Max Lucado Daily: YOUR FATHER IS HERE
When my daughters were small, they would occasionally cry out in the middle of the night. The wind would brush a branch against a window. They’d hear a noise on the street. They would shout, “Daddy!” I would do what all daddies do—tell their mother! Just kidding. I’d walk down the hall and step into their room. When I did the atmosphere changed. Strange noises…odd sounds? They didn’t matter. Daddy was here.
You need to know this: your Father is here. Here as the Commander. Here with his heavenly hosts. This is the promise God gives to you. He is with you. “He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything” (Ephesians 1:22). All authority has been given to him. He needs only to lift a finger, and thousands upon thousands of mighty angels will respond to his call.
From God is With You Every Day
2 Corinthians 7
With promises like this to pull us on, dear friends, let’s make a clean break with everything that defiles or distracts us, both within and without. Let’s make our entire lives fit and holy temples for the worship of God.
More Passionate, More Responsible
2-4 Trust us. We’ve never hurt a soul, never exploited or taken advantage of anyone. Don’t think I’m finding fault with you. I told you earlier that I’m with you all the way, no matter what. I have, in fact, the greatest confidence in you. If only you knew how proud I am of you! I am overwhelmed with joy despite all our troubles.
5-7 When we arrived in Macedonia province, we couldn’t settle down. The fights in the church and the fears in our hearts kept us on pins and needles. We couldn’t relax because we didn’t know how it would turn out. Then the God who lifts up the downcast lifted our heads and our hearts with the arrival of Titus. We were glad just to see him, but the true reassurance came in what he told us about you: how much you cared, how much you grieved, how concerned you were for me. I went from worry to tranquility in no time!
8-9 I know I distressed you greatly with my letter. Although I felt awful at the time, I don’t feel at all bad now that I see how it turned out. The letter upset you, but only for a while. Now I’m glad—not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss.
10 Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.
11-13 And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of heart. And that is what I was hoping for in the first place when I wrote the letter. My primary concern was not for the one who did the wrong or even the one wronged, but for you—that you would realize and act upon the deep, deep ties between us before God. That’s what happened—and we felt just great.
13-16 And then, when we saw how Titus felt—his exuberance over your response—our joy doubled. It was wonderful to see how revived and refreshed he was by everything you did. If I went out on a limb in telling Titus how great I thought you were, you didn’t cut off that limb. As it turned out, I hadn’t exaggerated one bit. Titus saw for himself that everything I had said about you was true. He can’t quit talking about it, going over again and again the story of your prompt obedience, and the dignity and sensitivity of your hospitality. He was quite overwhelmed by it all! And I couldn’t be more pleased—I’m so confident and proud of you.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, July 29, 2016
Read: Romans 13:8–11
Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.
11-14 But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!
INSIGHT:
Paul’s words in today’s passage remind us of Jesus’s words to the young teacher of the law who asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25–29). Love for God and neighbor is the fulfillment of all the laws of the Old Testament. In Luke, Jesus defines who our neighbor is and what love for that person should look like (vv. 30–37). Paul provides thoughts about this to the people at the church in Rome. After telling them to love their neighbor in chapter 13, he goes on to tell them in chapter 14 to consider the effect their actions will have on their neighbor. Love is to guide everything we do.
Love Your Neighbor
By Mart DeHaan
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:14
An anthropologist was winding up several months of research in a small village, the story is told. While waiting for a ride to the airport for his return flight home, he decided to pass the time by making up a game for some children. His idea was to create a race for a basket of fruit and candy that he placed near a tree. But when he gave the signal to run, no one made a dash for the finish line. Instead the children joined hands and ran together to the tree.
When asked why they chose to run as a group rather than each racing for the prize, a little girl spoke up and said: “How could one of us be happy when all of the others are sad?” Because these children cared about each other, they wanted all to share the basket of fruit and candy.
Because He cares for us, we care for each other.
