Max Lucado Daily: WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER
Speaking to the church, Jesus didn’t issue individual assignments. He said, “You—all of you, collectively—will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8 NIV). Jesus works in community. For that reason you find no personal pronouns in the earliest description of the church in Acts. All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship; to the sharing of meals; and to prayer. And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They worshiped together and shared their meals with great joy” (Acts 2:42-46 NLT).
The cameo contains only plural nouns and pronouns. No I or my or you. We are in this together. “He is the head of the body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:18 NCV). I am not the body, you are not the body. We—together—are his body!
From God is With You Every Day
Isaiah 64
Can We Be Saved?
Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and descend,
make the mountains shudder at your presence—
As when a forest catches fire,
as when fire makes a pot to boil—
To shock your enemies into facing you,
make the nations shake in their boots!
You did terrible things we never expected,
descended and made the mountains shudder at your presence.
Since before time began
no one has ever imagined,
No ear heard, no eye seen, a God like you
who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who happily do what is right,
who keep a good memory of the way you work.
But how angry you’ve been with us!
We’ve sinned and kept at it so long!
Is there any hope for us? Can we be saved?
We’re all sin-infected, sin-contaminated.
Our best efforts are grease-stained rags.
We dry up like autumn leaves—
sin-dried, we’re blown off by the wind.
No one prays to you
or makes the effort to reach out to you
Because you’ve turned away from us,
left us to stew in our sins.
8-12 Still, God, you are our Father.
We’re the clay and you’re our potter:
All of us are what you made us.
Don’t be too angry with us, O God.
Don’t keep a permanent account of wrongdoing.
Keep in mind, please, we are your people—all of us.
Your holy cities are all ghost towns:
Zion’s a ghost town,
Jerusalem’s a field of weeds.
Our holy and beautiful Temple,
which our ancestors filled with your praises,
Was burned down by fire,
all our lovely parks and gardens in ruins.
In the face of all this,
are you going to sit there unmoved, God?
Aren’t you going to say something?
Haven’t you made us miserable long enough?
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Read: Matthew 6:1–6
The World Is Not a Stage
“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.
2-4 “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—‘playactors’ I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.
Pray with Simplicity
5 “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
6 “Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
INSIGHT:
In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7), Jesus issues a warning about hypocrisy (6:1–8). After His strong caution against it, He gives us the proper motivation. Our reason to share with open hands, to raise our hands in prayer, and to fold them before an empty plate is both stated and implied. When we do these things, we do them out of love for the Father, the source of all good, knowing He will bless our efforts. The implication is fairly clear. The approval of the Father is better than any praise we may receive from friends and neighbors. It is the reward from Him that we should truly and deeply want.
A Façade
By Anne Cetas
Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you. Matthew 6:4 NLT
Kerri tries hard to get people to admire her. She acts happy most of the time so that others will notice and compliment her on her joyful attitude. Some affirm her because they see her helping people in the community. But in a transparent moment Kerri will admit, "I love the Lord, but in some ways I feel like my life is a façade." Her own sense of insecurity is behind much of her effort of trying to look good to others, and she says she’s running out of energy to keep it up.
We can probably all relate in some way because it’s not possible to have perfect motives. We love the Lord and others, but our motives for how we live the Christian life are sometimes mixed with our desire to be valued or praised.
He created us in His image and values us so much that He gave us His Son.
Jesus talked about those who give, pray, and fast in order to be seen (Matt. 6:1–18). He taught in the Sermon on the Mount to “give your gifts in private,” to “pray to your Father in private,” and “when you fast, don't make it obvious” (vv. 4, 6, 16 nlt).
Serving is most often done publicly, but maybe a little anonymous service could help us learn to rest in God’s opinion of us. He who created us in His image values us so much that He gave us His Son and shows us His love each day.
Dear Lord, please forgive me for desiring praise from others more than from You. Please help me as I struggle to keep my motives pure.
Our desire to please God should be our highest motive for obeying God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, November 17, 2016
The Eternal Goal
By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing…I will bless you… —Genesis 22:16-17
Abraham, at this point, has reached where he is in touch with the very nature of God. He now understands the reality of God.
My goal is God Himself…
At any cost, dear Lord, by any road.
“At any cost…by any road” means submitting to God’s way of bringing us to the goal.
