Max Lucado Daily: GOD WILL NEVER LET YOU GO
We never outgrow our need for a father’s love. We were wired to receive it! Listen closely. The words I give you are God’s. Don’t filter, resist, or deflect them. Just receive them.
My child, I want you in my new kingdom. I have swept away your offenses like the morning clouds, your sins like the morning mist. I have redeemed you. The transaction is sealed. I [God] have made my choice. I choose you to be part of my forever family.
Let these words cement in your heart a satisfying confidence that God will never let you go. Your efforts to win his affection are unnecessary. Your fears of losing his affection are needless. You can no more make him want you than you can convince him to abandon you. The adoption is irreversible. Accept your place as God’s adopted child.
From God is With You Every Day
Romans 2
God Is Kind, but Not Soft
Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn’t so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you’ve done.
3-4 You didn’t think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he’s such a nice God, he’d let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.
5-8 You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you—Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!
9-11 If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you’re from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up. Being a Jew won’t give you an automatic stamp of approval. God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind.
12-13 If you sin without knowing what you’re doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you’re doing, that’s a different story entirely. Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.
14-16 When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman. The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ takes into account all these differences.
Religion Can’t Save You
17-24 If you’re brought up Jewish, don’t assume that you can lean back in the arms of your religion and take it easy, feeling smug because you’re an insider to God’s revelation, a connoisseur of the best things of God, informed on the latest doctrines! I have a special word of caution for you who are sure that you have it all together yourselves and, because you know God’s revealed Word inside and out, feel qualified to guide others through their blind alleys and dark nights and confused emotions to God. While you are guiding others, who is going to guide you? I’m quite serious. While preaching “Don’t steal!” are you going to rob people blind? Who would suspect you? The same with adultery. The same with idolatry. You can get by with almost anything if you front it with eloquent talk about God and his law. The line from Scripture, “It’s because of you Jews that the outsiders are down on God,” shows it’s an old problem that isn’t going to go away.
25-29 Circumcision, the surgical ritual that marks you as a Jew, is great if you live in accord with God’s law. But if you don’t, it’s worse than not being circumcised. The reverse is also true: The uncircumcised who keep God’s ways are as good as the circumcised—in fact, better. Better to keep God’s law uncircumcised than break it circumcised. Don’t you see: It’s not the cut of a knife that makes a Jew. You become a Jew by who you are. It’s the mark of God on your heart, not of a knife on your skin, that makes a Jew. And recognition comes from God, not legalistic critics.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, October 03, 2016
Read: Deuteronomy 10:12–22
So now Israel, what do you think God expects from you? Just this: Live in his presence in holy reverence, follow the road he sets out for you, love him, serve God, your God, with everything you have in you, obey the commandments and regulations of God that I’m commanding you today—live a good life.
14-18 Look around you: Everything you see is God’s—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that’s you!—out of all the other peoples. That’s where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he’s the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn’t play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.
19-21 You must treat foreigners with the same loving care—
remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Reverently respect God, your God, serve him, hold tight to him,
back up your promises with the authority of his name.
He’s your praise! He’s your God!
He did all these tremendous, these staggering things
that you saw with your own eyes.
22 When your ancestors entered Egypt, they numbered a mere seventy souls. And now look at you—you look more like the stars in the night skies in number. And your God did it.
INSIGHT:
God commanded His people to allow the poor to feed on their lands (Lev. 19:9–10; 23:22; Deut. 24:19–21). “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner” (Lev. 19:9–10; 23:22).
No Outsiders
By Tim Gustafson
What does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him. Deuteronomy 10:12
In the remote region of Ghana where I lived as a boy, “Chop time, no friend” was a common proverb. Locals considered it impolite to visit at “chop time” (mealtime) because food was often scarce. The maxim applied to neighbors and outsiders alike.
But in the Philippines, where I also lived for a time, even if you visit unannounced at mealtime, your hosts will insist on sharing with you regardless of whether they have enough for themselves. Cultures differ for their own good reasons.
Heavenly Father, help us bless others today.
As the Israelites left Egypt, God provided specific instructions to govern their culture. But rules—even God’s rules—can never change hearts. So Moses said, “Change your hearts and stop being stubborn” (Deut. 10:16 nlt). Interestingly, right after issuing that challenge Moses took up the topic of Israel’s treatment of outsiders. God “loves the foreigner residing among you,” he said, “giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (vv. 18–19).
Israel served the “God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome” (v. 17). One powerful way they were to show their identification with God was by loving foreigners—those from outside their culture.
What might this small picture of God’s character mean for us today? How can we show His love to the marginalized and the needy in our world?
Heavenly Father, help us bless others today by showing Your love in some small way.
