Max Lucado Daily: OPENING CLOSED DOORS
When God locks a door, it needs to be locked. When he stuck Paul and Silas in prison, God had a plan for the prison jailer. As Paul and Silas sang, God shook the prison, and “at once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose” (Acts 16:26 NIV). When the jailer realized what had happened, he assumed all the prisoners had escaped and he drew his sword to take his life. When Paul told him otherwise, the jailer brought the two missionaries out and asked, “What must I do to be saved?” (v.30 NIV). Paul told him to believe. He did, and all his family were baptized.
The jailer washed their wounds, and Jesus washed his sins. God shut the door of the jail cell so that he could open the heart of a jailer. So might the closed door you are facing be God’s way of opening someone’s heart? It’s possible!
From God is With You Every Day
Hosea 6
Gangs of Priests Assaulting Worshipers
“Come on, let’s go back to God.
He hurt us, but he’ll heal us.
He hit us hard,
but he’ll put us right again.
In a couple of days we’ll feel better.
By the third day he’ll have made us brand-new,
Alive and on our feet,
fit to face him.
We’re ready to study God,
eager for God-knowledge.
As sure as dawn breaks,
so sure is his daily arrival.
He comes as rain comes,
as spring rain refreshing the ground.”
4-7 “What am I to do with you, Ephraim?
What do I make of you, Judah?
Your declarations of love last no longer
than morning mist and predawn dew.
That’s why I use prophets to shake you to attention,
why my words cut you to the quick:
To wake you up to my judgment
blazing like light.
I’m after love that lasts, not more religion.
I want you to know God, not go to more prayer meetings.
You broke the covenant—just like Adam!
You broke faith with me—ungrateful wretches!
8-9 “Gilead has become Crime City—
blood on the sidewalks, blood on the streets.
It used to be robbers who mugged pedestrians.
Now it’s gangs of priests
Assaulting worshipers on their way to Shechem.
Nothing is sacred to them.
10 “I saw a shocking thing in the country of Israel:
Ephraim worshiping in a religious whorehouse,
and Israel in the mud right there with him.
11 “You’re as bad as the worst of them, Judah.
You’ve been sowing wild oats. Now it’s harvest time.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, November 28, 2016
Read: Luke 7:36–50
Anointing His Feet
36-39 One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”
40 Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Oh? Tell me.”
41-42 “Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”
43-47 Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”
“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”
48 Then he spoke to her: “I forgive your sins.”
49 That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!”
50 He ignored them and said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
Beautiful
By Dave Branon
She has done a beautiful thing to me. Mark 14:6
Picture two teenage girls. The first girl is strong and healthy. The other girl has never known the freedom of getting around on her own. From her wheelchair she faces not only the emotional challenges common to life, but also a stream of physical pains and struggles.
But both girls are smiling cheerfully as they enjoy each other’s company. Two beautiful teenagers—each seeing in the other the treasure of friendship.
Everyone we meet bears the image of God.
Jesus devoted much of His time and attention to people like the girl in the wheelchair. People with lifelong disabilities or physical deformities as well as those who were looked down on by others for various reasons. In fact, Jesus let one of “those people” anoint Him with oil, to the disdain of the religious leaders (Luke 7:39). On another occasion, when a woman demonstrated her love with a similar act, Jesus told her critics, “Leave her alone . . . . She has done a beautiful thing to me” (Mark 14:6).
God values everyone equally; there are no distinctions in His eyes. In reality, we are all in desperate need of Christ’s love and forgiveness. His love compelled Him to die on the cross for us.
May we see each person as Jesus did: made in God’s image and worthy of His love. Let’s treat everyone we meet with Christlike equality and learn to see beauty as He does.
Dear Lord, help me to see people as You see them—not important because of what they can do or how they look, but because they are made in God’s image and You loved them enough to die for them.
