Max Lucado Daily: EVERYTHING YOU NEED
The psalmist says, “I know the LORD is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me” (Psalm 16:8).
Need more energy? You have it. More kindness? It’s yours. Could you use more self-control? Or self-confidence? Just press the gas pedal. Scripture reminds us, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life” (2 Peter 1:3). And that life begins with a paradigm shift.
Like Joshua and the Israelites marching into Canaan, you do not fight FOR victory. You fight FROM victory. In the wilderness you strive, but in Canaan you trust. In the wilderness you seek God’s attention, but in the promised land, you already have God’s favor. In the wilderness you doubt your salvation, but in Canaan you know you are saved. You move from wanting to have—to believing you already do!
From God is With You Every Day
2 Chronicles 4
Temple Furnishings
4 He made the Bronze Altar thirty feet long, thirty feet wide, and ten feet high.
2-5 He made a Sea—an immense round basin of cast metal fifteen feet in diameter, seven and a half feet high, and forty-five feet in circumference. Just under the rim, there were two parallel bands of something like bulls, ten to each foot and a half. The figures were cast in one piece with the Sea. The Sea was set on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. All the bulls faced outward and supported the Sea on their hindquarters. The Sea was three inches thick and flared at the rim like a cup, or a lily. It held about 18,000 gallons.
6 He made ten Washbasins, five set on the right and five on the left, for rinsing the things used for the Whole-Burnt-Offerings. The priests washed themselves in the Sea.
7 He made ten gold Lampstands, following the specified pattern, and placed five on the right and five on the left.
8 He made ten tables and set five on the right and five on the left. He also made a hundred gold bowls.
9 He built a Courtyard especially for the priests and then the great court and doors for the court. The doors were covered with bronze.
10 He placed the Sea on the right side of The Temple at the southeast corner.
11-16 He also made ash buckets, shovels, and bowls.
And that about wrapped it up: Huram completed the work he had contracted to do for King Solomon:
two pillars;
two bowl-shaped capitals for the tops of the pillars;
two decorative filigrees for the capitals;
four hundred pomegranates for the filigrees (a double row of pomegranates for each filigree);
ten washstands with their basins;
one Sea and the twelve bulls under it;
miscellaneous buckets, forks, shovels, and bowls.
16-18 All these artifacts that Huram-Abi made for King Solomon for The Temple of God were made of burnished bronze. The king had them cast in clay in a foundry on the Jordan plain between Succoth and Zarethan. These artifacts were never weighed—there were far too many! Nobody has any idea how much bronze was used.
19-22 Solomon was also responsible for the furniture and accessories in The Temple of God:
the gold Altar;
the tables that held the Bread of the Presence;
the Lampstands of pure gold with their lamps, to be lighted
before the Inner Sanctuary, the Holy of Holies;
the gold flowers, lamps, and tongs (all solid gold);
the gold wick trimmers, bowls, ladles, and censers;
the gold doors of The Temple, doors to the Holy of Holies, and the doors to the main sanctuary.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
Read: 1 Timothy 4:6–11
1 Timothy 4:6-14The Message (MSG)
6-10 You’ve been raised on the Message of the faith and have followed sound teaching. Now pass on this counsel to the followers of Jesus there, and you’ll be a good servant of Jesus. Stay clear of silly stories that get dressed up as religion. Exercise daily in God—no spiritual flabbiness, please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever. You can count on this. Take it to heart. This is why we’ve thrown ourselves into this venture so totally. We’re banking on the living God, Savior of all men and women, especially believers.
11-14 Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed—keep that dusted off and in use.
INSIGHT:
The Greek word translated godliness in verse 8 is eusebeia. It is a noun that means both right action and right belief. In today’s passage Paul is telling Timothy that both believing and doing right (godliness) have value for all aspects of our lives.
Strengthening the Heart
By David Roper
It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace. Hebrews 13:9
The neighborhood fitness center where I have worked out for years closed down last month, and I had to join a new gym. The former place was a warm, friendly facility, patronized by those who liked to socialize while they worked out. We hardly ever broke a sweat. The new gym is a hard-core facility filled with serious men and women, earnestly invested in building better bodies. I watch these people strain and toil. Their bodies look strong, but I wonder if their hearts are being strengthened with grace.
The heart is a muscle—the muscle that keeps the other muscles going. It’s good to build and tone our other muscles, but the essential thing is doing whatever keeps the heart strong.
God’s training is designed to grow us in faith.
