Max Lucado Daily: TO OUTWIT THE DEVIL
God will help us stand against the Devil. He will disclose the craftiness of Satan. But we must regularly consult him in everything. The Scriptures say that God’s word is a lamp unto our feet (Psalm 119:105)…but it doesn’t say it is a spotlight into our future. Our best days come when we learn to hear God’s voice telling us to turn this way or that way. “Right behind you a voice will say, ‘This is the way you should go,’whether to the right or to the left'” (Isaiah 30:21 NLT).
Like David, we can ask God to “bend low and hear my whispered plea” (Psalm 31:2 TLB). Wait until God speaks before you act. The promise says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye” (Psalm 32:8). If you feel a check in your heart, heed it and ask God again. It’s the only way to outwit the Devil’s deceit!
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 5
1-3 Every high priest selected to represent men and women before God and offer sacrifices for their sins should be able to deal gently with their failings, since he knows what it’s like from his own experience. But that also means that he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as the peoples’.
4-6 No one elects himself to this honored position. He’s called to it by God, as Aaron was. Neither did Christ presume to set himself up as high priest, but was set apart by the One who said to him, “You’re my Son; today I celebrate you!” In another place God declares, “You’re a priest forever in the royal order of Melchizedek.”
7-10 While he lived on earth, anticipating death, Jesus cried out in pain and wept in sorrow as he offered up priestly prayers to God. Because he honored God, God answered him. Though he was God’s Son, he learned trusting-obedience by what he suffered, just as we do. Then, having arrived at the full stature of his maturity and having been announced by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who believingly obey him.
Re-Crucifying Jesus
11-14 I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening. By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago! Milk is for beginners, inexperienced in God’s ways; solid food is for the mature, who have some practice in telling right from wrong.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Read: John 9:1–11
True Blindness
1-2 Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?”
3-5 Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light.”
6-7 He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “Sent”). The man went and washed—and saw.
8 Soon the town was buzzing. His relatives and those who year after year had seen him as a blind man begging were saying, “Why, isn’t this the man we knew, who sat here and begged?”
9 Others said, “It’s him all right!”
But others objected, “It’s not the same man at all. It just looks like him.”
He said, “It’s me, the very one.”
10 They said, “How did your eyes get opened?”
11 “A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ I did what he said. When I washed, I saw.”
INSIGHT:
Have you ever felt as though you saw no purpose to your life, couldn’t see your way forward, and were not even sure there is a God willing or able to give you light at the end of the tunnel? John wrote his gospel to proclaim the life and light that troubled people like us long for (John 1:1–5). John found many reasons to believe that Jesus really is the light of the world: “These [miraculous signs] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
The Junkyard Genius
By David McCasland
One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see! John 9:25
Noah Purifoy began his work as an “assemblage” artist with three tons of rubble salvaged from the 1965 riots in the Watts area of Los Angeles. From broken bicycle wheels and bowling balls to discarded tires and damaged TV sets—things no longer usable—he and a colleague created sculptures that conveyed a powerful message about people being treated as “throw-aways” in modern society. One journalist referred to Mr. Purifoy as “the junkyard genius.”
In Jesus’s time, many people considered those with diseases and physical problems as sinners being punished by God. They were shunned and ignored. But when Jesus and His disciples encountered a man born blind, the Lord said his condition was not the result of sin, but an occasion to see the power of God. “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). When the blind man followed Jesus’s instructions, he was able to see.
God takes our broken lives and shapes us into His new creations.
When the religious authorities questioned the man, he replied simply, “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (v. 25).
Jesus is still the greatest “junkyard genius” in our world. We are all damaged by sin, but He takes our broken lives and shapes us into His new creations.
Lord, I thank You today for Your amazing grace!
Jesus is the restorer of life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, February 16, 2017
The Inspiration of Spiritual Initiative
Arise from the dead… —Ephesians 5:14
Not all initiative, the willingness to take the first step, is inspired by God. Someone may say to you, “Get up and get going! Take your reluctance by the throat and throw it overboard— just do what needs to be done!” That is what we mean by ordinary human initiative. But when the Spirit of God comes to us and says, in effect, “Get up and get going,” suddenly we find that the initiative is inspired.
