Max Lucado Daily: Taking No Chances
With God-chance is eliminated! God knows what's best! No struggle will come your way apart from his purpose, his presence and his permission. Isaiah 43:2 says, "when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you." What encouragement! You're never the victim of nature or the prey of fate. Chance is eliminated.
You are more than a weather vane whipped by the winds of fortune. Perish the thought! You live beneath the protective palm of a sovereign King who superintends every circumstance of your life, and delights in doing you good! Remember this! Nothing comes your way that has not first passed through the filter of God's love!
From Grace for the Moment
Ecclesiastes 10
As dead flies cause even a bottle of perfume to stink,
so a little foolishness spoils great wisdom and honor.
2 A wise person chooses the right road;
a fool takes the wrong one.
3 You can identify fools
just by the way they walk down the street!
4 If your boss is angry at you, don’t quit!
A quiet spirit can overcome even great mistakes.
The Ironies of Life
5 There is another evil I have seen under the sun. Kings and rulers make a grave mistake 6 when they give great authority to foolish people and low positions to people of proven worth. 7 I have even seen servants riding horseback like princes—and princes walking like servants!
8 When you dig a well,
you might fall in.
When you demolish an old wall,
you could be bitten by a snake.
9 When you work in a quarry,
stones might fall and crush you.
When you chop wood,
there is danger with each stroke of your ax.
10 Using a dull ax requires great strength,
so sharpen the blade.
That’s the value of wisdom;
it helps you succeed.
11 If a snake bites before you charm it,
what’s the use of being a snake charmer?
12 Wise words bring approval,
but fools are destroyed by their own words.
13 Fools base their thoughts on foolish assumptions,
so their conclusions will be wicked madness;
14 they chatter on and on.
No one really knows what is going to happen;
no one can predict the future.
15 Fools are so exhausted by a little work
that they can’t even find their way home.
16 What sorrow for the land ruled by a servant,[a]
the land whose leaders feast in the morning.
17 Happy is the land whose king is a noble leader
and whose leaders feast at the proper time
to gain strength for their work, not to get drunk.
18 Laziness leads to a sagging roof;
idleness leads to a leaky house.
19 A party gives laughter,
wine gives happiness,
and money gives everything!
20 Never make light of the king, even in your thoughts.
And don’t make fun of the powerful, even in your own bedroom.
For a little bird might deliver your message
and tell them what you said.
Footnotes:
10:16 Or a child.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, December 14, 2015
Read: Psalm 150
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heaven!
2 Praise him for his mighty works;
praise his unequaled greatness!
3 Praise him with a blast of the ram’s horn;
praise him with the lyre and harp!
4 Praise him with the tambourine and dancing;
praise him with strings and flutes!
5 Praise him with a clash of cymbals;
praise him with loud clanging cymbals.
6 Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
INSIGHT:
The last five psalms (146–150) are also known as Hallelujah psalms because each of them begins and ends with “Hallelujah” or “Praise the Lord.” The psalmist calls for “everything that has breath”—every living thing on earth and spiritual beings in the heavens—to worship God for what He has done (v. 6). We praise Him for “his acts of power” and for “his surpassing greatness” (v. 2). God deserves the full and joyous expression of our commitment and devotion, and we can praise Him exuberantly with singing and musical instruments (vv. 3-6).
Let’s Celebrate
By Marvin Williams
Praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe. Psalm 150:4
After Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan scored a goal against Germany in the 2014 World Cup, he and his teammates did a coordinated dance step. When Germany’s Miroslav Klose scored a few minutes later, he did a running front flip. “Soccer celebrations are so appealing because they reveal players’ personalities, values, and passions,” says Clint Mathis, who scored for the US at the 2002 World Cup.
In Psalm 150, the psalmist invites “everything that has breath” to celebrate and praise the Lord in many different ways. He suggests that we use trumpets and harps, stringed instruments and pipes, cymbals and dancing. He encourages us to creatively and passionately celebrate, honor, and adore the Lord. Because the Lord is great and has performed mighty acts on behalf of His people, He is worthy of all praise. These outward expressions of praise will come from an inner wellspring overflowing with gratitude to God. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord,” the psalmist declares (150:6).
Though we may celebrate the Lord in different ways (I’m not encouraging back flips in our worship services), our praise to God always needs to be expressive and meaningful. When we think about the Lord’s character and His mighty acts toward us, we cannot help but celebrate Him through our praise and worship.
How has this psalm challenged you to be more expressive in your praise to God? Spend some time thinking about the greatness of the Lord’s mighty works. Then give Him your praise.
