Max Lucado Daily: God Redeems for Good
Have you wept your final tear or received your last round of chemotherapy? Not necessarily. Will your unhappy marriage become happy in a heartbeat? Not likely. Does God guarantee the absence of struggle and the abundance of strength? Not in this life. But he does pledge to reweave your pain for a higher purpose.
It won't be quick! Sometimes God takes His time. Twenty years to prepare Noah for the flood, eighty years to prepare Moses for his work. How long will God take with you? He may take His time. His history is redeemed not in minutes but in lifetimes. We see a perfect mess; God sees a perfect chance to train, test, and teach. We see a prison…God sees bootcamp! What Satan intends for evil, God redeems for good!
From You'll Get Through This
2 Samuel 4
The Murder of Ishbosheth
When Ishbosheth,[g] Saul’s son, heard about Abner’s death at Hebron, he lost all courage, and all Israel became paralyzed with fear. 2 Now there were two brothers, Baanah and Recab, who were captains of Ishbosheth’s raiding parties. They were sons of Rimmon, a member of the tribe of Benjamin who lived in Beeroth. The town of Beeroth is now part of Benjamin’s territory 3 because the original people of Beeroth fled to Gittaim, where they still live as foreigners.
4 (Saul’s son Jonathan had a son named Mephibosheth,[h] who was crippled as a child. He was five years old when the report came from Jezreel that Saul and Jonathan had been killed in battle. When the child’s nurse heard the news, she picked him up and fled. But as she hurried away, she dropped him, and he became crippled.)
5 One day Recab and Baanah, the sons of Rimmon from Beeroth, went to Ishbosheth’s house around noon as he was taking his midday rest. 6 The doorkeeper, who had been sifting wheat, became drowsy and fell asleep. So Recab and Baanah slipped past her.[i] 7 They went into the house and found Ishbosheth sleeping on his bed. They struck and killed him and cut off his head. Then, taking his head with them, they fled across the Jordan Valley[j] through the night. 8 When they arrived at Hebron, they presented Ishbosheth’s head to David. “Look!” they exclaimed to the king. “Here is the head of Ishbosheth, the son of your enemy Saul who tried to kill you. Today the Lord has given my lord the king revenge on Saul and his entire family!”
9 But David said to Recab and Baanah, “The Lord, who saves me from all my enemies, is my witness. 10 Someone once told me, ‘Saul is dead,’ thinking he was bringing me good news. But I seized him and killed him at Ziklag. That’s the reward I gave him for his news! 11 How much more should I reward evil men who have killed an innocent man in his own house and on his own bed? Shouldn’t I hold you responsible for his blood and rid the earth of you?”
12 So David ordered his young men to kill them, and they did. They cut off their hands and feet and hung their bodies beside the pool in Hebron. Then they took Ishbosheth’s head and buried it in Abner’s tomb in Hebron
Footnotes:
4:1 Ishbosheth is another name for Esh-baal.
4:4 Mephibosheth is another name for Merib-baal.
4:6 As in Greek version; Hebrew reads So they went into the house pretending to fetch wheat, but they stabbed him in the stomach. Then Recab and Baanah escaped.
4:7 Hebrew the Arabah.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
Read: Ephesians 2:10-22
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Oneness and Peace in Christ
11 Don’t forget that you Gentiles used to be outsiders. You were called “uncircumcised heathens” by the Jews, who were proud of their circumcision, even though it affected only their bodies and not their hearts. 12 In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. 13 But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ.
14 For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. 15 He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. 16 Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.
17 He brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. 18 Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.
A Temple for the Lord
19 So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. 20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. 21 We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. 22 Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.
INSIGHT:
The Jews believed they alone were God’s favored people (Gen. 17:9-14), so God would never save the Gentiles (Eph. 3:4-8). Correcting this, Paul says that Christ through the cross has torn down the wall of hostility that separated Jews and Gentiles (2:12-14) and has brought them together into a new unified humanity—the church (vv. 15-18).
Something New
By Tim Gustafson
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. —Ephesians 2:10
It was only scrap wood, but Charles Hooper saw much more than that. Salvaging old timbers from a long-abandoned corncrib, he sketched some simple plans. Then he felled a few oak and poplar trees from his wooded property and painstakingly squared them with his grandfather’s broadax. Piece by piece, he began to fit together the old lumber with the new.
Today you can see Charles and Shirley Hooper’s postcard-perfect log cabin, tucked away in the trees on Tennessee Ridge. Part guesthouse, part museum for family heirlooms, the structure stands as an enduring tribute to Charles’ vision, skill, and patience.
Writing to a Gentile audience, Paul told the church at Ephesus how Jesus was creating something new by bringing together Jewish and non-Jewish believers as a single entity. “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ,” Paul wrote (Eph. 2:13). This new structure was “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (vv. 20-21).
