Max Lucado Daily: IMAGINE A PERFECT WORLD
Try this. Imagine a perfect world. Whatever that means to you…imagine it. Does that mean peace? Then envision absolute tranquility. Does a perfect world imply joy? Then create your highest happiness. Will a perfect world have love? Ponder a place where love has no bounds. Whatever heaven means to you, imagine it.
Get it firmly fixed in your mind. Delight in it. Dream about it. Long for it. And then smile as the Father reminds you from the apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No one has ever imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” No one has come close. No one. Think of all the songs about heaven. All the artists’ portrayals. All the lessons preached, poems written and chapters drafted. When it comes to describing heaven, we are all happy failures!
From Lucado Inspirational Reader
Zephaniah 2
Seek God
1-2 So get yourselves together. Shape up!
You’re a nation without a clue about what it wants.
Do it before you’re blown away
like leaves in a windstorm,
Before God’s Judgment-anger
sweeps down on you,
Before God’s Judgment Day wrath
descends with full force.
3 Seek God, all you quietly disciplined people
who live by God’s justice.
Seek God’s right ways. Seek a quiet and disciplined life.
Perhaps you’ll be hidden on the Day of God’s anger.
All Earth-Made Gods Will Blow Away
4-5 Gaza is scheduled for demolition,
Ashdod will be cleaned out by high noon,
Ekron pulled out by the roots.
Doom to the seaside people,
the seafaring people from Crete!
The Word of God is bad news for you
who settled Canaan, the Philistine country:
“You’re slated for destruction—
no survivors!”
6-7 The lands of the seafarers
will become pastureland,
A country for shepherds and sheep.
What’s left of the family of Judah will get it.
Day after day they’ll pasture by the sea,
and go home in the evening to Ashkelon to sleep.
Their very own God will look out for them.
He’ll make things as good as before.
8-12 “I’ve heard the crude taunts of Moab,
the mockeries flung by Ammon,
The cruel talk they’ve used to put down my people,
their self-important strutting along Israel’s borders.
Therefore, as sure as I am the living God,” says
God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
Israel’s personal God,
“Moab will become a ruin like Sodom,
Ammon a ghost town like Gomorrah,
One a field of rocks, the other a sterile salt flat,
a moonscape forever.
What’s left of my people will finish them off,
will pick them clean and take over.
This is what they get for their bloated pride,
their taunts and mockeries of the people
of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
God will be seen as truly terrible—a Holy Terror.
All earth-made gods will shrivel up and blow away;
And everyone, wherever they are, far or near,
will fall to the ground and worship him.
Also you Ethiopians,
you, too, will die—I’ll see to it.”
13-15 Then God will reach into the north
and destroy Assyria.
He will waste Nineveh,
leave her dry and treeless as a desert.
The ghost town of a city,
the haunt of wild animals,
Nineveh will be home to raccoons and coyotes—
they’ll bed down in its ruins.
Owls will hoot in the windows, ravens will croak in the doorways—
all that fancy woodwork now a perch for birds.
Can this be the famous Fun City
that had it made,
That boasted, “I’m the Number-One City!
I’m King of the Mountain!”
So why is the place deserted,
a lair for wild animals?
Passersby hardly give it a look;
they dismiss it with a gesture.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Read: Romans 8:31–39
31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
INSIGHT:
Christ’s work on the cross to secure our salvation has been completed. With a triumphant proclamation, Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). Forty days after His resurrection, Jesus returned to the Father. Now seated at God’s right hand, the exalted Christ continues His redemptive and sanctifying work as our eternal High Priest (Heb. 4:14–16). He is our “Advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1–2; 1 Tim. 2:5), always defending and interceding for us (Heb. 7:24–25; 9:24). Paul confidently writes, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). No one can successfully bring a charge of condemnation against those who are in Christ (vv. 33–34).
Locked Into Love
By Cindy Hess Kasper
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Psalm 106:1
In June 2015, the city of Paris removed forty-five tons of padlocks from the railings of the Pont des Arts pedestrian bridge. As a romantic gesture, couples would etch their initials onto a lock, attach it to the railing, click it shut, and throw the key into the River Seine.
After this ritual was repeated thousands of times, the bridge could no longer bear the weight of so much “love.” Eventually the city, fearing for the integrity of the bridge, removed the “love locks.”
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Psalm 106:1
The locks were meant to symbolize everlasting love, but human love does not always last. The closest of friends may offend each other and never resolve their differences. Family members may argue and refuse to forgive. A husband and wife may drift so far apart that they can’t remember why they once decided to marry. Human love can be fickle.
