Vengeance is God's. He will repay-whether ultimately on the Day of Judgment or intermediately in this life. God can discipline your abusive boss. He can bring your ex to his knees or to her senses. Forgiveness doesn't diminish justice; it just entrusts it to God. He guarantees the right retribution. The God of justice has the precise prescription. Forgive your enemies? Ah, that's where you and I come in.
"Do not let the sun go down on your anger," Paul wrote, "and do not give the devil an opportunity" (Ephesians 4:26-27). Don't give the devil territory or ground. Bitterness invites him to occupy a space in your heart, to rent a room. Believe me, he will move in and stink up the place! When it comes to forgiveness, all of us are beginners. Stay the course!
From You'll Get Through This
Psalm 70
O God, hurry to take me out of trouble. O Lord, hurry to help me! 2 Let those who want to kill me be ashamed and brought low. Let those who want to hurt me be turned away in shame. 3 Let those who say, “O, O!” be turned back because of their shame.
4 Let all who look for You be full of joy and be glad in You. And let those who love Your saving power always say, “Let God be honored.” 5 But I am poor and in need. Hurry to me, O God! You are my help and the One Who takes me out of trouble. O Lord, do not wait.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
Read: Job 16:1-5
Job Talks
Then Job answered, 2 “I have heard many such things. All of you bring trouble instead of comfort. 3 Is there no end to your words that are full of wind? What is your problem that you keep on talking? 4 I also could speak like you, if I were in your place. I could put words together against you, and shake my head at you. 5 I could give you strength with my mouth. I could speak words of comfort and make your pain less.
INSIGHT:
The story of how Job wrestled with tragedy and how he struggled to understand God’s role in the apparent injustices of life is well known. Job and his three friends (Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite) engage in a series of debates to try to come to terms with life’s great heartaches. In Job 16, Job responds to more charges from Eliphaz who says Job’s suffering is punishment for wickedness (see 15:17-35). The issues of suffering and injustice do not always find resolution in this life, regardless of our attempts to explain them away. In the end, the wise response is to say that “the secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29), for some things are just not revealed to us.
The Slow Walk
By Tim Gustafson
I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever. —John 14:16
Caleb was sick. Really sick! Diagnosed with a nervous system disease, the 5-year-old suffered from temporary paralysis. His anxious parents prayed. And waited. Slowly, Caleb began to recover. Months later, when doctors cleared him to attend school, all Caleb could manage was a slow, unsteady walk.
One day his dad visited him at school. He watched his son haltingly descend the steps to the playground. And then he saw Caleb’s young friend Tyler come alongside him. For the entire recess, as the other kids raced and romped and played, Tyler slowly walked the playground with his frail friend.
Job must have ached for a friend like Tyler. Instead, he had three friends who were certain he was guilty. “Who ever perished, being innocent?” asked Eliphaz (Job 4:7). Such accusations prompted Job to bitterly declare, “Miserable comforters are you all!” (16:2).
How unlike Jesus. On the eve of His crucifixion He took time to comfort His disciples. He promised them the Holy Spirit, who would be with them forever (John 14:16), and assured them, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (v. 18). Then, just before He returned to His Father, He said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
The One who died for us also walks with us, step by painstaking step.
Father, we tend to say too much to our hurting friends. Help us choose our words wisely. Teach us to walk slowly with those in pain, as You walk patiently with us.
Sometimes the best way to be like Jesus is to sit quietly with a hurting friend.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
All Efforts of Worth and Excellence Are Difficult
Enter by the narrow gate….Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life…. —Matthew 7:13-14
If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all efforts of worth and excellence are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but its difficulty does not make us faint and cave in— it stirs us up to overcome. Do we appreciate the miraculous salvation of Jesus Christ enough to be our utmost for His highest— our best for His glory?
God saves people by His sovereign grace through the atonement of Jesus, and “it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). But we have to “work out” that salvation in our everyday, practical living (Philippians 2:12). If we will only start on the basis of His redemption to do what He commands, then we will find that we can do it. If we fail, it is because we have not yet put into practice what God has placed within us. But a crisis will reveal whether or not we have been putting it into practice. If we will obey the Spirit of God and practice in our physical life what God has placed within us by His Spirit, then when a crisis does come we will find that our own nature, as well as the grace of God, will stand by us.
Thank God that He does give us difficult things to do! His salvation is a joyous thing, but it is also something that requires bravery, courage, and holiness. It tests us for all we are worth. Jesus is “bringing many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10), and God will not shield us from the requirements of sonship. God’s grace produces men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not pampered, spoiled weaklings. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to live the worthy and excellent life of a disciple of Jesus in the realities of life. And it is always necessary for us to make an effort to live a life of worth and excellence.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
How to Hear God - #7432
I went out shooting, yes, as in a gun, with a friend of mine a while back, and I got a high caliber scare! The report of one volley of gunfire was so loud it literally made me deaf for a little while. I mean it was just temporary, just a few minutes, but I'll tell you it was all the deafness I ever want to experience. It is not a pleasant prospect to imagine hearing no children's laughter, no tender words, no music, no birds singing, and I had a new understanding of the tragedy of deafness. There's one kind, though, that isn't a tragedy. It's a triumph.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Hear God."
Our word for today from the Word of God; we're in Psalm 46, and you'll find it to be a very familiar phrase out of the Bible I think. David has said that God is our "Help in trouble," and then it goes on and talks about, "We won't fear though the earth gives away," (Wow!) "or the mountains fall into the heart of the sea." That's pretty tough times. "Though the waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." He's talking about the times when everything's in upheaval. And following on the heels of all this turbulence he says in Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God."
If you've ever done much formal Bible study you might have run into a biblical scholar named William Barclay, who wrote some commentaries that have some, you know, sometimes helpful information. I certainly don't agree with everything that he wrote by any means, but there was a lot in there that really brought some scriptures to life. I've reached into my library and pulled out his volume on whatever book of the Bible that I'm studying.
I learned that he was really quite a powerful preacher until he began to lose his hearing. When he was almost completely deaf, instead of losing hope, he consecrated this new life of deafness to the Lord and he immersed himself in a world where he could hear, he said, only one voice - the voice of God. And in that environment he said it opened him up to whole new understandings.
You know, it's God's intention that we actually have times of planned deafness where we're deaf to every other voice but God's. We're wired by God, our Creator, to need regular time where we hear no voice but His. Jesus often did that in the midst of the most demanding responsibilities any man ever had. Now, that requires privacy; you've got to find a place where it's just you and Him. It requires time, because it takes a little while to silence all the other chatter inside so you can only hear one voice. And maybe that's why it's even good to do it in the morning to try to get a jump on the day before you look at any emails, before you turn on the television, before you check the news. Maybe even before anybody else is up. It's just me and you God time.
And this requires consistency, because practice makes perfect. And you need to do it like building one day on the next day on the next day. Emily Dickenson, the poet, said, "The world is too much with us." Do you ever feel like that?
Let me ask you, "When is your time to hear that only one voice - the voice from heaven?" When you turn off your cell phone, your iPod, the television, the computer, even those closest to you and you get in touch with heaven. You know what happens? Some things that looked really big look a lot smaller, and you experience like a shower for your soul that washes off the stresses of the pressure cooker living we're all doing. But it won't happen unless you plan it.
Make it a non-negotiable of your schedule. Plan it so you are deaf to earth for a while so you can hear from heaven.