What can you do? When the challenge is greater than you are. When you feel helpless and impotent. Where can you turn? In Luke 11:10 Jesus says, "Everyone who seeks me, finds me. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." Intercessory prayer at its purest is your acknowledgement:
"I can't heal them, but, God, you can."
"I can't forgive them, but, God, you can."
"I can't help them, but, God, you can."
Before you say amen. . .this simple prayer gets God's attention: "Father you are good. They need help. I can't, but you can!" He never sleeps. He is never irritated. When you knock, he responds quickly and fairly!
Here's my challenge for you today! Sign on at BeforeAmen.com. Take the brief Prayer Strengths Assessment you'll find there. It only takes a minute. But it will encourage you and give you a building block for your growth in prayer.
From Before Amen
Numbers 18
Duties of Priests and Levites
Then the Lord said to Aaron: “You, your sons, and your relatives from the tribe of Levi will be held responsible for any offenses related to the sanctuary. But you and your sons alone will be held responsible for violations connected with the priesthood.
2 “Bring your relatives of the tribe of Levi—your ancestral tribe—to assist you and your sons as you perform the sacred duties in front of the Tabernacle of the Covenant.[e] 3 But as the Levites go about all their assigned duties at the Tabernacle, they must be careful not to go near any of the sacred objects or the altar. If they do, both you and they will die. 4 The Levites must join you in fulfilling their responsibilities for the care and maintenance of the Tabernacle,[f] but no unauthorized person may assist you.
5 “You yourselves must perform the sacred duties inside the sanctuary and at the altar. If you follow these instructions, the Lord’s anger will never again blaze against the people of Israel. 6 I myself have chosen your fellow Levites from among the Israelites to be your special assistants. They are a gift to you, dedicated to the Lord for service in the Tabernacle. 7 But you and your sons, the priests, must personally handle all the priestly rituals associated with the altar and with everything behind the inner curtain. I am giving you the priesthood as your special privilege of service. Any unauthorized person who comes too near the sanctuary will be put to death.”
Support for the Priests and Levites
8 The Lord gave these further instructions to Aaron: “I myself have put you in charge of all the holy offerings that are brought to me by the people of Israel. I have given all these consecrated offerings to you and your sons as your permanent share. 9 You are allotted the portion of the most holy offerings that is not burned on the fire. This portion of all the most holy offerings—including the grain offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings—will be most holy, and it belongs to you and your sons. 10 You must eat it as a most holy offering. All the males may eat of it, and you must treat it as most holy.
11 “All the sacred offerings and special offerings presented to me when the Israelites lift them up before the altar also belong to you. I have given them to you and to your sons and daughters as your permanent share. Any member of your family who is ceremonially clean may eat of these offerings.
12 “I also give you the harvest gifts brought by the people as offerings to the Lord—the best of the olive oil, new wine, and grain. 13 All the first crops of their land that the people present to the Lord belong to you. Any member of your family who is ceremonially clean may eat this food.
14 “Everything in Israel that is specially set apart for the Lord[g] also belongs to you.
15 “The firstborn of every mother, whether human or animal, that is offered to the Lord will be yours. But you must always redeem your firstborn sons and the firstborn of ceremonially unclean animals. 16 Redeem them when they are one month old. The redemption price is five pieces of silver[h] (as measured by the weight of the sanctuary shekel, which equals twenty gerahs).
17 “However, you may not redeem the firstborn of cattle, sheep, or goats. They are holy and have been set apart for the Lord. Sprinkle their blood on the altar, and burn their fat as a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. 18 The meat of these animals will be yours, just like the breast and right thigh that are presented by lifting them up as a special offering before the altar. 19 Yes, I am giving you all these holy offerings that the people of Israel bring to the Lord. They are for you and your sons and daughters, to be eaten as your permanent share. This is an eternal and unbreakable covenant[i] between the Lord and you, and it also applies to your descendants.”