So it is with our spiritual heart. We strengthen and tone the heart through the Word of truth by receiving its message of God’s goodness and grace. Keeping our spiritual heart strong and fit must be our first priority, the one thing we do above all others.
Paul would agree: "Train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come" (1 Tim. 4:7–8 esv).
May I feed on Your goodness every day, Lord, so my heart will grow stronger through the Spirit.
God’s training is designed to grow us in faith.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
Visions Becoming Reality
The parched ground shall become a pool… —Isaiah 35:7
We always have a vision of something before it actually becomes real to us. When we realize that the vision is real, but is not yet real in us, Satan comes to us with his temptations, and we are inclined to say that there is no point in even trying to continue. Instead of the vision becoming real to us, we have entered into a valley of humiliation.
Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And battered by the shocks of doom
To shape and use.
God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience. Just think of the enormous amount of free time God has! He is never in a hurry. Yet we are always in such a frantic hurry. While still in the light of the glory of the vision, we go right out to do things, but the vision is not yet real in us. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision. Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work. He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the Sculptor’s hand in an effort to batter ourselves into the shape of our own goal.
The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here. Allow the Potter to put you on His wheel and whirl you around as He desires. Then as surely as God is God, and you are you, you will turn out as an exact likeness of the vision. But don’t lose heart in the process. If you have ever had a vision from God, you may try as you will to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never allow it.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Beware of bartering the Word of God for a more suitable conception of your own. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
The Cost of Not Changing - #7693
Once you've tasted Vermont maple syrup, all the store brands taste like goo! So my ears perked up one night when NBC Nightly News started talking about the troubles that Vermont maple farmers were having that year. They focused on one farmer who lived on a farm where they've been mapling for eight generations! This farmer had known that the maple trees were ready to be tapped for their valuable sap during the first week of March. But recent weather changes had suddenly thrown that predictable harvest schedule into total confusion.
The previous year, he and his son nearly lost a third of their normal maple sap because it was either too soon or too late to capture it. For all those eight generations, this family had used one time-honored method of tapping their maple trees; a spout on the tree and a bucket underneath. But there's this new technology, I guess, that enables a farmer to know when the sap is ready and to capture it in that brief window. But tubes and vacuums seemed pretty foreign to a man who'd known one way that worked all his life and for generations. But after all they lost last year, his son finally convinced him. His son's comment was, "It takes some coercion to get him to go along with new ideas, for sure." But the veteran farmer did it. The NBC News reporter identified why. He would do anything to keep the farm for his son. In the reporter's words, "Even if it means doing what he hates the most—changing his old ways."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Cost of Not Changing."
When the method you know, and the method you're comfortable with is costing you the harvest, you change or you lose the harvest. How can that lesson be lost on those of us who have joined Jesus in what He came to earth to do—seeking and saving the lost? Jesus actually called the work of bringing people to Him harvest. And honestly, there's a harvest many Christians and many ministries may be losing because we hate to change.
While North American Christians have built this massive Christian subculture, we've been losing our culture. And the lost people around us have changed dramatically. They don't know God's rules; they don't know God's Book; they don't know the religious words we use; they don't ever plan to go to any of our religious meetings. But in many cases, we're deciding what we'll do to reach them based on what we're comfortable doing; what we're used to. But since when does a rescuer decide what he's going to do based on what's comfortable for him? He does whatever he has to do to save that dying person, and it's seldom comfortable!
Listen to God's greatest harvester, the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:22, our word for today from the Word of God. "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." Just before this, he's told us that when he's with the Jews, he comes in a Jewish package; when he's with the Gentiles, he's as Gentile as God will allow him to be; when he's with those who need an uncomplicated presentation of Christ, he becomes what they need. All the time making sure he is never "ashamed of the Gospel of Christ" (Romans 1:16) as he said.
And Paul followed a Savior who constantly changed the package and the presentation to break through to changing audiences. But they never changed the product! They never compromised the message! Like that Vermont farmer, we're harvesting the same product, but we've got to be willing to change the way we get it as much as the harvest requires.
So are you willing to change so we can bring in the harvest of lost lives? Will you, for example, learn to tell them about Jesus in their words like a missionary does in a foreign culture, and not just speak our Christianese? Are you willing to use the kind of program, the kind of music, the kind of package that speaks the language of the person you're trying to reach? Are you willing to reach them in locations where they're comfortable and maybe you're not? Are you willing to introduce the Gospel by starting with needs they care about?
We might be talking change here; it's what we hate to do the most. But the cost of not changing is much higher than the cost of changing-souls lost forever maybe because we wouldn't change.
