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Max Lucado Daily: The Burlap Bag of Burdens
Worry is the burlap bag of burdens. It’s overflowing with “whaddifs” and “howells.” Whaddif after all my dieting, I find that lettuce is fattening and chocolate isn’t? Howell will we pay our baby’s tuition?” Whaddifs and howells…the burlap bag of worry. Cumbersome. Chunky. Unattractive. Scratchy. Irritating to carry and impossible to give away! No one wants your worries. The truth is, you don’t want them either. No one has to remind you of the high cost of anxiety, but I will anyway. Worry divides the mind. It splits our energy between today’s priorities and tomorrow’s problems. The result is half-minded living!
Hebrews 4:16 encourages us to “boldly approach the throne of our gracious God, where we may receive mercy and, in His grace, find timely help.” God’s help is timely! God will do the right thing at the right time. And what a difference that makes!
From Traveling Light
Habakkuk 2
The Lord’s Answer
2 Then the Lord replied:
“Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald[e] may run with it.
3 For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it[f] will certainly come
and will not delay.
4 “See, the enemy is puffed up;
his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness[g]—
5 indeed, wine betrays him;
he is arrogant and never at rest.
Because he is as greedy as the grave
and like death is never satisfied,
he gathers to himself all the nations
and takes captive all the peoples.
6 “Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn, saying,
“‘Woe to him who piles up stolen goods
and makes himself wealthy by extortion!
How long must this go on?’
7 Will not your creditors suddenly arise?
Will they not wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their prey.
8 Because you have plundered many nations,
the peoples who are left will plunder you.
For you have shed human blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
9 “Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain,
setting his nest on high
to escape the clutches of ruin!
10 You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,
shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.
11 The stones of the wall will cry out,
and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.
12 “Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed
and establishes a town by injustice!
13 Has not the Lord Almighty determined
that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire,
that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
15 “Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors,
pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk,
so that he can gaze on their naked bodies!
16 You will be filled with shame instead of glory.
Now it is your turn! Drink and let your nakedness be exposed[h]!
The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you,
and disgrace will cover your glory.
17 The violence you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you,
and your destruction of animals will terrify you.
For you have shed human blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
18 “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman?
Or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation;
he makes idols that cannot speak.
19 Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’
Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’
Can it give guidance?
It is covered with gold and silver;
there is no breath in it.”
20 The Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth be silent before him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Lamentations 3:1-3, 25-33
New International Version (NIV)
3 [a]I am the man who has seen affliction
by the rod of the Lord’s wrath.
2 He has driven me away and made me walk
in darkness rather than light;
3 indeed, he has turned his hand against me
again and again, all day long.
Footnotes:
Lamentations 3:1 This chapter is an acrostic poem; the verses of each stanza begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the verses within each stanza begin with the same letter.
New International Version (NIV)
25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
26 it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke
while he is young.
28 Let him sit alone in silence,
for the Lord has laid it on him.
29 Let him bury his face in the dust—
there may yet be hope.
30 Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace.
31 For no one is cast off
by the Lord forever.
32 Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
33 For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to anyone.
Play In Pain
June 19, 2013 — by David C. Egner
Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion. —Lamentations 3:32
Baseball Hall-of-Fame catcher Gary Carter was a follower of Jesus. During his 19-year career, he drew strength and endurance from his faith in God to compete day after day. In an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal shortly after Carter died of brain cancer at age 57, writer Andrew Klavan told how Carter had influenced his life.
In the late 1980s, Klavan had sunk to a low point in his life. His mind dwelt on suicide. Then he heard Carter interviewed after a game. His team, the New York Mets, had won, and the aging catcher had helped by running hard at a critical point in the game. Carter was asked how he could do that with his aching knees. Klavan heard him say something like this: “Sometimes you just have to play in pain.” That simple statement helped draw Klavan out of his depression. “I can do that!” he declared. Encouraged, he found hope—and later became a believer in Christ.
The comforting truth behind Carter’s statement comes from Lamentations. We may face sorrow, pain, and hardship, but we don’t have to sink into self-pity. The same God who allows our suffering also showers us with His compassion (Lam. 3:32). With God’s love lifting us up, we can—if we have to—“play” in pain.
