Max Lucado Daily: SEEK HEAVEN
Do you feel as if your best years have passed you by? Do you regret wasting seasons of life on foolish pursuits? So do I. But we can stop our laments. We have an eternity to make up for lost time.
Colossians 3:1 is a great reminder to “seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.” Seek heaven the way a sailor seeks the coast or a pilot seeks the landing strip. Colossians 3:2 says, “think only about it.” Other translation say Keep your mind on it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. In other words, obsess yourself with heaven! Open your eyes, Christ invites. Lift up your gaze. Don’t limit your story to the days between your birth and death. You were made for more than this life!
From More to Your Story
1 Corinthians 6
Avoiding Lawsuits with Christians
When one of you has a dispute with another believer, how dare you file a lawsuit and ask a secular court to decide the matter instead of taking it to other believers[a]! 2 Don’t you realize that someday we believers will judge the world? And since you are going to judge the world, can’t you decide even these little things among yourselves? 3 Don’t you realize that we will judge angels? So you should surely be able to resolve ordinary disputes in this life. 4 If you have legal disputes about such matters, why go to outside judges who are not respected by the church? 5 I am saying this to shame you. Isn’t there anyone in all the church who is wise enough to decide these issues? 6 But instead, one believer[b] sues another—right in front of unbelievers!
7 Even to have such lawsuits with one another is a defeat for you. Why not just accept the injustice and leave it at that? Why not let yourselves be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves are the ones who do wrong and cheat even your fellow believers.[c]
9 Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, 10 or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. 11 Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Avoiding Sexual Sin
12 You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. 13 You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 14 And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.
15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! 16 And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.”[d] 17 But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
18 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
Footnotes:
6:1 Greek God’s holy people; also in 6:2.
6:6 Greek one brother.
6:8 Greek even the brothers.
6:16 Gen 2:24.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Read: Psalm 86:5-15
O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive,
so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.
6 Listen closely to my prayer, O Lord;
hear my urgent cry.
7 I will call to you whenever I’m in trouble,
and you will answer me.
8 No pagan god is like you, O Lord.
None can do what you do!
9 All the nations you made
will come and bow before you, Lord;
they will praise your holy name.
10 For you are great and perform wonderful deeds.
You alone are God.
11 Teach me your ways, O Lord,
that I may live according to your truth!
Grant me purity of heart,
so that I may honor you.
12 With all my heart I will praise you, O Lord my God.
I will give glory to your name forever,
13 for your love for me is very great.
You have rescued me from the depths of death.[a]
14 O God, insolent people rise up against me;
a violent gang is trying to kill me.
You mean nothing to them.
15 But you, O Lord,
are a God of compassion and mercy,
slow to get angry
and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.
Footnotes:
86:13 Hebrew of Sheol.
INSIGHT:
Psalm 86:5 declares, “You, Lord, are forgiving and good.” The Hebrew word translated “forgiving” is sallah and literally means “ready to forgive.” Sallah appears just once in the Old Testament. By choosing this particular word, the psalmist is telling his readers that the Lord is not only capable of forgiving our sins, He is also ready and willing to do so.
Start Afresh
By Cindy Hess Kasper
His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23
When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. In one amusing passage, young Anne, by mistake, adds a skin medication instead of vanilla to the cake she is making. Afterward, she exclaims hopefully to her stern-faced guardian, Marilla, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
I like that thought: tomorrow is a new day—a new day when we can start afresh. We all make mistakes. But when it comes to sin, God’s forgiveness is what enables us to start each morning with a clean slate. When we repent, He chooses to remember our sins no more (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12).
God’s compassion and faithfulness are new every morning (Lam. 3:23).
Some of us have made wrong choices in our lives, but our past words and deeds need not define our future in God’s eyes. There is always a fresh start. When we ask for His forgiveness, we take a first step toward restoring our relationship with Him and with others. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
God’s compassion and faithfulness are new every morning (Lam. 3:23), so we can start afresh each day.
Thank You for this new day, Lord. Forgive me for doing those things in the past that I shouldn't have done, and for not doing those things that I should have done. Set my feet on Your right path today.
Each new day gives us new reasons to praise the Lord.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
“Love One Another”
…add to your…brotherly kindness love. —2 Peter 1:5, 7
Love is an indefinite thing to most of us; we don’t know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the loftiest preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that this sovereign preference be for Himself (see Luke 14:26). Initially, when “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5), it is easy to put Jesus first. But then we must practice the things mentioned in 2 Peter 1 to see them worked out in our lives.
