Max Lucado Daily: A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Pigeonholing permits us to wash our hands and leave. As long as we can categorize people, place them in labeled boxes, we can dismiss them. “Oh, I know John. He’s an alcoholic.” Translation: Why can’t he control himself? Categorizing others creates distance and gives us a convenient strategy for avoiding involvement.
Jesus was all about including people. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14 MSG). His Facebook page included the likes of Zacchaeus the Ponzimeister and Matthew the IRS agent. Jesus spent thirty-three years walking in the mess of this world. The Scriptures say, “When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity, took on the status of a slave, and became human!” (Philippians 2:6-7 MSG). His example sends this message, Don’t call any person unfit!
From God is With You Every Day
Jeremiah 24
Two Baskets of Figs
1-2 God showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of the Temple of God. This was after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah from Jerusalem into exile in Babylon, along with the leaders of Judah, the craftsmen, and the skilled laborers. In one basket the figs were of the finest quality, ripe and ready to eat. In the other basket the figs were rotten, so rotten they couldn’t be eaten.
3 God said to me, “Jeremiah, what do you see?”
“Figs,” I said. “Excellent figs of the finest quality, and also rotten figs, so rotten they can’t be eaten.”
4-6 Then God told me, “This is the Message from the God of Israel: The exiles from here that I’ve sent off to the land of the Babylonians are like the good figs, and I’ll make sure they get good treatment. I’ll keep my eye on them so that their lives are good, and I’ll bring them back to this land. I’ll build them up, not tear them down; I’ll plant them, not uproot them.
7 “And I’ll give them a heart to know me, God. They’ll be my people and I’ll be their God, for they’ll have returned to me with all their hearts.
8-10 “But like the rotten figs, so rotten they can’t be eaten, is Zedekiah king of Judah. Rotten figs—that’s how I’ll treat him and his leaders, along with the survivors here and those down in Egypt. I’ll make them something that the whole world will look on as disgusting—repugnant outcasts, their names used as curse words wherever in the world I drive them. And I’ll make sure they die like flies—from war, starvation, disease, whatever—until the land I once gave to them and their ancestors is completely rid of them.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Read: 1 John 4:9–16
God Is Love
7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
13-16 This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
INSIGHT:
In today’s reading the word for love is the Greek noun agape, which speaks of the highest form of love imaginable, a love that seeks the welfare of the other even at great personal cost. John reminds us that the ultimate evidence of God’s love for us is seen in the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf (1 John 4:9). John then says that our response to God’s love should be our self-sacrificing love for one another as fellow Christ-followers (v. 11). His application of God’s love concludes with a reminder that our ability to love one another is dependent upon His love being revealed and “made complete in us” (v. 12). Our expression of the Father’s love for us in our relationships will be a result of what the Holy Spirit is producing in our hearts.
To learn more about the love of God, take a look at the Discovery Series booklet God Is Love: Reflections on the Character of God at discoveryseries.org/q0612.
Love Revealed
By Jennifer Benson Schuldt
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 1 John 4:9
When a series of pink “I love you” signs mysteriously appeared in the town of Welland, Ontario, local reporter Maryanne Firth decided to investigate. Her sleuthing turned up nothing. Weeks later, new signs appeared featuring the name of a local park along with a date and time.
Accompanied by a crowd of curious townspeople, Firth went to the park at the appointed time. There, she met a man wearing a suit who had cleverly concealed his face. Imagine her surprise when he handed her a bouquet and proposed marriage! The mystery man was Ryan St. Denis—her boyfriend. She happily accepted.
Dear God, help my life to demonstrate my love for You.
St. Denis’s expression of love toward his fiancée may seem a bit over-the-top, but God’s expression of love for us is nothing short of extravagant! “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).
Jesus is not merely a token of love, like a rose passed from one person to another. He is the divine human who willingly gave up His life so that anyone who believes in Him for salvation can have an everlasting covenant relationship with God. Nothing can separate a Christian “from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).
