Max Lucado Daily: Behind Bars
In 1965 Howard Rutledge parachuted into North Vietnam and spent the next several years in a prison in Hanoi, locked in a filthy cell breathing stale, rotten air trying to keep his sanity. Few of us will ever face the conditions of a POW camp.
Yet, to one degree or another, we all spend time behind bars. After half-a-century of marriage, my friend's wife began to lose her memory. A young mother called, just diagnosed with Lupus. Why would God permit such imprisonment? To what purpose? Jeremiah 30:24 promises, "The Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His mind."
This season in which you find yourself may puzzle you, but it doesn't bewilder God. He will use it for His purpose. Please be reminded…You will get through this!
From You'll Get Through This
Daniel 8
Daniel’s Vision of a Ram and a Goat
In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me. 2 In my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa in the province of Elam; in the vision I was beside the Ulai Canal. 3 I looked up, and there before me was a ram with two horns, standing beside the canal, and the horns were long. One of the horns was longer than the other but grew up later. 4 I watched the ram as it charged toward the west and the north and the south. No animal could stand against it, and none could rescue from its power. It did as it pleased and became great.
5 As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between its eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. 6 It came toward the two-horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at it in great rage. 7 I saw it attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering its two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against it; the goat knocked it to the ground and trampled on it, and none could rescue the ram from its power. 8 The goat became very great, but at the height of its power the large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven.
9 Out of one of them came another horn, which started small but grew in power to the south and to the east and toward the Beautiful Land. 10 It grew until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth and trampled on them. 11 It set itself up to be as great as the commander of the army of the Lord; it took away the daily sacrifice from the Lord, and his sanctuary was thrown down. 12 Because of rebellion, the Lord’s people[a] and the daily sacrifice were given over to it. It prospered in everything it did, and truth was thrown to the ground.
13 Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to him, “How long will it take for the vision to be fulfilled—the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, the rebellion that causes desolation, the surrender of the sanctuary and the trampling underfoot of the Lord’s people?”
14 He said to me, “It will take 2,300 evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary will be reconsecrated.”
The Interpretation of the Vision
15 While I, Daniel, was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there before me stood one who looked like a man. 16 And I heard a man’s voice from the Ulai calling, “Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of the vision.”
17 As he came near the place where I was standing, I was terrified and fell prostrate. “Son of man,”[b] he said to me, “understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.”
18 While he was speaking to me, I was in a deep sleep, with my face to the ground. Then he touched me and raised me to my feet.
19 He said: “I am going to tell you what will happen later in the time of wrath, because the vision concerns the appointed time of the end.[c] 20 The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia. 21 The shaggy goat is the king of Greece, and the large horn between its eyes is the first king. 22 The four horns that replaced the one that was broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation but will not have the same power.
23 “In the latter part of their reign, when rebels have become completely wicked, a fierce-looking king, a master of intrigue, will arise. 24 He will become very strong, but not by his own power. He will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does. He will destroy those who are mighty, the holy people. 25 He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior. When they feel secure, he will destroy many and take his stand against the Prince of princes. Yet he will be destroyed, but not by human power.
26 “The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been given you is true, but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.”
27 I, Daniel, was worn out. I lay exhausted for several days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Acts 8:4-8,26-35
Philip in Samaria
4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. 5 Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there. 6 When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7 For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. 8 So there was great joy in that city.
Philip and the Ethiopian
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”[b]
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
Footnotes:
Acts 8:27 That is, from the southern Nile region
Acts 8:33 Isaiah 53:7,8 (see Septuagint)
A Difficult Place
September 20, 2013 — by Randy Kilgore
I will never leave you nor forsake you. —Hebrews 13:5
When a sudden change in technology made his job obsolete, a highly trained scientist found himself working in a fast-food restaurant. One evening after our Bible study he described the situation as difficult and humbling. He said, “One good thing I can say is that the young people there seem very interested in my faith.” A member of the group responded, “I admire you for being humble. I know your faith must have something to do with it.”
Like my acquaintance, Philip may have wondered why God would pull him off an assignment in Samaria (Acts 8:4-8) and plop him in the middle of the desert (v.26). But then he found that the Ethiopian needed help understanding the Scriptures (vv.27-35), and his place made sense.
When Jesus promised He would never leave us alone (Matt. 28:20; Heb. 13:5), He meant in the hard times as well as in the good times. Our mission in the difficult seasons of life is to work or serve remembering we are doing it for God, and then to watch as God works to accomplish His purposes.
