Max Lucado Daily:Help From the Inside Out
When your hope comes from within you, your life is good as long as you are good. Your faith is strong as long as you are strong. But therein lies the problem. The Bible says, no one is good. Nor is anyone always strong; nor always secure. We need help from the inside out.
Jesus promised this kind of help in John 14:16-17 when he said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. . .you know Him because He lives with you and will be in you.”
Not near us. Not above us. Not around us. But in us. In the part of us we don’t even know. In the heart no one else has seen. In the hidden recesses of our being dwells, not an angel, not a philosophy, not a genie, but Spirit of God. Imagine that!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 6
God Promises Deliverance
Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.”
6 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.”
2 God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty,[d] but by my name the Lord[e] I did not make myself fully known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’”
9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.
10 Then the Lord said to Moses, 11 “Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country.”
12 But Moses said to the Lord, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips[f]?”
Family Record of Moses and Aaron
13 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron about the Israelites and Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he commanded them to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.
14 These were the heads of their families[g]:
The sons of Reuben the firstborn son of Israel were Hanok and Pallu, Hezron and Karmi. These were the clans of Reuben.
15 The sons of Simeon were Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jakin, Zohar and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman. These were the clans of Simeon.
16 These were the names of the sons of Levi according to their records: Gershon, Kohath and Merari. Levi lived 137 years.
17 The sons of Gershon, by clans, were Libni and Shimei.
18 The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Kohath lived 133 years.
19 The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi.
These were the clans of Levi according to their records.
20 Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.
21 The sons of Izhar were Korah, Nepheg and Zikri.
22 The sons of Uzziel were Mishael, Elzaphan and Sithri.
23 Aaron married Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon, and she bore him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.
24 The sons of Korah were Assir, Elkanah and Abiasaph. These were the Korahite clans.
25 Eleazar son of Aaron married one of the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas.
These were the heads of the Levite families, clan by clan.
26 It was this Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.” 27 They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt—this same Moses and Aaron.
Aaron to Speak for Moses
28 Now when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, 29 he said to him, “I am the Lord. Tell Pharaoh king of Egypt everything I tell you.”
30 But Moses said to the Lord, “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?”
Exodus 6:3 Hebrew El-Shaddai
Exodus 6:3 See note at 3:15.
Exodus 6:12 Hebrew I am uncircumcised of lips; also in verse 30
Exodus 6:14 The Hebrew for families here and in verse 25 refers to units larger than clans.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Read: Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Love the Lord Your God
These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Footnotes:
Deuteronomy 6:4 Or The Lord our God is one Lord; or The Lord is our God, the Lord is one; or The Lord is our God, the Lord alone
Insight
Deuteronomy 6:4 contains the Shema (or Shema Yisrael). This affirmation of the oneness of God (“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!”) is the centerpiece of the morning and evening prayers of observant Jews. The title Shema comes from the Hebrew term for the first word in the verse, hear.
Waving The White Flag
By Joe Stowell
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God. —Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Recently, while watching a video of a church service held in South America, I noticed something I had never seen before in church. As the pastor passionately called his flock to yield their lives to Jesus, one of the parishioners took a white hankie out of his pocket and started waving it in the air. Then another, and another. With tears running down their cheeks, they were expressing full surrender to Christ.
But I wonder if there was more to the moment than the flags of surrender. I think they were waving flags of love to God. When God told His people to “love the Lord your God” (Deut. 6:5), it was in the context of His urging them to surrender their lives to Him.
From God’s point of view, life with Him is far more than just trying to be good. It is always about relationship—relationship in which surrender is the way we express our grateful love to Him. Jesus, in amazing love for us, surrendered Himself on the cross to rescue us from our helpless bondage to sin and set us on a journey to all that is good and glorious.
We don’t have enough words to tell God how much we love Him! So, let’s show Him our love by surrendering our hearts and lives to follow Him.
Lord, take my life and make it wholly Thine;
Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine.
Take all my will, my passion, self, and pride;
I now surrender, Lord—in me abide. —Orr
Surrender is God’s love language.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Sanctification (2)
But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us . . . sanctification . . . —1 Corinthians 1:30
The Life Side. The mystery of sanctification is that the perfect qualities of Jesus Christ are imparted as a gift to me, not gradually, but instantly once I enter by faith into the realization that He “became for [me] . . . sanctification . . . .” Sanctification means nothing less than the holiness of Jesus becoming mine and being exhibited in my life.
