Revenge builds a lonely house. Space enough for one person. The lives of its tenants are reduced to one goal: make someone miserable. They do. Themselves!
Keep a sharp eye out for the weeds of bitter discontent. God's healing includes a move out of the House of Spite, toward the spacious ways of grace, away from hardness toward forgiveness. Can he really, you wonder? Can He really clean up this mess? This history of sexual abuse? This raw anger at the father who left my mother? Can God heal this ancient hurt in my heart?
Begin the process of forgiveness. Turn your attention away from what they did to you to what Jesus did for you. Stay the course. You'll spend less time in the spite house and more in the grace house. And as one who's walked the hallways of both, believe me, you're going to love the space of grace. You'll get through this!
From You'll Get Through This
1 Timothy 6
New International Version (NIV)
6 All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. 2 Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare[a] of their slaves.
False Teachers and the Love of Money
These are the things you are to teach and insist on. 3 If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, 4 they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions 5 and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
Final Charge to Timothy
11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.
17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
20 Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, 21 which some have professed and in so doing have departed from the faith.
Grace be with you all.
Footnotes:
1 Timothy 6:2 Or and benefit from the service
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Psalm 8
For the director of music. According to gittith.[b] A psalm of David.
1 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?[c]
5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e]
and crowned them[f] with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their[g] feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Footnotes:
Psalm 8:1 In Hebrew texts 8:1-9 is numbered 8:2-10.
Psalm 8:1 Title: Probably a musical term
Psalm 8:4 Or what is a human being that you are mindful of him, / a son of man that you care for him?
Psalm 8:5 Or him
Psalm 8:5 Or than God
Psalm 8:5 Or him
Psalm 8:6 Or made him ruler . . . ; / . . . his
Dreams Of Childhood
October 15, 2013 — by Randy Kilgore
Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength. —Psalm 8:2
Years ago, I asked fifth-grade students to prepare a list of questions to ask Jesus if He were to show up in person the following week. I also asked groups of adults to do the same thing. The results were startlingly different. The kids’ questions ranged from adorable to poignant: “Will we have to sit around in robes and sing all day in heaven? Will my puppy be in heaven? Were the whales in or out of the ark? How’s my grandpa doing up there with You?” Almost without fail, their questions were free from doubt that heaven existed or that God acts supernaturally.
Adults, on the other hand, featured a completely different line of questioning: “Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I know You’re listening to my prayers? Why is there only one way to heaven? How could a loving God let this tragedy happen to me?”
For the most part, children live life unfettered by the cares and sorrows that burden adults. Their faith lets them trust God more readily. While we adults often get lost in trials and sorrows, children retain the psalmist’s view of life—an eternal perspective that sees the greatness of God (Ps. 8:1-2).
God can be trusted, and He longs for us to trust Him the way children do (Matt. 18:3).
O Father, may I find again the dreams of childhood
when thoughts of You filled me with peace
and I longed to know You more. Give me
a faith that trusts You implicitly.
An intimate walk with God lifts our eyes from today’s trials and into eternity’s triumphs.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 15, 2013
The Key to the Missionary’s Work (2)
He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world —1 John 2:2
The key to the missionary’s message is the propitiation of Christ Jesus— His sacrifice for us that completely satisfied the wrath of God. Look at any other aspect of Christ’s work, whether it is healing, saving, or sanctifying, and you will see that there is nothing limitless about those. But— “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”— that is limitless (John 1:29). The missionary’s message is the limitless importance of Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins, and a missionary is someone who is immersed in the truth of that revelation.
The real key to the missionary’s message is the “remissionary” aspect of Christ’s life, not His kindness, His goodness, or even His revealing of the fatherhood of God to us. “. . . repentance and remission of sins should be preached . . . to all nations . . .” (Luke 24:47). The greatest message of limitless importance is that “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins . . . .” The missionary’s message is not nationalistic, favoring nations or individuals; it is “for the whole world.” When the Holy Spirit comes into me, He does not consider my partialities or preferences; He simply brings me into oneness with the Lord Jesus.
A missionary is someone who is bound by marriage to the stated mission and purpose of his Lord and Master. He is not to proclaim his own point of view, but is only to proclaim “the Lamb of God.” It is easier to belong to a faction that simply tells what Jesus Christ has done for me, and easier to become a devotee of divine healing, or of a special type of sanctification, or of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But Paul did not say, “Woe is me if I do not preach what Christ has done for me,” but, “. . . woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16). And this is the gospel— “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Identifying the Killer - #6982
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
My wife and I had some of the most special weeks of our lives on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. But there was a cloud over one visit during a summer ministry we had there. See, there had been this mystery illness; it was all over the news. It had already taken some 20 lives. People suddenly were developing severe breathing problems, and in a short time they were gone. Well, since then, that same disease has surfaced in places all over the country. That demonstrated that the killer was not a reservation disease. But in the early stages, there was panic on the reservation.
Health experts and researchers from all over descended on the area to find the cause. Finally, they isolated this rodent-born cause that they called the Hantavirus, and then victims had some hope of recovery. Before that, the medical personnel were just trying to treat the symptoms, but everyone knew that the killer would continue to claim victims until the culprit was identified.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Identifying the Killer."
The Bible-God's book-identifies the greatest killer of all time; the greatest problem you and I have. Strangely, many of us wouldn't even put this disease on our list of problems that need a solution. We'd put its deadly symptoms on our list. We see the damage from this disease in our family, our working relationships, some of the dark feelings inside of us, in the brokenness between people.
Okay, here's the diagnosis. Isaiah 59:1-2, our word for today from the Word of God. "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save nor His ear too dull to hear. But our iniquities (That's our sins; our wrong doings.) have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear." There is a killer on the loose in your world and mine called sin. And because of it the Bible says here we are away from God, and that single missing relationship is responsible for so much of our misery.
First of all, sin needs a definition. What is it? Well, I think the middle letter says it pretty well - s-I-n. "I will run my life, not you, God." No matter how religious we are, the Bible says we have all made that defiant choice about the central control of our life. Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fallen short of God's glorious ideal." And out of that hijacking of our life has come thousands of little life choices that disregard what God wants and just plow ahead with what we want.
This sin virus puts a wall between us and the God that we can't live without. The symptoms? They read like a list of the greatest struggles and needs of our life: chronic loneliness. Why? We're lonely for God. We're away from Him. A low view of our own worth. Why? Because we're away from the One who gave us our worth. Disappointing relationships. Why? Because we haven't got the central relationship right and all the others aren't working, a lot of times because of selfishness.
Those dark feelings that frighten us sometimes, depression and anger. They're there because there's no God to help us control them and change them. We're nervous about death and we're nervous about eternity because we're not ready to meet God; we are away from Him. We've got struggles in our marriages, in our parenting, in finding peace and trying to find some closeness. It's all so hard because we're doing it without the love of God; without the power of God.
Maybe you have battled the symptoms all your life without knowing what caused them - the sin virus. If you're ready for a cure, listen to Isaiah 53:5-6. "The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him (that's Christ). We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity (the sin) of us all." Jesus took the punishment for your sin when He died on the cross, and the wall between you and God comes down the moment you make the Savior your Savior by saying, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hopes on You. Come into my life. Forgive my sin and bring me into a relationship with my God."
If you're not sure you've begun that relationship and you want to, I would love to help you by just visiting our website ANewStory.com. Join me there and let me explain to you how to be sure you belong to Him.
Right now, right where you are, you can open your life up to the One, not who has the cure. No, He is the cure.