Look for God in your difficult place and discover what He’s doing in and through you there.
Disappointment—His appointment,
No good thing will He withhold;
From denials oft we gather
Treasures of His love untold. —Young
What’s better than answers to our why questions? Trusting a good God who has His reasons.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
September 20, 2013
The Divine Commandment of Life
. . . be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect —Matthew 5:48
Our Lord’s exhortation to us in Matthew 5:38-48 is to be generous in our behavior toward everyone. Beware of living according to your natural affections in your spiritual life. Everyone has natural affections— some people we like and others we don’t like. Yet we must never let those likes and dislikes rule our Christian life. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:7), even those toward whom we have no affection.
The example our Lord gave us here is not that of a good person, or even of a good Christian, but of God Himself. “. . . be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In other words, simply show to the other person what God has shown to you. And God will give you plenty of real life opportunities to prove whether or not you are “perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Being a disciple means deliberately identifying yourself with God’s interests in other people. Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing, but in God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not just good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian’s life is that the supernatural becomes natural in him as a result of the grace of God, and the experience of this becomes evident in the practical, everyday details of life, not in times of intimate fellowship with God. And when we come in contact with things that create confusion and a flurry of activity, we find to our own amazement that we have the power to stay wonderfully poised even in the center of it all.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Unloseable - #6965
Friday, September 20, 2013
Rwanda - It was the centerpiece of a lot of news attention back in 1994. Bloody civil war; tens of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered there. There were nightly images of emaciated refugees, dying of disease, dying of starvation. And children; oh, you just couldn't forget the children. Many of those kids had lost everything in the carnage.
Billy Graham's son, Franklin Graham, took a medical team to try to help there, and I heard him tell about one little girl he said he could never forget, and I don't think I will. He was in this rebel camp and he was walking by an army truck. He noticed this one little girl sitting in the back of it and she was just rocking back and forth, and she was singing something very softly but in a language Franklin couldn't understand.
There was a soldier standing by there paying no attention to the girl, and Franklin said, "What happened to this little girl?" And he said, "Oh, the same as all the others. She's got nobody left." Franklin said, "Well, would you do me one more favor? Would you tell me what she's singing?" The soldier seemed a little annoyed, but he listened for a minute and he said, "Yeah, it's..." Then he went on to translate it. When he translated the song, it was clear that this little Rwandan orphan hadn't lost everything.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Unloseable."
The soldier, after hearing this song sung by that little Rwandan orphan girl said, "Yeah, it's something about Jesus loving her." Franklin said, "Is it Jesus Loves Me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so?" "Yeah, yeah, that's it." With her world torn apart, with every human who loved her gone, this precious little victim had one unloseable relationship. Do you? They couldn't take Jesus away from her.
Our word for today from the Word of God - Romans 8. It begins by talking about the worst things that could happen to you in your life, and in verse 37 it says, "We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nothing in the present or the future, nor any powers," - this covers everything - "neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." A love you can never lose; a love that will never lose you.
Jesus is the unloseable person we've looked for all our lives. Actually we're built to belong to our Creator. If it weren't for Jesus, we would never have the possibility of that heart-satisfying relationship because of the gap between God and us. It's called sin. That's basically the self-rule of our lives. It could be summed up in those words "I did it my way." So the God that we're built by and for is out of our reach until that sin bill is paid. Talk about love! God's only Son came to remove the only thing that could keep us from His love - the death penalty for our sin. From the moment you say, "Jesus, I'm putting my total trust in you and what you did on the cross for me" you belong to God. You always will. Nothing in heaven, nothing in hell, nothing on earth can end that relationship. God has guaranteed it.
Quite some time ago, my wife and I spent a week at a little house at the Jersey shore; it was like a mini-honeymoon. And two weeks later she came down with a life-threatening case of hepatitis. I'll never forget the night when she almost died. I realized that this one person who would never choose to leave me might not have any choice about it that night. I'm so grateful God spared her. But that night I realized that the closest thing I have on earth to an unloseable person is loseable. But if and when I ever lose the earth person I love the most, I will still be able to sing "Jesus loves me, this I know." I hope you can too.
You probably never thought you'd learn anything from a little Rwandan orphan girl, but she was hanging on to Jesus with all her heart. Maybe it's time for you to do that. I'd love to help you know how. Join me at our website AnewStory.com.
Isn't it time you grabbed Jesus' hand? Because that's the only hand that won't ever let you go.