Max Lucado Daily: IN CHRIST YOU HAVE EVERYTHING
Define yourself by stuff, and you’ll feel good when you have a lot, and you’ll feel bad when you don’t. The cycle is predictable. If I get a car, I’ll be happy. If I get married, I’ll be happy…or if I get the new job. But in each case the joy comes and then diminishes. By the time you reach old age, you’ve ridden a roller coaster of hope and disappointment. And you are suspicious that life will let you down again.
Contingent contentment turns us into wounded, worried people. But Christ-based contentment turns us into happy people. Death, failure, betrayal, sickness, disappointment—they cannot take our joy, because they cannot take our Jesus. Write this down! In Christ you have everything! He can give you a happiness that can never be taken, a grace that will never expire, and a wisdom that will ever increase. He is a fountain of living hope that will never be exhausted!
Read more Anxious for Nothing
Job 2
The Second Test: Health
1-3 One day when the angels came to report to God, Satan also showed up. God singled out Satan, saying, “And what have you been up to?” Satan answered God, “Oh, going here and there, checking things out.” Then God said to Satan, “Have you noticed my friend Job? There’s no one quite like him, is there—honest and true to his word, totally devoted to God and hating evil? He still has a firm grip on his integrity! You tried to trick me into destroying him, but it didn’t work.”
4-5 Satan answered, “A human would do anything to save his life. But what do you think would happen if you reached down and took away his health? He’d curse you to your face, that’s what.”
6 God said, “All right. Go ahead—you can do what you like with him. But mind you, don’t kill him.”
7-8 Satan left God and struck Job with terrible sores. Job was ulcers and scabs from head to foot. They itched and oozed so badly that he took a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself, then went and sat on a trash heap, among the ashes.
9 His wife said, “Still holding on to your precious integrity, are you? Curse God and be done with it!”
10 He told her, “You’re talking like an empty-headed fool. We take the good days from God—why not also the bad days?”
Not once through all this did Job sin. He said nothing against God.
Job’s Three Friends
11-13 Three of Job’s friends heard of all the trouble that had fallen on him. Each traveled from his own country—Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuhah, Zophar from Naamath—and went together to Job to keep him company and comfort him. When they first caught sight of him, they couldn’t believe what they saw—they hardly recognized him! They cried out in lament, ripped their robes, and dumped dirt on their heads as a sign of their grief. Then they sat with him on the ground. Seven days and nights they sat there without saying a word. They could see how rotten he felt, how deeply he was suffering.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Read: Romans 7:14–25
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[b] a slave to the law of sin.
Footnotes:
Romans 7:18 Or my flesh
Romans 7:25 Or in the flesh
INSIGHT
In Romans 7 the apostle Paul laments that sinful tendencies within us sometimes win out over righteous impulses. In what ways can we yield to the Holy Spirit’s power to experience more righteous living?
For further reading see ourdailyjourney.org/spirits-wind. -Dennis Fisher
We’ve Got the Power!
By Xochitl Dixon
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Galatians 5:25
The loud crackling noise startled me. Recognizing the sound, I raced to the kitchen. I’d accidently tapped the start button on the empty coffee maker. Unplugging the appliance, I grabbed the handle of the carafe. Then I touched the bottom of the container to ensure it wasn’t too hot to place on the tile counter. The smooth surface burned my fingertips, blistering my tender skin.
As my husband nursed my wound, I shook my head. I knew the glass would be hot. “I honestly do not know why I touched it,” I said.
The Holy Spirit transforms us through His love and by His grace.
My response after making such a mistake reminded me of Paul’s reaction to a more serious issue in Scripture—the nature of sin.
The apostle admits to not knowing why he does things he knows he shouldn’t do and doesn’t want to do (Rom. 7:15). Affirming that Scripture determines right and wrong (v. 7), he acknowledges the real, complex war constantly waging between the flesh and the spirit in the struggle against sin (vv. 15–23). Confessing his own weaknesses, he offers hope for victory now and forever (vv. 24–25).
When we surrender our lives to Christ, He gives us His Holy Spirit who empowers us to choose to do right (8:8–10). As He enables us to obey God’s Word, we can avoid the searing sin that separates us from the abundant life God promises those who love Him.
