Max Lucado Daily: Run Your Own Race
A little boy named Adam wanted to be like his friend Bobby. Adam loved the way Bobby walked and talked. Bobby wanted to be like Charlie. Something about Charlie's stride intrigued him. Charlie on the other hand, was impressed with Danny. Charlie wanted to look and sound like Danny. Danny, of all things, had a hero as well. He wanted to be just like Adam. So Adam was imitating Bobby, who was imitating Charlie, who was imitating Danny, who was imitating Adam. Turns out, all Adam had to do was be himself.
Stay in your own lane. Run your own race. Nothing good happens when you compare and compete. God's yardstick for measuring faithfulness is how faithful you are with your own gifts. You are not responsible for the nature of your gift. But you are responsible for how you use it!
From Glory Days
Acts 7:22-43
Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in both speech and action.
23 “One day when Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his relatives, the people of Israel. 24 He saw an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite. So Moses came to the man’s defense and avenged him, killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses assumed his fellow Israelites would realize that God had sent him to rescue them, but they didn’t.
26 “The next day he visited them again and saw two men of Israel fighting. He tried to be a peacemaker. ‘Men,’ he said, ‘you are brothers. Why are you fighting each other?’
27 “But the man in the wrong pushed Moses aside. ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ he asked. 28 ‘Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 When Moses heard that, he fled the country and lived as a foreigner in the land of Midian. There his two sons were born.
30 “Forty years later, in the desert near Mount Sinai, an angel appeared to Moses in the flame of a burning bush. 31 When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he went to take a closer look, the voice of the Lord called out to him, 32 ‘I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses shook with terror and did not dare to look.
33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground. 34 I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groans and have come down to rescue them. Now go, for I am sending you back to Egypt.’[a]
35 “So God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected when they demanded, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ Through the angel who appeared to him in the burning bush, God sent Moses to be their ruler and savior. 36 And by means of many wonders and miraculous signs, he led them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and through the wilderness for forty years.
37 “Moses himself told the people of Israel, ‘God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your own people.’[b] 38 Moses was with our ancestors, the assembly of God’s people in the wilderness, when the angel spoke to him at Mount Sinai. And there Moses received life-giving words to pass on to us.[c]
39 “But our ancestors refused to listen to Moses. They rejected him and wanted to return to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us some gods who can lead us, for we don’t know what has become of this Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’ 41 So they made an idol shaped like a calf, and they sacrificed to it and celebrated over this thing they had made. 42 Then God turned away from them and abandoned them to serve the stars of heaven as their gods! In the book of the prophets it is written,
‘Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings
during those forty years in the wilderness, Israel?
43 No, you carried your pagan gods—
the shrine of Molech,
the star of your god Rephan,
and the images you made to worship them.
So I will send you into exile
as far away as Babylon.’[d]
Footnotes:
7:31-34 Exod 3:5-10.
7:37 Deut 18:15.
7:38 Some manuscripts read to you.
7:42-43 Amos 5:25-27 (Greek version).
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, November 20, 2015
Read: Galatians 1:6-10
There Is Only One Good News
I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ.[a] You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News 7 but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.
8 Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. 9 I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed.
10 Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.
Footnotes:
1:6 Some manuscripts read through loving mercy.
INSIGHT:
Because the risen Christ called Paul to be an apostle on the Damascus Road (Acts 9:1-18; 22:1-15; 26:9-18), Paul acknowledges that his apostleship was different from the original 12 apostles (Gal. 1:11-17), but it was clearly accepted by them (1:18; 2:7-10). Because Christianity was birthed in Judaism, adhering to the Mosaic law became an issue as more Gentiles became believers. The Judaizers taught that Christians must follow Jewish laws and practices in order to be saved. Paul wrote this letter to counter and condemn this false teaching (vv. 8-9), affirming that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by observing the law (Gal. 2:16,20-21; 3:11,24).
Our Main Concern
By Jaime Fernández Garrido
If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10
Peer pressure is part of everyday life. Sometimes we base our decisions on what other people will think or say rather than on our convictions and on what will please God. We’re worried that we’ll be judged or made fun of.
