Max Lucado Daily: JESUS KNOWS HOW YOU FEEL
Remember when you sought a night’s rest and got a colicky baby? Remember when you sought to catch up at the office and got even further behind? And you can add to the list of interruptions sorrow, excitement, and bedlam. Sound familiar? Take comfort—it happened to Jesus too.
You may have trouble believing that. You probably believe Jesus knows what it means to endure heavy-duty tragedies. You’re no doubt convinced Jesus is acquainted with sorrow and has wrestled with fear. Most people accept that. But can God relate to the hassles and headaches of my life? Of your life? For some reason this is harder to believe. Jesus knows how you feel. His eyes have grown weary. His heart has grown heavy. He has had to climb out of bed with a sore throat. He has been kept awake late and has gotten up early. Jesus knows how you feel!
From Lucado Inspirational Reader
Job 11
Zophar’s Counsel
How Wisdom Looks from the Inside
1-6 Now it was the turn of Zophar from Naamath:
“What a flood of words! Shouldn’t we put a stop to it?
Should this kind of loose talk be permitted?
Job, do you think you can carry on like this and we’ll say nothing?
That we’ll let you rail and mock and not step in?
You claim, ‘My doctrine is sound
and my conduct impeccable.’
How I wish God would give you a piece of his mind,
tell you what’s what!
I wish he’d show you how wisdom looks from the inside,
for true wisdom is mostly ‘inside.’
But you can be sure of this,
you haven’t gotten half of what you deserve.
7-12 “Do you think you can explain the mystery of God?
Do you think you can diagram God Almighty?
God is far higher than you can imagine,
far deeper than you can comprehend,
Stretching farther than earth’s horizons,
far wider than the endless ocean.
If he happens along, throws you in jail
then hauls you into court, can you do anything about it?
He sees through vain pretensions,
spots evil a long way off—
no one pulls the wool over his eyes!
Hollow men, hollow women, will wise up
about the same time mules learn to talk.
Reach Out to God
13-20 “Still, if you set your heart on God
and reach out to him,
If you scrub your hands of sin
and refuse to entertain evil in your home,
You’ll be able to face the world unashamed
and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless.
You’ll forget your troubles;
they’ll be like old, faded photographs.
Your world will be washed in sunshine,
every shadow dispersed by dayspring.
Full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again;
you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy.
Expansive, without a care in the world,
you’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing.
But the wicked will see none of this.
They’re headed down a dead-end road
with nothing to look forward to—nothing.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, November 03, 2017
Read: Psalm 13
Psalm 13[a]
For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Footnotes:
Psalm 13:1 In Hebrew texts 13:1-6 is numbered 13:2-6.
INSIGHT
We may be surprised to hear a cry of abandonment coming from David, a man who knew God intimately. Psalm 13 describes David’s struggle. He was threatened by powerful enemies and distressed by God’s seeming prolonged apathy and absence, feeling forsaken in the time of his greatest need. “How long, Lord?” he asks. David questioned if God would ever come to his rescue (vv. 1–2). Even as he felt the sting of abandonment, David turned his turmoil over to God, asking Him for a deeper understanding of his circumstances (vv. 3–4). Anchoring himself in God’s unfailing covenantal love, David renews his trust in God (vv. 5–6).
Like David, you may be going through a rough patch, engulfed by feelings of dread and abandonment. God may seem silent, but He is never absent. Scripture confirms He will never leave or forsake anyone who calls on Him (Heb. 13:5–6). - Sim Kay Tee
Powerful Baby
By Tim Gustafson
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? . . . But I trust in your unfailing love. Psalm 13:1, 5
The first time I saw him, I cried. He looked like a perfect newborn asleep in his crib. But we knew he would never wake up. Not until he was in the arms of Jesus.
He clung to life for several months. Then his mother told us of his death in a heart-wrenching email. She wrote of “that deep, deep pain that groans inside you.” Then she said, “How deeply God carved His work of love into our hearts through that little life! What a powerful life it was!”
