Max Lucado Daily: God's Transforming Power
Family pain is often the deepest pain because it was inflicted so early, and because it involves people who should have been trustworthy. You were too young to process the mistreatment. You didn't know how to defend yourself. Besides the perpetrators of your pain were so large. Your dad, mom, uncle, big brother-they towered over you, usually in size, always in rank. When they judged you falsely, you believed them. All this time you've been operating on faulty data. "You're stupid. . .slow. . .dumb, like your daddy.
Decades later these voices of defeat still echo in your subconscious. But they don't have to! Romans 12:2 says, "Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." And 1st Corinthians 13:11 adds, "Let Him replace childish thinking with mature truth!" You are not who they said you were. You are God's child!
From You'll Get Through This
John 5:1-24
Jesus Heals a Lame Man
Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. 2 Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda,[a] with five covered porches. 3 Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.[b] 5 One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
7 “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
8 Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
9 Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, 10 so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”
11 But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
12 “Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.
13 The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. 14 But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.” 15 Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.
Jesus Claims to Be the Son of God
16 So the Jewish leaders began harassing[c] Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules. 17 But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.” 18 So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.
19 So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing. In fact, the Father will show him how to do even greater works than healing this man. Then you will truly be astonished. 21 For just as the Father gives life to those he raises from the dead, so the Son gives life to anyone he wants. 22 In addition, the Father judges no one. Instead, he has given the Son absolute authority to judge, 23 so that everyone will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent him.
24 “I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.
Footnotes:
5:2 Other manuscripts read Beth-zatha; still others read Bethsaida.
5:3 Some manuscripts add an expanded conclusion to verse 3 and all of verse 4: waiting for a certain movement of the water, 4 for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and stirred up the water. And the first person to step in after the water was stirred was healed of whatever disease he had.
5:16 Or persecuting.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, July 02, 2015
Read: James 3:2-10
Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way.
3 We can make a large horse go wherever we want by means of a small bit in its mouth. 4 And a small rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot chooses to go, even though the winds are strong. 5 In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches.
But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. 6 And among all the parts of the body, the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself.[a]
7 People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, 8 but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. 9 Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. 10 And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right!
Footnotes:
3:6 Or for it will burn in hell (Greek Gehenna).
INSIGHT:
The book of James is often referred to as “the Proverbs of the New Testament.” The emphasis on wisdom and behavior throughout its five brief chapters makes the comparison understandable. James’s well-known warning about the explosive threat hiding behind our lips is sandwiched between verses about the relationship between faith and deeds (2:14-26) and between wisdom and deeds (3:13-18). It seems that James is suggesting that faith and wisdom are both significantly demonstrated in our ability to control our tongue. In other words, our speech puts our faith and our wisdom on display for everyone to see.
Fiery Conversation
By Lawrence Darmani
Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt. —Colossians 4:6
Where I come from in northern Ghana, bush fires are regular occurrences in the dry season between December and March. I’ve witnessed many acres of farmland set ablaze when the winds carried tiny embers from fireplaces or from cigarette butts carelessly thrown by the roadside. With the dry grassland vegetation, all that is needed to start a devastating fire is a little spark.
That is how James describes the tongue, calling it “a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6 niv). A false statement made here or backbiting there, a vicious remark somewhere else, and relationships are destroyed. “The words of the reckless pierce like swords,” says Proverbs 12:18, “but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (niv). Just as fire has both destructive and useful elements, so “death and life are in the power of the tongue” (18:21).
For conversation that reflects God’s presence in us and pleases Him, let it “always be with grace” (Col. 4:6). When expressing our opinions during disagreements, let’s ask God to help us choose wholesome language that brings honor to Him.
Guide my conversation today, Lord. May the words I choose bless and encourage others and build them up rather than tear them down. May You be pleased with what You hear.