The apostle Paul experienced his fair share of peer pressure. Some Jewish Christians believed that Gentiles should be circumcised to be truly saved (Gal. 1:7; see 6:12-15). However, Paul stood his ground. He continued to preach that salvation is by grace through faith alone; no further works are required. And for that he was accused of being a self-appointed apostle. They further asserted that his version of the gospel had never received the apostles’ approval (2:1-10).
Despite the pressure, Paul was very clear about whom he served—Christ. God’s approval mattered most, not man’s. He made it his goal not to win the approval of people, but of God (1:10).
Similarly, we are Christ’s servants. We serve God whether people honor or despise us, whether they slander or praise us. One day “each of us will give an account of ourselves to God” (Rom. 14:12). That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider what people think or say, but ultimately, we make pleasing God our main concern. We want to hear our Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matt. 25:23).
Dear Lord, no matter what others may say or do, give me the courage to be faithful to You today.
Keep following Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, November 20, 2015
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.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The emphasis to-day is placed on the furtherance of an organization; the note is, “We must keep this thing going.” If we are in God’s order the thing will go; if we are not in His order, it won’t. Conformed to His Image, 357 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, November 20, 2015
Stars You Can't Count and Things You Can't Fix - #7530
I really hate it when a five-year-old makes me feel dumb; especially when it's my grandson. I mean, he didn't mean to make me feel dumb. He didn't know he was making me feel dumb. But he is really smart, and he knows a lot about a lot! Like the solar system. He's got the planets down cold along with all kinds of facts about the universe. Things I either have forgotten or never knew. Another thing our grandson is really mastering is numbers. Man, can he count! He's working on thousands, millions, billions, and his favorite quantity, a google! When it comes to our universe, he's never going to be able to count that high!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Stars You Can't Count and Things You Can't Fix."
With the discoveries of new high-tech explorers like NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, and the Hubble Telescope, we are learning some absolutely staggering new things about the universe we live in. There are over 200 billion galaxies that we know about so far. When we look up in the sky at night, it's estimated that we can see maybe 9,000 stars. But it's estimated that the average number of stars in a single galaxy is actually 200 billion stars! Let's see: 200 billion stars times 200 billion galaxies... oh for heaven's sake, that's a mental meltdown.
If you think that the vastness of the universe is amazing, fasten your seatbelt for something much more amazing. It's in Psalm 147:4, our word for today from the Word of God. It says of God, "He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name." What? I can't even remember the names of all the people I've met! But God calls each of the 200 billion stars in 200 billion galaxies by name!
Isaiah 40:26 adds this: "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." Not only does He number all the stars and name all the stars, but He knows when any star goes out!
In the verse just before the one that says God numbers and names the stars, the Bible shows something else amazing about Him. It says, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Wow! This God who gives personal attention to countless billions of stars cares about your broken heart! He stands ready to heal what's broken in your life with the power that rules this mighty universe. Wow!
You may have felt very unnoticed and very insignificant in your life, but not to the most powerful person in the universe. He knows you, He cares about your wounds, He deeply, deeply loves you. For this awesome God left the throne room of heaven to come here to this little dirtball called earth on a rescue mission for you, to actually die on a cross for the sin you've done against Him, the sin that has cut you off from Him all these years. The sin no religion can remove. The Bible says of Him, He is "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
And this very day, this awesome God may be knocking on the door of your heart. He's offering to come into your life with His infinite love, His infinite power-the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Why would you wait one more day to open up your heart to a Savior like this? Tell Him, "Jesus, it makes no sense for me to try to run my life any longer. I'm sorry for running a life you were supposed to run. I believe my only hope is your death for my sin on the cross. I turn from my sin today. I am yours, Lord Jesus!"
If you want to make this day your "Jesus day", will you experience the greatness of His love in your heart, the greatness of His power in your life, would you just reach out to Him today? We'd love to help you do that. That's why we're here. Go to our website ANewStory.com. That's actually what could begin today is your new story. Or if you want to talk with someone about what it means to follow Christ, then text us at 442-244-WORD.
He's who you were made by. He's who you were made for, and this very day you can belong to Him!
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