Max Lucado Daily: God Will Lighten Your Load
If we let him, God will lighten our loads. Why don't you try traveling light? Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Try it! Try it for the sake of those you love. How do you embrace someone if your arms are full of bags? For the sake of those you love, learn to set them down.
And for the sake of the God you serve, do the same. God has a great race for you to run. But you have to drop some stuff. How can you share grace if you're full of guilt? How can you offer comfort if you're disheartened? God is saying, "Set it down, child. I'll carry that one." What do you say we take God up on his wonderful offer? We just might find ourselves traveling a little lighter.
From Traveling Light
Luke 21:1-19
The Widow’s Offering
While Jesus was in the Temple, he watched the rich people dropping their gifts in the collection box. 2 Then a poor widow came by and dropped in two small coins.[a]
3 “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them. 4 For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has.”
Jesus Foretells the Future
5 Some of his disciples began talking about the majestic stonework of the Temple and the memorial decorations on the walls. But Jesus said, 6 “The time is coming when all these things will be completely demolished. Not one stone will be left on top of another!”
7 “Teacher,” they asked, “when will all this happen? What sign will show us that these things are about to take place?”
8 He replied, “Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’[b] and saying, ‘The time has come!’ But don’t believe them. 9 And when you hear of wars and insurrections, don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place first, but the end won’t follow immediately.” 10 Then he added, “Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, and there will be famines and plagues in many lands, and there will be terrifying things and great miraculous signs from heaven.
12 “But before all this occurs, there will be a time of great persecution. You will be dragged into synagogues and prisons, and you will stand trial before kings and governors because you are my followers. 13 But this will be your opportunity to tell them about me.[c] 14 So don’t worry in advance about how to answer the charges against you, 15 for I will give you the right words and such wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to reply or refute you! 16 Even those closest to you—your parents, brothers, relatives, and friends—will betray you. They will even kill some of you. 17 And everyone will hate you because you are my followers.[d] 18 But not a hair of your head will perish! 19 By standing firm, you will win your souls.
Footnotes:
21:2 Greek two lepta [the smallest of Jewish coins].
21:8 Greek claiming, ‘I am.’
21:13 Or This will be your testimony against them.
21:17 Greek on account of my name.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, May 04, 2015
Read: Revelation 21:1-8
The New Jerusalem
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.[a] 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
5 And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” 6 And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. 7 All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.
8 “But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt, murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshipers, and all liars—their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
Footnotes:
21:3 Some manuscripts read God himself will be with them, their God.
The Best Wedding Ever
By Julie Ackerman Link
The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. —Revelation 19:7
Within the last 800 or so years, a new custom has been added to the Jewish wedding ceremony. At the very end, the groom crushes a wine glass under his foot. One explanation of this is that the shattering of the glass symbolizes the destruction of the temple in ad 70. Young couples are encouraged to remember, as they establish their own homes, that God’s home had been destroyed.
God is not homeless, however. He has just chosen a new place to live—in us, His followers. In the metaphors of Scripture, believers are both the bride of Christ and the temple in which God lives. God is fitting His people together to build a new home that will be His permanent dwelling place. At the same time, He is preparing the bride and planning a wedding that will include all of God’s family from the beginning of time.
Our part is easy though sometimes painful. We cooperate with God as He is at work in us to make us more like His Son Jesus. Then some day, at the best wedding ever, our Lord will present us to Himself without spot or wrinkle. We will be holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:27). This wedding will bring an end to all sorrow and suffering.
Finish then Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee. —Wesley
The return of Jesus is sure.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, May 04, 2015
Vicarious Intercession
…having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus… —Hebrews 10:19
Beware of thinking that intercession means bringing our own personal sympathies and concerns into the presence of God, and then demanding that He do whatever we ask. Our ability to approach God is due entirely to the vicarious, or substitutionary, identification of our Lord with sin. We have “boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus.”