Lord, thanks for breaking the chains that used to bind us to a life controlled by our sinful nature.
The Holy Spirit transforms us through His love and by His grace.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, October 19, 2017
The Unheeded Secret
Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world." —John 18:36
The great enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ today is the idea of practical work that has no basis in the New Testament but comes from the systems of the world. This work insists upon endless energy and activities, but no private life with God. The emphasis is put on the wrong thing. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation….For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). It is a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives to be seen by others, while it is the innermost, personal area that reveals the power of a person’s life.
We must get rid of the plague of the spirit of this religious age in which we live. In our Lord’s life there was none of the pressure and the rushing of tremendous activity that we regard so highly today, and a disciple is to be like His Master. The central point of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with Him, not public usefulness to others.
It is not the practical activities that are the strength of this Bible Training College— its entire strength lies in the fact that here you are immersed in the truths of God to soak in them before Him. You have no idea of where or how God is going to engineer your future circumstances, and no knowledge of what stress and strain is going to be placed on you either at home or abroad. And if you waste your time in overactivity, instead of being immersed in the great fundamental truths of God’s redemption, then you will snap when the stress and strain do come. But if this time of soaking before God is being spent in getting rooted and grounded in Him, which may appear to be impractical, then you will remain true to Him whatever happens.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Recycling Your Garbage - #8029
It was exciting that first time I landed at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. There's the skyline of Manhattan out the window, and water all around us as the plane touched down on the runway. It was only after I had landed that my host in New York told me how they built LaGuardia Airport. He said, "Oh, they built it on the garbage of New York." Landfill in the bay created a base on which an airport could be built. By the way, on which my airplane just landed.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Recycling Your Garbage."
It's amazing what they can do with garbage, isn't it? They recycle what seems vile and useless and they make it into something useful. That's the very kind of miracle God's been doing for people for a long time, and He wants to do it for you.
This past summer God used the brokenness, the courage of a team of young Native Americans to bring unprecedented numbers of reservation young people to a commitment to Jesus Christ. I've seen it happen summer after summer. Some of the most powerful moments we experienced with our "On Eagles' Wings" team were when some of these young people, representing some 35 different tribes, stood in the middle of Indian villages and shared what they call their Hope Story. They poured out the pain of some horrific backgrounds, and then the incredible hope they have found in Jesus Christ. And kids who listen to no one listened to them, and by the hundreds, they gave themselves publicly to Jesus Christ.
One night, at a reservation outreach, Mary shared her heart-wrenching story of sexual abuse and the drugs and alcohol she used to sedate her pain. It's a story that's always hard for her to tell, but one which powerfully turns young people's hearts to Jesus. After telling her story at a second outreach, Mary came to me and said, "I can't believe how God uses the stuff I've been through to change so many lives."
That's it. Garbage, recycled by God, to help other people find life and find hope. In Genesis 50:20, our word for today from the Word of God, Joseph summarizes the perspective God has given him on the junk of his life. He's been nearly murdered by his brothers as a teenager, he's been sold into slavery, unjustly imprisoned in a foreign land, but ultimately rescued by God and made the assistant Pharaoh of Egypt, the second most powerful man in the world. In that position, his God-directed plans to prepare for a coming famine, save many lives in Egypt and even the lives of the brothers who betrayed him many years before. No betrayal and he never would have been in Egypt. No Egypt and many would have died, possibly even his own family.
So here's Joseph's summary of it all, explained to his brothers: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish...the saving of many lives." See, that's what God wants to do with all the garbage of your life - make it into something that can touch and heal many other lives.
If you'll release all that junk, all that pain to Jesus, He alone can heal it and He alone can redeem it, and He'll make it into a magnet for some other hurting lives. If you harbor it, it's just going to make you hard and bitter and largely useless in a wounded world. But if you surrender all that garbage to Jesus, He can turn it into a beautiful compassion, because you know how it feels. And that will cause many other struggling people to identify with you, to open their hearts to you, to trust you, and perhaps to let you lead them to Jesus. He's the One who was "a man of sorrows," the Bible says, "familiar with suffering," who "took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows." And the Bible says it is "by His wounds we are healed" (Isaiah 53:4-5).
Or in the words of a broken young Indian woman who has experienced His healing, He will "use the things you've been through to change so many lives."
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