Max Lucado Daily: IT’S NOT THE JOURNEY
This is God’s invitation to us. Set your hearts on your home! In God’s plan it’s all about the King and his kingdom. He wrote the script, built the sets, directs the actors, and knows the final act—an everlasting kingdom. Scripture says, “At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth” (Ephesians 1:10 NLT). Reach for it!
The journey home is nice, but the journey is not the destination. Those who are content with nothing more than joy in the journey are settling for too little satisfaction. There is more to this life than this life. The Bible tells us “God…has planted eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In God’s narrative, life on earth is but the beginning. It’s the first letter of the first sentence in the first chapter of God’s great story that he is writing with your life.
From God is With You Every Day
Isaiah 58
Your Prayers Won’t Get Off the Ground
“Shout! A full-throated shout!
Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’
3-5 “Well, here’s why:
“The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
a fast day that I, God, would like?
6-9 “This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’
A Full Life in the Emptiest of Places
9-12 “If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.
13-14 “If you watch your step on the Sabbath
and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
God’s holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’
making money, running here and there—
Then you’ll be free to enjoy God!
Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all.
I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.”
Yes! God says so!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Read: Mark 1:16–22
Passing along the beach of Lake Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew net-fishing. Fishing was their regular work. Jesus said to them, “Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass.” They didn’t ask questions. They dropped their nets and followed.
19-20 A dozen yards or so down the beach, he saw the brothers James and John, Zebedee’s sons. They were in the boat, mending their fishnets. Right off, he made the same offer. Immediately, they left their father Zebedee, the boat, and the hired hands, and followed.
Confident Teaching
21-22 Then they entered Capernaum. When the Sabbath arrived, Jesus lost no time in getting to the meeting place. He spent the day there teaching. They were surprised at his teaching—so forthright, so confident—not quibbling and quoting like the religion scholars.
INSIGHT:
In ancient cultures, the family relationship was more than a heritage; it was an identity. The family business wasn’t simply a way to earn a living; it was a commitment to family. This cultural setting shows two surprising aspects to Jesus’s call of His disciples. First, the authority and absoluteness of Jesus’s call. He calls these men to accept an immediate, complete, and permanent change of life and an entirely new destiny. Jesus’s call to discipleship trumps even the closest relationships (see Mark 10:29–30). Second, the immediate and unquestioning response of the disciples. “At once” can also be translated “immediately.” These men left father and business to follow Jesus with no hesitation.
A New Purpose
By Bill Crowder
“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” Mark 1:17
Jacob Davis was a tailor with a problem. It was the height of the Gold Rush in the 1800s American West and the gold miners’ work pants kept wearing out. His solution? Davis went to a local dry goods company owned by Levi Strauss, purchased tent cloth, and made work pants from that heavy, sturdy material—and blue jeans were born. Today, denim jeans in a variety of forms (including Levi’s) are among the most popular clothing items in the world, and all because tent material was given a new purpose.
Simon and his friends were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Then Jesus arrived and called them to follow Him. He gave them a new purpose. No longer would they fish for fish. As Jesus told them, “Come, follow me, . . . and I will send you out to fish for people” (Mark 1:17).
“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” Mark 1:17
With this new purpose set for their lives, these men were taught and trained by Jesus so that, after His ascension, they could be used by God to capture the hearts of people with the message of the cross and resurrection of Christ. Today, we follow in their steps as we share the good news of Christ’s love and salvation.
May our lives both declare and exhibit this love that can change the lives, purposes, and eternal destinies of others.
Help me, Lord, to represent You well so that others might be drawn to Your love and salvation.
With our new life in Christ we have been given a new purpose.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Fellowship in the Gospel
…fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ… —1 Thessalonians 3:2
After sanctification, it is difficult to state what your purpose in life is, because God has moved you into His purpose through the Holy Spirit. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself, thinking, “God has called me for this and for that,” you barricade God from using you. As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.
I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, “Lord, this causes me such heartache.” To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy “world within the world,” and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being “frost-bitten.”
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Divinely Positioned - #7784
Some friends of ours struggled with a wide variety of health issues over several years. And a while back, a trusted friend told them about a juice taken from a rare fruit that seemed to have measurably improved their health, and the health of several people that they love. Well, our friends invested in that juice, and they liked the early results. I can just imagine what would have happened, though, if some telemarketer had called them cold and tried to sell this product to them. "Hey, I have some juice for you." Click. See, I know these people. They never would have bought it from some professional salesman. But, you know, it helped when someone like them, someone they knew and trusted was the one who told them about it. They wanted what she believed in. They wanted what was changing her.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Divinely Positioned."
You are divinely positioned. Yeah, because someone will believe you about Jesus that would never believe anyone else. You know, most of us are like my friends that I described. We're not going to buy from Mr. Slick Salesman. We'll buy from someone who's like us. Even when it comes to the most important choice we'll ever make in our life – our relationship with the God who made us; with the God we will stand before when we die.
Many of us have found at the cross of Jesus Christ the greatest love in the universe. And in His empty grave, we found the greatest power in the universe – the power of the only man who ever walked out of His grave under His own power. But every day we're with folks who've never experienced His love or His power and who will never experience His heaven if they don't meet Him for themselves. But whose responsibility is it to tell them?
Many of us would like to leave it to someone who can do it better – like my pastor or that evangelist. He's really good. He's better at this; got more training. The problem is that in our world today, those folks are perceived as professional God-salesmen, which most lost folks aren't interested in listening to. But then, God's strategy never has been to leave spiritual rescuing just to His professional lifeguards. He works through the everyday believers; His satisfied customers.
Take our word for today from the Word of God, for example, in John 4:39. Jesus wants to reach the Samaritans in a nearby village, but He's Jewish and they don't like Jews. He doesn't go into that village and have rallies there. He reaches one Samaritan woman and sends her back to her village to tell about Him. The Bible says, "Many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the woman's testimony." They listened to someone like them. So will the people around you.
Over the past twenty plus summers, I've been eyewitness to a modern miracle. In 400 years of missionary effort, only about 5% of Native Americans know Jesus Christ. And yet, I've seen thousands of Native young people give their lives to Christ, because our On Eagles' Wings teams – they're the ones telling about Jesus and their people just like them, young Native Americans who have lived the drinking, the drugs, the gang life, the violence, the despair and the suicide. But now they have found hope in the Creator's Son, Jesus Christ, and they're going to reservation after reservation introducing young people just like them to Jesus Christ. Some have said it's the greatest spiritual harvest in 400 years. Why? Because the messenger is someone like them! That's why there's been a breakthrough.
Do you see yourself in this life-saving picture? Who are the people around you going to listen to about Jesus Christ? Someone from their tribe, their vocation, their avocation, their occupation, their location, or their association. Someone who walks the same trail they do day after day and you're the person they know who's walking that trail with the hope of Jesus Christ and showing them in that world – their world – the Jesus-difference.
You don't have to go to their world. You are in their world! It is you they'll listen to. It is you God will hold accountable for their soul. Is there someone who could say it better? Maybe. Would they listen to that person? Probably not. They'll listen to you. Jesus is sending you to your people to tell them about Him. Humanly speaking, their eternity is in your hands, and you are their best chance.
