Max Lucado Daily: Forgiveness is Not Excusing
It's one thing to give grace to friends, but to give grace to those who give us grief? Most of us find it hard to forgive. Leave your enemies in God's hands. You are not endorsing their misbehavior when you do. You can hate what someone did without letting hatred consume you. Forgiveness is not excusing. Give grace, but if need be, keep your distance. You can forgive the abusive husband without living with him. Be quick to give mercy to the immoral pastor, but be slow to give him a pulpit.
Society can dispense grace and prison terms at the same time. To forgive is to move on, not to think about the offense anymore. You don't excuse him, endorse her, or embrace them. You just route your thoughts about them through heaven. In Romans 12:19 God says, "I will take care of it!" Let Him!
From Facing Your Giants
Psalm 14
For the director of music. Of David.
The fool[e] says in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;
there is no one who does good.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven
on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
any who seek God.
3 All have turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
4 Do all these evildoers know nothing?
They devour my people as though eating bread;
they never call on the Lord.
5 But there they are, overwhelmed with dread,
for God is present in the company of the righteous.
6 You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is their refuge.
7 Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the Lord restores his people,
let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!
Footnotes:
Psalm 14:1 The Hebrew words rendered fool in Psalms denote one who is morally deficient.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Read: Judges 2:11-22
The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight and served the images of Baal. 12 They abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They went after other gods, worshiping the gods of the people around them. And they angered the Lord. 13 They abandoned the Lord to serve Baal and the images of Ashtoreth. 14 This made the Lord burn with anger against Israel, so he handed them over to raiders who stole their possessions. He turned them over to their enemies all around, and they were no longer able to resist them. 15 Every time Israel went out to battle, the Lord fought against them, causing them to be defeated, just as he had warned. And the people were in great distress.
The Lord Rescues His People
16 Then the Lord raised up judges to rescue the Israelites from their attackers. 17 Yet Israel did not listen to the judges but prostituted themselves by worshiping other gods. How quickly they turned away from the path of their ancestors, who had walked in obedience to the Lord’s commands.
18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge over Israel, he was with that judge and rescued the people from their enemies throughout the judge’s lifetime. For the Lord took pity on his people, who were burdened by oppression and suffering. 19 But when the judge died, the people returned to their corrupt ways, behaving worse than those who had lived before them. They went after other gods, serving and worshiping them. And they refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.
20 So the Lord burned with anger against Israel. He said, “Because these people have violated my covenant, which I made with their ancestors, and have ignored my commands, 21 I will no longer drive out the nations that Joshua left unconquered when he died. 22 I did this to test Israel—to see whether or not they would follow the ways of the Lord as their ancestors did.”
Pencil Battle
By Cindy Hess Kasper
They did not cease from their own doings nor from their stubborn way. —Judges 2:19
As I learned to write my letters, my first-grade teacher insisted that I hold my pencil in a specific way. As she watched me, I held it the way she wanted me to. But when she turned away, I obstinately reverted the pencil to the way I found more comfortable.
I thought I was the secret winner in that battle of the wills, and I still hold my pencil in my own peculiar way. Decades later, however, I realize that my wise teacher knew that my stubborn habit would grow into a bad writing practice that would result in my hand tiring more quickly.
Return to the Lord; He is gracious and merciful.
Children rarely understand what is good for them. They operate almost entirely on what they want at the moment. Perhaps the “children of Israel” were aptly named as generation after generation stubbornly insisted on worshiping the gods of the nations around them rather than the one true God. Their actions greatly angered the Lord because He knew what was best, and He removed His blessing from them (Judg. 2:20-22).
Pastor Rick Warren says, “Obedience and stubbornness are two sides of the same coin. Obedience brings joy, but our stubbornness makes us miserable.”
If a rebellious spirit is keeping us from obeying God, it’s time for a change of heart. Return to the Lord; He is gracious and merciful.
Heavenly Father, You are loving and gracious, and eager to forgive when we return to You. May we pursue you with our whole heart and not cling to our stubborn tendency to want things our way.
First we make our habits; then our habits make us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
God’s Purpose or Mine?
He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side… —Mark 6:45
We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success. We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us. In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or a desired goal, but He is not. The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way. What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.
What is my vision of God’s purpose for me? Whatever it may be, His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me. God is not working toward a particular finish— His purpose is the process itself. What He desires for me is that I see “Him walking on the sea” with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see “Him walking on the sea” (Mark 6:49). It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God.
God’s training is for now, not later. His purpose is for this very minute, not for sometime in the future. We have nothing to do with what will follow our obedience, and we are wrong to concern ourselves with it. What people call preparation, God sees as the goal itself.
God’s purpose is to enable me to see that He can walk on the storms of my life right now. If we have a further goal in mind, we are not paying enough attention to the present time. However, if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The Tragedy of Trusting Yourself - #7447
Man, did my wife and I grow up in two different worlds! While I was growing up in a little apartment on the South Side of Chicago, my future wife was living in the Ozarks in a tarpaper cabin, wallpapered with Montgomery Ward catalog pages to keep out the winter wind. They called that area "Trail's End", and it was. When her Dad got out of the service, his parents gave him some land where he literally bulldozed a road and then a lot out of the woods. I think my wife's early years sound a little like something out of Laura Ingalls Wilder or the Waltons, the old TV show.
For exam-ple, there was no electricity. Light? Well, a kerosene lamp. The family was close, but the surroundings were spartan. Her Dad was determined to get the electric company to provide power out to the families in their area. When he consistently got no response, he finally went into town one day to ask the electric company why. The lady he talked to happened to leave his family's county records on the counter. That's when he saw the two words that explained why they had been denied power -"too poor."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Tragedy of Trusting Yourself."
Jesus has a little different approach to deciding who will get His power. Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 5:3. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." At the Kingdom of Heaven Power Company, the words you want to find on your record are "poor enough"; poor enough to qualify for the most powerful life Jesus can give.
Now Jesus isn't talking about poor in your bank account, He's talking about people who are poor in spirit. That's poor, as in being totally dependent; knowing you can't make it independ-ently. Jesus is looking for people who have lost the pride of self-reliance. People who have finally figured out that God created us to live in total trust and dependency on Him.
Now our human nature rebels against this kind of positive poverty. We're raised to say things like, "I can handle it", "I think I can", "I'll fix it", and "Hey, I'll figure this out." And no matter how much we talk about trusting God, the reality is that we often trust God only when there is no other option. Trusting ourselves? That's our default position; always our first choice; or trusting our solution, our ability, our strength, our planning, our cleverness, our connections.
But in His love, God keeps bringing us to those painful moments when it's totally out of our hands, when our efforts have only served to make the mess messier, when He is our only hope. I call them times of forced dependency. And in those moments when our resources are gone, when we're just poor, that's when He opens up the Kingdom of Heaven to us. We feel His love and we experience His power as we never did when we still had our own resources to depend on. So strangely, when we get this poor, we become spiritually and emotionally richer than we have ever been before. But only when we get out of the way.
So if this is one of those times when your resources aren't enough, don't be afraid; don't be discouraged. It could very well be that God has been withholding His power in your life because your record at the Kingdom of Heaven Power Co. has said "too rich." Too rich in your answers; too rich in your efforts. But now maybe you're exactly where God has wanted you to be.
You're poor; finally poor enough to receive the amazing things that only God's power can do.
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