(Click here to listen to God's love letter to you)
Max Lucado Daily: Your Agenda
It’s easy to forget who’s the servant and who’s to be served. The tool of distortion is one of Satan’s slyest. When the focus is on yourself, you worry that your co-workers won’t appreciate you. Your leaders will overwork you. With time, your agenda becomes more important than God’s. You’re more concerned with presenting self than pleasing Him. You may even find yourself doubting God’s judgment.
Remember Mary criticizing her sister Martha, “Lord don’t you care that my sister has left me alone to do all the work? Tell her to help me.” (Luke 40:10) What had Mary chosen? She’d chosen to sit at the feet of Christ. God is more pleased with the quiet attention of a sincere servant than the noisy service of a sour one!
Guard your attitude. If you concern yourself with your neighbor’s talents, you’ll neglect your own. But if you concern yourself with yours, you could inspire both!
from He Still Moves Stones
Jeremiah 19
This is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests 2 and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you, 3 and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. 4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. 6 So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
7 “‘In this place I will ruin[b] the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals. 8 I will devastate this city and make it an object of horror and scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds. 9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’
10 “Then break the jar while those who go with you are watching, 11 and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter’s jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room. 12 This is what I will do to this place and to those who live here, declares the Lord. I will make this city like Topheth. 13 The houses in Jerusalem and those of the kings of Judah will be defiled like this place, Topheth—all the houses where they burned incense on the roofs to all the starry hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.’”
14 Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the Lord’s temple and said to all the people, 15 “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Listen! I am going to bring on this city and all the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10
New International Version (NIV)
Paul’s Vision and His Thorn
12 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. 5 I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6 Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, 7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Hard Way To Strength
July 16, 2013 — by Julie Ackerman Link
My strength is made perfect in weakness. —2 Corinthians 12:9
Diamonds are beautiful and valuable gemstones, but their beginning is common carbon—black, dirty, and combustible. Through years of intense heat and high pressure, they become pure and strong. This makes them a good metaphor for spiritual strength; God uses intense outside forces to rid us of impurities and to perfect His strength in us.
God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, says the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 12:9). I wish this were not true because I hate being weak. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments taught me more than I ever wanted to know about physical weakness. Then a minor event plunged me into a state of emotional weakness that caught me off guard. After losing 3 feet of hair and being bald for nearly a year, one bad haircut should not have been a big deal. But it was, and I felt silly for being so weak. Some of us are able to create an illusion of strength and self-sufficiency. But sudden loss of health, employment, or a treasured relationship is a startling reminder of our total dependence on God.
When we experience the fiery furnace of suffering—whether physical or emotional, whether persecution from without or humiliation from within—God’s loving purpose is to make us pure and strong.
God uses testing in our lives
To rid us of impurity
And teach us that our strength’s in Him
And not in self-sufficiency. —Sper
Suffering is the fire that God uses to purify and strengthen us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
July 16, 2013
The Concept of Divine Control
. . . how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! —Matthew 7:11
Jesus is laying down the rules of conduct in this passage for those people who have His Spirit. He urges us to keep our minds filled with the concept of God’s control over everything, which means that a disciple must maintain an attitude of perfect trust and an eagerness to ask and to seek.
Fill your mind with the thought that God is there. And once your mind is truly filled with that thought, when you experience difficulties it will be as easy as breathing for you to remember, “My heavenly Father knows all about this!” This will be no effort at all, but will be a natural thing for you when difficulties and uncertainties arise. Before you formed this concept of divine control so powerfully in your mind, you used to go from person to person seeking help, but now you go to God about it. Jesus is laying down the rules of conduct for those people who have His Spirit, and it works on the following principle: God is my Father, He loves me, and I will never think of anything that He will forget, so why should I worry?
Jesus said there are times when God cannot lift the darkness from you, but you should trust Him. At times God will appear like an unkind friend, but He is not; He will appear like an unnatural father, but He is not; He will appear like an unjust judge, but He is not. Keep the thought that the mind of God is behind all things strong and growing. Not even the smallest detail of life happens unless God’s will is behind it. Therefore, you can rest in perfect confidence in Him. Prayer is not only asking, but is an attitude of the mind which produces the atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural. “Ask, and it will be given to you . . .” (Matthew 7:7).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Nagged To Death - #6917
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Motivation--That's the art of getting a person to do something. We're all in the motivating business. You may be motivating people to go somewhere, or to do a job, to correct a weakness in their life, to change their ways, to finish what they start, to do what you want them to do. Motivation comes in a lot of forms. You can inspire people to do it. You can threaten them if they don't do it. You can love them into doing it; put an arm around them and say, "Come on, Buddy." You can help them do it; pitch in and show them how and be willing to do your part.
But the number one selection on the motivation hit parade is that tried and true method called nagging. Just keep bringing it up; keep pushing for it; keep talking about it. Eventually you'll wear them down and they'll do it just to get you off their back. That may get the job done, but it may not do much to enhance your relationship. Unfortunately, nagging often works (Yeah, oh, it works!) with very damaging results.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Nagged To Death."
I guess I'd have to define nagging as motivation by erosion; just wear them down. That's what Delilah did to Sampson. You remember the story probably that the Philistines had not been able to defeat the super-natural strength of Sampson. Of course his secret was that it was in his hair, and his hair should never be cut, and he had never told anyone. The Philistines paid beautiful Delilah to fall in love with Sampson and to find the secret of his strength. Three times she asked in a very cozy romantic situation, and three times he gave her a misleading answer that proved that the Philistines could not conquer him. He had not given his secret.
But you know what? He finally told her, and the result was his capture, his humiliation by the Philistines and ultimately his death as their prisoner. How did she do it? Judges 16:16, "With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death. So he told her everything." Sampson was worn down, and he ended up doing something he was sure he would never do.
Could that be happening to you right now? Maybe there are Delilahs; you know, people in your life who want you to live as they do, to lower your standards, to compromise what you believe. And they are after you day after day to do it. Right? And you have been sure you never would, but maybe you're weakening. You're about to be nagged to death.
Sampson was nagged to his death. Don't cave in. You think you've got pressure now? Wait until you give in to sin; wait until you compromise. You ain't seen nothin' yet! Maybe you need to get away from the people who are wearing you down. Maybe that's not possible. Okay, then, seek the Lord for daily strength to stand strong as His man or woman. This is a day-by-day battle; one day at a time. Determine to be the one who is the changer, not the changee. You are the make-a-difference person. You're going to represent Christ to them. There's too much at stake if they don't see Jesus in you. You're their best hope of heaven. Now, they're not going to change you. You're going to do your very best to change them.
Anchor yourself every morning in Jesus' expectations for your life. Anchor yourself to His lordship over your life. Spend quality time with Jesus. Be with Him so He is real for You for that day.
See, the number of times a wrong idea is presented doesn't make it any truer. Don't be nagged to death. A lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie.