Max Lucado Daily: BUILD YOUR HOUSE ON THE ROCK
Obedience leads to blessing. Disobedience leads to trouble!
Remember Jesus’ parable about the two builders who each built a house? One built on cheap, easy-to-access-sand. The other built on costly, difficult-to-reach rock. The second construction project demanded more time and expense, but when the spring rains turned the creek into a gulley washer. . .guess which builder enjoyed a blessing and which experienced trouble?
According to Jesus, the wise builder is “whoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them” (Matthew 7:24). The difference between the two was not knowledge and ignorance but obedience and disobedience. Security comes when we put God’s precepts into practice. We’re only as strong as our obedience.
From God is With You Every Day
Acts 27:27-44
27-29 On the fourteenth night, adrift somewhere on the Adriatic Sea, at about midnight the sailors sensed that we were approaching land. Sounding, they measured a depth of 120 feet, and shortly after that ninety feet. Afraid that we were about to run aground, they threw out four anchors and prayed for daylight.
30-32 Some of the sailors tried to jump ship. They let down the lifeboat, pretending they were going to set out more anchors from the bow. Paul saw through their guise and told the centurion and his soldiers, “If these sailors don’t stay with the ship, we’re all going down.” So the soldiers cut the lines to the lifeboat and let it drift off.
33-34 With dawn about to break, Paul called everyone together and proposed breakfast: “This is the fourteenth day we’ve gone without food. None of us has felt like eating! But I urge you to eat something now. You’ll need strength for the rescue ahead. You’re going to come out of this without even a scratch!”
35-38 He broke the bread, gave thanks to God, passed it around, and they all ate heartily—276 of us, all told! With the meal finished and everyone full, the ship was further lightened by dumping the grain overboard.
39-41 At daybreak, no one recognized the land—but then they did notice a bay with a nice beach. They decided to try to run the ship up on the beach. They cut the anchors, loosed the tiller, raised the sail, and ran before the wind toward the beach. But we didn’t make it. Still far from shore, we hit a reef and the ship began to break up.
42-44 The soldiers decided to kill the prisoners so none could escape by swimming, but the centurion, determined to save Paul, stopped them. He gave orders for anyone who could swim to dive in and go for it, and for the rest to grab a plank. Everyone made it to shore safely.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Read: Romans 8:28–30
26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
29-30 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
INSIGHT:
“All things” (Rom. 8:28) is a phrase that treats the seemingly good and bad events of life as a whole. The idea is that there is a dynamic interaction between the good and bad to bring a desired outcome, though this positive outcome may not yet be visible. If we consider a young man nailed to a cross dying in agony, we might wonder if anything good could be found there. But if we understand that this is Jesus Christ atoning for the sins of those who love Him, we can see how even this terrible event worked together for good. God works for “the good” of those who are true believers in Jesus Christ. They demonstrate the authenticity of their faith because they respond back with love to the One who first loved them (1 John 4:19).
Work Together
By Marvin Williams
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
My wife makes an amazing pot roast dinner. She takes raw meat, along with raw sliced white and sweet potatoes, celery, mushrooms, carrots, and onions and throws them into the slow cooker. Six or seven hours later the aroma fills the house, and the first taste is a delight. It is always to my advantage to wait until the ingredients in the slow cooker work together to achieve something they could not achieve individually.
When Paul used the phrase “work together” in the context of suffering, he used the word from which we get our word synergy. He wrote, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). He wanted the Romans to know that God, who didn’t cause their suffering, would cause all their circumstances to cooperate with His divine plan—for their ultimate good. The good to which Paul referred was not the temporal blessings of health, wealth, admiration, or success, but being “conformed to the image of [God’s] Son” (v. 29).
May we wait patiently and confidently before our heavenly Father. He wants to make us like Jesus.
May we wait patiently and confidently because our heavenly Father is taking all the suffering, all the distress, all the evil, and causing them to work together for His glory and our spiritual good. He wants to make us like Jesus.
Read 2 Corinthians 12:9, Philippians 1:6, and 1 Peter 5:10. What encouragement did you find for tough times?
The growth we gain from waiting on God is often greater than the answer or result we desire.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
What My Obedience to God Costs Other People
As they led Him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon…, and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus. —Luke 23:26
If we obey God, it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the pain begins. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything— it is a delight. But to those who do not love Him, our obedience does cost a great deal. If we obey God, it will mean that other people’s plans are upset. They will ridicule us as if to say, “You call this Christianity?” We could prevent the suffering, but not if we are obedient to God. We must let the cost be paid.
When our obedience begins to cost others, our human pride entrenches itself and we say, “I will never accept anything from anyone.” But we must, or disobey God. We have no right to think that the type of relationships we have with others should be any different from those the Lord Himself had (see Luke 8:1-3).
A lack of progress in our spiritual life results when we try to bear all the costs ourselves. And actually, we cannot. Because we are so involved in the universal purposes of God, others are immediately affected by our obedience to Him. Will we remain faithful in our obedience to God and be willing to suffer the humiliation of refusing to be independent? Or will we do just the opposite and say, “I will not cause other people to suffer”? We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord. If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience. We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him.
Beware of the inclination to dictate to God what consequences you would allow as a condition of your obedience to Him.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is in the middle that human choices are made; the beginning and the end remain with God. The decrees of God are birth and death, and in between those limits man makes his own distress or joy. Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Satan's High Value Targets - #7828
It may be a common term in the military, but I don't think I ever heard it before until I saw an interview some years ago with some American soldiers who were working to establish an air base at Kandahar in Afghanistan. They were busy finding and clearing land mines, repairing and expanding the runway – and, at the same time, carefully defending their perimeter. The soldiers pointed out that there were still Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters hiding out – and waiting for an opportunity, of course, to do some serious damage. That's when one soldier referred to what he called "high value targets". He said the enemy still had the capability to take out some "high value target" like an incoming aircraft, for example.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Satan's High Value Targets."
It makes sense – an enemy does not have unlimited capability or ammunition, so he's going to look for a high value target to attack. Especially if that enemy is the ultimate terrorist, the devil himself. He takes careful aim and he devotes special attention to bringing down what he considers a high value target. Maybe like you.
It's interesting that the familiar verse about the devil "prowling around like a lion, looking for someone to devour" is in a passage that is primarily about Christian leaders. Those who are making a difference – or are about to make a difference – for Jesus Christ, they're the ones who become special targets for enemy attack.
In Acts 19, the sons of a Jewish priest watch how Paul casts out demons in the name of Jesus, so they decide they'll give it a try. The Bible says, "The evil spirit answered them, 'Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?" (Acts 19:15). The demon-possessed man then jumped on those boys and nearly beat them to death.
Notice, there are names that have made it onto hell's "watch list". Paul was on that list. In a way, I guess it's one of life's great honors to have made it onto hell's target list, to be considered by the devil someone who could do a lot of damage to his plans. And what an insult to realize they've never heard of you in hell!
Who does Satan consider high value targets? Well, we can't know for sure, but we can make some Biblically educated guesses. A parent who is raising his or her children to love and serve Jesus, or someone who has stepped up to spiritual leadership – or who is considering it, or any believer who is – or who could be – a warrior for Christ, who could end up leading people away from hell and toward heaven. Your name may be never known widely on earth, but your name may be very well known in hell, because of the difference you're making.
Which leads us to Ephesians 6, beginning with verse 11, our word for today from the Word of God: "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. Put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground." You can't afford to be spiritually careless about what you watch, what you listen to, what you say, what you laugh at, who you hang out with, and what you allow into your mind or your heart.
You cannot afford to be careless about how you're raising your family, how you're handling your money, about telling the truth, and about avoiding temptation. You are more valuable to the work of God, my friend, than you know. And you are more in Satan's sights than you know.
If you stand your ground, if you put on God's armor, if you keep your eyes on Jesus, you have nothing to fear from the enemy's artillery. But you need to remember that you are not on a peacetime mission where you can be casual and careless. We are at war and you're a target.
Don't hand the enemy any ammunition to shoot you with. It's not just your life that's at stake. It's all those lives that your life is going to touch.