The most wonderful secret of living a holy life does not lie in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfect qualities of Jesus exhibit themselves in my human flesh. Sanctification is “Christ in you . . .” (Colossians 1:27). It is His wonderful life that is imparted to me in sanctification— imparted by faith as a sovereign gift of God’s grace. Am I willing for God to make sanctification as real in me as it is in His Word?
Sanctification means the impartation of the holy qualities of Jesus Christ to me. It is the gift of His patience, love, holiness, faith, purity, and godliness that is exhibited in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy— it is drawing from Jesus the very holiness that was exhibited in Him, and that He now exhibits in me. Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation. Imitation is something altogether different. The perfection of everything is in Jesus Christ, and the mystery of sanctification is that all the perfect qualities of Jesus are at my disposal. Consequently, I slowly but surely begin to live a life of inexpressible order, soundness, and holiness— “. . . kept by the power of God . . .” (1 Peter 1:5).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
MOUNT EVEREST IS CLOSED - #7183
It just sounds weird: "Mount Everest is closed." But that was the headline No one was going to climb that most iconic of all mountaineering quests, because 16 Sherpa guides were lost on the mountain, as blocks of ice as big as automobiles cascaded down on them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mount Everest is Closed."
You don't venture onto that peak without a Sherpa. They are the legendary people of the mountain; the guides who take climbers there - climbers who pay up to $100,000 to the Nepalese government to go. And the Sherpas didn't want the mountain "open for business" the rest of the year because it had cost too much. Did you know getting to the top of a mountain often does.
Our personal "Everest's"; that treasured goal that we're driven to achieve. "I will be married no matter what." So many who conquered that slope now wish they had never dreamed the dream, because it turned into a nightmare.
"I will get to the top in what I do, whatever it takes." Only to sacrifice a spouse, a marriage, a child, a good name to get there. A price too high to pay. "My kid's going to be a winner. I'll make sure of it." So he or she becomes more of a performer than a person. A creation of a parent's ego rather than the person God made them to be. A robot programmed to please, but dangerously lonely and stressed.
Success. We each have our own definition. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to climb our mountain. But in the words of Jesus, "Count the cost" in relationships, in integrity. What's it going to cost you in your health, in the lives of your children, in your personal peace?
No conquest, no dream is worth ending up in the emergency room with a medical crisis of your own or the emotional meltdown of someone you love, leaving behind you a trail of people wounded or crushed as you race for your finish line. That's a price too high to pay.
I've seen it too many times. Driving for a goal - even a noble goal - can make you blind to the needs around you and deaf to their cries, and oblivious to the cost until the avalanche.
Jesus asked a haunting question. It's in our word for today from the Word of God in Mark 8:36. It is worth thinking about seriously. "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" And so many have. It's a price too high to pay.
Isn't it amazing that we keep climbing these mountains thinking that surely the peace I've been looking for, the significance I've been looking for, the meaning I've been looking for, the wholeness I've been looking for in my soul, it will be at the top of this mountain. You got to the top of the mountain and it wasn't there. Or you think it's going to be at the top of the mountain, but the people who've been there have found nothing there.
There's a reason for that, because we were never meant ultimately to find our happiness, and find our wholeness, and find our identity in anything other than the person who gave us our life in the first place. And that is the God who put us here. It says in the Bible, "You were created by Him and for Him." And we've lived for everything else but Him. There's only one hill you can climb, only one mountain, where you're going to find what you're looking for. It's called Skull Hill in the Bible. There's a cross at the top, and that is where God's Son died to pay the price to reunite you and me with the God who fills the hole in our soul and who holds our eternity in His hands.
Maybe you've been climbing the wrong hills. Maybe you've been climbing the wrong mountains. It's time to find your way to where Jesus has died for you and say, "Jesus, I am Yours." And to finally find what has eluded you for a lifetime that can only be found in Him. If you've never done that, and you say, "I wish I knew how to begin that personal relationship with Him." I want to invite you to our website where I'd love to show you how - ANewStory.com. Because there is no Everest that is worth giving up an irreplaceable treasure.