Praise is the song of a soul set free.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, December 14, 2015
The Great Life
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled… —John 14:27
Whenever we experience something difficult in our personal life, we are tempted to blame God. But we are the ones in the wrong, not God. Blaming God is evidence that we are refusing to let go of some disobedience somewhere in our lives. But as soon as we let go, everything becomes as clear as daylight to us. As long as we try to serve two masters, ourselves and God, there will be difficulties combined with doubt and confusion. Our attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. Once we get to that point, there is nothing easier than living the life of a saint. We encounter difficulties when we try to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own purposes.
God’s mark of approval, whenever you obey Him, is peace. He sends an immeasurable, deep peace; not a natural peace, “as the world gives,” but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, wait until it does, or seek to find out why it is not coming. If you are acting on your own impulse, or out of a sense of the heroic, to be seen by others, the peace of Jesus will not exhibit itself. This shows no unity with God or confidence in Him. The spirit of simplicity, clarity, and unity is born through the Holy Spirit, not through your decisions. God counters our self-willed decisions with an appeal for simplicity and unity.
My questions arise whenever I cease to obey. When I do obey God, problems come, not between me and God, but as a means to keep my mind examining with amazement the revealed truth of God. But any problem that comes between God and myself is the result of disobedience. Any problem that comes while I obey God (and there will be many), increases my overjoyed delight, because I know that my Father knows and cares, and I can watch and anticipate how He will unravel my problems.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is impossible to read too much, but always keep before you why you read. Remember that “the need to receive, recognize, and rely on the Holy Spirit” is before all else. Approved Unto God, 11 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, December 14, 2015
Men on the Edge - #7546
Suicide. It usually stuns those close to it. Hollywood has seen several suicides in the past years. A director that leaped from a bridge. Actors battling drugs and alcohol that had beaten the addiction. And others that were still battling until the addiction won. Families left crushed. Many people left asking that question that often defies an answer, "Why?" Well, we may never know.
And then there was that prominent official in the White House some years ago who committed suicide. A national news magazine turned the spotlight on a disturbing fact about too many men. They are, (And I've never forgotten these words) "wounded men with no place to bleed."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Men on the Edge."
I know from years of walking through crises with many guys, that we men often stuff it rather than share it. We live with the lie that being strong means never showing weakness, never showing a soft or hurting heart, and always being in control of course.
So we bleed inside where there's nothing to stop the bleeding or treat the wound. The pressure builds like lava in a volcano. Or like a beach ball pushed farther and farther under the water. The farther down you push it, the higher it ultimately goes when it can't be held down anymore. Suddenly, often inexplicably, there's an explosion of anger or violence or depression, or self-destruction.
But the strongest man who ever lived offered us guys a better way. The shortest verse in the Bible – only two words, John 11:35, "Jesus wept" at a friend's grave. The Bible says, when He saw a crowd of hurting people, "He was moved with compassion because they were...like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). I'm pretty sure He wasn't afraid to smile or laugh either. The children loved to sit on His lap, and I know my grandchildren don't want anything to do with grouches.
Jesus wasn't afraid to let His friends know He was really hurting. Just before what He knew was going to be His awful torture and crucifixion, He asked His main guys to be with Him in the garden. He told them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with Me" (Matthew 26:38). Though He was God in the flesh – the ultimate Man – He wasn't afraid to say He needed people.
So, wounded men do have a place to bleed. With the One who bled for them. As one high-powered enemy-turned-follower of Jesus said in our word for today from the Word of God in Galatians 2:20, He "loved me and gave Himself for me." We would be lost in this life and horribly lost forever if Jesus hadn't paid the price to cure our terminal spiritual cancer called sin.
Guys get what sin is. It means, "I've gotta drive. You ride, God, but I'm driving." That's spiritual hijacking. Controlling a life that was made by God and for God and taking it where we want it to go instead. Sadly, we're like my four-year-old grandson standing behind the wheel of his daddy's parked car. He was never meant to drive.
Neither were we. And if we do, we'll ultimately crash, taking people we love with us. That's why God lets a man run into something he can't fix, he can't change, or he can't control to show us we never really were in control. So we see that we're created to have the One who gave us our life running our life.
To be blunt, we need a Savior. We need Jesus. Not a religion. Jesus. We need Him to forgive all the junk of our life; to open up this closed and wounded heart. To give us the power to be the man we want to be; that we need to be. And to fill us with the exhilaration of living our life for the one cause that's worth everything a guy's got.
A man can totally trust himself to this Jesus, because anyone who loved you enough to die for you will never do you wrong. You ready to surrender the pain, the sin to the Man who died to fix us? Well, this could be your new beginning today.
You know, our website is there to help you make that new beginning. It's called ANewStory.com. I hope you'll go there right now as soon as you can today. Maybe it's time to talk with someone about what it means to belong to Jesus. Text us at 442-244-WORD.
No longer does your heart have to be lonely and hurting. You're not alone. You have a place to bleed. Remember, with the Man who bled for you.