But there is one constant and enduring love—the love of God. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever,” proclaims Psalm 106:1. The promises of the unfailing and everlasting nature of God’s love are found throughout Scripture. And the greatest proof of this love is the death of His Son so that those who put their faith in Him can live eternally. And nothing will ever separate us from His love (Rom. 8:38–39).
Fellow believers, we are locked into God’s love forever.
I’m grateful for Your unending love, Father. I’m locked into Your love by the Holy Spirit who is living in me.
Christ’s death and resurrection are the measure of God’s love for me.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, December 28, 201
Continuous Conversion
…unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. —Matthew 18:3
These words of our Lord refer to our initial conversion, but we should continue to turn to God as children, being continuously converted every day of our lives. If we trust in our own abilities, instead of God’s, we produce consequences for which God will hold us responsible. When God through His sovereignty brings us into new situations, we should immediately make sure that our natural life submits to the spiritual, obeying the orders of the Spirit of God. Just because we have responded properly in the past is no guarantee that we will do so again. The response of the natural to the spiritual should be continuous conversion, but this is where we so often refuse to be obedient. No matter what our situation is, the Spirit of God remains unchanged and His salvation unaltered. But we must “put on the new man…” (Ephesians 4:24). God holds us accountable every time we refuse to convert ourselves, and He sees our refusal as willful disobedience. Our natural life must not rule— God must rule in us.
To refuse to be continuously converted puts a stumbling block in the growth of our spiritual life. There are areas of self-will in our lives where our pride pours contempt on the throne of God and says, “I won’t submit.” We deify our independence and self-will and call them by the wrong name. What God sees as stubborn weakness, we call strength. There are whole areas of our lives that have not yet been brought into submission, and this can only be done by this continuous conversion. Slowly but surely we can claim the whole territory for the Spirit of God.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
So Send I You
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
The Fight That Isn't Worth It - #7817
You've probably never heard of the "Pig War" between the United States and Great Britain because it's a war that almost happened. That war almost started in 1859 on the disputed San Juan Island between Canada and the State of Washington. In the midst of that tension between England and the U. S., an American settler named Lyman Cutler shot a pig who was rooting through his potato patch. Unfortunately, that pig belonged to an Englishman, Charles Griffin. That incident was just like a match to a powder keg in an already inflamed situation. For twelve years, there was serious hostility and tension between the U. S. and British authorities over a pig. Finally, General Winfield Scott brokered a peace deal. So, fortunately, the only fatality in this conflict was a pig.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Fight That Isn't Worth It."
I wonder how many churches have had a war over some things that weren't much more important than Mr. Griffin's pig. How many marriages have become battlefields because of one relatively small issue that was never resolved and allowed to grow into something much bigger? How many families have become war zones over something that started as a relatively small conflict or misunderstanding between a parent and a child? How many friendships, how many working relationships, how many churches have come unglued ultimately over something like that pig?
Our word for today from the Word of God is packed with wisdom on this issue. It's a short but important statement in Proverbs 17:14. "Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out." That's pretty good stuff isn't it? We all get fixated on how that person insulted us, the affront we suffered, the hurting words that were spoken, the wound from some incident. It's not that the hurt or the issue isn't real; the dead pig was real, but is it worth "breaching the dam" by making it into a defining issue? Can we let it go instead of letting it grow?
It's amazing how a hurt or a misunderstanding can totally destroy our sense of perspective; how it can cause us to forget the big picture and focus on one dark thing that we refuse to forgive or forget. As Jesus was preparing His disciples for His impending death, they were all caught up in a dispute over who was going to be the biggest "big shot" among them. They were so consumed by their ego and by turf issues they totally missed what was about to happen to their Master.
But that's what happens to us so often. We get derailed by some relatively small issue (Though, at the time, it seems like the biggest issue in the world to us.), and we totally miss the huge things that really matter. And we can't, or we won't, get back on the main track. That's why God tells us, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry." (Ephesians 4:26) When you do, you (it says here) give "the devil a foothold" (4:27). Deal with it while it's small. 1 Peter 4:8 tells us to "love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins." Love doesn't keep score; "un-love" remembers every wound. Love lets it go; "un-love" lets it grow. Love involves a lot of overlooking instead of overreacting.
The alternative is for that "bitter root" the Bible talks about to grow into something ugly and destructive. Bitterness is like an emotional cancer, constantly growing, destroying whatever it touches. But it doesn't have to be that way if you'll forgive, if you'll overlook, if you'll love unconditionally, if you'll keep your perspective on the big picture instead of getting dragged into a "pig war" over something that isn't worth sacrificing so much for. And if something relatively small has grown into something big and ugly in some relationship of yours, would you be the one to start the healing-the restoring process-before it does more damage?
Don't let walls and wars develop over battles that, in reality, just aren't worth it, because they keep us from fighting the battles that really are.
