Max Lucado Daily: BUT GOD CAN
When you feel helpless, where can you turn? I suggest you turn to one of Jesus’ most intriguing teachings about prayer!
Luke tells the story of a persistent neighbor looking to borrow bread at midnight. Imagine it’s you ringing the doorbell. The door opens. “What are you doing here?” he asks. You answer, “A friend of mine has arrived for a visit, and I’ve nothing for him to eat.”
Finally he takes you to his pantry. And, as a result, your surprise guest doesn’t have to go to bed hungry. All because you spoke up on behalf of someone else. This is intercessory prayer at its purest. This prayer gets God’s attention. If your cranky and disgruntled neighbor will help you out, how much more will God do?
From God is With You Every Day
Colossians 2
I want you to realize that I continue to work as hard as I know how for you, and also for the Christians over at Laodicea. Not many of you have met me face-to-face, but that doesn’t make any difference. Know that I’m on your side, right alongside you. You’re not in this alone.
2-4 I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”
5 I’m a long way off, true, and you may never lay eyes on me, but believe me, I’m on your side, right beside you. I am delighted to hear of the careful and orderly ways you conduct your affairs, and impressed with the solid substance of your faith in Christ.
From the Shadows to the Substance
6-7 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.
8-10 Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.
11-15 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.
16-17 So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.
18-19 Don’t tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are. They’re completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.
20-23 So, then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? “Don’t touch this! Don’t taste that! Don’t go near this!” Do you think things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they’re just another way of showing off, making yourselves look important.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Read: Romans 7:14–25
I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.
17-20 But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
21-23 It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
24 I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
25 The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
INSIGHT:
Although we are saved by grace, we often struggle to live up to our position as children of God. However, we can turn to Christ and find His sufficient help and grace to move beyond our worst selves and to stand in Him (vv. 24–25). How does it give you confidence to know that God is still at work in your life?
All Too Human
By Tim Gustafson
The trouble is with me, for I am all too human. Romans 7:14 NLT
British writer Evelyn Waugh wielded his words in a way that accentuated his character flaws. Eventually the novelist converted to Christianity, yet he still struggled. One day a woman asked him, “Mr. Waugh, how can you behave as you do and still call yourself a Christian?” He replied, “Madam, I may be as bad as you say. But believe me, were it not for my religion, I would scarcely be a human being.”
Waugh was waging the internal battle the apostle Paul describes: “I want to do what is right, but I can’t” (Rom. 7:18 nlt). He also says, “The trouble is not with the law . . . [It] is with me, for I am all too human” (v. 14 nlt). He further explains, “In my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me . . . . Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (vv. 22–24). And then the exultant answer: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25).
Teach us to rely on Your Holy Spirit. Make us more like Your Son each day.
When we come in faith to Christ, admitting our wrongdoing and need of a Savior, we immediately become a new creation. But our spiritual formation remains a lifelong journey. As John the disciple observed: “Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But . . . when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
Father, we bring our struggles to You because You know all about them, yet You love us anyway. Teach us to rely on Your Holy Spirit. Make us more like Your Son each day.
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. C. S. Lewis
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Look Again and Consecrate
If God so clothes the grass of the field…, will He not much more clothe you…? —Matthew 6:30
A simple statement of Jesus is always a puzzle to us because we will not be simple. How can we maintain the simplicity of Jesus so that we may understand Him? By receiving His Spirit, recognizing and relying on Him, and obeying Him as He brings us the truth of His Word, life will become amazingly simple. Jesus asks us to consider that “if God so clothes the grass of the field…” how “much more” will He clothe you, if you keep your relationship right with Him? Every time we lose ground in our fellowship with God, it is because we have disrespectfully thought that we knew better than Jesus Christ. We have allowed “the cares of this world” to enter in (Matthew 13:22), while forgetting the “much more” of our heavenly Father.
“Look at the birds of the air…” (Matthew 6:26). Their function is to obey the instincts God placed within them, and God watches over them. Jesus said that if you have the right relationship with Him and will obey His Spirit within you, then God will care for your “feathers” too.
“Consider the lilies of the field…” (Matthew 6:28). They grow where they are planted. Many of us refuse to grow where God plants us. Therefore, we don’t take root anywhere. Jesus said if we would obey the life of God within us, He would look after all other things. Did Jesus Christ lie to us? Are we experiencing the “much more” He promised? If we are not, it is because we are not obeying the life God has given us and have cluttered our minds with confusing thoughts and worries. How much time have we wasted asking God senseless questions while we should be absolutely free to concentrate on our service to Him? Consecration is the act of continually separating myself from everything except that which God has appointed me to do. It is not a one-time experience but an ongoing process. Am I continually separating myself and looking to God every day of my life?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Beware of bartering the Word of God for a more suitable conception of your own. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Light for Your Next Step - #7839
We were all nestled into our tent for the night as the campground fell silent after a busy day. We had zipped each of the kids into their sleeping bag. I had zipped up the tent and tied it securely. My wife and I were all settled into our sleeping bags for a good night's sleep. And then came the words, "I gotta' go potty." Great! Great! The bathroom was down the trail and over the hill. So, unzip my sleeping bag, unzip boy's sleeping bag, put on shoes, unzip the tent, untie the flaps – oh, and be sure you've got your lantern. Father and son make their way through the real darkness of the campground. They can't see the bathroom, but thanks to the light of their lantern, they make it to their goal in time.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Light for Your Next Step."
Actually, we didn't need to see the whole campground that night. We only needed to see our next step, and our lantern always showed us where that was. If you've got a Bible, you've got a lantern like that – one that will literally light up this day's path.
If you're just reading the Bible to fulfill your Christian duty or to accumulate religious information, you're missing the real power of what you've got in your hand. Those words in your Bible are God's light to show you how to navigate each new day. In Psalm 119:105, our word for today from the Word of God, the Bible says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path."
Now, how does that work? Let's look at a helpful example of this path-lighting from God's Word. In Acts 10, Peter gets a message from the Lord. "He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its' four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air." (Now, just a little footnote here; those were animals that Peter's Jewish upbringing had taught him were unclean.) "Then a voice told him, 'Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.' 'Surely not, Lord!' Peter replied. 'I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.' The voice spoke to him a second time, 'Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.'" O.K., that's God's word to Peter for that day. Peter's not sure what it means, but he's about to find out.
Peter was also raised to believe that Gentiles were unclean; he was to have no relationship with them. But this day God has prepared the heart of a Roman officer to find Christ, and Peter is called upon to be God's man to make the introductions. God used His Word to prepare Peter for what he was supposed to do that day. Now what has happened to Peter here is what God wants to happen to you and me on a daily basis.
As you read what He's written, He wants to use what you read to contextualize what He knows is coming in your day. So, you pray before you read, "Lord, You know what I need to know for today. Please show it to me." It's good to write down what God says to you in a spiritual journal. Boy, that makes a difference! Because when you do that, it will crystallize His message and it will help you remember it. Then, as your day unfolds, He keeps interpreting this days' events by referring your mind and heart back to what He said to you in His Word. He gives you the light of His Word to outfit you for the experiences of your day.
Listen, it's nothing to hear me say I want to have A Word With You today. It's when God says it that it really matters, and He wants to. He says, "I'm the Lord God, and I want to have A Word With You today." Let that word guide your day.
This makes studying God's Word not boring. It makes it pretty exciting, knowing you are getting God's insight, God's sneak preview, God's preparation for what God knows is coming. That's pretty awesome stuff. Why would you ever head out into life's dark path without the light, without that revealing word from heaven that will show you where to walk!
