my circumstances myself. Our Lord’s inner abiding was pure and unblemished. He was at home with God wherever His body was. He never chose His own circumstances, but was meek, submitting to His Father’s plans and directions for Him. Just think of how amazingly relaxed our Lord’s life was! But we tend to keep God at a fever pitch in our lives. We have none of the serenity of the life which is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
Think of the things that take you out of the position of abiding in Christ. You say, “Yes, Lord, just a minute— I still have this to do. Yes, I will abide as soon as this is finished, or as soon as this week is over. It will be all right, Lord. I will abide then.” Get moving— begin to abide now. In the initial stages it will be a continual effort to abide, but as you continue, it will become so much a part of your life that you will abide in Him without any conscious effort. Make the determination to abide in Jesus wherever you are now or wherever you may be placed in the future.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Father Power - #6895
Friday, June 14, 2013
It was Father's Day, and my friend Dave and I were making the most of it. We had our two families together for a picnic. He's a father too, and we expressed our needs shall we say, we let everybody know what we needed and wanted. And every once in a while somebody even paid attention. Well, we were all gathered around the picnic table and we were explaining to everyone why it was a day of special privilege for Dave and me. And I said, "Hey, it's Father's Day! That's why we're planning everything." I'll never forget what Dave's son said. He said, "Hey, at our house every day is Father's Day." Well, in a sense - probably a different sense than our teenage friend had in mind - it is very much that way in many things.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Father Power."
The Bible seems to say that Dad is the thermostat of the family; the one who sets the temperature, and then everyone else kind of responds to the temperature that the thermostat sets. Dad has this tremendous power to make his family feel loved, or to feel small, or to feel big, or confident. Dad can really make everybody feel tense, or relaxed, or frustrated. In that sense, every day is Father's Day.
It's a father's power to frustrate that is addressed in our word for today from the Word of God. Colossians 3:17 says, "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Then it goes on to talk about how to be a wife in the name of the Lord Jesus, how to be a husband, and here's how to be a father. "Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged."
Okay, if there is sort of a "dad sin" it must be along these lines of embittering our children. How does a father do that? Certainly he doesn't intend to, but there is a great desire in a child to please Dad. You remember that in your own life. And that power that he has because of that...He may not even know he has it, but it can really crush a spirit if that power isn't exercised gently.
If you're a dad, I know you don't want to commit that dad sin. Well, there are four ways we do it: number one is with our expectations. So often, as a father, because we want our kids to be all they can be, we end up majoring on what needs improving instead of what's been accomplished. We talk about what they didn't do instead of what they did, and they can become embittered.
Secondly, we can do it by our neglect. We're just not there to hear about their day, or to watch them in their important moments, or to discipline. We forfeit so much to mom. And after a while, our kids become discouraged - embittered. Insensitivity - that's the third way we can make that mistake; just kind of running in, busy dad, drop a bomb on the kids without being there enough to find out how they're feeling, what's really going on under the surface.
And there's a fourth way we can discourage and embitter our kids called inflexibility - never able to be wrong, never able to forgive, never able to be the one who needs forgiveness and to say, "Hey, I was wrong. Can you forgive me?" You don't forfeit authority when you do that, you gain it. You don't lose respect, you gain respect. It's a good time to look in a mirror if you're a dad, and evaluate, "Am I creating a healthy child, or am I frustrating a child?"
In terms of making a child feel loved and competent, every day is Father's Day.