What if prospective parents approached an adoption agency with these questions?
We just have a question or two before we come in and sign the adoption papers. Will he be a good child? Healthy always? Oh, and can he fix his own meals? Do his own laundry?
Can you imagine prospective parents saying that? No adoption agency would put up with it. They’d respond with Wait a minute. You don’t understand. You don’t adopt this child because of what he has; you adopt him because of what he needs. He needs a home.
The same is true with God. John 3:17 says, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” He doesn’t adopt us because of what we have. He doesn’t give us His name because of our intelligence, or our wallet or good attitude. Adoption is something we receive—not something we earn!
From Grace for the Moment
1 Kings 14
Ahijah’s Prophecy against Jeroboam
At that time Jeroboam’s son Abijah became very sick. 2 So Jeroboam told his wife, “Disguise yourself so that no one will recognize you as my wife. Then go to the prophet Ahijah at Shiloh—the man who told me I would become king. 3 Take him a gift of ten loaves of bread, some cakes, and a jar of honey, and ask him what will happen to the boy.”
4 So Jeroboam’s wife went to Ahijah’s home at Shiloh. He was an old man now and could no longer see. 5 But the Lord had told Ahijah, “Jeroboam’s wife will come here, pretending to be someone else. She will ask you about her son, for he is very sick. Give her the answer I give you.”
6 So when Ahijah heard her footsteps at the door, he called out, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam! Why are you pretending to be someone else?” Then he told her, “I have bad news for you. 7 Give your husband, Jeroboam, this message from the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘I promoted you from the ranks of the common people and made you ruler over my people Israel. 8 I ripped the kingdom away from the family of David and gave it to you. But you have not been like my servant David, who obeyed my commands and followed me with all his heart and always did whatever I wanted. 9 You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made other gods for yourself and have made me furious with your gold calves. And since you have turned your back on me, 10 I will bring disaster on your dynasty and will destroy every one of your male descendants, slave and free alike, anywhere in Israel. I will burn up your royal dynasty as one burns up trash until it is all gone. 11 The members of Jeroboam’s family who die in the city will be eaten by dogs, and those who die in the field will be eaten by vultures. I, the Lord, have spoken.’”
12 Then Ahijah said to Jeroboam’s wife, “Go on home, and when you enter the city, the child will die. 13 All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only member of your family who will have a proper burial, for this child is the only good thing that the Lord, the God of Israel, sees in the entire family of Jeroboam.
14 “In addition, the Lord will raise up a king over Israel who will destroy the family of Jeroboam. This will happen today, even now! 15 Then the Lord will shake Israel like a reed whipped about in a stream. He will uproot the people of Israel from this good land that he gave their ancestors and will scatter them beyond the Euphrates River,[a] for they have angered the Lord with the Asherah poles they have set up for worship. 16 He will abandon Israel because Jeroboam sinned and made Israel sin along with him.”
17 So Jeroboam’s wife returned to Tirzah, and the child died just as she walked through the door of her home. 18 And all Israel buried him and mourned for him, as the Lord had promised through the prophet Ahijah.
19 The rest of the events in Jeroboam’s reign, including all his wars and how he ruled, are recorded in The Book of the History of the Kings of Israel. 20 Jeroboam reigned in Israel twenty-two years. When Jeroboam died, his son Nadab became the next king.
Rehoboam Rules in Judah
21 Meanwhile, Rehoboam son of Solomon was king in Judah. He was forty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city the Lord had chosen from among all the tribes of Israel as the place to honor his name. Rehoboam’s mother was Naamah, an Ammonite woman.
22 During Rehoboam’s reign, the people of Judah did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, provoking his anger with their sin, for it was even worse than that of their ancestors. 23 For they also built for themselves pagan shrines and set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. 24 There were even male and female shrine prostitutes throughout the land. The people imitated the detestable practices of the pagan nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites.
25 In the fifth year of King Rehoboam’s reign, King Shishak of Egypt came up and attacked Jerusalem. 26 He ransacked the treasuries of the Lord’s Temple and the royal palace; he stole everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. 27 King Rehoboam later replaced them with bronze shields as substitutes, and he entrusted them to the care of the commanders of the guard who protected the entrance to the royal palace. 28 Whenever the king went to the Temple of the Lord, the guards would also take the shields and then return them to the guardroom.
29 The rest of the events in Rehoboam’s reign and everything he did are recorded in The Book of the History of the Kings of Judah. 30 There was constant war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. 31 When Rehoboam died, he was buried among his ancestors in the City of David. His mother was Naamah, an Ammonite woman. Then his son Abijam[b] became the next king.
Footnotes:
14:15 Hebrew the river.
14:31 Also known as Abijah.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, December 21, 2015
Read: John 6:32-40
Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, Moses didn’t give you bread from heaven. My Father did. And now he offers you the true bread from heaven. 33 The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day.”
35 Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But you haven’t believed in me even though you have seen me. 37 However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them. 38 For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will. 39 And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them up at the last day. 40 For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day.”
INSIGHT:
The 40-year experience of the Israelites in the wilderness where God sustained them by manna (Ex. 16) provides the backdrop for this passage in John 6. The miraculous feeding of 5,000 men (vv. 1-13) caused the Jews to compare Moses with Jesus. Jesus corrected them, saying that it was God, not Moses, who had fed the Israelites (v. 32). Jesus then gave them one of the greatest revelations of Himself: He said He was the new manna—sent down from heaven to sustain them. “I am the bread of life” (v. 35) is the first of seven “I am” sayings in this gospel where Jesus provides a clear picture of who He is (John 8:12; 10:9; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1).
