Max Lucado Daily: Travel Light
I've never been one to travel light. I've tried. Believe me, I've tried. I'm prepared. I'm prepared for a baby dedication or costume party. Prepared to parachute behind enemy lines. And, if perchance, the Dalai Lama might be on my flight and invite me to dine in Tibet, I carry snowshoes. I need to learn to travel light!
Haven't you been known to pick up a few bags? The suitcase of guilt. A sack of discontent. An overnight bag of loneliness and a trunk of fear. A hanging bag of grief. No wonder you're so tired at the end of the day.
God's saying to you, "Set that stuff down. You're carrying burdens you don't need to bear." "Come to Me," He invites, "all of you who're weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest."
If we let Him-God will lighten our loads!
From Traveling Light
Job 17
My spirit is broken,
my days are cut short,
the grave awaits me.
2 Surely mockers surround me;
my eyes must dwell on their hostility.
3 “Give me, O God, the pledge you demand.
Who else will put up security for me?
4 You have closed their minds to understanding;
therefore you will not let them triumph.
5 If anyone denounces their friends for reward,
the eyes of their children will fail.
6 “God has made me a byword to everyone,
a man in whose face people spit.
7 My eyes have grown dim with grief;
my whole frame is but a shadow.
8 The upright are appalled at this;
the innocent are aroused against the ungodly.
9 Nevertheless, the righteous will hold to their ways,
and those with clean hands will grow stronger.
10 “But come on, all of you, try again!
I will not find a wise man among you.
11 My days have passed, my plans are shattered.
Yet the desires of my heart
12 turn night into day;
in the face of the darkness light is near.
13 If the only home I hope for is the grave,
if I spread out my bed in the realm of darkness,
14 if I say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’
and to the worm, ‘My mother’ or ‘My sister,’
15 where then is my hope—
who can see any hope for me?
16 Will it go down to the gates of death?
Will we descend together into the dust?”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Matthew 8:1-4
Jesus Heals a Man With Leprosy
When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. 2 A man with leprosy[a] came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
3 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. 4 Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
Footnotes:
Matthew 8:2 The Greek word traditionally translated leprosy was used for various diseases affecting the skin.
Insight
Some biblical scholars say that of all the Gospel writers Matthew seems to have been the most concerned with presenting events in chronological order. If that’s correct, then the context of the event in today’s text is critical to our understanding. Directly prior to this encounter with a leper, Jesus presented His “Sermon on the Mount” (Matt. 5–7). In that timeless message, Christ detailed a challenging, lofty kingdom ethic of loving, caring, and serving. Now, confronted by this leper, Jesus lived out His own teaching by demonstrating love and compassion for one whose disease had absolutely marginalized him (8:1-4). Jesus not only taught these truths, He lovingly modeled them as well.
“If You Are Willing”
By Anne Cetas
Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean. —Matthew 8:2
Molly wanted her dad’s help, but she was afraid to ask. She knew that when he was working on his computer, he didn’t want to be interrupted. He might get upset at me, she thought, so she didn’t ask him.
We need not have such fears when we come to Jesus. In Matthew 8:1-4, we read about a leper who didn’t hesitate to interrupt Jesus with his needs. His disease made him desperate—he had been ostracized from society and was in emotional distress. Jesus was busy with “great multitudes,” but the leper made his way through the crowd to talk with Jesus.
Matthew’s gospel says that the leper came and “worshiped Him” (v.2). He approached Jesus in worship, with trust in His power, and with humility, acknowledging that the choice to help belonged to Jesus. He said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean” (v.2). In compassion, Jesus touched him (leprosy had made him “untouchable” by the standards of Jewish law), and he was cleansed immediately.
Like the leper, we don’t need to hesitate to approach Jesus with our desire for His help. As we go to Him in humility and worship, we can trust that He will make the best choices for us.
What an example this leper is to me, Lord. Give me
a heart of worship, of confidence in Your power, and
of trust that when I bring my needs to You, You’ll
make the best choice. May I surrender to Your will.
Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy. —Hebrews 4:16
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, May 01, 2014
Faith— Not Emotion
We walk by faith, not by sight —2 Corinthians 5:7
For a while, we are fully aware of God’s concern for us. But then, when God begins to use us in His work, we begin to take on a pitiful look and talk only of our trials and difficulties. And all the while God is trying to make us do our work as hidden people who are not in the spotlight. None of us would be hidden spiritually if we could help it. Can we do our work when it seems that God has sealed up heaven? Some of us always want to be brightly illuminated saints with golden halos and with the continual glow of inspiration, and to have other saints of God dealing with us all the time. A self-assured saint is of no value to God. He is abnormal, unfit for daily life, and completely unlike God. We are here, not as immature angels, but as men and women, to do the work of this world. And we are to do it with an infinitely greater power to withstand the struggle because we have been born from above.