Along life’s pathway troubles come
That God will help us bear;
Then we can look beyond the pain
To those who need our care. —Branon
God will either spare you from suffering or give you the grace to bear it.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 19, 2013
My Utmost for His Highest
. . . do you love Me? . . . Tend My sheep —John 21:16
Jesus did not say to make converts to your way of thinking, but He said to look after His sheep, to see that they get nourished in the knowledge of Him. We consider what we do in the way of Christian work as service, yet Jesus Christ calls service to be what we are to Him, not what we do for Him. Discipleship is based solely on devotion to Jesus Christ, not on following after a particular belief or doctrine. “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate . . . , he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). In this verse, there is no argument and no pressure from Jesus to follow Him; He is simply saying, in effect, “If you want to be My disciple, you must be devoted solely to Me.” A person touched by the Spirit of God suddenly says, “Now I see who Jesus is!”— that is the source of devotion.
Today we have substituted doctrinal belief for personal belief, and that is why so many people are devoted to causes and so few are devoted to Jesus Christ. People do not really want to be devoted to Jesus, but only to the cause He started. Jesus Christ is deeply offensive to the educated minds of today, to those who only want Him to be their Friend, and who are unwilling to accept Him in any other way. Our Lord’s primary obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of people— the saving of people was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father. If I am devoted solely to the cause of humanity, I will soon be exhausted and come to the point where my love will waver and stumble. But if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity, even though people may treat me like a “doormat.” The secret of a disciple’s life is devotion to Jesus Christ, and the characteristic of that life is its seeming insignificance and its meekness. Yet it is like a grain of wheat that “falls into the ground and dies”— it will spring up and change the entire landscape (John 12:24).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
A Jet Ski There For You When You Fall Off - #6898
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
I happened to be there when my friend, Rick, tried a Jet Ski for the first time. Now, you may have seen those little water machines that look kind of like a baby snowmobile, and they're a lot of fun. But it takes some skill to stay balanced on them as they start to take off across the water. Rick actually handled it pretty well for a while; he's a good water skier, and that didn't surprise me. But it was inevitable that he would eventually fall off. I expected that when he hit the water, that Jet Ski was going to take right off without him across the water. I wondered how he'd ever get back! It didn't happen. That Jet Ski is designed to start going in a circle near you, and it did, and it circles until you can get back on. Well, that's exactly what you need when you fall off.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Jet Ski There For You When You Fall Off."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Lamentations chapter 3, and we're going to begin reading at verse 19. Now, you probably were not discussing Lamentations over breakfast this morning, but Jeremiah wrote it. It follows his long book that's named after him. Of course, he's a great man of God, but he's a great man of God who knew about failure too. In fact, here's what he says; maybe some things you and I can relate to. I'm sure we can. Beginning with Lamentations 3:19 and then ending with a phrase that you may have sung in church many times.
"I remember my affliction in my wandering..." Can you relate to that? He says, "the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them." See, his mind is playing back failures. "My soul is downcast within me," he says. "This really gets me depressed," in other words. "Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope." Okay, the sun's coming up now. "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness."
Jeremiah is reflecting on times when even the most committed of us believers fall off, so to speak, as my friend fell off that Jet Ski. And he captures the feelings very well. "When I fail my Lord I feel discouraged, I feel depressed, sometimes like, 'What's the use?' But every new day, every morning His compassions do not fail, His mercies are new every morning. Every new day I find my Lord circling near me to pick me up even though I fell off."
The prophet Zephaniah says, "Every new day, He does not fail." Yes, when I looked at how that Jet Ski operated, I couldn't help but think of how our Lord deals with us. It could be that even now you're feeling crushed by a feeling of failure; you've let your Lord down, you've let yourself down, and you've let other people down. And maybe you feel like you're just going to stay down. In fact, at times like these your feelings are telling you, "Hey, you fell off! And you know what? The Lord's going on without you, buddy!" Wrong. "His mercies are new every morning."
Jeremiah said, "My hope is every new day is a new start. Great (He says of God) is Your faithfulness." Not great is our faithfulness; great is Your faithfulness, Lord. So, no failure needs to last more than 24 hours. Because there's a new day, and there's new mercies.
Today your Lord is there, circling faithfully. See, He stopped when you fell off, and He's been lovingly waiting to pick you up and to get you off to a fresh new start.
