Max Lucado Daily: God is in All Days
Suppose I invited you to experience the day of your dreams. Twenty-four hours on an island paradise with your favorite people, food, and activities? The only stipulation? You'll need to begin the day with one millisecond of distress. Would you accept my offer? I think you would.
A moment is nothing compared to twenty-four hours. Compared to eternity, what is seventy, eighty, ninety years? A finger snap compared to heaven. We point to our sick child, crutches, or famine and say, "This makes no sense!" Yet of all of his creation, how much have we seen? Of all his work, how much do we understand? Perhaps a doorway peephole. What if God's answer to the question of suffering requires more megabytes than our puny minds have been given?
Let God finish his work. The forecast is simple. We'll have some good days. And some bad days. But God is in all days.
From You'll Get Through This
1 Timothy 4
New International Version (NIV)
4 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. 4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
6 If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters,[a] you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. 7 Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. 8 For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. 9 This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. 10 That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.
11 Command and teach these things. 12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. 13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. 14 Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.
15 Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. 16 Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
Footnotes:
1 Timothy 4:6 The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Psalm 96
Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
4 For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of his[a] holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
13 Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness.
Footnotes:
Psalm 96:9 Or Lord with the splendor of
Public Praise
October 7, 2013 — by Joe Stowell
Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples. —Psalm 96:3
I love the YouTube video of people in a food court of a mall, who in the midst of their ordinary lives were suddenly interrupted by someone who stood up and boldly began singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” To the surprise of everyone, another person got up and joined the chorus, and then another, and another. Soon the food court was resounding with the celebrative harmonies of Handel’s masterpiece. A local opera company had planted their singers in strategic places so that they could joyfully interject the glory of God into the everyday lives of lunching shoppers.
Every time I watch that video, it moves me to tears. It reminds me that bringing the glory of God into the ordinary situations of our world through the beautiful harmonies of Christlikeness is exactly what we are called to do. Think of intentionally interjecting God’s grace into a situation where some undeserving soul needs a second chance; of sharing the love of Christ with someone who is needy; of being the hands of Jesus that lift up a weary friend; or of bringing peace to a confusing and chaotic situation.
As the psalmist reminds us, we have the high and holy privilege of declaring “His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples” (Ps. 96:3).
Thank You, Lord, for filling us with the capacity to take
Your glory “public” through the way we act and react
toward others. Give us the grace to interject the surprising
beauty of Your wonderful ways into each encounter.
Surprise your world with the wonders of Christ shining through you!
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 7, 2013
The Nature of Reconciliation
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him —2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. . .” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.
A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
It's Not Me Anymore - #6976
Monday, October 7, 2013
Think about what you looked like in seventh grade. You say, "Oh, no! Please, I'd rather not." Are you thinking, "Man, what a hunk I was! What a Miss America!" Probably not.
Our daughter had a funny experience in her senior French class in high school. There was some down time and some girls were comparing their wallet pictures, including our daughter. She had her senior picture and she also had her seventh grade picture. The teacher asked what everybody was laughing at. Now, my daughter has always had a beautiful smile, but I've got to tell you in seventh grade it was decorated with braces. She had glasses. Her hair was kind of kinky and curly, and she looked like a seventh grader.
Well, her French teacher looked at that picture next to the very beautiful senior in her graduation picture; no glasses, long hair, carefully curled hair, big, blue eyes not concealed by glasses. And that teacher had a simple two-word reaction. I think it was the French words, "La Miracle!" Well, my daughter was laughing with her friends and her teacher at that seventh grade picture because, it wasn't her anymore.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "It's Not Me Anymore."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 6:9. It starts out with very bad news and ends with some really good news. We read about people with a past here, with a reputation-a record. "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." That's a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of pain there.
But listen to 1 Corinthians 6:11. Stand by for the very good news. "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified." That means made special again. "You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." People who are cleaned up, made special again, made right with God; only one possible way, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's like my daughter with her seventh grade picture. She couldn't laugh at it when she was that person, but she sure could as a senior because that photo represented who she was then, not now. That's the "la miracle" of being a new creation in Jesus Christ.
Here's what the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "When you're in Christ you're a new creation. The old is gone; a new life has begun." He not only changes your eternal future from hell to heaven and makes your present meaningful and satisfying, but He miraculously makes your past sins irrelevant. It may be that you're sometimes pursued by a past you wish you could do over or erase, but the question is, "Did you honestly bring it to Jesus' cross and repent of it?"
Well, if that's so, Acts 3:19 says, "Repent and turn to God and your sins will be wiped away and times of refreshing will come from the Lord." It's gone! God is treating you as if you're a whole new person. Why don't you treat you that way? Maybe you've even held onto to some of the old you because you just didn't believe it could ever be different.
Listen to this: "He carried our sins in His own body on the tree that we might die to sin and live for righteousness" (1 Peter 2:24). See, there's no reason for the new you in Christ to still be wearing the braces and glasses of the person you don't ever have to be again. He's dealt with your past. It's all paid for on His cross. It's all part of the sorrows He carried and the sin He was crushed for.
This very day you can have every one of those sins erased from God's Book if you would come to Jesus and say, "Jesus, you who died to pay for my sin, I give myself to you to be forgiven and to become new." That miracle could take place for you this very day. I would love to show you how it could happen.
I just invite you to join me at our website ANewStory.com. You can tear up the old photo. That was you. It won't be you any more because of Jesus.