20 And the Lord said to Aaron, “You priests will receive no allotment of land or share of property among the people of Israel. I am your share and your allotment. 21 As for the tribe of Levi, your relatives, I will compensate them for their service in the Tabernacle. Instead of an allotment of land, I will give them the tithes from the entire land of Israel.
22 “From now on, no Israelites except priests or Levites may approach the Tabernacle. If they come too near, they will be judged guilty and will die. 23 Only the Levites may serve at the Tabernacle, and they will be held responsible for any offenses against it. This is a permanent law for you, to be observed from generation to generation. The Levites will receive no allotment of land among the Israelites, 24 because I have given them the Israelites’ tithes, which have been presented as sacred offerings to the Lord. This will be the Levites’ share. That is why I said they would receive no allotment of land among the Israelites.”
25 The Lord also told Moses, 26 “Give these instructions to the Levites: When you receive from the people of Israel the tithes I have assigned as your allotment, give a tenth of the tithes you receive—a tithe of the tithe—to the Lord as a sacred offering. 27 The Lord will consider this offering to be your harvest offering, as though it were the first grain from your own threshing floor or wine from your own winepress. 28 You must present one-tenth of the tithe received from the Israelites as a sacred offering to the Lord. This is the Lord’s sacred portion, and you must present it to Aaron the priest. 29 Be sure to give to the Lord the best portions of the gifts given to you.
30 “Also, give these instructions to the Levites: When you present the best part as your offering, it will be considered as though it came from your own threshing floor or winepress. 31 You Levites and your families may eat this food anywhere you wish, for it is your compensation for serving in the Tabernacle. 32 You will not be considered guilty for accepting the Lord’s tithes if you give the best portion to the priests. But be careful not to treat the holy gifts of the people of Israel as though they were common. If you do, you will die.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Read: James 2:14-20
Faith without Good Deeds Is Dead
What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? 15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, 16 and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?
17 So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.
18 Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”
19 You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God.[a] Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. 20 How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless?
Footnotes:
2:19 Some manuscripts read that God is one; see Deut 6:4.
Insight
There is disagreement among scholars as to the identity of the James who authored this letter. Some see him as the son of Alphaeus (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18). Long-held church tradition, however, identifies this James as the half-brother of Jesus (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3). In Galatians 1:19, Paul mentions seeing James, “the Lord’s brother,” in Jerusalem—and this has fueled the position that the James of the Jerusalem church and the James who wrote this letter was in fact “the Lord’s brother.” James became a person of great prominence in the early church, having received a personal audience with the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:7) and having become one of the primary leaders of the church at Jerusalem (Acts 15:13-20).
Can You Help?
By Dave Branon
Bible in a Year:
Ezekiel 14-15; James 2
Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. —James 2:17
The administrators of the high school in Barrow, Alaska, were tired of seeing students get into trouble and drop out at a rate of 50 percent. To keep students interested, they started a football team, which offered them a chance to develop personal skills, teamwork, and learn life lessons. The problem with football in Barrow, which is farther north than Iceland, is that it’s hard to plant a grass field. So they competed on a gravel and dirt field.
Four thousand miles away in Florida, a woman named Cathy Parker heard about the football team and their dangerous field. Feeling that God was prompting her to help, and impressed by the positive changes she saw in the students, she went to work. About a year later, they dedicated their new field, complete with a beautiful artificial-turf playing surface. She had raised thousands of dollars to help some kids she didn’t even know.
This is not about football—or money. It is about remembering “to do good and to share” (Heb. 13:16). The apostle James reminds us that we demonstrate our faith by our actions (2:18). The needs in our world are varied and overwhelming but when we love our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus said (Mark 12:31), we reach people with God’s love.
Open our eyes, dear Father, to those in need. Allow
us to find ways—monetarily and otherwise—to
help meet those needs. Help us to take the focus off
ourselves and place it on those who can use our assistance.
