Max Lucado Daily: KEEP IN STEP WITH THE SPIRIT
I believe we can make the same mistake the Welsh woman made. She lived many years ago in a remote valley, and felt it worth the cost and trouble to have electricity installed in her home. Several weeks after the installation, the power company noticed she had barely used any electricity. A meter reader went to see her. “Is there a problem?” he asked. “Oh no,” she responded. “We’re quite satisfied. Every night we turn on the electric lights to see how to light our lamps.”
We’re prone to do likewise: depend on God’s Spirit to save us but not sustain us. We turn to him to get us started and then continue in our own strength. Scripture urges us to “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). He directs and leads; we obey and follow. Plug into his power and leave the switch turned on.
from More to Your Story
1 Chronicles 8
The Genealogy of Saul the Benjamite
Benjamin was the father of Bela his firstborn,
Ashbel the second son, Aharah the third,
2 Nohah the fourth and Rapha the fifth.
3 The sons of Bela were:
Addar, Gera, Abihud,[g] 4 Abishua, Naaman, Ahoah, 5 Gera, Shephuphan and Huram.
6 These were the descendants of Ehud, who were heads of families of those living in Geba and were deported to Manahath:
7 Naaman, Ahijah, and Gera, who deported them and who was the father of Uzza and Ahihud.
8 Sons were born to Shaharaim in Moab after he had divorced his wives Hushim and Baara. 9 By his wife Hodesh he had Jobab, Zibia, Mesha, Malkam, 10 Jeuz, Sakia and Mirmah. These were his sons, heads of families. 11 By Hushim he had Abitub and Elpaal.
12 The sons of Elpaal:
Eber, Misham, Shemed (who built Ono and Lod with its surrounding villages), 13 and Beriah and Shema, who were heads of families of those living in Aijalon and who drove out the inhabitants of Gath.
14 Ahio, Shashak, Jeremoth, 15 Zebadiah, Arad, Eder, 16 Michael, Ishpah and Joha were the sons of Beriah.
17 Zebadiah, Meshullam, Hizki, Heber, 18 Ishmerai, Izliah and Jobab were the sons of Elpaal.
19 Jakim, Zikri, Zabdi, 20 Elienai, Zillethai, Eliel, 21 Adaiah, Beraiah and Shimrath were the sons of Shimei.
22 Ishpan, Eber, Eliel, 23 Abdon, Zikri, Hanan, 24 Hananiah, Elam, Anthothijah, 25 Iphdeiah and Penuel were the sons of Shashak.
26 Shamsherai, Shehariah, Athaliah, 27 Jaareshiah, Elijah and Zikri were the sons of Jeroham.
28 All these were heads of families, chiefs as listed in their genealogy, and they lived in Jerusalem.
29 Jeiel[h] the father[i] of Gibeon lived in Gibeon.
His wife’s name was Maakah, 30 and his firstborn son was Abdon, followed by Zur, Kish, Baal, Ner,[j] Nadab, 31 Gedor, Ahio, Zeker 32 and Mikloth, who was the father of Shimeah. They too lived near their relatives in Jerusalem.
33 Ner was the father of Kish, Kish the father of Saul, and Saul the father of Jonathan, Malki-Shua, Abinadab and Esh-Baal.[k]
34 The son of Jonathan:
Merib-Baal,[l] who was the father of Micah.
35 The sons of Micah:
Pithon, Melek, Tarea and Ahaz.
36 Ahaz was the father of Jehoaddah, Jehoaddah was the father of Alemeth, Azmaveth and Zimri, and Zimri was the father of Moza. 37 Moza was the father of Binea; Raphah was his son, Eleasah his son and Azel his son.
38 Azel had six sons, and these were their names:
Azrikam, Bokeru, Ishmael, Sheariah, Obadiah and Hanan. All these were the sons of Azel.
39 The sons of his brother Eshek:
Ulam his firstborn, Jeush the second son and Eliphelet the third. 40 The sons of Ulam were brave warriors who could handle the bow. They had many sons and grandsons—150 in all.
Footnotes:
1 Chronicles 8:3 Or Gera the father of Ehud
1 Chronicles 8:29 Some Septuagint manuscripts (see also 9:35); Hebrew does not have Jeiel.
1 Chronicles 8:29 Father may mean civic leader or military leader.
1 Chronicles 8:30 Some Septuagint manuscripts (see also 9:36); Hebrew does not have Ner.
1 Chronicles 8:33 Also known as Ish-Bosheth
1 Chronicles 8:34 Also known as Mephibosheth
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Read: Galatians 6:1-10
We Harvest What We Plant
Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer[a] is overcome by some sin, you who are godly[b] should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. 2 Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. 3 If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.
4 Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. 5 For we are each responsible for our own conduct.
6 Those who are taught the word of God should provide for their teachers, sharing all good things with them.
7 Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. 8 Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. 9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. 10 Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.
Footnotes:
6:1a Greek Brothers, if a man.
6:1b Greek spiritual.
INSIGHT:
When the Scriptures were written, much of the culture was agrarian. Even the city-dwellers, like those who made up the church at Galatia, were familiar with the natural rhythm of planting, growth, and harvest. No doubt Paul’s encouragement to keep doing good had a ring of truth that modern and industrialized people might miss. The harvest takes hard work, investment, and time.