Amazing Love
By David McCasland
I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.
John 6:38
Approaching the first Christmas after her husband died, our friend Davidene wrote a remarkable letter in which she pictured what it might have been like in heaven when Jesus was born on earth. “It was what God always knew would happen,” she wrote. “The three were one, and He had agreed to allow the fracturing of His precious unity for our sake. Heaven was left empty of God the Son.”
As Jesus taught and healed people on earth, He said, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. . . . For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:38,40).
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, it was the beginning of His mission on earth to demonstrate God’s love and give His life on the cross to free us from the penalty and power of sin.
“I cannot imagine actually choosing to let go of the one I loved, with whom I was one, for the sake of anyone else,” Davidene concluded. “But God did. He faced a house much emptier than mine, so that I could live in His house with Him forever.”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16).
Father in heaven, we are in awe of Your amazing love for us. Thank You for giving Your only Son to save us from our sins.
The birth of Christ brought God to man; the cross of Christ brings man to God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, December 21, 2015
Experience or God’s Revealed Truth?
We have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. —1 Corinthians 2:12
My experience is not what makes redemption real— redemption is reality. Redemption has no real meaning for me until it is worked out through my conscious life. When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes me beyond myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left only with my personal experiences, I am left with something not produced by redemption. But experiences produced by redemption prove themselves by leading me beyond myself, to the point of no longer paying any attention to experiences as the basis of reality. Instead, I see that only the reality itself produced the experiences. My experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source of truth— Jesus Christ.
If you try to hold back the Holy Spirit within you, with the desire of producing more inner spiritual experiences, you will find that He will break the hold and take you again to the historic Christ. Never support an experience which does not have God as its Source and faith in God as its result. If you do, your experience is anti-Christian, no matter what visions or insights you may have had. Is Jesus Christ Lord of your experiences, or do you place your experiences above Him? Is any experience dearer to you than your Lord? You must allow Him to be Lord over you, and pay no attention to any experience over which He is not Lord. Then there will come a time when God will make you impatient with your own experience, and you can truthfully say, “I do not care what I experience— I am sure of Him!”
Be relentless and hard on yourself if you are in the habit of talking about the experiences you have had. Faith based on experience is not faith; faith based on God’s revealed truth is the only faith there is.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great word of Jesus to His disciples is Abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on His word; trust entirely to Him and watch that when He brings us to the venture, we take it.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, December 21, 2015
My friend Billy knew where his parents hid the Christmas gifts. He's an adult now but he still remembers the year he sneaked downstairs while his parents were gone. (I'll bet you could guess the rest.) He went in the closet and saw the shopping bags that contained all his gifts. Nothing was wrapped yet. He looked inside the bags and there they were. He folded up the bag and went back upstairs. His parents never knew.
Christmas morning! Now, Billy had the reputation for being Mr. Christmas in his family. He never needed an alarm clock on Christmas morning. But this particular Christmas everybody was downstairs. They were beginning to open their presents and they suddenly realized, "Whoa, Whoa Billy is not here." Well Dad went up and got him and said, "It's Christmas son. Are you coming?" "Yeah" and he came shuffling downstairs, opened his presents, expressed his appreciation but he just wasn't into it like everybody else was. His dad called him aside and he said, "Billy, are you sick or something, man?" Billy said, "Dad, I really blew it. I opened my gifts early and I ruined Christmas."
You know, there are a lot of people that have ruined what could have been an unforgettable celebration.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Save Your Gift For Christmas."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Hebrews 13:4. He's talking about the great gift that God gave you to express your love physically, sexually to a person to whom you are making a lifetime commitment – your lifetime love. It says, "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral." God says you've got this great gift; save it for marriage. Your wedding night is Christmas and all the nights that follow. Outside of marriage it's wrong and it's expensive. God's intention is that there would be a great celebration for two people who waited for each other.
Proverbs 5:18 and 19 describes a celebration. It says, "Rejoice in the wife of your youth." Be ravished with her love. "Let her breasts satisfy you at all times." God says, "I want this to be exciting." The excitement, though, is based on the uniqueness. You never said I love you like this to anyone before, but listen, the pressure is on to open your gift early and you know that. But you lose when you do. If Christmas is your wedding night and all those other nights, then God doesn't want you to ruin Christmas. See the lie is that you're missing something if you don't have sex before marriage. The truth is you're missing it if you do.
This season why don't you decide to keep your gift of love and purity special from now on. You say, "Great, Ron, it's too late." Well, there's this wonderful promise from God in Hebrews chapter 8, "I will remember your sins no more." He said to people who had sinned sexually, who had messed it up. He said these wonderful words in 1 Corinthians 6:11, "That is what some of you were. But you were washed and sanctified; you were justified (That means made right with God.) in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." Think about it. Forgiven, cleaned up and made special again; a new beginning because of the wonderful redeeming work of Jesus Christ.
Have you ever taken advantage, have you ever made personal for you the sacrifice He made on a cross to do all the dying for all the sinning you've ever done? Wow! Why don't you do it this Christmas season? We'd be glad to help you get started with Him.
In fact, our website; listen to the name of it – AnewStory.com. This could be the beginning of your new story. Go check it out. If you want to talk with someone about this relationship with Christ, text us at 442-244-WORD.
See, it's all about what you do from this moment on. Let God begin to restore your spiritual and emotional virginity. It's time to begin to set a new physical standard. Don't play on the edge. Don't see how far you can go. Live as if your gift is too precious to open early. Yes, Christmas is your wedding night and Christmas is so worth waiting for.
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