There is no possibility of questioning God when He speaks, if He speaks to His own nature in me. Prompt obedience is the only result. When Jesus says, “Come,” I simply come; when He says, “Let go,” I let go; when He says, “Trust God in this matter,” I trust. This work of obedience is the evidence that the nature of God is in me.
God’s revelation of Himself to me is influenced by my character, not by God’s character.
’Tis because I am ordinary,
Thy ways so often look ordinary to me.
It is through the discipline of obedience that I get to the place where Abraham was and I see who God is. God will never be real to me until I come face to face with Him in Jesus Christ. Then I will know and can boldly proclaim, “In all the world, my God, there is none but Thee, there is none but Thee.”
The promises of God are of no value to us until, through obedience, we come to understand the nature of God. We may read some things in the Bible every day for a year and they may mean nothing to us. Then, because we have been obedient to God in some small detail, we suddenly see what God means and His nature is instantly opened up to us. “All the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen…” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Our “Yes” must be born of obedience; when by obedience we ratify a promise of God by saying, “Amen,” or, “So be it.” That promise becomes ours.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Awe is the condition of a man’s spirit realizing Who God is and what He has done for him personally. Our Lord emphasizes the attitude of a child; no attitude can express such solemn awe and familiarity as that of a child. Not Knowing Whither, 882 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, November 17, 2016
You Are Their Best Chance - #7789
Our son-in-law was visiting his grandfather in Florida, with a nice Florida view outside his bedroom window-grapefruit trees. It wasn't all a happy view though. Many of the grapefruit were actually rotting on the ground. His grandfather wasn't up to harvesting them anymore. So those grapefruit got all ready to be picked and no one came, and they dropped to the ground and died.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "You Are Their Best Chance."
That's what happens when there's no one there to harvest a crop when it's ready. It will die ready. Tragically, that same thing can happen to something much, much more valuable-a human soul. But it doesn't have to happen.
In Luke 10:2, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." Okay, I grew up in an apartment in Chicago. I don't know a lot about harvesting. I mean, we just harvested cockroaches in our apartment. But I've asked a lot of farmers what's the first thing they think of when I say the word "harvest." Their answer is almost always the same, "ready."
So Jesus was saying, "The ready is plentiful." In other words, He's got a lot of lost people ready to hear about Him. They don't know that it's Jesus they're ready for, but they will when they hear about Him...if they hear about Him. Because Jesus' problem isn't with the people who don't know Him; it's with the people who do-His spiritual harvesters. He has so many of His people He's counting on to harvest the hearts that He's gotten ready for Him, but they're just sitting in the farmhouse with the rest of God's family. Meanwhile, the harvest of hearts is waiting in the field ready...until that person dies ready.
That's a heartbreaking spiritual tragedy-lives lost because the Christian they know isn't telling them about Jesus. Here's what He says to do about this deadly apathy. "Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest field." Those words "send out" sound so gentle in English. But the original Greek word is "ekballo" which means to "forcibly expel." It's used to throwing demons out of people, undesirables out of the temple. Many uses of the word include at least a hint of getting pretty aggressive, even violent. Jesus said His people need to be forcibly thrown out into the harvest of ready hearts. Maybe that's what He's trying to do with you.
That's why you're restless. That's why you're unfulfilled as a believer. He's rescued you to be using your everyday influence for something eternal-rescuing others from a Christless eternity. In Jesus, you've got so much that lost people around you are looking for. You've got peace in times of trouble, when Jesus is the only explanation for your peace. You've got a love you know you'll never lose. You've got the power to change the dark parts of you that you could have never changed yourself. You have a purpose to live for beyond just making it through the day and an eternity you are sure of. You have all of that because you have Jesus. They have none of that because they don't have Jesus.
The Savior who died for them has been working in their life to get them ready to hear about Him. And He's moving and shaking things in your life and in your soul to get you to tell about Him. He died for them, and they don't know it. And you are in possibly the best position of anyone to tell them. Before you talk to someone without Jesus, pray that 3-Open Prayer: "Lord, open a door to talk with them," "Lord, open their heart," and "Lord, open my mouth." Open a door, open their heart, and open my mouth.
You have no idea how important you are to the people you know. And they have no idea how important you are, but Jesus does. You are their best chance at Him; their best chance at heaven. It's harvest time, but it won't be for long. The ready time never is. Don't wait 'till their heart turns hard or until it beats for the very last time. Please don't let the people you know die ready.