We all have many dreams and aspirations when we are young, but sooner or later we realize we have no power to accomplish them. We cannot do the things we long to do, so our tendency is to think of our dreams and aspirations as dead. But God comes and says to us, “Arise from the dead….” When God sends His inspiration, it comes to us with such miraculous power that we are able to “arise from the dead” and do the impossible. The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative is that the life and power comes after we “get up and get going.” God does not give us overcoming life— He gives us life as we overcome. When the inspiration of God comes, and He says, “Arise from the dead…,” we have to get ourselves up; God will not lift us up. Our Lord said to the man with the withered hand, “Stretch out your hand” (Matthew 12:13). As soon as the man did so, his hand was healed. But he had to take the initiative. If we will take the initiative to overcome, we will find that we have the inspiration of God, because He immediately gives us the power of life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
When you are joyful, be joyful; when you are sad, be sad. If God has given you a sweet cup, don’t make it bitter; and if He has given you a bitter cup, don’t try and make it sweet; take things as they come. Shade of His Hand, 1226 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Homeless In Your Heart - #7854
Our family has gone into New York City at times when we lived in that area with some blankets and food and gifts for homeless people, but we had to find them in order to meet them. Sometimes, they were in a park; other times they were under or near a viaduct or overpass. One night we found a little village of homeless people on a vacant lot next to the bus depot with their makeshift shelters against the back wall of the depot. I remember the time that I interviewed a homeless man on the street. I wanted to get his story out to people through my radio program. He actually let me crawl right into that large cardboard box that he called home. I guess when you're homeless you seek shelter and warmth wherever you can find it.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Homeless In Your Heart."
Now, it's possible to have a place-maybe a beautiful place-to go home to every night and still know deep feelings of homelessness in your heart. Like you've never really found the emotional home, the spiritual home you've always wanted to experience, you've always been looking for.
It's not for lack of trying. When your heart is looking for home, you seek shelter and warmth in lots of places, some of which may have actually made you feel more homeless than ever. Maybe you've looked for that peace and security and acceptance in some close relationships, even in marriage. But the restlessness, the emptiness is still there.
It could be that you've sought the shelter of building up a lot of financial security or lots of strokes and approval from people, maybe in your job performance, or even in your children. But the best you've found is just temporary shelter. After all these years, all these experiences, all these people, it still doesn't feel like you've found home.
But you might be close if you're ready to open up to the only One whose love is big enough to finally make you complete and fulfilled and safe. He's the One who created you. Who, according to the Bible, created you "by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16). That's why no one but Him can finally fill the hole in your heart.
Our word for today from the Word of God is in Isaiah 53:6. It tells us why we have felt homeless all these years. "We all, like sheep, have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way." To put it simply, we were created to live God's way. We've decided to live our way. And that's made us lifetime wanderers looking for what only God can give us. But this same passage in the Bible tells us about the incredible love God has for us and what He did to make it possible for us to come home.
Speaking of Jesus, the Bible says, "And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity (that's actually the wrongdoing) of us all. He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him." Jesus' suffering and His death on that cross was to pay the death penalty for all our mistakes, all our sins, all our rebellion. So the road home begins at the cross of Jesus when you give Him your homeless heart, when you tell this One who died for you that you are putting your total trust in Him to forgive your sin and connect you to God forever.
I'm guessing that God's Holy Spirit is right now, if this is for you; if I'm talking about you, He's making sure you know that this is your moment. As He tugs on your heart, this is your moment to open your heart to the One who can bring you home. You want to begin the relationship you were made for, this love relationship with Jesus Christ, would you tell Him that right now, "Jesus, I'm yours."
Next step, go to our website if you would, and there I've laid out as simply as I could how you can be sure you have this relationship that is the love you've looked for all your life. It might be within your reach right now. It's ANewStory.com. That's the website.
You've looked for shelter, you've looked for warmth in a lot of places that turned out to not really be home. Today can be the day when your heart is homeless no more. You are almost home.
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