Max Lucado Daily: A Spiritual Heart Transplant
Grace! The bank gives us a grace period. The seedy politician falls from grace. Musicians speak of a grace note. We use the word for hospitals, baby girls, kings and pre-meal prayers. We talk as though we know what grace means.
You turn the page of your Bible and look at the words. You might as well be gazing at a cemetery. Lifeless, stony. Nothing moves you. But you don't dare close the book, no sirree. You dare not miss a deed for fear that God will erase your name.
God's grace has a drenching about it. Grace comes after you. It re-wires you. From insecure to God secure. From regret riddled to better-because-of-it. From afraid to die to ready to fly.
As Paul said in Galatians 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me."
You might call it a spiritual heart transplant!
From GRACE
Nehemiah 13
Nehemiah’s Final Reforms
On that day the Book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people and there it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be admitted into the assembly of God, 2 because they had not met the Israelites with food and water but had hired Balaam to call a curse down on them. (Our God, however, turned the curse into a blessing.) 3 When the people heard this law, they excluded from Israel all who were of foreign descent.
4 Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms of the house of our God. He was closely associated with Tobiah, 5 and he had provided him with a large room formerly used to store the grain offerings and incense and temple articles, and also the tithes of grain, new wine and olive oil prescribed for the Levites, musicians and gatekeepers, as well as the contributions for the priests.
6 But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Some time later I asked his permission 7 and came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done in providing Tobiah a room in the courts of the house of God. 8 I was greatly displeased and threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the room. 9 I gave orders to purify the rooms, and then I put back into them the equipment of the house of God, with the grain offerings and the incense.
10 I also learned that the portions assigned to the Levites had not been given to them, and that all the Levites and musicians responsible for the service had gone back to their own fields. 11 So I rebuked the officials and asked them, “Why is the house of God neglected?” Then I called them together and stationed them at their posts.
12 All Judah brought the tithes of grain, new wine and olive oil into the storerooms. 13 I put Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, and a Levite named Pedaiah in charge of the storerooms and made Hanan son of Zakkur, the son of Mattaniah, their assistant, because they were considered trustworthy. They were made responsible for distributing the supplies to their fellow Levites.
14 Remember me for this, my God, and do not blot out what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services.
15 In those days I saw people in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore I warned them against selling food on that day. 16 People from Tyre who lived in Jerusalem were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them in Jerusalem on the Sabbath to the people of Judah. 17 I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this wicked thing you are doing—desecrating the Sabbath day? 18 Didn’t your ancestors do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity on us and on this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath.”
19 When evening shadows fell on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be shut and not opened until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my own men at the gates so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day. 20 Once or twice the merchants and sellers of all kinds of goods spent the night outside Jerusalem. 21 But I warned them and said, “Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do this again, I will arrest you.” From that time on they no longer came on the Sabbath. 22 Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and go and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy.
Remember me for this also, my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.
23 Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. 24 Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. 25 I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. I made them take an oath in God’s name and said: “You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves. 26 Was it not because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women. 27 Must we hear now that you too are doing all this terrible wickedness and are being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women?”
28 One of the sons of Joiada son of Eliashib the high priest was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite. And I drove him away from me.
29 Remember them, my God, because they defiled the priestly office and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites.
30 So I purified the priests and the Levites of everything foreign, and assigned them duties, each to his own task. 31 I also made provision for contributions of wood at designated times, and for the firstfruits.
Remember me with favor, my God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Matthew 9:35–10:1
The Workers Are Few
35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Jesus Sends Out the Twelve
10 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
Insight
As we read in today’s text Jesus’ response to the multitudes, we see three distinct elements to that response. First of all, Jesus saw something. He saw the crowds of people “weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). Additionally, He felt something because, as verse 36 tells us, He was “moved with compassion for them.” Finally, the Master did something by calling for laborers to join in the work with Him (v.38). Christ’s example gives us a powerful model for engaging people with the heart of Christ.
Me And Dad
By Philip Yancey
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. —Genesis 2:15
A friend once spent a day installing large stone steps in his backyard. When his 5-year-old daughter begged to help, he suggested she just sing to encourage him in his work. She said no. She wanted to help. Carefully, when it would not endanger her, he let her place her hands on the rocks as he moved them.
He could have built the steps in less time without her. At the end of the day, though, he not only had new steps but also a daughter bursting with pride. “Me and Dad made steps,” she announced at dinner that night.
From the beginning, God has relied on people to advance His work. After equipping Adam to cultivate the land and supervise the animals, God left the work of the garden in his hands (Gen. 2:15-20).
The pattern has continued. When God wanted a dwelling place on earth, a tabernacle and temple did not descend from the sky; thousands of artists and craftsmen worked to fashion them (Ex. 35–38; 1 Kings 6). When Jesus proclaimed the new reign of God’s kingdom on earth, He invited human beings to help. He told His disciples, “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matt. 9:38).
As a father does with his children, so does God welcome us as His kingdom partners.
Heavenly Father, thank You that in Your love
and wisdom, You invite us to accomplish Your acts
of love, service, and kindness here on earth.
Thank You for the privilege of “helping” You.
God uses humble servants to accomplish His great work.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Is He Really My Lord?
. . . so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus . . . —Acts 20:24
Joy comes from seeing the complete fulfillment of the specific purpose for which I was created and born again, not from successfully doing something of my own choosing. The joy our Lord experienced came from doing what the Father sent Him to do. And He says to us, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21). Have you received a ministry from the Lord? If so, you must be faithful to it— to consider your life valuable only for the purpose of fulfilling that ministry. Knowing that you have done what Jesus sent you to do, think how satisfying it will be to hear Him say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). We each have to find a niche in life, and spiritually we find it when we receive a ministry from the Lord. To do this we must have close fellowship with Jesus and must know Him as more than our personal Savior. And we must be willing to experience the full impact of Acts 9:16 — “I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.”
“Do you love Me?” Then, “Feed My sheep” (John 21:17). He is not offering us a choice of how we can serve Him; He is asking for absolute loyalty to His commission, a faithfulness to what we discern when we are in the closest possible fellowship with God. If you have received a ministry from the Lord Jesus, you will know that the need is not the same as the call— the need is the opportunity to exercise the call. The call is to be faithful to the ministry you received when you were in true fellowship with Him. This does not imply that there is a whole series of differing ministries marked out for you. It does mean that you must be sensitive to what God has called you to do, and this may sometimes require ignoring demands for service in other areas.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
They Aren't Where They Used To Be - #7083
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Sometimes we tell people, "You really need to get out more." For my wife, that was especially true some years ago. Our ministry had been growing so fast that she almost felt like a prisoner at the office. She hadn't been able to get out and shop, even in the town where we lived.
Well, she finally broke down, and she "escaped", if you will, because she had so much needed shopping to do. That night she came home and she said, "You know, it's kind of sad. I had my route all planned out, what I was going to buy, where I was going to buy it, how to avoid backtracking." She said, "There was one small problem: the stores aren't there anymore."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "They Aren't Where They Used To Be."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from John chapter 4. We find Jesus in a place where most Jews would never go. It was an area called Samaria. Jews weren't very well liked there. And it says, "He had to go through Samaria." Now, this chapter tells us that He has a life-transforming encounter there with a Samaritan woman, who finds out that the love of Christ is the love she's been looking for her whole life.
And then finally, when we get down to verses 39 and 41 it says, "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony. And because of His words, many more became believers." Now, why did Jesus have to go through Samaria? Because that's where Samaritans are! The Samaritans would never have come to Him. He went where the lost people were. He connected with them on their turf where they were comfortable.
Now let's fast-forward to the present. On our watch, America has become a post-Christian nation. We're surrounded by people every day who don't know our language, they don't know our morality, they don't know anything about our meetings or want to go to them, they don't know our heroes, they don't know our book. They don't know anything about our Savior. There's plenty of activity going on in the name of evangelism, but it seems like we're missing most of our neighbors. We're not making a difference, and the chasm between the world of the church and the world of the lost is wider than ever. What's the problem? Could it be the same problem that my wife found after being cloistered in her office for too long? She went where the action had been, but it wasn't there anymore.
So many of the ways we try to reach lost people were developed maybe decades ago, and we're still trying to reach people with the same kind of programs, same vocabulary, same kind of presentations, and music and literature. See, we're going to where they used to be, and they moved. They're not there anymore.
When it comes to communicating with lost people, the price of failure is eternally high. It is an unthinkable eternity for those who are lost! We can't leave the people around us lost and wait for them to come to us, or to our meeting, or to our place. Jesus didn't do that. He went to their turf. He went to their place. He talked about the things they cared about. He explained the gospel in words and examples that they could understand; not religious talk.
The ancient Indian proverb says, "We need to walk a mile in the other man's moccasins." In other words, think post-Christian for a minute. Think lost! How would a lost person think in these times? How would they respond to our program? How would they respond to how we're saying it? Be the person you're trying to reach. Would you come to those Christian meetings? Would you understand those religious words? What would interest you there? What would keep you coming back?
Would they come to our website? Would they listen to what we're doing? What's going on in the life of a 21st Century lost person that would make them interested in Jesus? What are the differences in a Christian you know that would mean something to you if you're a lost person? You say, "Man, I want what they've got." Want would that be? You want to find someone who's lost, go where they are.
Maybe we've been in our little Christian cocoon too long. We need to realize that the people who have to know about our Jesus don't live where they used to live, they don't understand what they used to understand. Like Jesus, we need to "seek and save those who are lost." Please, go to lost people where they are.