After years of studying the law of Moses, the apostle Paul found that all of God’s laws could be summed up in one: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14; see also Rom. 13:9). In Christ, Paul saw not only the reason to encourage, comfort, and care for one another but also the spiritual enablement to do it.
Because He cares for us, we care for each other.
Father, thank You for the love You shower on us day by day. Teach us, in turn, to care for others. Open our eyes to see their need and respond as You want us to.
We show our love for God when we love one another.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 29, 2016
Do You See Jesus in Your Clouds?
Behold, He is coming with clouds… —Revelation 1:7
In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. “The clouds are the dust of His feet” (Nahum 1:3). They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds— He does not come in clear-shining brightness.
It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in using the cloud is to simplify our beliefs until our relationship with Him is exactly like that of a child— a relationship simply between God and our own souls, and where other people are but shadows. Until other people become shadows to us, clouds and darkness will be ours every once in a while. Is our relationship with God becoming more simple than it has ever been?
There is a connection between the strange providential circumstances allowed by God and what we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in the light of our knowledge of God. Until we can come face to face with the deepest, darkest fact of life without damaging our view of God’s character, we do not yet know Him.
“…they were fearful as they entered the cloud” (Luke 9:34). Is there anyone except Jesus in your cloud? If so, it will only get darker until you get to the place where there is “no one anymore, but only Jesus …” (Mark 9:8; also see Mark 2:7).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence. Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, July 29, 2016
The 2-Word Tranquilizer - #7710
Some people have wall-to-wall carpet. Some people have a wall-to-wall schedule. I think I'm one of those. And it was like that when we took our daughter to college. She and I had just returned from a mission's trip to the Philippines, and I had to be in Chicago Friday to produce radio programs and deliver her to college. It had to be perfectly timed.
Using some of my frequent flyer free tickets that I get from the airlines, all five of us Hutchcrafts flew to Chicago with a mountain of "moving to college" luggage that our daughter had. We landed at O' Hare Airport, only to learn that a 9" deluge of rain had just closed the airport to all cars going in or out. It was like that for many, many hours. Now my plans said I had to be at that studio, but apparently I didn't. My plans said my daughter had to be at college that day. Apparently, she didn't. In fact, thousands of people were fighting over those airport telephones-it was before cell phones-to change their plans. Every one of them had to be somewhere. No, they didn't. There are lots of days like that!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The 2-Word Tranquilizer."
Plans are good. Schedules are good. They don't always work. Our word for today from the Word of God is from James 4:13-15. This is pretty cool. "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'"
Slowly but surely, this planner guy, this make-it-happen guy that I am, is beginning to understand the peace-giving power of these two little words, "Lord willing." Oh, they can become just a cliché. Or they can become a way of life. I'm by nature a planner. I believe God wants us to make our times count...our days count. Psalm 90:12 says, "to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom." I think that presumes a certain amount of priorities and thinking through and planning.
But in our wall-to-wall schedules, it's easy to rule out God's right to reschedule our day...to interrupt...to slow us down. And you know what? He often does, like that chaotic day at O' Hare Airport when all human plans were trashed.
I began to realize how much of my own stress I create by failing to say, "Here's my list, here's my goals, here's my plan, here's my schedule. Now, Lord, You are the Sovereign Lord of the universe, and my life, and this day. You have the complete right to change any of this. (Now here's the hard part.) And Lord, I'll be OK if You do." This is where we really test how much that word "Lord" really means to us when His plans intrude on our plans.
We get so frustrated when car trouble derails the plan, or an illness, a tragedy, an interruption, or a closed airport. But I can avoid so much grief if I allow the God of heaven to be the Lord of my calendar. I do that when I consult Him as I make my plans. And I do that when I make those plans saying, "We will, if the Lord wills." At that moment, you are relaxing in the wonderful sovereignty of an Almighty God. Of Whom the Bible says, "As for God, His way is perfect."
Two words, "Lord willing". It's more than a spiritual cliché. For us stress-filled planners, it could be the most powerful tranquilizer in the world.