Everyone we meet bears the image of God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, November 28, 2016
The Riches of the Destitut
…being justified freely by His grace… —Romans 3:24
The gospel of the grace of God awakens an intense longing in human souls and an equally intense resentment, because the truth that it reveals is not palatable or easy to swallow. There is a certain pride in people that causes them to give and give, but to come and accept a gift is another thing. I will give my life to martyrdom; I will dedicate my life to service— I will do anything. But do not humiliate me to the level of the most hell-deserving sinner and tell me that all I have to do is accept the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.
We have to realize that we cannot earn or win anything from God through our own efforts. We must either receive it as a gift or do without it. The greatest spiritual blessing we receive is when we come to the knowledge that we are destitute. Until we get there, our Lord is powerless. He can do nothing for us as long as we think we are sufficient in and of ourselves. We must enter into His kingdom through the door of destitution. As long as we are “rich,” particularly in the area of pride or independence, God can do nothing for us. It is only when we get hungry spiritually that we receive the Holy Spirit. The gift of the essential nature of God is placed and made effective in us by the Holy Spirit. He imparts to us the quickening life of Jesus, making us truly alive. He takes that which was “beyond” us and places it “within” us. And immediately, once “the beyond” has come “within,” it rises up to “the above,” and we are lifted into the kingdom where Jesus lives and reigns (see John 3:5).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth. The Place of Help, 1005 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, November 28, 2016
A Walking, Talking Dead Man - #7796
My wife and I were staying at a little place that we had when we could get away from our work and from our ministry for a little while, and there were some next door neighbors there. We got to know them along the way, John and Vicky. And they stopped to ask us one day if they could pick some of our mushrooms. Yeah, for use in witchcraft.
As Halloween approached, we noticed that they had built a ceremonial circle at their place, which is really somebody else's property, technically. But it had become someone else's through encroachment over the years. My wife was pretty troubled and so was I by the thought of this occult ceremony happening right close to where we would stay occasionally. We had to leave soon, but we felt led to pray, "Lord, do whatever it takes to break up the satanic activity there." We were stunned by the report from a neighbor who had tried to watch that property at Halloween. He said, "Oh, you know, last week there was a terrible accident near here, and one guy is paralyzed with a broken neck. And John, the guy in that house, was killed."
Well, we were wiped out. Well, back in the Spring, we were back at that place, and as we walked the perimeter, we saw a young couple at the house where John and Vicki had lived. Except it was John and Vicki! We couldn't believe it! Then John told us his story. Yes, there had been an accident. Yes, his neck was broken in three places. But, miraculously, he survived. He had planned to give his soul to the devil, he said, at that Halloween ceremony in his yard, but the accident stopped him and turned him to Jesus Christ. John said, "I've been involved in unspeakable evil. But that night I left the darkness and chose the light. I gave myself to Jesus."
Since then apparently John and Vicki have stopped smoking and drinking and doing drugs. They even got married. They burned all the clothes and the attachments of their old life, and apparently really got into God's Word. Well, we were pretty blown away by the mighty miracle God had done. John himself summed it up. He said, "In a way, what you heard about last Fall was true. The man who lived here was in a terrible accident, and that man did die that night."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Walking, Talking Dead Man."
John realizes what it means to belong to Jesus Christ. It actually means a death and then a new person. Our word for today from the Word of God talks about that in Colossians 3, beginning in verse 2, "Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry."
What happened to our neighbor John is exactly what's supposed to happen to you if you know Christ. It's supposed to be the death of the old you. Your circumstances may not be dramatic, or your sin, but the same miracle of a new you is what Jesus died to accomplish.
See, if you have followed the steps to a wonderful, new you, and that guy next door was a good example, first, you go to your own funeral. You declare a point in time where you say, "This is the end of the way I have been living. 'My way' dies today." Secondly, you starve the old you. That means burning all your bridges to the old you, eliminating any things or any associations that keep the old you alive.
Finally, you feed the new you, consuming God's Word along with reading and websites and radio and music that uplifts you and uplifts Jesus, and connecting yourself to other believers who will help you grow. Maybe you've tried to have a foot in both worlds – a little old you and a little new you. That can't be done. You've got to make a clear-cut choice, against the darkness and for the light of Jesus.
A funeral for the old you. And, because of Jesus, the birth of a whole new you.