Time to Grow
By Marion Stroud
At the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9
In Debbie’s new home, she discovered an abandoned plant in a dark corner of the kitchen. The dusty and ragged leaves looked like those of a moth orchid, and she imagined how pretty the plant would look once it had sent up new bloom-bearing stems. She moved the pot into a spot by the window, cut off the dead leaves, and watered it thoroughly. She bought plant food and applied it to the roots. Week after week she inspected the plant, but no new shoots appeared. “I’ll give it another month,” she told her husband, “and if nothing has happened by then, out it goes.”
When decision day came, she could hardly believe her eyes. Two small stems were poking out from among the leaves! The plant she’d almost given up on was still alive.
Please give me patience, dear Lord, with myself and with others.
Do you ever get discouraged by your apparent lack of spiritual growth? Perhaps you frequently lose your temper or enjoy that spicy piece of gossip you just can’t resist passing on. Or perhaps you get up too late to pray and read your Bible, in spite of resolving to set the alarm earlier.
Why not tell a trusted friend about the areas of your life in which you want to grow spiritually and ask that person to pray for and encourage you to be accountable? Be patient. You will grow as you allow the Holy Spirit to work in you.
Please give me patience, dear Lord, with myself and with others. Help me to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He shapes my desires and helps me to grow.
Each small step of faith is a giant step of growth
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
His Ascension and Our Access
It came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. —Luke 24:51
We have no experiences in our lives that correspond to the events in our Lord’s life after the transfiguration. From that moment forward His life was altogether substitutionary. Up to the time of the transfiguration, He had exhibited the normal, perfect life of a man. But from the transfiguration forward— Gethsemane, the Cross, the resurrection— everything is unfamiliar to us. His Cross is the door by which every member of the human race can enter into the life of God; by His resurrection He has the right to give eternal life to anyone, and by His ascension our Lord entered heaven, keeping the door open for humanity.
The transfiguration was completed on the Mount of Ascension. If Jesus had gone to heaven directly from the Mount of Transfiguration, He would have gone alone. He would have been nothing more to us than a glorious Figure. But He turned His back on the glory, and came down from the mountain to identify Himself with fallen humanity.
The ascension is the complete fulfillment of the transfiguration. Our Lord returned to His original glory, but not simply as the Son of God— He returned to His father as the Son of Man as well. There is now freedom of access for anyone straight to the very throne of God because of the ascension of the Son of Man. As the Son of Man, Jesus Christ deliberately limited His omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. But now they are His in absolute, full power. As the Son of Man, Jesus Christ now has all the power at the throne of God. From His ascension forward He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is an easy thing to argue from precedent because it makes everything simple, but it is a risky thing to do. Give God “elbow room”; let Him come into His universe as He pleases. If we confine God in His working to religious people or to certain ways, we place ourselves on an equality with God. Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
How to Bring People Together - #7657
I had just finished speaking for a Christian leaders' gathering that was part of the countdown to a Franklin Graham Festival. The setup team there was in their early days of working together on this massive mobilization. The team leader thought it would be a good idea to get his team together for a few minutes after the meeting ended, and he invited me to join them. Then he handed me a cluster of helium balloons tied together. Suddenly, I felt like I'd gone from speaker to circus clown. And, you know, I've read Winnie the Pooh stories to our kids enough that I couldn't help but picture Pooh Bear being carried into the sky by a bunch of balloons like that.
Well, in spite of my trivial imaginings, the team leader had a holy purpose for having me stand there with those balloons. He asked his team members to spread out around the room. They ended up widely separated. He asked them to get as close to me and my balloons as they could. Within moments, those workers, who had been so scattered, were shoulder-to-shoulder in a clump around me and my balloons.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Bring People Together."
That morning the team leader actually made a powerful point. He said, "You guys notice this, that the closer each of you got to Ron, the closer you got to each other?" He said, "The more we focus on Jesus and lift up His cross, the closer we will get to each other." We didn't have a cross in the room, and I think the balloons were a strange but available substitute for me to hold up, but the point was made.
And that point reaches to where you are right now in your family, your church, your ministry, your community. The closer each person on your team gets to Jesus and what He did on the cross for us, the closer those people are going to get to each other. It's focusing on lesser things; titles, personal agendas, hard feelings, little issues, comparing with another person, the things we disagree on – that's what makes any group of people distant, divided and very easy for our enemy to defeat.
The 133rd Psalm says, "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity...for there the Lord bestows His blessing." There's a helpful picture of how the right focus can bring people together in our word for today from the Word of God in Acts 2, beginning with verse 42. It actually shows us the lifestyle of the original Christians; possibly the most powerful people in history. It says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Celebrating Jesus' death together in Communion, talking to Him together, learning about Him together – that's what they were doing. So it says, "So all the believers were together and had everything in common. They continued to meet together, and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
Imagine people coming to Christ every day! When's the last time you saw that? But then, when's the last time you saw God's people setting aside their differences and coming together consistently around Jesus and His cross?
If someone's depending on the same Savior for their eternity, if they've been to the same cross to be forgiven, isn't that enough to at least pray together, if nothing else? If you want, you can focus on the 90% that we agree on or you can focus on the 10% we disagree on. We can focus 90% of our energy on the 10% that makes "our group" our group. Or we can focus on our magnificent Savior and the magnet that is His cross.
When we realize that He has left us here to draw a world of lost people to that cross, we realize we can rescue far more people together than we ever could apart. Remember, Jesus said, "When I am lifted up...I will draw all men to Myself" (John 12:32). Jesus and His cross – they're the magnet that pulls His people together and pulls lost people to Him. Isn't it time we made that our focus instead of whatever has kept us in separate parts of the room? Because the closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to His cross, the closer we're going to get to each other.