Max Lucado Daily: The Big News
The big news of the Bible is not that you love God, but that God loves you; not that you can know God, but that God already knows you!
God tattooed your name on the palm of his hand. You never leave his mind, escape his sight, flee his thoughts. He sees the worst of you and loves you still. Your sins of tomorrow and failings of the future will not surprise him, he sees them now. Every day and deed of your life has passed before his eyes and been calculated in his decision. He knows you better than you know you and reached his verdict: He loves you still!
No discovery will disillusion him, no rebellion will dissuade him. You need not win his love. You already have it. And since you can't win it, you can't lose it! He loves you with an everlasting love!
From The Lucado Inspirational Reader
Amos 6
Woe to the Complacent
Woe to you who are complacent in Zion,
and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria,
you notable men of the foremost nation,
to whom the people of Israel come!
2 Go to Kalneh and look at it;
go from there to great Hamath,
and then go down to Gath in Philistia.
Are they better off than your two kingdoms?
Is their land larger than yours?
3 You put off the day of disaster
and bring near a reign of terror.
4 You lie on beds adorned with ivory
and lounge on your couches.
You dine on choice lambs
and fattened calves.
5 You strum away on your harps like David
and improvise on musical instruments.
6 You drink wine by the bowlful
and use the finest lotions,
but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
7 Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile;
your feasting and lounging will end.
The Lord Abhors the Pride of Israel
8 The Sovereign Lord has sworn by himself—the Lord God Almighty declares:
“I abhor the pride of Jacob
and detest his fortresses;
I will deliver up the city
and everything in it.”
9 If ten people are left in one house, they too will die. 10 And if the relative who comes to carry the bodies out of the house to burn them[f] asks anyone who might be hiding there, “Is anyone else with you?” and he says, “No,” then he will go on to say, “Hush! We must not mention the name of the Lord.”
11 For the Lord has given the command,
and he will smash the great house into pieces
and the small house into bits.
12 Do horses run on the rocky crags?
Does one plow the sea[g] with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness—
13 you who rejoice in the conquest of Lo Debar[h]
and say, “Did we not take Karnaim[i] by our own strength?”
14 For the Lord God Almighty declares,
“I will stir up a nation against you, Israel,
that will oppress you all the way
from Lebo Hamath to the valley of the Arabah.”
Footnotes:
Amos 6:10 Or to make a funeral fire in honor of the dead
Amos 6:12 With a different word division of the Hebrew; Masoretic Text plow there
Amos 6:13 Lo Debar means nothing.
Amos 6:13 Karnaim means horns; horn here symbolizes strength.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Read: Luke 4:14-21
Jesus Rejected at Nazareth
Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. 15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.[a]”
20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. 21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”
Footnotes:
4:18-19 Or and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Isa 61:1-2 (Greek version); 58:6.
INSIGHT:
Luke 4 provides a classic portrait of how a prophet is without honor in his own country (see Matt. 13:53–57; John 4:44). In the synagogue Jesus made His formal announcement of His role as the promised Messiah, quoting Isaiah’s great messianic prophecy (Luke 4:16–21; Isa. 61:1–2). The people immediately responded with amazement and “spoke well of Him” (v. 22). But when Jesus responded by challenging the hardness of their hearts, they tried to kill Him (vv. 23–30). In the midst of His challenge to them Jesus pointed to the reality of being rejected by those of His own hometown (v. 24).
He Came for You
By Bill Crowder
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. Luke 4:18
In his novels The Trial and The Castle, Franz Kafka (1883–1924) portrays life as a dehumanizing existence that turns people into a sea of empty faces without identity or worth. Kafka said, “The conveyer belt of life carries you on, no one knows where. One is more of an object, a thing, than a living creature.”
Early in His ministry, Jesus went to a synagogue in Nazareth, stood up in front of the crowd, and read from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
The Lord's mercy extends to all people.
Then Christ sat down and declared, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21). Centuries earlier, the prophet Isaiah had proclaimed these words (Isa. 61:1-2). Now Jesus announced that He was the fulfillment of that promise.
Notice who Jesus came to rescue—the poor, brokenhearted, captive, blind, and oppressed. He came for people dehumanized by sin and suffering, by brokenness and sorrow. He came for us!
For those who sin and those who suffer. For those who suffer because of sin. For those who sin to alleviate suffering. Lord, have mercy on us. Robert Gelinas, The Mercy Prayer
No matter how impersonal the world may seem, Jesus loves each of us as if we were His only child.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Do You See Your Calling?
…separated to the gospel of God… —Romans 1:1
Our calling is not primarily to be holy men and women, but to be proclaimers of the gospel of God. The one all-important thing is that the gospel of God should be recognized as the abiding reality. Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell— it is redemption. The need to perceive this is the most vital need of the Christian worker today. As workers, we have to get used to the revelation that redemption is the only reality. Personal holiness is an effect of redemption, not the cause of it. If we place our faith in human goodness we will go under when testing comes.
Paul did not say that he separated himself, but “when it pleased God, who separated me…” (Galatians 1:15). Paul was not overly interested in his own character. And as long as our eyes are focused on our own personal holiness, we will never even get close to the full reality of redemption. Christian workers fail because they place their desire for their own holiness above their desire to know God. “Don’t ask me to be confronted with the strong reality of redemption on behalf of the filth of human life surrounding me today; what I want is anything God can do for me to make me more desirable in my own eyes.” To talk that way is a sign that the reality of the gospel of God has not begun to touch me. There is no reckless abandon to God in that. God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own character. Paul was not conscious of himself. He was recklessly abandoned, totally surrendered, and separated by God for one purpose— to proclaim the gospel of God (see Romans 9:3).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony