Yell a loud NO to the Devil and watch him scamper! He must retreat. He is not allowed in the place where God is praised. Just keep praising and walking.
“But, Max, I’ve been walking a long time,” you say. Yes, it seems like it. It must have seemed that way to the Hebrews too. Joshua didn’t tell them how many trips they’d have to make around the city of Jericho. God told Joshua the walls would fall on the seventh day but Joshua didn’t tell the people. They just kept walking.
Our Joshua [Jesus] didn’t tell us either. Through the pen of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:58, Jesus urges us to “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” Keep walking! For all you know, this may be the day the walls come down.
From Glory Days
Proverbs 16
We can make our own plans,
but the Lord gives the right answer.
2 People may be pure in their own eyes,
but the Lord examines their motives.
3 Commit your actions to the Lord,
and your plans will succeed.
4 The Lord has made everything for his own purposes,
even the wicked for a day of disaster.
5 The Lord detests the proud;
they will surely be punished.
6 Unfailing love and faithfulness make atonement for sin.
By fearing the Lord, people avoid evil.
7 When people’s lives please the Lord,
even their enemies are at peace with them.
8 Better to have little, with godliness,
than to be rich and dishonest.
9 We can make our plans,
but the Lord determines our steps.
10 The king speaks with divine wisdom;
he must never judge unfairly.
11 The Lord demands accurate scales and balances;
he sets the standards for fairness.
12 A king detests wrongdoing,
for his rule is built on justice.
13 The king is pleased with words from righteous lips;
he loves those who speak honestly.
14 The anger of the king is a deadly threat;
the wise will try to appease it.
15 When the king smiles, there is life;
his favor refreshes like a spring rain.
16 How much better to get wisdom than gold,
and good judgment than silver!
17 The path of the virtuous leads away from evil;
whoever follows that path is safe.
18 Pride goes before destruction,
and haughtiness before a fall.
19 Better to live humbly with the poor
than to share plunder with the proud.
20 Those who listen to instruction will prosper;
those who trust the Lord will be joyful.
21 The wise are known for their understanding,
and pleasant words are persuasive.
22 Discretion is a life-giving fountain to those who possess it,
but discipline is wasted on fools.
23 From a wise mind comes wise speech;
the words of the wise are persuasive.
24 Kind words are like honey—
sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.
25 There is a path before each person that seems right,
but it ends in death.
26 It is good for workers to have an appetite;
an empty stomach drives them on.
27 Scoundrels create trouble;
their words are a destructive blaze.
28 A troublemaker plants seeds of strife;
gossip separates the best of friends.
29 Violent people mislead their companions,
leading them down a harmful path.
30 With narrowed eyes, people plot evil;
with a smirk, they plan their mischief.
31 Gray hair is a crown of glory;
it is gained by living a godly life.
32 Better to be patient than powerful;
better to have self-control than to conquer a city.
33 We may throw the dice,[a]
but the Lord determines how they fall.
Footnotes:
16:33 Hebrew We may cast lots.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Read: Ezra 9:1-9
Ezra’s Prayer concerning Intermarriage
When these things had been done, the Jewish leaders came to me and said, “Many of the people of Israel, and even some of the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the other peoples living in the land. They have taken up the detestable practices of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites. 2 For the men of Israel have married women from these people and have taken them as wives for their sons. So the holy race has become polluted by these mixed marriages. Worse yet, the leaders and officials have led the way in this outrage.”
3 When I heard this, I tore my cloak and my shirt, pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat down utterly shocked. 4 Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel came and sat with me because of this outrage committed by the returned exiles. And I sat there utterly appalled until the time of the evening sacrifice.
5 At the time of the sacrifice, I stood up from where I had sat in mourning with my clothes torn. I fell to my knees and lifted my hands to the Lord my God. 6 I prayed,
“O my God, I am utterly ashamed; I blush to lift up my face to you. For our sins are piled higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens. 7 From the days of our ancestors until now, we have been steeped in sin. That is why we and our kings and our priests have been at the mercy of the pagan kings of the land. We have been killed, captured, robbed, and disgraced, just as we are today.
8 “But now we have been given a brief moment of grace, for the Lord our God has allowed a few of us to survive as a remnant. He has given us security in this holy place. Our God has brightened our eyes and granted us some relief from our slavery. 9 For we were slaves, but in his unfailing love our God did not abandon us in our slavery. Instead, he caused the kings of Persia to treat us favorably. He revived us so we could rebuild the Temple of our God and repair its ruins. He has given us a protective wall in Judah and Jerusalem.
