Max Lucado Daily: DELIVERANCE
You’ll get through this! You fear you won’t. We all do. We feel stuck, trapped, locked in. Will we ever exit this pit? Yes! Deliverance is to the Bible what jazz music is to Mardi Gras…bold, brassy, and everywhere. Out of the lion’s den for Daniel, the whale’s belly for Jonah, and the prison for Paul. Through the Red Sea onto dry ground; through the wilderness; through the valley of the shadow of death…through! It’s a favorite word of God’s! Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. . .when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.”
It won’t be painless. Have you wept your final tear, received your last round of chemotherapy? Not necessarily. Does God guarantee the absence of struggle? Not in this life. We see Satan’s tricks and ploys but God sees Satan tripped and foiled. You’ll get through this!
From You’ll Get Through This
Acts 20:17-38
From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. 18 When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. 19 I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. 20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
22 “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.
25 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. 26 Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. 28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God,[a] which he bought with his own blood.[b] 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
32 “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. 35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”
36 When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
Footnotes:
Acts 20:28 Many manuscripts of the Lord
Acts 20:28 Or with the blood of his own Son.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, September 02, 2016
Read: Psalm 138:7–8; Ephesians 2:6–10
When I walk into the thick of trouble,
keep me alive in the angry turmoil.
With one hand
strike my foes,
With your other hand
save me.
Finish what you started in me, God.
Your love is eternal—don’t quit on me now.
Ephesians 2:6-10The Message (MSG)
He Tore Down the Wall
2 1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
INSIGHT:
We are God’s handiwork, and our Father will not abandon the work of His hands. Ephesians 2:6–10 provides further insight into the theme of God’s handiwork. After Christ’s atoning death, God raised Him from the dead “and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (v. 20). Those who believe in Him have been given new life by God’s grace.
How to Carve a Duck
By David Roper
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Romans 8:29
My wife, Carolyn, and I met Phipps Festus Bourne in 1995 in his shop in Mabry Hill, Virginia. Bourne, who died in 2002, was a master wood carver whose carvings are almost exact replicas of real objects. “Carving a duck is simple,” he said. “You just look at a piece of wood, get in your head what a duck looks like, and then cut off everything that doesn’t look like it.”
So it is with God. He looks at you and me—blocks of rough wood—envisions the Christlike woman or man hidden beneath the bark, knots, and twigs and then begins to carve away everything that does not fit that image. We would be amazed if we could see how beautiful we are as finished “ducks.”
Growing in Christ comes from a deepening relationship with Him.
But first we must accept that we are a block of wood and allow the Artist to cut, shape, and sand us where He will. This means viewing our circumstances—pleasant or unpleasant—as God’s tools that shape us. He forms us, one part at a time, into the beautiful creature He envisioned in our ungainly lump of wood.
Sometimes the process is wonderful; sometimes it is painful. But in the end, all of God’s tools conform us “to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29).
Do you long for that likeness? Put yourself in the Master Carver’s hands.
Father, You are the craftsman who shapes me. You are the one who knows what shape my life should take. Thank You for carving me into the image You have planned. Help me to trust that the pieces and parts that You shave from me are the right ones.
Growing in Christ comes from a deepening relationship with Him.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, September 02, 2016
A Life of Pure and Holy Sacrifice
He who believes in Me…out of his heart will flow… —John 7:38
Jesus did not say, “He who believes in Me will realize all the blessings of the fullness of God,” but, in essence, “He who believes in Me will have everything he receives escape out of him.” Our Lord’s teaching was always anti-self-realization. His purpose is not the development of a person— His purpose is to make a person exactly like Himself, and the Son of God is characterized by self-expenditure. If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain but what He pours through us that really counts. God’s purpose is not simply to make us beautiful, plump grapes, but to make us grapes so that He may squeeze the sweetness out of us. Our spiritual life cannot be measured by success as the world measures it, but only by what God pours through us— and we cannot measure that at all.