Spiritual stubbornness is the most effective hindrance to intercession, because it is based on a sympathetic “understanding” of things we see in ourselves and others that we think needs no atonement. We have the idea that there are certain good and virtuous things in each of us that do not need to be based on the atonement by the Cross of Christ. Just the sluggishness and lack of interest produced by this kind of thinking makes us unable to intercede. We do not identify ourselves with God’s interests and concerns for others, and we get irritated with Him. Yet we are always ready with our own ideas, and our intercession becomes only the glorification of our own natural sympathies. We have to realize that the identification of Jesus with sin means a radical change of all of our sympathies and interests. Vicarious intercession means that we deliberately substitute God’s interests in others for our natural sympathy with them.
Am I stubborn or substituted? Am I spoiled or complete in my relationship to God? Am I irritable or spiritual? Am I determined to have my own way or determined to be identified with Him?
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, May 04, 2015
Purity - Your Appreciating Asset - #7386
One day my oldest son and I wandered into this huge memorabilia store. And in the cases were all kinds of artifacts of his childhood, and even mine. Like there was a Brachiosaurus... No, but I was looking at baseball cards that I once owned, thanks to the pop bottle deposits I collected many years ago. Notice I said I once owned. When we were moving, my Mother threw them away. And so I found myself looking at what might have been. Those same cards are now worth hundreds of dollars.
My son, meanwhile, was looking at the toys of his not-that-long-ago childhood, including some action figures and a very popular space ship. And I couldn't believe what they're worth today. The dealer said that some woman had bought them years ago, took care of them, held onto them, and now almost 20 years later, she brought them in to cash them in. Now, we had the same thing she did, but we didn't get the value out of them that she did, because she hung on to what others carelessly threw away.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Purity - Your Appreciating Asset."
Our word for today from the Word of God - 1 Thessalonians 4:3, "It is God's will that you should be sanctified." By the way, that means like kept or reserved for special purposes; kept special. You're valuable, and God wants you to stay that way. Not everyone does.
The difference? Well, He goes on to say He wants you to avoid sexual immorality. "That each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable." Staying special means staying away from sexual impurity; so a sexual relationship with anyone but the one God designed sex for, your lifetime marriage partner. In a word, God is talking about virginity if you're not married and faithfulness if you are.
What's the alternative? He talks about "passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God." That's the opposite of controlling your body in holiness. Throwing away something of great value; not realizing what you're losing. My Mother did that with my old baseball cards. Our family did it with the kid's old toys. If only we'd kept them special, they would have been worth so much.
So many people have realized that about their sexual purity on their wedding night. If only they hadn't already thrown it away, it would have been so much more valuable. So many married people have wandered outside their marriage vows and gotten physically involved with someone else, not realizing at the time the treasure they were trashing.
It's very possible that you're feeling heavy pressure right now to give up your virginity or to be unfaithful. Well God knew that, and He wanted to send you this message right now to save you from it. This warning: not to throw it away. If you're single and you're still a virgin, I know it's getting harder and harder all the time to not give in isn't it? You may be taking a fair amount of ridicule for being weird. Well, you're not weird just because so many others have thrown their treasure away. No, you're rare and so you're valuable.
Maybe you've already taken sex out of God's bounds and there's a voice inside of you saying, "What's the use?" Well, that's the Devil himself broadcasting his lie that you have to stay this way. The truth is that Jesus is waiting for you to bring every sexual sin to His cross where He died to pay for everything you've ever done, all of those incidents and to claim His restoring promise of 1 John 1:7, "The blood of Jesus, God's Son, purifies us from all sin." All sin.
You want to be clean today? You want every sin of your life erased from God's Book? Then this is the day you take what Jesus did on the cross and make it yours. You say, "How do I do that, Ron?" Let me meet you at our website ANewStory.com and take you to where you can begin your relationship with Him. Saying, "Jesus, I'm yours."
You can begin today to restore the specialness of sex and the virginity of your soul. I realized that day in the memorabilia shop that a person can be rich just because they hang onto something that other people throw away. A virgin, a faithful husband or wife, is rich God says. If you're hanging on to your purity no matter what the temptation, I can tell you, your value is going up and up and up.
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