, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily:
God Notices the Grateful Heart
God notices the grateful heart. He took a praise-singing shepherd boy and made him a king.
There's no hint of God getting out of sorts if we aren't thankful. But there is evidence that we are affected by our own ingratitude. What of the disastrous days? The nights I can't sleep and the hours I can't rest? Am I grateful then? Jesus was.
The Bible records, "On the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it." (I Corinthians 11:23). It's not often you see the words betrayed and thanks in the same sentence, much less in the same heart. In the midst of the darkest night of the human soul, Jesus found a way to give thanks.
Anyone can thank God for the light. Jesus teaches us to thank God for the night. He says to us, "You'll get through this!" And we will.
From You'll Get Through This
Ezekiel 10
God’s Glory Departs From the Temple
I looked, and I saw the likeness of a throne of lapis lazuli above the vault that was over the heads of the cherubim. 2 The Lord said to the man clothed in linen, “Go in among the wheels beneath the cherubim. Fill your hands with burning coals from among the cherubim and scatter them over the city.” And as I watched, he went in.
3 Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the temple when the man went in, and a cloud filled the inner court. 4 Then the glory of the Lord rose from above the cherubim and moved to the threshold of the temple. The cloud filled the temple, and the court was full of the radiance of the glory of the Lord. 5 The sound of the wings of the cherubim could be heard as far away as the outer court, like the voice of God Almighty[b] when he speaks.
6 When the Lord commanded the man in linen, “Take fire from among the wheels, from among the cherubim,” the man went in and stood beside a wheel. 7 Then one of the cherubim reached out his hand to the fire that was among them. He took up some of it and put it into the hands of the man in linen, who took it and went out. 8 (Under the wings of the cherubim could be seen what looked like human hands.)
9 I looked, and I saw beside the cherubim four wheels, one beside each of the cherubim; the wheels sparkled like topaz. 10 As for their appearance, the four of them looked alike; each was like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 11 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the cherubim faced; the wheels did not turn about[c] as the cherubim went. The cherubim went in whatever direction the head faced, without turning as they went. 12 Their entire bodies, including their backs, their hands and their wings, were completely full of eyes, as were their four wheels. 13 I heard the wheels being called “the whirling wheels.” 14 Each of the cherubim had four faces: One face was that of a cherub, the second the face of a human being, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.
15 Then the cherubim rose upward. These were the living creatures I had seen by the Kebar River. 16 When the cherubim moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the cherubim spread their wings to rise from the ground, the wheels did not leave their side. 17 When the cherubim stood still, they also stood still; and when the cherubim rose, they rose with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in them.
18 Then the glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim. 19 While I watched, the cherubim spread their wings and rose from the ground, and as they went, the wheels went with them. They stopped at the entrance of the east gate of the Lord’s house, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them.
20 These were the living creatures I had seen beneath the God of Israel by the Kebar River, and I realized that they were cherubim. 21 Each had four faces and four wings, and under their wings was what looked like human hands. 22 Their faces had the same appearance as those I had seen by the Kebar River. Each one went straight ahead.
Ezekiel 10:5 Hebrew El-Shaddai
Ezekiel 10:11 Or aside
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Acts 1:1-9
Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven
1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.”
6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
Footnotes:
Acts 1:5 Or in
Acts 1:5 Or in
Being A Witness
October 10, 2013 — by Bill Crowder
You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me. —Acts 1:8
When I was a teen, I witnessed an auto accident. It was a shocking experience that was compounded by what followed. As the only witness to the incident, I spent the ensuing months telling a series of lawyers and insurance adjustors what I had seen. I was not expected to explain the physics of the wreck or the details of the medical trauma. I was asked to tell only what I had witnessed.
As followers of Christ, we are called to be witnesses of what Jesus has done in us and for us. To point people to Christ, we don’t need to be able to explain every theological issue or answer every question. What we must do is explain what we have witnessed in our own lives through the cross and the resurrection of the Savior. Even better is that we don’t have to rely on ourselves alone to do this. Jesus said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
As we rely on the Spirit’s power, we can point a hurting world to the redeeming Christ. With His help, we can witness to the life-changing power of His presence in our lives!
I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.
I love to tell the story, because I know ’tis true;
It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do. —Hankey
Our testimony is the witness of what God has done for us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 10, 2013
How Will I Know?