The work continues today. God takes the brokenness of our lives, artfully fits us together with other broken and rescued people, and patiently chips away our rough edges. He loves His work, you know.
Lord, we can’t thank You enough for Your passionate love for us. Help us to see that You bring us together in this beautiful body of believers known as Your church.
Our rough edges must be chipped away to bring out the image of Christ.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
“The Secret of the Lord”
The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him… —Psalm 25:14
What is the sign of a friend? Is it that he tells you his secret sorrows? No, it is that he tells you his secret joys. Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you. Have we ever let God tell us any of His joys? Or are we continually telling God our secrets, leaving Him no time to talk to us? At the beginning of our Christian life we are full of requests to God. But then we find that God wants to get us into an intimate relationship with Himself— to get us in touch with His purposes. Are we so intimately united to Jesus Christ’s idea of prayer— “Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10)— that we catch the secrets of God? What makes God so dear to us is not so much His big blessings to us, but the tiny things, because they show His amazing intimacy with us— He knows every detail of each of our individual lives.
“Him shall He teach in the way He chooses” (Psalm 25:12). At first, we want the awareness of being guided by God. But then as we grow spiritually, we live so fully aware of God that we do not even need to ask what His will is, because the thought of choosing another way will never occur to us. If we are saved and sanctified, God guides us by our everyday choices. And if we are about to choose what He does not want, He will give us a sense of doubt or restraint, which we must heed. Whenever there is doubt, stop at once. Never try to reason it out, saying, “I wonder why I shouldn’t do this?” God instructs us in what we choose; that is, He actually guides our common sense. And when we yield to His teachings and guidance, we no longer hinder His Spirit by continually asking, “Now, Lord, what is Your will?”
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
The Sin Trap You Can't See - #7408
My thumb is not and probably never will be green, but I think my friend Mel was born with a green thumb. He has one of the most beautiful fruit and vegetable gardens I think I've ever seen. And more than once I've literally asked him to take me on a tour of his garden. Now, city boy always learns a lot in that garden. On the last time, I think, we toured (which was a while back) he showed me a garden spider at work, for example. Actually, it wasn't at work, it was at dinner. It was just finishing filet of grasshopper; the latest insect to be caught in his web.
Now, while I was watching, another grasshopper flew into the bottom of that web a few inches below the spider. And since the web is sticky, he stayed there. Well, Mr. Spider left his dinner, slid down this silk thread like a fireman would slide down his fire pole, and in a maneuver that you would have missed if you looked away for even a second, this spider spewed out a bombardment of silken thread that totally encased and imprisoned that grasshopper - kind of mummified him. It was over in seconds. From that time that he touched the web that grasshopper never stood a chance.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Sin Trap You Can't See."
Now it's not a spider you and I need to be concerned about. Well, maybe you are, but he won't hurt you much. You're a lot bigger than he is. We need to be concerned about a lion with a deadly approach, not unlike that of the spider. Thus God's sober warning in 1 Peter 5:8, our word for today from the Word of God. "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him!"
Now, there is this very day a powerful, shrewd, spiritual destroyer who's looking for a way to entrap you, to invade your soul, to take you where you never thought you'd go; to devour you. And in a very real sense, the Devil's trying to get you just to touch his sticky web. Like that grasshopper, you don't intend to stay. You don't intend to become a prisoner. You certainly don't intend to lose everything. Satan never tells you he's going to do all that. He just says, "Just touch this beautiful web." And when you touch the Devil's web, you're his.
You might be flying perilously close to that web right now by the relationships, or the relationship you're getting into, by listening to what you're listening to, or watching things that glamorize or trivialize, or "humorize" sin. By the thoughts you're dwelling on. By the websites you go to, maybe you're falling for some of Satan's most successful web lies, "Hey, just this once." "Don't you deserve this?" "You know, so many others are doing it." "It won't hurt." "No one will know." Don't fall for those lies. They've destroyed so many people.
Remember, once you touch the web, he can do what he wants with you. While I was in that garden I actually saw another spider and a grasshopper that landed just below his web. The spider didn't even move. He couldn't touch that grasshopper if the grasshopper didn't touch the web. You render Satan powerless against you in the same way. That's why God said, "Be self-controlled." "Be alert." "Resist him." If you don't play around the sticky threads of sin and temptation, the one who wants to devour you cannot touch you. You have done what the Bible says. You have resisted the one who would devour you.
Listen, you been flying pretty close to the Devil's web lately, too close? Would you accept this as not just me talking, but a loving warning from God, "Touch the web and you will pay a price you never could have imagined." When sin looks good, remember that death on a sticky web. The destroyer is waiting to wrap you up and make you his. But in Jesus' power, you can get away. But you need to do it now while you can.