God can do the most with what we think is least.
Powerful? How could she say that?
This family’s precious little boy showed them—and us—that we must depend on God for everything. Especially when things go horribly wrong! The hard yet comforting truth is that God meets us in our pain. He knows the grief of losing a Son.
In our deepest pain, we turn to the songs of David because he writes out of his own grief. “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?” he asked (Ps. 13:2). “Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death” (v. 3). Yet David could give his biggest questions to God. “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation” (v. 5).
Only God can bring ultimate significance to our most tragic events.
Where do I turn when a crisis hits me? Do I ever get angry with God when facing grief and loss? Am I afraid to share my true emotions with Him? Have I ever asked God for His peace?
God can do the most with what we think is least.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, November 03, 2017
A Bondservant of Jesus
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me… —Galatians 2:20
These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, “…for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). That is what makes a strong saint.
Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is— will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable— “I have been crucified with Christ….”
The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.
One student a year who hears God’s call would be sufficient for God to have called the Bible Training College into existence. This college has no value as an organization, not even academically. Its sole value for existence is for God to help Himself to lives. Will we allow Him to help Himself to us, or are we more concerned with our own ideas of what we are going to be?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We can understand the attributes of God in other ways, but we can only understand the Father’s heart in the Cross of Christ. The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 558 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, November 03, 2017
Living Proof - #8040
Well, it's been kind of a long time since our daughter was a little girl, all grown up, married, a mom and all. But the other day she told me about a Bible verse she learned as a little girl and has never forgotten. You've probably heard it, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31). Then she told me why she's never forgotten it. One day when she was pretty young I brought her to my office, and at lunchtime, we walked downtown to get something to eat. And, as Lisa remembers very vividly, we passed this storefront that must have been a fortune teller's place. There was a picture of a big human palm in the window, signifying that the occupant did palm reading. Now, Lisa tells that I explained to her what that all meant-and that night she got to thinking about it. And really she was too scared to go to sleep. At which point she says I knelt next to her bed and I gave her a word for today from the Word of God: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" She went to sleep repeating those words. She said she never forgot them, and she's hung onto them many times in the years to come.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living Proof."
Lisa said to me, "Dad, you know why that Bible verse became part of me? Because it was linked to a real experience." There's nothing new about that. That's how God's been telling parents to make God real to their children for 3,000 years.
Our word for today from the Word of God, Deuteronomy 6:5-7 - instructions for parents who are trying to raise children in a morally confusing and increasingly pagan culture. Does that sound familiar at all? Well, that was the situation in the time this statement was written, and hey, it's an awful lot like our situation today. And you know what God's parenting strategy is? Well, it's still the same.
Here's what it says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Notice here, first of all, that God says you should be showing your children a love-relationship with God, not a religion. He goes on, "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children." OK, impress your son or daughter with them-don't just tell them about it. How do you do that? Here's what it says, "Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up."
So, God's saying show them your Lord, show them His ways, not just in formal spiritual settings, but in the casual classroom of everyday life. This is spontaneous stuff, it's not preplanned. It's teaching that looks for, that prays for teachable moments to arise in a child's life, and then gently introduces God's statement into that situation. When a verse is a response to a real-life experience, and when your child can use it to handle that experience, that verse becomes part of them! They've just experienced living proof that God and His Word are the real deal.
It's a basic principle of learning that we learn what we live. And that we don't really learn something until we're in a situation where we really need it. Just before the first Gulf War, I heard a soldier admit that most of them had paid little attention when chemical warfare was talked about in basic training-but now when it was covered, they were taking notes and listening intently. Why? Because suddenly they were in a situation where that might just be needed.
So God advises parents to communicate His truth in real-life situations: sitting at home, walking or driving somewhere together, when you're getting up, when you're wrapping up the day. It's those spontaneous lessons-responses to things that happen in the course of a day. Those are the ones that are never forgotten.
So look for and pray for those wonderful, teachable moments in the life of your child. And let the daily experiences of your child's life be the blackboard on which you write the powerful words of God.
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