Pride at the Core
By Tim Gustafson
Ezra . . . was a teacher well versed in the Law of Moses. Ezra 7:6
“He thinks he’s really something!” That was my friend’s assessment of a fellow Christian we knew. We thought we saw in him a spirit of pride. We were saddened when we learned that he soon was caught in some serious misdeeds. By elevating himself, he had found nothing but trouble. We realized that could happen to us as well.
It can be easy to minimize the terrible sin of pride in our own hearts. The more we learn and the more success we enjoy, the more likely we are to think we’re “really something.” Pride is at the core of our nature.
#Humility lets us trust in the goodness of our forgiving God.
In Scripture, Ezra is described as “a teacher well versed in the Law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6). King Artaxerxes appointed him to lead an expedition of Hebrew exiles back to Jerusalem. Ezra could have been a prime candidate to succumb to the sin of pride. Yet he didn’t. Ezra didn’t only know God’s law; he lived it.
After his arrival in Jerusalem, Ezra learned that Jewish men had married women who served other gods, defying God’s express directions (9:1-2). He tore his clothes in grief and prayed in heartfelt repentance (vv. 5-15). A higher purpose guided Ezra’s knowledge and position: his love for God and for His people. He prayed, “Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence” (v. 15).
Ezra understood the scope of their sins. But in humility he repented and trusted in the goodness of our forgiving God.
Lord, fill us with such a love for You that we think first of what will please You, not ourselves. Free us from the subtle captivity of our own pride.
Pride leads to every other vice: It is the complete anti-God state of mind. C. S. Lewis
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Impulsiveness or Discipleship?
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith… —Jude 20
There was nothing of the nature of impulsive or thoughtless action about our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into a panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the lines of our own nature, not along the lines of God’s nature. Impulsiveness is a trait of the natural life, and our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple. Watch how the Spirit of God gives a sense of restraint to impulsiveness, suddenly bringing us a feeling of self-conscious foolishness, which makes us instantly want to vindicate ourselves. Impulsiveness is all right in a child, but is disastrous in a man or woman— an impulsive adult is always a spoiled person. Impulsiveness needs to be trained into intuition through discipline.
Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on water is easy to someone with impulsive boldness, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is something altogether different. Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he “followed Him at a distance” on dry land (Mark 14:54). We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises— human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God— but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people— and this is not learned in five minutes.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
So Send I You
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Rescue Glue - #7508
I think we all have some awful memories of some painful scenes at Ground Zero in the rubble of the World Trade Center after September 11 - firemen, policemen, emergency personnel, combing through the wreckage for their fallen brothers and sisters. Later, pausing for a moment of silent tribute as the remains of one of them would be carried out. But at a time when there was talk of reducing the number of workers at the site, I saw a scene that was painful in a different way. Tempers flared in the raw emotions of that moment, and some of those firefighters and police who had been fighting together to save or find people in the rescue and recovery effort were suddenly fighting with one another at Ground Zero.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Rescue Glue."
The moment was short-lived, but it still hurt - people who on September 11, and the days that followed had been so united in trying to rescue the dying, were now fighting with each other. Let me tell you, that kind of heartache is something God's been all too familiar with for a long time. His people, who should be united in an all-out effort to rescue the spiritually dying, are instead battling one another. That's not a new issue.
Way back in Philippians 4:2-3, our word for today from the Word of God, Paul was writing about some rescuers who had turned on each other. He said, "I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. (These two women had been co-workers of Paul's.) Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life."
Now, notice, when these women were actively involved in what Paul calls "the cause of the gospel" - in other words, getting the life-or-death message of Jesus to people - they were together. But when they drifted away from the rescue mission of Jesus, they stopped contending for the Gospel and started contending with each other. That's still happening today.
Rescue unites God's people. When believers, when a church, when a ministry is focused on rescuing the spiritually dying whatever it takes, there's no time to battle with each other. We're too busy battling for the lives of the lost people around us. There was no conflict between those New York police and firefighters when they were in that wreckage desperately working together to bring some people out alive. Turf, ego and divisive issues: they're just not important when people are dying.
But so many of us, so many of our churches, are focused on ourselves rather than on those who are dying all around us spiritually. And, when we start focusing on our issues, our kingdoms, our distinctives, our likes and dislikes, our agendas, we start bickering, forming cliques and power blocks, criticizing our brothers and sisters, and elevating things that are relatively trivial to being way too important. Important enough even to fight over; to split over.
Remember this: rescue unites - self-focus divides. It's a sad scene when the people who are supposed to be rescuers start turning on each other. You see, while God's spiritual rescuers are battling with each other, we're losing the battle for people who will die if we don't get to them. We have to fight for them, not fight against each other!