Max Lucado Daily: BRING EVERYONE IN
People are prone to pecking orders. We love the high horse. They did in the first century. An impassable gulf yawned between Jews and Gentiles in the days of the early church. No Jew would have anything to do with a Gentile. They were unclean.
Unless that Jew, of course, was Jesus. Suspicions of a new order began to surface because of his curious conversation with the Canaanite woman. Her daughter was dying and her prayer was urgent. Yet her ancestry was Gentile. “I was sent only to help God’s lost sheep—the people of Israel,” Jesus told her. “That is true, Lord,” she replied, “but even dogs are allowed to eat the scraps that fall beneath their master’s table” (Matthew 15:24, 27 NLT).
Jesus healed the daughter and he made his position clear. He was more concerned about bringing everyone in than shutting certain people out!
From God is With You Every Day
Jeremiah 14
Time and Again We’ve Betrayed God
1-6 God’s Message that came to Jeremiah regarding the drought:
“Judah weeps,
her cities mourn.
The people fall to the ground, moaning,
while sounds of Jerusalem’s sobs rise up, up.
The rich people sent their servants for water.
They went to the cisterns, but the cisterns were dry.
They came back with empty buckets,
wringing their hands, shaking their heads.
All the farm work has stopped.
Not a drop of rain has fallen.
The farmers don’t know what to do.
They wring their hands, they shake their heads.
Even the doe abandons her fawn in the field
because there is no grass—
Eyes glazed over, on her last legs,
nothing but skin and bones.”
7-9 We know we’re guilty. We’ve lived bad lives—
but do something, God. Do it for your sake!
Time and time again we’ve betrayed you.
No doubt about it—we’ve sinned against you.
Hope of Israel! Our only hope!
Israel’s last chance in this trouble!
Why are you acting like a tourist,
taking in the sights, here today and gone tomorrow?
Why do you just stand there and stare,
like someone who doesn’t know what to do in a crisis?
But God, you are, in fact, here, here with us!
You know who we are—you named us!
Don’t leave us in the lurch.
10 Then God said of these people:
“Since they loved to wander this way and that,
never giving a thought to where they were going,
I will now have nothing more to do with them—
except to note their guilt and punish their sins.”
The Killing Fields
11-12 God said to me, “Don’t pray that everything will turn out all right for this people. When they skip their meals in order to pray, I won’t listen to a thing they say. When they redouble their prayers, bringing all kinds of offerings from their herds and crops, I’ll not accept them. I’m finishing them off with war and famine and disease.”
13 I said, “But Master, God! Their preachers have been telling them that everything is going to be all right—no war and no famine—that there’s nothing to worry about.”
14 Then God said, “These preachers are liars, and they use my name to cover their lies. I never sent them, I never commanded them, and I don’t talk with them. The sermons they’ve been handing out are sheer illusion, tissues of lies, whistlings in the dark.
15-16 “So this is my verdict on them: All the preachers who preach using my name as their text, preachers I never sent in the first place, preachers who say, ‘War and famine will never come here’—these preachers will die in war and by starvation. And the people to whom they’ve been preaching will end up as corpses, victims of war and starvation, thrown out in the streets of Jerusalem unburied—no funerals for them or their wives or their children! I’ll make sure they get the full brunt of all their evil.
17-18 “And you, Jeremiah, will say this to them:
“‘My eyes pour out tears.
Day and night, the tears never quit.
My dear, dear people are battered and bruised,
hopelessly and cruelly wounded.
I walk out into the fields,
shocked by the killing fields strewn with corpses.
I walk into the city,
shocked by the sight of starving bodies.
And I watch the preachers and priests
going about their business as if nothing’s happened!’”
19-22 God, have you said your final No to Judah?
Can you simply not stand Zion any longer?
If not, why have you treated us like this,
beaten us nearly to death?
We hoped for peace—
nothing good came from it;
We looked for healing—
and got kicked in the stomach.
We admit, O God, how badly we’ve lived,
and our ancestors, how bad they were.
We’ve sinned, they’ve sinned,
we’ve all sinned against you!
Your reputation is at stake! Don’t quit on us!
Don’t walk out and abandon your glorious Temple!
Remember your covenant.
Don’t break faith with us!
Can the no-gods of the godless nations cause rain?
Can the sky water the earth by itself?
You’re the one, O God, who does this.
So you’re the one for whom we wait.
You made it all,
you do it all.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, January 20, 2017
Read: Genesis 2:4–8
By the seventh day
God had finished his work.
On the seventh day
he rested from all his work.
God blessed the seventh day.
He made it a Holy Day
Because on that day he rested from his work,
all the creating God had done.
This is the story of how it all started,
of Heaven and Earth when they were created.
Adam and Eve
5-7 At the time God made Earth and Heaven, before any grasses or shrubs had sprouted from the ground—God hadn’t yet sent rain on Earth, nor was there anyone around to work the ground (the whole Earth was watered by underground springs)—God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!
8-9 Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
INSIGHT:
Who hasn’t found themselves taking the unexplainable mysteries of life for granted? Who doesn’t obsess from time to time over what we don’t have, rather than treasuring the breath of life given to us by an all-wise God who has chosen to share His life and joy with us? According to the great story of the Bible, that’s why our Creator breathed His own life into a handful of earth. He wants to share His eternal existence, His love, His joy with us. That’s why He came to our rescue and offers us a restored relationship with Him through Jesus Christ—a life of forgiveness and hope.