In Christ, there are no outsiders.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, October 03, 2016
The Place of Ministry
He said to them, "This kind [of unclean spirit] can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting." —Mark 9:29
“His disciples asked Him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ ” (Mark 9:28). The answer lies in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “This kind can come out by nothing but” concentrating on Him, and then doubling and redoubling that concentration on Him. We can remain powerless forever, as the disciples were in this situation, by trying to do God’s work without concentrating on His power, and by following instead the ideas that we draw from our own nature. We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.
When you are brought face to face with a difficult situation and nothing happens externally, you can still know that freedom and release will be given because of your continued concentration on Jesus Christ. Your duty in service and ministry is to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself. Is there anything between you and Jesus even now? If there is, you must get through it, not by ignoring it as an irritation, or by going up and over it, but by facing it and getting through it into the presence of Jesus Christ. Then that very problem itself, and all that you have been through in connection with it, will glorify Jesus Christ in a way that you will never know until you see Him face to face.
We must be able to “mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31), but we must also know how to come down. The power of the saint lies in the coming down and in the living that is done in the valley. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) and what he was referring to were mostly humiliating things. And yet it is in our power to refuse to be humiliated and to say, “No, thank you, I much prefer to be on the mountaintop with God.” Can I face things as they actually are in the light of the reality of Jesus Christ, or do things as they really are destroy my faith in Him, and put me into a panic?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
“I have chosen you” (John 15:16). Keep that note of greatness in your creed. It is not that you have got God, but that He has got you. My Utmost for His Highest, October 25, 837 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, October 03, 2016
A Shattered Heart, A Certain Hope - #7756
I've done my whole adult life with my Karen, the only woman I've ever needed. Suddenly, I have to figure out how to do the rest of my life without her. That Sunday night, we sat in the bleachers at our local football stadium and we watched our grandson graduate from high school as valedictorian and giving a faith-filled valedictory message. Monday afternoon, she was gone. Wrapped in this huddle of sobs with our three adult children, I just choked out the words, "It hurts so bad." It really does.
Now, it's been some weeks, but as I walk into our living room, I still instinctively look for that beautiful hair. I called it her "crown of glory" as she sat in her favorite blue chair. I go to make that oatmeal that she loved for breakfast. I turn to tell her about a conversation or situation and to hear her trademark laugh over my dumb jokes.
Our four-year-old grandson said it all the first time he ran into our living room and saw her chair empty. He just ran back to his mommy and said, "Mommy, you were right. She's not here." No, she's not, and she won't be again. I've probably shed more tears in recent weeks than I've shed the rest of my life. But I have a story to tell. Actually, it's the Story that I've tried to tell folks my whole adult life. And suddenly I'm living its ultimate validation.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Shattered Heart, A Certain Hope."
Everything I've ever believed, everything I've ever taught about my Jesus is true! Everything that my death-crushing Savior promised, I can tell you, He delivers in the darkest, most devastating days of my life!
He said of those who have put their total trust in His death on the cross for their sins, and this is in our word for today from the Word of God in John 14:19. He said, "Because I live, you will live also." Because Karen's Savior is alive, so is this woman I love.
In God's own words, we have "a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). I'm not talking about some "cross your fingers" hope. This is living hope. Hope is a Person – Jesus. He trampled death as He blasted out of His grave on Easter morning.
The hope that is holding my heart together is as sure as our hope that spring will follow a seemingly endless winter. Spring is a sure thing. So is heaven for those who've pinned all their hopes on the One who died so we could go there. As much as I love Karen, she is now with the One who loves her the most. Experiencing His promise that, as He said, "He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies" (John 11:25).
This amazing Jesus has got my Karen. And He's got me. I can tell by the peace. It's what He promised to His disciples in their darkest hour. He said, "My peace I give you...do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" (John 14:27). That peace, along with that certain hope of a forever spring after this cold winter, is a powerful counterbalance on that scale that is so weighed down by grief. Through all my darkest hours, through my loneliest moments, the peace has never been shaken.
Oh, this Jesus I've talked about, that I've written about, I've believed in all these years has come closer and become more real to me than ever before. He promised He would be, as the Bible says, "close to the brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18). He really, really is. When you walk through the valley of the shadow, you've got to have Jesus to go there. And when you walk across that final frontier beyond our death, you've got to know you belong to Jesus.
If you're not sure of that, would you please make this the day you get that settled? Say, "Jesus, what you died for was me. I am yours. You're alive! I want you to live in me." Please see what I've put on our website at ANewStory.com. It will help you land this relationship with Jesus once and for all.
Look, I'm in the biggest storm of my life; the Cat 5 hurricane, the EF-5 tornado. But Jesus is my safe room. Is He yours? He's stronger than the storm. The Bible says, "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19).
The Anchor holds.