Dear God, thank You for showing me, in the greatest way possible, that You love me. Help my life to demonstrate my love for You.
We know how much God loves us because He sent His Son to save us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
The Discipline of Hearing
Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. —Matthew 10:27
Sometimes God puts us through the experience and discipline of darkness to teach us to hear and obey Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and God puts us into “the shadow of His hand” until we learn to hear Him (Isaiah 49:2). “Whatever I tell you in the dark…” — pay attention when God puts you into darkness, and keep your mouth closed while you are there. Are you in the dark right now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? If so, then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood— darkness is the time to listen. Don’t talk to other people about it; don’t read books to find out the reason for the darkness; just listen and obey. If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else once you are back in the light.
After every time of darkness, we should experience a mixture of delight and humiliation. If there is only delight, I question whether we have really heard God at all. We should experience delight for having heard God speak, but mostly humiliation for having taken so long to hear Him! Then we will exclaim, “How slow I have been to listen and understand what God has been telling me!” And yet God has been saying it for days and even weeks. But once you hear Him, He gives you the gift of humiliation, which brings a softness of heart— a gift that will always cause you to listen to God now.
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
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Transmitters, Receivers, and a Happy Marriage - #7852
You're blessed if you have a great Christian radio station in your area. We do. It's wonderful if you can hear it. A lot of people can. But then I've talked with a friend who lives another direction who says she just can't pick up that station where she is. But then I've met people who live in a part of the area where the station has a strong signal, and they've never heard it either. They've never turned to that frequency, that's why. Important information-eternal information-is being communicated over that station. But a lot of people are missing it; some because the transmitter isn't transmitting their direction. And others because their receiver isn't turned to that frequency!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Transmitters, Receivers, and a Happy Marriage."
For radio communication to take place the transmitter has to be beamed your direction and you have to have your receiver tuned to receive it. Actually, marriage works that same way. Communication usually breaks down because of a problem with the way things are being transmitted, or the way they are being received.
There was an article in the Journal of Marriage and the Family that basically reached that conclusion. It was the result of a study of married couples over a period of years and kind of gave ways to predict marital success and failure. One newspaper report quoted a lead researcher as saying this, "We found that only those newlywed men who are accepting of influence from their wives are ending up in happy, stable marriages." He went on to say that the autocrats, who failed to listen to their wives' complaints, greeting them with stonewalling, or contempt, or belligerence, were doomed from the beginning.
Marriages get in trouble when the husband's receiver is not tuned to the messages his wife is trying to transmit. He'll either not tune to her frequency or he just shuts it off when he doesn't like it or doesn't care about what he's hearing. This researcher goes on to say, "If you want to change marriages, you have to talk about the 'emotionally intelligent' husband. Some men are really good at accepting a wife's influence, at finding something reasonable in a partner's complaint to agree with."
Now some wife is listening right now and she's saying, "Yeah! Tell the old boy! Yeah!" Well, the study doesn't let wives completely off the hook. The report says, "Women who couched their complaints in a gentle, soothing, perhaps even humorous approach to the husband were more likely to have happy marriages than those who were more belligerent."
So, the transmitter has something to do with marital happiness, too! A wise woman will not just blast her message at top volume, thus causing the listener to turn it off. She will pick the right time and she'll say it gently and non-accusingly. You know, God's been saying this for 2000 years. Our word for today from the Word of God: 1 Peter 3:7. First, the receiver: "Husbands, be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect." I can think of no greater way for a husband to show respect to his wife than to listen to her, to be open to her input, to value her opinions, to hear her heart, not just her words.
Then 1 Peter 3:4 is addressed to wives, the transmitter. "Your beauty should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." There's that gentleness that communicates in such a way that a man doesn't feel attacked.
That marriage study summarized their findings this way, "Men have to be more accepting of a woman's position, and women have to be more gentle in starting up discussions." A receiver tuned to his wife's frequency, a transmitter sending messages with gentleness, clarity, and sensitivity in the direction of her man. It takes both to make a marriage what God has destined it to be.