Breath of Life
By Amy Boucher Pye
Then the Lord God . . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Genesis 2:7
On a cold and frosty morning, as my daughter and I walked to school, we enjoyed seeing our breath turn to vapor. We giggled at the various steamy clouds we could each produce. I received the moment as a gift, reveling in being with her and being alive.
Our breath, which is usually invisible, was seen in the cold air, and it made me think about the Source of our breath and life—the Lord our Creator. For He who formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, giving him the breath of life, also gives life to us and to every living creature (Gen. 2:7). All things come from Him—even our very breath, which we inhale without even thinking about.
Jesus, we praise You and stand in awe of You.
We may be tempted, living with today’s conveniences and technology, to forget our beginnings and that God is the one who gives us life. But when we pause to remember that God is our Creator, we can build an attitude of thankfulness into our daily routines. We can ask Him for help and acknowledge the gift of life with humble, thankful hearts. May our gratitude spill out and touch others, so that they also may give thanks to the Lord for His goodness and faithfulness.
Dear heavenly Father, what an awesome and powerful God You are! You created life by Your very breath. We praise You and stand in awe of You. Thank You for Your creation.
Give thanks to God, our Creator, who gives us the breath of life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, January 20, 2017
Are You Fresh for Everything?
Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." —John 3:3
Sometimes we are fresh and eager to attend a prayer meeting, but do we feel that same freshness for such mundane tasks as polishing shoes?
Being born again by the Spirit is an unmistakable work of God, as mysterious as the wind, and as surprising as God Himself. We don’t know where it begins— it is hidden away in the depths of our soul. Being born again from above is an enduring, perpetual, and eternal beginning. It provides a freshness all the time in thinking, talking, and living— a continual surprise of the life of God. Staleness is an indication that something in our lives is out of step with God. We say to ourselves, “I have to do this thing or it will never get done.” That is the first sign of staleness. Do we feel fresh this very moment or are we stale, frantically searching our minds for something to do? Freshness is not the result of obedience; it comes from the Holy Spirit. Obedience keeps us “in the light as He is in the light…” (1 John 1:7).
Jealously guard your relationship with God. Jesus prayed “that they may be one just as We are one” — with nothing in between (John 17:22). Keep your whole life continually open to Jesus Christ. Don’t pretend to be open with Him. Are you drawing your life from any source other than God Himself? If you are depending on something else as your source of freshness and strength, you will not realize when His power is gone.
Being born of the Spirit means much more than we usually think. It gives us new vision and keeps us absolutely fresh for everything through the never-ending supply of the life of God.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, January 20, 2017
Changing a Heart - #7835
Dr. Christiaan Barnard was a doctor who made medical history. He performed the first successful heart transplant in human history. Since then, the procedure has become much more advanced as a way to extend the life of someone with a failing heart. I've got friends whose lives were radically changed by a heart transplant – an operation from which they recovered in surprisingly short time. I mean, it's pretty amazing to think that a surgeon can literally put a new heart in someone. Of course, heart transplants have been going on since long before Dr. Barnard's historic surgery.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Changing a Heart."
God's been in the business of changing hearts for a long time. If you know a heart that could use some changing right now, start praying for that miracle every day. You need to hear Ezekiel 36:26. It's our word for today from the Word of God, and the Lord explains the miracle of a heart transplant from heaven.
He says, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." So, God turns hard hearts into soft hearts. In Proverbs 21:1, the Bible says, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; He directs it like a watercourse wherever He pleases." One example of that is when the Jews were stuck in captivity in a foreign land, unable to go back to their homeland. But it says, "the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia." And so a pagan king opens the door for God's people to go home.
Our God is a heart-changing God. Recently, Bob came to me at a dinner and he showed me a letter his now 19-year-old daughter wrote when she was just 11. Bob is now a representative for a mission organization. But he said many years before, he was a lost and bitter rancher. He told me he was well on his way to becoming an alcoholic by the age of 15, he was into pornography, and he was ultimately so deep into drugs he thought the only good dose was an overdose. Then he married a Christian girl and he had three daughters, but he went on living for himself. Then he lost his home and 24,000 acres of ranchland that had been passed on to him by his father.
Bob said that on a morning in October, he would never forget, he was a bitter, drug-addicted rancher. What he didn't know was what was going on between his youngest daughter and God. At a camp in July of that same year, she wrote a letter to God. Here's what it said, "My dad isn't a Christian. I can't stand the thought of my dearly beloved Father going to hell and living in torment. Please help me." So, she prayed for her father's heart to change. That day, after two friends had asked him separately, "Why don't you take it to the Lord?' Bob finally got his 11-year-old daughter out of school to show him how he could get to Jesus. He was gloriously reborn that day and instantly transformed.
Our God is a heart-changing God. Why not believe Him to be that for you? Sometimes, God will work through something you say to the person you know, you love, whose heart needs changing. Other times, it's time to be still and just let God work. He'll let you know which time it is.
By the way, if you personally aren't in the market for a heart change, a heart that's become hardened by hurt, by sin, by pain, could I direct you to my Jesus, who said, "I've come to bind up the brokenhearted." Who said that He had "come to carry all your sin to a cross to die for it there." And, you know what's going to make a new you, a new dad, a new mom, a new son, a new daughter, a new husband, a new wife? It's going to be the new you that Jesus makes people. Tell Him, "Jesus, you're in charge from now on. I'm yours."
Go to our website. You'll find out there exactly how to begin your relationship with Him and be sure you do belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com. Maybe your new story can begin there today.
Right now, you might be about to give up hope that your situation will ever change because there's a person in it who seems they will never change. Don't underestimate heaven's Heart Surgeon. He does heart transplants often in answer to our prayers. And I can tell you, the results are miraculous!