Max Lucado Daily: GOD’S LOVE NEVER FAILS
One stumble does not define or break a person. Though you failed, God’s love does not. Face your failures with faith in God’s goodness.
He saw this collapse coming. God could see the upcoming mishaps. Still, he tells you what he told Joshua. “Arise, go. . .you and all this people, to the land which I am giving” (Joshua 1:2). There is no condition in that covenant. No fine print. No performance language. God’s promised land does not depend on your perfection. It depends on his.
In God’s hands no defeat is a crushing defeat. Scripture says “the steps of good men are directed by the Lord. He delights in each step they take. If they fall, it isn’t fatal, for the Lord holds them with his hand” (Psalm 37:23-24). Put your faith in the One who is always faithful!
From God is With You Every Day
2 Chronicles 15
Then Azariah son of Obed, moved by the Spirit of God, went out to meet Asa. He said, “Listen carefully, Asa, and listen Judah and Benjamin: God will stick with you as long as you stick with him. If you look for him he will let himself be found; but if you leave him he’ll leave you. For a long time Israel didn’t have the real God, nor did they have the help of priest or teacher or book. But when they were in trouble and got serious, and decided to seek God, the God of Israel, God let himself be found. At that time it was a dog-eat-dog world; life was constantly up for grabs—no one, regardless of country, knew what the next day might bring. Nation battered nation, city pummeled city. God let loose every kind of trouble among them.
7 “But it’s different with you: Be strong. Take heart. Payday is coming!”
8-9 Asa heard the prophecy of Azariah son of Obed, took a deep breath, then rolled up his sleeves, and went to work: He cleaned out the obscene and polluting sacred shrines from the whole country of Judah and Benjamin and from the towns he had taken in the hill country of Ephraim. He spruced up the Altar of God that was in front of The Temple porch. Then he called an assembly for all Judah and Benjamin, including those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were living there at the time (for many from Israel had left their homes and joined forces with Asa when they saw that God was on his side).
10-15 They all arrived in Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign for a great assembly of worship. From their earlier plunder they offered sacrifices of seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep for the worship. Then they bound themselves in a covenant to seek God, the God of their fathers, wholeheartedly, holding nothing back. And they agreed that anyone who refused to seek God, the God of Israel, should be killed, no matter who it was, young or old, man or woman. They shouted out their promise to God, a joyful sound accompanied with blasts from trumpets and rams’ horns. The whole country felt good about the covenant promise—they had given their promise joyfully from the heart. Anticipating the best, they had sought God—and he showed up, ready to be found. God gave them peace within and without—a most peaceable kingdom!
16-19 In his cleanup of the country, Asa went so far as to remove his mother, Queen Maacah, from her throne because she had built a shockingly obscene image of the sex goddess Asherah. Asa tore it down, smashed it, and burned it up in the Kidron Valley. Unfortunately he didn’t get rid of the local sex-and-religion shrines. But he was well-intentioned—his heart was in the right place, loyal to God. All the gold and silver vessels and artifacts that he and his father had consecrated for holy use he installed in The Temple of God. There wasn’t a trace of war up to the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Read: Jonah 4
“I Knew This Was Going to Happen!”
Jonah was furious. He lost his temper. He yelled at God, “God! I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That’s why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness!
3 “So, God, if you won’t kill them, kill me! I’m better off dead!”
4 God said, “What do you have to be angry about?”
5 But Jonah just left. He went out of the city to the east and sat down in a sulk. He put together a makeshift shelter of leafy branches and sat there in the shade to see what would happen to the city.
6 God arranged for a broad-leafed tree to spring up. It grew over Jonah to cool him off and get him out of his angry sulk. Jonah was pleased and enjoyed the shade. Life was looking up.
7-8 But then God sent a worm. By dawn of the next day, the worm had bored into the shade tree and it withered away. The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: “I’m better off dead!”
9 Then God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?”
Jonah said, “Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!”
10-11 God said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?”
INSIGHT:
In Exodus 34 God describes Himself as “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love . . . forgiving wickedness . . . and sin” (vv. 6–7). It is ironic that these divine attributes angered Jonah (Jonah 4:1), who wanted Nineveh destroyed, not forgiven. This was the very reason he initially refused to go to the Ninevites to preach God’s message of repentance and forgiveness (v. 2).
Tactical Distractions
By Randy Kilgore
The Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah 4:4
It became painfully clear the first time my wife and I collaborated on a writing project that procrastination was going to be a major obstacle. Her role was to edit my work and keep me on schedule; my role seemed to be to drive her crazy. Most times, her organization and patience outlasted my resistance to deadlines and direction.