The first thing God does is forcibly remove any insincerity, pride, and vanity from my life. And the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now He commands me to show the same love to others by saying, “…love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). He is saying, “I will bring a number of people around you whom you cannot respect, but you must exhibit My love to them, just as I have exhibited it to you.” This kind of love is not a patronizing love for the unlovable— it is His love, and it will not be evidenced in us overnight. Some of us may have tried to force it, but we were soon tired and frustrated.
“The Lord…is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish…” (2 Peter 3:9). I should look within and remember how wonderfully He has dealt with me. The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to go into the world to love others in the same way. I may get irritated because I have to live with an unusually difficult person. But just think how disagreeable I have been with God! Am I prepared to be identified so closely with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness will be continually poured out through Me? Neither natural love nor God’s divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is nurtured. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through discipline.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are in danger of being stern where God is tender, and of being tender where God is stern. The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 673 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Sex and the Inventor - #7653
Years ago, we had this 1998 Oldsmobile, and it had behavior problems. You could say it was acting up again. I was thinking about this one time that it seemed to be having lots of problems at the same time. So my wife and I looked at each other and said, "It's time to take it to Mr. Oldsmobile." So, we dropped it off at the local Oldsmobile dealer's garage. Of course, they knew exactly what was wrong and exactly what had to be done. Of course! That shouldn't be a big surprise. They represented the manufacturer. And the manufacturer knows how it runs best. Right?
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Sex and the Inventor."
In our lifetime, our culture has gone through a culturequake that probably registers about a 9.5 on the Richter scale. One area that has been severely shaken is our beliefs about sex. So much so, that our culture is just rapidly redefining what's normal, including sexual relationships outside of marriage, sexual relationships with the same sex, sex where the only deciding factor is whether you can do it safely.
But sex is just too powerful; it's too beautiful to risk messing it up. I'd like to think that this bombardment of sexual ideas has left God's people untouched, but you know better than that. Our kids, our families, our choices, our thinking are all being shaken by this same quake. That's why it's time to take this wonderful invention called sex right back to the Manufacturer to see how it's supposed to run. Because the quake has left too many victims scarred, and lonely, and diseased, and devalued, and struggling with guilt, and shame, and brokenness.
Remember, no one knows more about sex than the Inventor. So let's go to the Manufacturer's manual – you may know it as the Bible – and we'll see what the Manufacturer of sex says about His invention in our word for today from the Word of God. It begins with Mark 10:6. Jesus is talking. "At the beginning God made them male and female." Okay, so God thought up this whole thing. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate."
Now the Inventor of sex says He designed it to be an exclusive language of love with only one person in your life – the person of the opposite sex to whom you are committed in a lifetime covenant called marriage. Anything else is abnormal sex – sex as it was never meant to be, sex that can never deliver the fulfillment and love and excitement that belongs only to those who wait for and limit themselves to Designer Love.
The debates over abstinence and safe sex, living together, and same-sex relationships tend to be a clash of human values and viewpoints. What we're talking about here is the Inventor's word on sex. The user doesn't have the final word. The Inventor does. His word is final. It doesn't matter what percent of any group believes differently or what the culture says is normal or what your glands or rationalizations say is okay. The Creator of sex has spoken. He's never changed His mind. Sex is for one man with one woman, committed to each other for life. And the Creator of sex is also the Judge of all mankind – the One to whom we will give account for what we have done with His powerful gift of sex.
You may very well say, as we've talked about this, "You know, I have crossed the boundaries of God more than once." And the Bible says, in fact, we will stand before Him in judgment for all of our actions that have violated His boundaries – outside of His fence...His laws. But I have wonderful news for you. The very things you're thinking about right now that may have brought shame and guilt and great concern about the judgment you may face are the very things Jesus was nailed to a cross to die for, pay for, and forgive you for.
This very day He could give you a brand new beginning. The Bible says you can be clean and forgiven when you grab Him to be your Rescuer from your sin. If you want that, tell Him that today. Go to our website and find there the information you need to confirm a relationship with Him. That's ANewStory.com.
Sex at its best is for those who keep it inside the Manufacturer's boundaries. Anything else is a lie that promises excitement, but yields loneliness and scars. The Inventor knows best.