If we continually try to bring back those exceptional moments of inspiration, it is a sign that it is not God we want. We are becoming obsessed with the moments when God did come and speak with us, and we are insisting that He do it again. But what God wants us to do is to “walk by faith.” How many of us have set ourselves aside as if to say, “I cannot do anything else until God appears to me”? He will never do it. We will have to get up on our own, without any inspiration and without any sudden touch from God. Then comes our surprise and we find ourselves exclaiming, “Why, He was there all the time, and I never knew it!” Never live for those exceptional moments— they are surprises. God will give us His touches of inspiration only when He sees that we are not in danger of being led away by them. We must never consider our moments of inspiration as the standard way of life— our work is our standard.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Cold War, Missing Plane - How to Find an Anchor - #7124
Thursday, May 1, 2014
I should have saved my DVRs of the Winter Olympics. I liked the news from Russia a lot better when it was about the Olympics. As soon as the fireworks in Sochi ended, the fireworks in Ukraine began. And suddenly part of Ukraine is part of Russia. Hello? And with Russia flexing its expansionist muscles on the world's stage again, I'm hearing those two words again that I haven't heard for a long time - Cold War.
See, the standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine, well that's maybe just a beginning. It feels uncomfortably familiar and potentially explosive. It doesn't help that a Russian anchorman (who reportedly is President Putin's "favorite") was on State-controlled TV recently with a mushroom cloud as his backdrop. He was announcing, literally, Russia is the only country capable of turning the U.S. into (in his words) "radioactive ash." That's not what you want to watch right before bedtime.
I'm Ron Hutchraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Cold War, Missing Plane - How to Find an Anchor."
Some of this feels like the opening act of a world that's growing even more unstable and more dangerous as time goes by. You know when that Malaysian jetliner went missing, that didn't help. The longer it was "unfindable," the more troubling suspicions grew.
More and more people were calling this kind of a grim reminder of one of the realities of the new terrorism, where airplanes become weapons. Overall, It's a disturbing time in the world.
There's new talk of a Cold War standoff with a resurgent Russia; rekindled fears of a terrorism that seared our souls not very long ago. And then the growing prospect of weapons of mass destruction in some pretty scary hands. Increasingly, it feels like one little spark could send things spinning out of control; our control anyway. So I turned off the news and I reached for my Bible.
I read where David, the revered Jewish king, asked this question, "What can we do when the foundations are being destroyed?" Well I'll tell you, with so many "foundations" shaking these days, that's a good question right now.
Here's our word for today from the Word of God. The answer in Psalm 11:3-4, "The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His heavenly throne." At first, that didn't sound like it answered the questions. But then I realized I was reading about the one unmoving anchor when everything else is up for grabs.
Things might be out of our control. Yeah, they are. But they're never out of God's control. Nations may fall. Evil men can plot and even succeed. The doctor may stun us with bad news. The finances may seem impossible. The funeral may seem like the end. Our family may look hopeless. But God has not vacated the throne from which the universe is governed. Proverbs 19:21 says, "It is the Lord's purpose that prevails"
You know, I was scared to death when I was on my first big roller coaster as a kid. And pretty sure I was going to die at the age of nine. I was jerking every which-way. We were defying gravity. It seemed like we were out of control. But not out of control, because the whole time that car was flying all over, it was attached to the tracks and headed for a safe destination.
I'm not at the mercy of a roller coaster world. I am loved by the God who rules the galaxies; whose plans can't be derailed. I'm not afraid. However wild the ride, things are still on track.
The Bible says in the greatest insurance policy in the universe, "Who will ever separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Which causes me to ask you to consider today what unloseable source of security do you have that is divorce-proof, terror-proof, recession-proof, unemployment-proof, death-proof? The Bible says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." And this man who loved you enough to die for your sins was powerful enough to walk out of His grave, is the one sure thing in a rapidly changing and deteriorating world.
If you do not belong to Him...if you're not sure you do, get that settled today. Our website's there to actually help you do that. And I'm just going to invite you to check it out today ANewStory.com. Because "He's got the whole world in His hands."