Anger can make us speak our mind when we should be minding our speech.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, July 02, 2015
The Conditions of Discipleship
If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also….And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me….So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. —Luke 14:26-27, 33
If the closest relationships of a disciple’s life conflict with the claims of Jesus Christ, then our Lord requires instant obedience to Himself. Discipleship means personal, passionate devotion to a Person— our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a vast difference between devotion to a person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause— He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. To be a disciple is to be a devoted bondservant motivated by love for the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not truly devoted to Jesus Christ. No one on earth has this passionate love for the Lord Jesus unless the Holy Spirit has given it to him. We may admire, respect, and revere Him, but we cannot love Him on our own. The only One who truly loves the Lord Jesus is the Holy Spirit, and it is He who has “poured out in our hearts” the very “love of God” (Romans 5:5). Whenever the Holy Spirit sees an opportunity to glorify Jesus through you, He will take your entire being and set you ablaze with glowing devotion to Jesus Christ.
The Christian life is a life characterized by true and spontaneous creativity. Consequently, a disciple is subject to the same charge that was leveled against Jesus Christ, namely, the charge of inconsistency. But Jesus Christ was always consistent in His relationship to God, and a Christian must be consistent in his relationship to the life of the Son of God in him, not consistent to strict, unyielding doctrines. People pour themselves into their own doctrines, and God has to blast them out of their preconceived ideas before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, July 02, 2015
How to be the Person They'll Never Forget - #7429
Missy lost her mother yesterday and Andy's wife filed for divorce today. A friend texted recently, heartbroken over his sister-in-law's cancer verdict. Some reservation friends of ours are grieving over one young suicide after another.
It just seems that we always know someone who's walking their own personal "trail of tears." Some weeks I think we could be sending a sympathy card like every day. And we've taken our turn. No family is immune. Bad news from the doctor. Burying someone we dearly love. A broken heart over a life that's broken. And you know what? We never forgot the person who was there when it was dark.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to be the Person They'll Never Forget."
My wife and I are honored to call many wonderful Cherokee friends our brothers and sisters. Some are really like family. And you can't be with Cherokees for very long without recollections of their people's darkest hour; one of the most infamous chapters in our nation's history. You've probably heard of it - The Trail of Tears.
The forced removal from their ancestral homelands. The brutal stockade imprisonments, and then the 800-mile Trail of Tears under military guard in a horrific six-month walk through one of the fiercest winters in American history. An estimated one-fourth of the Cherokee Nation died on or because of the Trail of Tears. I've stood with Cherokee friends at unmarked graves where some of those people are buried. I'll tell you what, I've wiped my eyes as they sang in Cherokee, the hymn that sustained their people amid all the dying - "Amazing Grace."
There were people on that trail who didn't have to be there; missionaries who loved the Cherokee people, who represented Jesus among the Cherokees. And now, who chose to be by their side, sharing their suffering.
There's a nearly 200-year old mission church on Cherokee land in Oklahoma today. But it wasn't built in Oklahoma. It was built in Georgia. And I'm told that the missionaries had so won the respect of the people that the chief actually ordered that the mission be dismantled and moved with the people. See, you never forget the person who walked with you on your trail of tears. Because everyone's so busy, so stressed, just too preoccupied to enter into someone else's grief. But if you've walked your own trail of tears, you are uniquely qualified to walk with someone else on theirs. And in so doing, you can find meaning in your pain.
In his recent book, Rob Moll says it well: "When suffering turns to compassion, the questions provoked by suffering can find resolution." A reviewer of that book commented, "Pain breaks us open, allowing us to become kinder and more generous toward others who suffer."
Or, as the Bible says in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, "God...the source of all comfort...comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others."
No one had more to do - no one had more important things to do - than Jesus did in His world-changing three-year ministry. But He stopped for the blind man by the side of the road. He stopped for the mother who had just lost her son, for the leper no one else would touch. And He's stopped for me. Again and again, He has "carried me." In the words of the Bible, "as a father carries his son" (Deuteronomy 1:31) when I couldn't walk another step. When all I could do was reach up and cry, "Daddy, carry me!"
So I am to be, as Oswald Chambers says, "not one who merely proclaims the gospel, but one who becomes broken bread and poured-out wine in the hands of Jesus Christ for the sake of others."
Showing up when they're falling down as Jesus has shown up for me. He didn't stay in the comfort of His heaven. He came to us as "a man of sorrows, acquainted with the deepest grief" (Isaiah 53:3) carrying my burden all the way to the cross.
Now I am called. I am privileged to be His face, His voice, His arms, and His hands so someone doesn't have to walk their trail of tears alone.