When Mary of Bethany “broke the flask…of very costly oil…and poured it on [Jesus’] head,” it was an act for which no one else saw any special occasion; in fact, “…there were some who…said, ‘Why was this fragrant oil wasted?’ ” (Mark 14:3-4). But Jesus commended Mary for her extravagant act of devotion, and said, “…wherever this gospel is preached…what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her” (Mark 14:9). Our Lord is filled with overflowing joy whenever He sees any of us doing what Mary did— not being bound by a particular set of rules, but being totally surrendered to Him. God poured out the life of His Son “that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). Are we prepared to pour out our lives for Him?
“He who believes in Me…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water”— and hundreds of other lives will be continually refreshed. Now is the time for us to break “the flask” of our lives, to stop seeking our own satisfaction, and to pour out our lives before Him. Our Lord is asking who of us will do it for Him?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye. Disciples Indeed, 385 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, September 02, 2016
The Cancer Breakthrough - #7735
It's the word you hope you'll never hear when you're in your doctor's office-cancer. Recently, though, there's been a beautiful four-letter word that may go with that ugly word. It's the word "cure". At least they're hoping so. The possible breakthroughs have to do with one of the greatest killers of women-breast cancer. But the discoveries may turn out to open up ways to cure other cancers, too. This entirely new approach to fighting cancer-one that has so far shown promising results in lengthening the lives of terminally ill cancer patients has been described as "attacking cancer at its genetic roots."
The gene is called HER-2, and it produces this protein on the surface of our cells that ultimately helps accelerate that abnormal growth that becomes cancer. Scientists have developed a treatment that attacks this genetic malfunction that causes some cancers. One researcher offers hope to millions who have cancer or may develop cancer when he puts it this way, "If we understand what is broken in the malignant cell, we might be able to fix it." They're calling this one of the hottest areas of cancer research, and it makes sense-stop the cancer by stopping its genetic root.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today bout "The Cancer Breakthrough."
Now you may be one of the blessed people like me who when you hear about cancer, you can say, "Well, not me so far." I wish I could say that about the cancer that infects every single one of us-the deadliest cancer there is. You might call it heart cancer. It's that spiritual cancer in the human heart that causes so much hurt, guilt, shame, and brokenness. The Bible calls it sin, with the middle letter "I". Years ago when Pat Riley took over as coach of the New York Knicks, he said their problem was a disease. I read this in Sports Illustrated. He called it "the disease of me." Actually, we've all got that one.
We were created by God to live life His way. According to the Bible, we've all said, "No. No God's way. My way." That's the root of our deadly spiritual cancer. And it is always terminal. No matter how religious or how nice we are, God makes it clear, "the wages of our sin is death" (Romans 6:23)-that's death as in being eternally cut off from God, from His life and from His love.
This is the spiritual cancer that devastates our self-respect, our family, the people we love-and that's the ones we hurt the most. It takes away our inner peace, and it destroys our eternity. And like mankind's battle against physical cancer, the battle against this disease of me has been going on for a long time.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Romans 7:15. "What I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do." Sound familiar? That's our losing battle against the dark disease in our heart. The writer of these words is desperate for a cure, and he asks, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24) Just like us, he's found no cure that can get at the root cause of all the dark things that come out of us.
Then comes the announcement of the breakthrough, as this fellow-sinner asks, "Who will rescue me?" He answers, "Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Jesus has pioneered the cure for this spiritual cancer that has seemed so unstoppable, so incurable. He shed His blood on the cross, absorbed all the sin, all the punishment, and attacked the root causes of the actions and the attitudes we hate-and He broke the power of sin by taking all its punishment.
So many people-maybe even people you know-have opened their lives to Jesus and they have found forgiveness and moral victory that is changing their lives and their homes. It can be yours today if you will tell Jesus you are trusting Him to do that for you.
I want to invite you right where you are to say, "Jesus, I believe when You died on that cross You were paying for my sin. When You walked out of your grave it was to walk into my life. Come on in today." I want to invite you to go to our website at your first opportunity today and find there exactly the path you can travel right now in your heart to be sure you belong to Him and your sins are forgiven-ANewStory.com.
The disease of me is a ravaging spiritual cancer and it's terminal. But the cure is within your reach. The only reason you would go one more day still dying is if you refuse to reach out to Jesus for the cure He paid for with his life.