Max Lucado Daily: Strongholds
Does one prevailing problem stalk your life? Where does Satan have a hook in you?
Some are prone to cheat. Others quick to doubt. Maybe you worry. Yes, everyone worries some - but you own the national distributorship of anxiety. Perhaps you are judgmental. Sure, everybody can be critical, but you pass more judgments than the Supreme Court.
What is that one weakness, bad habit, rotten attitude? Where does the devil have a stronghold on you? Ahh, there is the word that fits-stronghold-fortress, citadel, thick walls, tall gates. It's as if the devil has fenced in one negative attribute, one bad habit, one weakness and constructed a rampart around it. "You ain't touching this flaw," he defies to heaven and he places himself squarely between God's help and your:
-explosive temper
-fragile self-image
-voracious appetite
-distrust for authority
Seasons come and go and this Loch Ness monster still lurks in the watery lake bottom of your soul. He won't go away. He lives up to both sides of his compound name: strong enough to grip like a vice and stubborn enough to hold on. He clings like a bear trap; the harder you shake, the more it hurts.
Strongholds: old, difficult, discouraging challenges.
The term stronghold appears at least fifty times in the Bible. It commonly referred to a fortress with a difficult access (see Judges 6:2; I Sam. 23:14). When King David first saw the city of Jerusalem, it was an old, ancient, cheerless fortress inhabited by enemies. No wonder it was twice called a stronghold (see II Sam. 5:7,9).
The Apostle Paul uses the term to describe a mindset or attitude.
"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds), casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ; and being in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be made full." (2 Corinthians 10:3-6 ASV)
We do not grit our teeth and redouble our efforts. No, this is the way of the flesh. Our weapons are from God. They have divine power to demolish strongholds. Isn't that what we want? We long to see our strongholds turned into rubble, once and for all, forever and ever, kaboom!
Maybe it's time for a different strategy.
Have you asked others to help you? Everything inside you says: keep the struggle a secret. Wear a mask, hide the pain. God says just the opposite: "Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed" (James 5:16 MSG). Satan indwells the domain of shadows and secrets. God lives in the land of light and honesty. Bring your problem into the open.
I know a young couple who battled the stronghold of sexual temptation. They wanted to save sex for the honeymoon, but didn't know if they could. So, they called for help. They enlisted the support of a mentoring, understanding married couple. They put the older couple's phone number on speed dial and asked their permission to call them, regardless of the hour, when the temptation was severe. When the wall was too tall, they took the tunnel.
Maybe it is time to get drastic. I had a friend who battled the stronghold of alcohol. He tried a fresh approach. If I ever saw him drinking, he gave me, and a few choice people, permission to slug him in the nose. The wall was too tall, so he tried the tunnel.
One woman counters her anxiety by memorizing long sections of Scripture. A traveling salesman asks the hotels to remove the TV from his room so he won't be tempted. Another man grew so weary of his prejudice toward non-whites, that he moved into an ethnically diverse neighborhood, made new friends and changed his attitude.
"God's power is very great for us who believe. That power is the same as the great strength God used to raise Christ from the dead and put him at his right side in the heavenly world." (Eph. 1:19, 20 NCV).
Ask for help. Get drastic. Try a fresh approach. Who knows, you may be a prayer away from a breakthrough.
©Max Lucado, September 2015
Proverbs 6
Warnings Against Folly
My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor,
if you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger,
2 you have been trapped by what you said,
ensnared by the words of your mouth.
3 So do this, my son, to free yourself,
since you have fallen into your neighbor’s hands:
Go—to the point of exhaustion—[b]
and give your neighbor no rest!
4 Allow no sleep to your eyes,
no slumber to your eyelids.
5 Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter,
like a bird from the snare of the fowler.
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest—
11 and poverty will come on you like a thief
and scarcity like an armed man.
12 A troublemaker and a villain,
who goes about with a corrupt mouth,
13 who winks maliciously with his eye,
signals with his feet
and motions with his fingers,
14 who plots evil with deceit in his heart—
he always stirs up conflict.
15 Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant;
he will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.
16 There are six things the Lord hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19 a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
Warning Against Adultery
20 My son, keep your father’s command
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
21 Bind them always on your heart;
fasten them around your neck.
22 When you walk, they will guide you;
when you sleep, they will watch over you;
when you awake, they will speak to you.
23 For this command is a lamp,
this teaching is a light,
and correction and instruction
are the way to life,
24 keeping you from your neighbor’s wife,
from the smooth talk of a wayward woman.
25 Do not lust in your heart after her beauty
or let her captivate you with her eyes.
26 For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread,
but another man’s wife preys on your very life.
27 Can a man scoop fire into his lap
without his clothes being burned?
28 Can a man walk on hot coals
without his feet being scorched?
29 So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife;
no one who touches her will go unpunished.
30 People do not despise a thief if he steals
to satisfy his hunger when he is starving.
31 Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold,
though it costs him all the wealth of his house.
32 But a man who commits adultery has no sense;
whoever does so destroys himself.
33 Blows and disgrace are his lot,
and his shame will never be wiped away.
34 For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury,
and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge.
35 He will not accept any compensation;
he will refuse a bribe, however great it is.
Footnotes:
Proverbs 6:3 Or Go and humble yourself,
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
Read: Job 19:1-21
Job’s Sixth Speech: A Response to Bildad
Then Job spoke again:
2 “How long will you torture me?
How long will you try to crush me with your words?
3 You have already insulted me ten times.
You should be ashamed of treating me so badly.
4 Even if I have sinned,
that is my concern, not yours.