I promised to have a certain amount of writing done by the end of one day. For the first hour, I plugged away diligently. Satisfied with what I’d accomplished so far, I decided to take a break. Before I knew it, my time was up. In trouble for sure, I thought of a way out. I set about doing a couple of chores my wife despised and which always netted me praise when I did them.
Are you dodging duties God makes clear He wants you to tackle?
My plan failed.
I sometimes play the same games with God. He brings specific people into my life He wants me to serve or tasks He wants me to accomplish. Like Jonah, who went another way when God gave Him an assignment (Jonah 4:2), I need to set aside my own feelings. I often try to impress God with good deeds or spiritual activity when what He really wants is obedience to His priorities. Inevitably, my plan fails.
Are you dodging duties God makes clear He wants you to tackle? Trust me: Real contentment comes from doing it in His strength and in His way.
Loving Father, help us to recognize our busyness and distractions for what they so often are—disobedience and inattention to the work You have given us to do.
Obedience pleases God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, July 21, 2016
The Doorway to the Kingdom
Blessed are the poor in spirit… —Matthew 5:3
Beware of thinking of our Lord as only a teacher. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, then all He can do is frustrate me by setting a standard before me I cannot attain. What is the point of presenting me with such a lofty ideal if I cannot possibly come close to reaching it? I would be happier if I never knew it. What good is there in telling me to be what I can never be— to be “pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8), to do more than my duty, or to be completely devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as my Savior before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of a lofty ideal which only leads to despair. But when I am born again by the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come only to teach— He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The redemption means that Jesus Christ can place within anyone the same nature that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives us are based on that nature.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces a sense of despair in the natural man— exactly what Jesus means for it to do. As long as we have some self-righteous idea that we can carry out our Lord’s teaching, God will allow us to continue until we expose our own ignorance by stumbling over some obstacle in our way. Only then are we willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. “Blessed are the poor in spirit….” This is the first principle in the kingdom of God. The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus, but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, “Lord, I cannot even begin to do it.” Then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). This is the doorway to the kingdom, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are actually poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation. What God looks at is what we are in the dark—the imaginations of our minds; the thoughts of our heart; the habits of our bodies; these are the things that mark us in God’s sight. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 669 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, July 21, 2016
The Liberating Power of a Few Hallelujahs - #7704
As a musical composition, Frederick Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" stands in a category by itself. There are few pieces of music that has the power to stir our hearts like that majestic chorus that even brought the King of England to his feet the first time he heard it. But before Frederick Handel wrote the "Hallelujah Chorus" and "The Messiah" oratorio of which it's a part, he wasn't having much of a hallelujah time. He was basically broke, depressed, and against a wall. Then someone asked him to write an oratorio, to be performed at this benefit concert on behalf of people who were in debtor's prison – locked up because they were too poor to pay their bills. There were 700 people who contributed to be at that premiere performance of "The Messiah" and the "Hallelujah Chorus" and 128 prisoners went free as a result!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Liberating Power of a Few Hallelujahs."
That night of hallelujahs turned Frederick Handel's life around and it set some people free. Hallelujahs still have that power today. It's the power of praising God; especially when it's hard to praise Him.
Turning our predicament and our prison into praise is part of the mission for which Jesus came as announced in Isaiah 61:1-3. They are our word for today from the Word of God. The Bible says of Jesus: "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners...to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair."
Jesus says He wants to trade our bondages for freedom, our mourning for comfort, our ugly ashes for something beautiful, and our despair for praise. And liberation from so much that's dark in life is rooted in wearing that garment of praise, no matter what situation we're in. Praise can set you free from discouragement, self-pity, frustration, bitterness, even grief. And, on any given day, there's always something to praise Him for. It's like we're always living between these two mountains – the one behind you that He brought you over and the one ahead of you that looks impossible just like that last mountain did. So, on any given day, there's always something to praise Him for, and there's always something to trust Him for.
My friend Kerri kept months of vigil at the hospital as she watched her young husband die a long and painful death. But she never sank to despair, and I think I know why. She said, "Every day on the way to the hospital, I would play praise music as loud as I could. I filled up on praise – because I knew there's only one place the devil will never be – in praise to God."
Kerri understands that praise is a choice; you choose to dwell on the greatness of your God rather than the greatness of your problems, on the God who never lets you down instead of the people who do, on God's faithfulness instead of your failure. You make a choice, usually in the very first waking moments of your day, to be all about Jesus today rather than all about you.
That way you can experience pain without being a pain. You can walk on the water instead of succumbing to the storm. Praise doesn't just lift up the Lord; it actually has a way of lifting you up, too. And it's a choice – praising instead of complaining; hallelujahs instead of hassles; your Lord instead of your load.
And why can your life always be a Hallelujah Chorus? Because your Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, and He shall reign forever and ever!
