Max Lucado Daily: Sacred Delight
He should have been miserable. He should have been bitter. He had every right to be a pot of boiling anger. But he wasn't. Jesus embodied a stubborn joy!
What is this stubborn joy? This bird that sings while it's still dark? What is the source of this peace that defies pain? I call it sacred delight. What is sacred is God's! And this joy is God's.
Sacred delight is good news coming through the back door of your heart. It's the too-good-to-be-true coming true. It's having God as your lawyer, your dad, your biggest fan, and your best friend. It's hope where you least expected it-a flower in life's sidewalk.
It is sacred because only God can grant it. It is a delight because it thrills. It can't be stolen. It can't be predicted. It is God's sacred delight!
The Applause of Heaven
Psalm 74
A maskil[a] of Asaph.
1 O God, why have you rejected us forever?
Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture?
2 Remember the nation you purchased long ago,
the people of your inheritance, whom you redeemed—
Mount Zion, where you dwelt.
3 Turn your steps toward these everlasting ruins,
all this destruction the enemy has brought on the sanctuary.
4 Your foes roared in the place where you met with us;
they set up their standards as signs.
5 They behaved like men wielding axes
to cut through a thicket of trees.
6 They smashed all the carved paneling
with their axes and hatchets.
7 They burned your sanctuary to the ground;
they defiled the dwelling place of your Name.
8 They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!”
They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land.
9 We are given no signs from God;
no prophets are left,
and none of us knows how long this will be.
10 How long will the enemy mock you, God?
Will the foe revile your name forever?
11 Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?
Take it from the folds of your garment and destroy them!
12 But God is my King from long ago;
he brings salvation on the earth.
13 It was you who split open the sea by your power;
you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.
14 It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.
15 It was you who opened up springs and streams;
you dried up the ever-flowing rivers.
16 The day is yours, and yours also the night;
you established the sun and moon.
17 It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth;
you made both summer and winter.
18 Remember how the enemy has mocked you, Lord,
how foolish people have reviled your name.
19 Do not hand over the life of your dove to wild beasts;
do not forget the lives of your afflicted people forever.
20 Have regard for your covenant,
because haunts of violence fill the dark places of the land.
21 Do not let the oppressed retreat in disgrace;
may the poor and needy praise your name.
22 Rise up, O God, and defend your cause;
remember how fools mock you all day long.
23 Do not ignore the clamor of your adversaries,
the uproar of your enemies, which rises continually.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Matthew 6:1-7
Giving to the Needy
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Prayer
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
The Night No One Came
January 6, 2014 — by Julie Ackerman Link
Do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. —Matthew 6:1
One winter night composer Johann Sebastian Bach was scheduled to debut a new composition. He arrived at the church expecting it to be full. Instead, he learned that no one had come. Without missing a beat, Bach told his musicians that they would still perform as planned. They took their places, Bach raised his baton, and soon the empty church was filled with magnificent music.
This story made me do some soul-searching. Would I write if God were my only audience? How would my writing be different?
New writers are often advised to visualize one person they are writing to as a way of staying focused. I do this when I write devotionals; I try to keep readers in mind because I want to say something they will want to read and that will help them on their spiritual journey.
I doubt that the “devotional writer” David, whose psalms we turn to for comfort and encouragement, had “readers” in mind. The only audience he had in mind was God.
Whether our “deeds,” mentioned in Matthew 6, are works of art or acts of service, we should keep in mind that they’re really between us and God. Whether or not anyone else sees does not matter. He is our audience.
That my ways might show forth Your glory,
That You, dear Lord, greatly deserve!
With Your precious blood You’ve redeemed me—
In all my days, You I would serve! —Somerville
Serve for an audience of one.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
January 6, 2014
Worship
He moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord —Genesis 12:8
Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard it for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded (see Exodus 16:20). God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.
Bethel is the symbol of fellowship with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abram “pitched his tent” between the two. The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private times of fellowship and oneness with Him. Rushing in and out of worship is wrong every time— there is always plenty of time to worship God. Days set apart for quiet can be a trap, detracting from the need to have daily quiet time with God. That is why we must “pitch our tents” where we will always have quiet times with Him, however noisy our times with the world may be. There are not three levels of spiritual life— worship, waiting, and work. Yet some of us seem to jump like spiritual frogs from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God’s idea is that the three should go together as one. They were always together in the life of our Lord and in perfect harmony. It is a discipline that must be developed; it will not happen overnight.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
When Differences Don't Matter - #7041
Monday, January 6, 2014
Oklahoma City! It's hard for me to hear those words without thinking of the devastation that occurred back on April 19, 1995; the day that a terrorist's bomb destroyed the Federal Building and 168 people who were in it. That day the very worst and the very best in people were displayed in Oklahoma City. It was an awful moment, but it united the community in a way like never before. There were so many people who threw themselves into the rescue effort. There were doctors, nurses, police, firefighters, and everyday heroes, counselors, ministers, and food suppliers. Someone wisely pointed out that suddenly white didn't matter, black didn't matter, Methodist didn't matter, Baptist didn't matter, old, young. There was one compelling need that had incredible power to erase all the categories.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When Differences Don't Matter."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Philippians 1:27-28. You know what suddenly pulls together people who usually work separately? Well, look at Oklahoma City. It's the realization that lives are at stake; that people will die if we don't work together. Turf doesn't matter when people are dying. Labels don't matter. The eternal tragedy of people dying spiritually isn't as easy to see as the devastation of a bomb blast, but it's every bit as real and far more eternal. And the way to rescue spiritually dying people who surround us is obvious.
Here we go, Philippians 1:27. "Stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel, without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved, and that by God." God says, "I want you to fight the gospel battle as one man in one spirit."
See, if we begin to see the people around us as Jesus sees them, we'll know that they're dying without a Savior. Now they're dying inside, and they will spend eternity without God unless we get to them in time. And then suddenly all those differences between us Christians don't seem so important. All that matters is getting to those dying people.
There's only one explanation for the competition and the categories between churches and organizations in your area. We must not really believe that getting to people for Jesus is life-or-death. The situation of lost people is too desperate for us to be worrying about denomination, or who gets the credit, or different views of the 10% that Christians disagree on. If "lostness" is not an eternal emergency, then maybe we could afford to stay clustered in our little individual rescue units.
But a lost world just doesn't understand why we can't get together. I hear that all the time. And if we don't, we'll never get to enough people in time. Let's start praying for the lost in groups that cross all the lines that have divided us. Let's plan together strategies to reach them. Let's work together out of a common broken heart for those who break the heart of Jesus. Try an experiment. Hit yourself in the face with your five separate fingers; see how it feels. Now, pull those five fingers together in a fist. Now hit yourself in the face. I doubt you're going to do it. Tell me which is more powerful, separate fingers working separately or pulled together in a fist. God's people have been carrying out the work of God way too long as separate fingers. Isn't it time we pulled together and made a fist in Satan's face?
That awful day in Oklahoma City I can't imagine the rescuers focusing most of their attention on the people who were already safe and already well. Of course not! They focused everything on the dying people. I can't imagine them arguing over turf either. See, when lives are at stake - in this case for heaven and hell - the differences do not matter. Saving lives together, that's all that matters.