Jesus answered and said, ’I thank You, Father . . . that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes’ —Matthew 11:25
We do not grow into a spiritual relationship step by step— we either have a relationship or we do not. God does not continue to cleanse us more and more from sin— “But if we walk in the light,” we are cleansed “from all sin” (1 John 1:7). It is a matter of obedience, and once we obey, the relationship is instantly perfected. But if we turn away from obedience for even one second, darkness and death are immediately at work again.
All of God’s revealed truths are sealed until they are opened to us through obedience. You will never open them through philosophy or thinking. But once you obey, a flash of light comes immediately. Let God’s truth work into you by immersing yourself in it, not by worrying into it. The only way you can get to know the truth of God is to stop trying to find out and by being born again. If you obey God in the first thing He shows you, then He instantly opens up the next truth to you. You could read volumes on the work of the Holy Spirit, when five minutes of total, uncompromising obedience would make things as clear as sunlight. Don’t say, “I suppose I will understand these things someday!” You can understand them now. And it is not study that brings understanding to you, but obedience. Even the smallest bit of obedience opens heaven, and the deepest truths of God immediately become yours. Yet God will never reveal more truth about Himself to you, until you have obeyed what you know already. Beware of becoming one of the “wise and prudent.” “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know . . .” (John 7:17).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Listening for My Language - #6979
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to be in Geneva, Switzerland. Or as they say, "Geneve." (I'm not sure about my French.) But anyway it's a beautiful, French-speaking city in Switzerland. And since we were with our host most of the time, my wife and I got along just fine. But one day they left us on our own to do a little shopping, and we don't speak French. The first I knew I was going to have a problem is when we went into this pharmacy, which, of course, was identified in French on the outside. I looked around, I had a couple of questions, and the pharmacist looked at me with a blank stare. Our English wasn't getting through.
Later on, our friend said to us, "Here in this place, if you don't speak their language, tough!" I said, "Even if it means money for them? We were trying to buy something." They said, "Hey, those people don't listen until you communicate in their language."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Listening for My Language."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts chapter 2, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 4. It's the powerful Day of Pentecost where 3,000 people come to Christ in one day. But before that happened, listen. "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem where there were God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard them speaking in his own language."
Now, these early Christians had the most powerful message in the world; the one who had been crucified in that city only weeks earlier was now alive and available to be their Savior. But the apostles could have talked all day, like me in that store in Geneva, and never have gotten through - unless they communicated the message in the language of the listener.
And it wasn't a language that was easy for the one who was doing the speaking. Every foreign missionary knows that you've got to do language study before you do anything else. You don't go to Peru and say to somebody there, "Now, as soon as you learn to speak English I have some great news about God for you." Of course not! If you want to communicate Christ to the lost people around you, you've got to say it in their language. That's true in our culture today. We will have to use words that the lost people around us understand; not our "Christianese" that we talk all the time at church.
There's a lot of people, I think, who aren't rejecting our Savior so much as they're rejecting our vocabulary. They don't understand all this Christian talk. It's time we begin to practice the Gospel in everyday language; telling people that there's a relationship you're supposed to have and that you don't have because of running your own life. But you can have because Jesus paid the death penalty for that, and it's a relationship you must choose. We've got to find some non-religious way to tell them.
Let's think about this; we should be using music they understand if we're going to use music at all, because music is the language of a generation. If we insist that they hear about Christ in the traditional music we're used to, that we like, we'll probably forfeit them to the darkness. We have to think of music as missionary languages, not so much a battle ground over style.
We're going to have to reach people in settings where they're comfortable, not where we're comfortable. We're talking about evangelism in a living room, or a park, or a Bible study at work or at school. If we wait for them to come to our religious turf, we'll probably leave them lost. It's time for God's people to break out of the walls of the church and reach people in places where they already are; addressing subjects they already care about.
We need to meet people where they are with a testimony out of our life that relates to their lives. Thousands came to Christ on this Day of Pentecost; the day that each one heard them speaking in his own language. Would you ask God to show you today how to speak the language of the people around you; to reach them with the words, the music, the issues, and the testimony that they will understand?
And remember, you've got life or death information to deliver to the people within your reach. Their eternity depends on it, and they're listening for their language.