Open your heart to God to learn compassion and open your hand to give help.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, November 20, 2014
The Forgiveness of God
In Him we have…the forgiveness of sins… —Ephesians 1:7
Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy. The only ground on which God can forgive our sin and reinstate us to His favor is through the Cross of Christ. There is no other way! Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony at Calvary. We should never take the forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and our sanctification in simple faith, and then forget the enormous cost to God that made all of this ours.
Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ. To forgive sin, while remaining a holy God, this price had to be paid. Never accept a view of the fatherhood of God if it blots out the atonement. The revealed truth of God is that without the atonement He cannot forgive— He would contradict His nature if He did. The only way we can be forgiven is by being brought back to God through the atonement of the Cross. God’s forgiveness is possible only in the supernatural realm.
Compared with the miracle of the forgiveness of sin, the experience of sanctification is small. Sanctification is simply the wonderful expression or evidence of the forgiveness of sins in a human life. But the thing that awakens the deepest fountain of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven his sin. Paul never got away from this. Once you realize all that it cost God to forgive you, you will be held as in a vise, constrained by the love of God.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Always A Way Out - #7269
You can feel it coming maybe five minutes before the TV program ends. They don't have enough time to get the hero out of this predicament, and you know those dreaded three words are about to appear on your screen; To Be Continued. You have a whole week to worry about how they're possibly going to rescue Dudley Do-right, or whatever his name is. If it's the end of the season you might have to wait until the whole beginning of the next season to see what happens. Of course, you can be sure, usually, that he will get out of it because, well, usually the hero always does.
When I was a kid I was a sucker for serials-not the kind you eat, the kind you see on a screen. It's the kind that's an adventure continued each week. Every episode left the hero in the clutches of disaster and what got you back was finding out how he got out of it. Of course, not all cliffhangers are on the screen. In fact, you have several every week don't you? And the tension is the same as in those continued stories. How are you going to get out of this predicament?
Well I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Always A Way Out."
Which brings us to our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Peter 1 and I'm reading verse 4, "God has given us His very great and precious promises so that through them you might participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." Now it's talking about escape-well we were talking about how the hero gets out of his predicament. In this case you're the hero; what's the predicament?
Well, it talks about corruption in the world and escaping the trap of the corruption in the world. In that case you and I have several close calls a week. I mean, we live in a morally rotting world. That's what that word corruption means. Sin is normal, it's expected, it's common, it's even celebrated. It is so tempting to lie when lying is the way people around here are getting things done. It is so tempting to compromise. You know, you still look better than most of the people around you, more righteous. It's so tempting to fit in; to succumb to that old habit. So, the sign freezes over your tempting moment-To Be Continued. Now what's going to happen? Well, now the escape is spelled out. Listen, "His very great and precious promises." The answer to the pressure to sin is a promise of Almighty God.
That means you've got to know some of those promises in order to escape being taken over by this rotting world. Do you know some promises? It's time to learn some. They are what get you through. Like 1 Corinthians 10:13, that wonderful verse that says, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted-beyond what you can bear. When you are tempted He will provide a way out so you can stand up under it." Now, that's a promise you ought to have in your heart so that when sins comes to the door, you send God's Word to answer it.
You need to be able to commit to memory a verse like 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds;" How about James 4:7, "Resist the devil and he will fight with you." No, it doesn't say that! "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you;" James 1:12 promises, "If you will endure temptation, you will receive a crown of life." When somebody asks me to sign their Bible - which is for me, an awkward moment – but, I use it to put something in there that might encourage them. There's a quote from D. L. Moody I love to put in there, "Either this Book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this Book."
The promises are the life preserver of God. When a wave of temptation hits you, you repeat one of those promises of God. So you need to go to work building a memory bank of escape promises. Make them part of who you are, part of your personality. Next time you're cornered by the villain of a wrong desire reach for the rescue; the supernatural promise of a mighty God. Because just like on TV, there is always a way out.