Max Lucado Daily: Lord, Teach Us to Pray
We can’t even get the cable company to answer us, yet God will? The doctor’s too busy, but God isn’t? We have our doubts about prayer!
Jesus raised people from the dead. But a “How to Vacate the Cemetery” seminar? His followers never called for one. But they did want Him to do this: “Lord, teach us to pray.” Might their interest have something to do with the jaw-dropping promise Jesus attached to prayer? “Ask and it will be given to you.” When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray He gave them a prayer. Could you use the same?
Father, You are good. I need help. Heal me and forgive me.
They need help. Thank You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Before amen—comes the power of a simple prayer. Punctuate your day with it!
Mark 8:1-21
Jesus Feeds the Four Thousand
During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, 2 “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. 3 If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”
4 His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”
5 “How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked.
“Seven,” they replied.
6 He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. 7 They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. 8 The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 9 About four thousand were present. After he had sent them away, 10 he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.
11 The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. 12 He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.” 13 Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.
The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod
14 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15 “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”
16 They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”
17 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”
“Twelve,” they replied.
20 “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”
They answered, “Seven.”
21 He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, October 06, 2014
Read: Jeremiah 20:7-13
Jeremiah’s Complaint
You deceived[a] me, Lord, and I was deceived[b];
you overpowered me and prevailed.
I am ridiculed all day long;
everyone mocks me.
8 Whenever I speak, I cry out
proclaiming violence and destruction.
So the word of the Lord has brought me
insult and reproach all day long.
9 But if I say, “I will not mention his word
or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot.
10 I hear many whispering,
“Terror on every side!
Denounce him! Let’s denounce him!”
All my friends
are waiting for me to slip, saying,
“Perhaps he will be deceived;
then we will prevail over him
and take our revenge on him.”
11 But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior;
so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.
They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced;
their dishonor will never be forgotten.
12 Lord Almighty, you who examine the righteous
and probe the heart and mind,
let me see your vengeance on them,
for to you I have committed my cause.
13 Sing to the Lord!
Give praise to the Lord!
He rescues the life of the needy
from the hands of the wicked.
Footnotes:
Jeremiah 20:7 Or persuaded
Jeremiah 20:7 Or persuaded
Insight
Knowing that God called him to a difficult ministry, Jeremiah endured much persecution while striving to remain faithful to his calling (Jer. 20:1-6). His suffering caused him to question that calling (vv.7-10), but he was quick to reaffirm God’s sovereignty (vv.11-13).
A Faithful Helper
By Jennifer Benson Schuldt
The Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome One. —Jeremiah 20:11
As a young boy, my father had to deliver slop to hungry pigs on the farm where he grew up. He hated this job because the hogs would knock him over when he entered their pen. This task might have been impossible except for a faithful helper who accompanied my dad—a German shepherd named Sugarbear. She would maneuver herself between my father and the pigs and hold them back until my dad finished his chore.
The prophet Jeremiah had the difficult job of proclaiming God’s messages to the Israelites. This required him to endure physical abuse, verbal attacks, imprisonment, and isolation. Although Jeremiah struggled with deep discouragement, he had a Helper through all of his trouble. God promised him, “I am with you . . . to deliver you” (Jer. 1:19).
God did not desert Jeremiah, and He will not desert us. We have His continual aid through the power of the Spirit who lives inside every believer (John 14:16-17). The Helper gives us hope (Rom. 15:13), steers us toward spiritual truth (John 16:13), and pours out God’s love in our hearts (Rom. 5:5). We can trust that God faithfully helps us as we endure hardship. We can say with Jeremiah, “The Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome One” (Jer. 20:11).
You, God, have been our help forever.
And You are our hope now and into eternity.
We thank You that You will never desert us.
You will be faithful.
Our greatest hope here below is help from God above.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, October 06, 2014
The Nature of Regeneration
When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me . . . —Galatians 1:15-16
If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “. . . until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you . . .” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, October 06, 2014
The Shocking Death of Robin Williams - #7236
Robin Williams, one of the funniest men in America, successful in movies, TV, and even Broadway. A suicide? That was the shocking news that's left the entertainment world - and the entertained world - reeling. It just seems that the joy and laughter he gave so many somehow wasn't enough for him. Not to keep on living.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Shocking Death of Robin Williams."
You know, his death makes me think of Jimmy, who always made me laugh. He made a lot of people laugh. He was never famous, but he was the funniest guy we knew at the time. I tried not to show how shocked I was the night I got a call from Jimmy to say goodbye. In fact, he had broken into my office. He said, "I just was going to call you – because you're the only person I want to say goodbye to." He was on his way to kill himself.
Thank God, he stayed there until I could get there. We talked all night. Actually, I mostly listened all night. And Jimmy poured out all the pain that his humor had concealed. I never knew. Seemingly, so full of life, but he was thinking about dying.
That's part of what has made Robin Williams' death so hard to grasp. There is this huge gap between the bright light we saw on the outside and the darkness that must have been stalking him on the inside. Sadly, that haunting contradiction is all too familiar to a lot of folks who may never have their name in the headlines. See, we've got it all together on the outside, but we're falling apart on the inside. You see my confidence; inside, I'm desperately insecure. You see my smile; inside, I'm battling my secret pain.
And it's that word secret that makes our inner darkness so dangerous. When I hide my monsters in the shadows, they stalk me constantly. Rather than facing our monsters, we opt for pain relievers. Which, rather than solving our problems, become another problem in themselves.
Stuffing our pain is not a cure. "Outing" our pain is where a cure begins. When I drag those monsters into the light, they begin to lose their power over me. There is no shame in letting people into your battle. There is great danger in trying to fight it alone.
I'm forever grateful that young Jimmy called me that night that he was going to die. Strangely, he found a reason to live that night; actually, the reason to live. He opened up all his pain to the One who said, "The Lord has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted." He talked about a darkness that comes to us when He spoke of it in our word for today from the Word of God, John 10:10. He said, "The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. But I have come that they may have life and have it to the full."
That's Jesus, of course. The Bible actually says we were "created by Him and we were created for Him." Which means we have this God-sized hole in our heart that no relationship or accomplishment can fill. So, we're ever searching; we're never finding, because God has planted what the Bible calls "eternity in our hearts."
I'm so thankful that I found that "forever" thing when I embraced that relationship with the God I was made by and made for. A relationship that was free for me, but it cost Jesus everything. It meant sacrificing His life, dying on a cross, to open the way for a sinful me to belong to a perfect God and to live forever.
Now, with the vista of my life opened up beyond my years here to this amazing forever, I can live life here to the full. Doing life with the only One who knows why I'm here; the One who put me here. The One who said, "Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life."
On this very day, this Jesus stands ready to come in and turn the darkness to light inside of you and to set you free from the monsters that have pursued you for a lifetime, and from the self-rule of your life that has caused so much of the pain.
If you want to begin a relationship with this One who loved you enough to die for you, I want to invite you to go to our website and there I will have the opportunity to show you how to begin with Him today. It's ANewStory.com.
See, because of Jesus, we know the darkness doesn't have to win, because light has come.
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