5 You think you’re better than I am,
using my humiliation as evidence of my sin.
6 But it is God who has wronged me,
capturing me in his net.[a]
7 “I cry out, ‘Help!’ but no one answers me.
I protest, but there is no justice.
8 God has blocked my way so I cannot move.
He has plunged my path into darkness.
9 He has stripped me of my honor
and removed the crown from my head.
10 He has demolished me on every side, and I am finished.
He has uprooted my hope like a fallen tree.
11 His fury burns against me;
he counts me as an enemy.
12 His troops advance.
They build up roads to attack me.
They camp all around my tent.
13 “My relatives stay far away,
and my friends have turned against me.
14 My family is gone,
and my close friends have forgotten me.
15 My servants and maids consider me a stranger.
I am like a foreigner to them.
16 When I call my servant, he doesn’t come;
I have to plead with him!
17 My breath is repulsive to my wife.
I am rejected by my own family.
18 Even young children despise me.
When I stand to speak, they turn their backs on me.
19 My close friends detest me.
Those I loved have turned against me.
20 I have been reduced to skin and bones
and have escaped death by the skin of my teeth.
21 “Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy,
for the hand of God has struck me.
Footnotes:
19:6 Or for I am like a city under siege.
Unclear Vision
By Anne Cetas
My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Job 42:5
My friend Meaghan is an accomplished equestrian, and I’ve been learning some interesting things about horses from her. For instance, despite having the largest eyes of all land mammals, horses have poor eyesight and can see fewer colors than humans. Because of this, they can’t always identify objects on the ground. When they see a pole, they don’t know if it’s a pole they can easily step over or a large snake that might harm them. For this reason, until they are properly trained horses are easily frightened and quick to run away.
We too may want to run from alarming circumstances. We may feel like Job who misunderstood his troubles and wished he’d never been born. Since he couldn’t see that it was Satan who was trying to break him down, he feared that the Lord, in whom he had trusted, was trying to destroy him. Overwhelmed, he cried out, “God has wronged me and drawn his net around me” (Job 19:6).
Like Job’s vision, ours is limited. We want to run away from the difficult situations that scare us. From God’s perspective, we are not alone. He understands what confuses and frightens us. He knows we are safe with Him by our side. This is our opportunity to trust His understanding rather than our own.
In what ways have you doubted God’s goodness? How have you seen Him working in your life during a difficult time?
Trusting God’s faithfulness dispels our fearfulness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
The Nature of Reconciliation
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. —2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us…” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.
A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Both nations and individuals have tried Christianity and abandoned it, because it has been found too difficult; but no man has ever gone through the crisis of deliberately making Jesus Lord and found Him to be a failure. The Love of God—The Making of a Christian, 680 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
Someone Else's Treasure - #7498
That night our car was totaled in an accident, and thank God, we weren't. We were hit by a drunk driver, and I had no car to get around in for the month of December, which was a very busy month for the youth ministry that I worked for at that time. I received a call from a friend one day. Much to my surprise, he said, "Ron, could we lend you a car for the next few weeks while we're in Florida." This was like a huge answer to prayer. I said, "Well, bring me the oldest one you have."
Well, he drove over his brand new Cadillac Coupe Deville. Now, that's good news and bad news. The good news is, "I'm going to be driving my friend's brand new Coupe Deville. The bad news is, "I'm going to be driving my friend's brand new Coupe Deville." This car was capable of things I didn't even know cars did, and here I am for the next six weeks driving around in my good friends' brand new Cadillac. To be honest, I drove like a different person when I drove that car! I was more careful, I took it and had it washed every other day. I made sure the kids didn't eat any potato chips in there. You know, you treat something like extra special when you know it belongs to somebody else.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Someone Else's Treasure."
Our word for today from the Word of God is about being trusted with somebody else's treasure. And it comes as a quiet, almost hidden lesson out of what we normally think of as the Christmas Story. It's in Matthew 1, where our word for today from the Word of God is in verses 20 and 21. We're in that part of the story where Joseph gets the news about what has happened to his fiancé Mary, and that in fact she is going to be a virgin mother of the Son of God.
Verse 20, "After he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.'"
You might think of this as good news/bad news for Joseph. Because isn't it great news for a father to be told, "You're going to have a son!"? That's like music to every dad's ears.
The down side is that he will be playing a supporting role in the life of this son that's going to be born. First of all, he's not even going to get to pick the name. God's going to do that. And then he's going to be the supporting cast. This child, basically God is saying here, is "not really yours Joseph." But then, in a sense, isn't every parent Joseph. You have, if you are a parent, in your care a child invented by God, for whom God has His own plans – a Cadillac He has entrusted to you. As Joseph was, so you are in a sense, a supporting actor to God's fathering in that child's life. Your mission is to support God's program for the children He trusted to you; not to live your life through them or to carry out your wonderful plan for their life.
So, how are you doing? Are you carrying out His plans for them and not yours? Are you accepting the gifts that God has given them and the limitations He's given them? Are you teaching God's boundaries to them? Are you bathing them in His values? Do you pray every day, "Dear Jesus, help me see this child through your eyes. Help me see what you're doing in my son or daughter's life and I want to follow you there, and I want to be a part of it."
He's given you this child to raise; He's trusted you. It is perhaps the greatest trust God can ever give a human being. You have someone else's treasure.
I think about the prayer of that grandmother that was up on the wall in her room, "Lord, I pray that on that Resurrection Day I may be able to say, 'Here am I, Lord, and the children you gave me.'" Yes, you've got somebody else's treasure.