Max Lucado Daily: A FINISHED WORK
Do you want to go to heaven? It doesn’t matter how religious you are or how many rules you keep. You need a new birth; you need to be “born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5-6 NLT).
Religious rule keeping can sap your strength. It’s endless! No prison is as endless as the prison of perfection. Her inmates never know when they are finished. Christ, however, gifts you with a finished work. He fulfilled the law for you at the Cross. Gone is the fear that having done everything, you might not have done enough. You climb the stairs, not by your strength, but his.
God pledges to help those who stop trying to help themselves. “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6 NIV). God will change you, my friend, from the inside out!
From Next Door Savior
Titus 2
A God-Filled Life
1-6 Your job is to speak out on the things that make for solid doctrine. Guide older men into lives of temperance, dignity, and wisdom, into healthy faith, love, and endurance. Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior. Also, guide the young men to live disciplined lives.
7-8 But mostly, show them all this by doing it yourself, incorruptible in your teaching, your words solid and sane. Then anyone who is dead set against us, when he finds nothing weird or misguided, might eventually come around.
9-10 Guide slaves into being loyal workers, a bonus to their masters—no back talk, no petty thievery. Then their good character will shine through their actions, adding luster to the teaching of our Savior God.
11-14 God’s readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation’s available for everyone! We’re being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears. He offered himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark, rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people he can be proud of, energetic in goodness.
15 Tell them all this. Build up their courage, and discipline them if they get out of line. You’re in charge. Don’t let anyone put you down.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Read: Psalm 1:1–3
How well God must like you—
you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon,
you don’t slink along Dead-End Road,
you don’t go to Smart-Mouth College.
2-3 Instead you thrill to God’s Word,
you chew on Scripture day and night.
You’re a tree replanted in Eden,
bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf,
always in blossom.
INSIGHT:
This pictorial psalm with its word imagery is a suitable introduction for the entire library of prayer, praise, and reflection we know as the book of Psalms. In contrast to “the world” is the believer’s joy and pursuit of gleaning gems of spiritual truth in the Word of God. The law of the Lord is his object of meditation. The Hebrew word for meditate means to “digest over and over again like a cow who chews its cud.” This is a spiritual preoccupation that draws the believer to the Word both day and night (v. 2). The analogy of a “tree planted by streams of water” (v. 3) pictures for us the life-giving water and nutrients of the soil that cause plant life to flourish. The result of a life so rooted in the Word is the overflow of fruitfulness.
Bearing Good Fruit
By Peter Chin
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season. Psalm 1:3
The view from my airplane window was striking: a narrow ribbon of ripening wheat fields and orchards wending between two barren mountains. Running through the valley was a river—life-giving water, without which there would be no fruit.
Just as a bountiful harvest depends on a source of clean water, the quality of the “fruit” in my life—my words, actions, and attitude—depends on my spiritual nourishment. The psalmist describes this in Psalm 1: The person “whose delight is in the law of the Lord . . . is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season” (vv. 1–3). And Paul writes in Galatians 5 that those who walk in step with the Spirit are marked by “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (vv. 22–23).
God’s Spirit lives in His people, in order to work through them.
Sometimes my perspective on my circumstances turns sour, or my actions and words become persistently unkind. There is no good fruit, and I realize I haven’t spent time being quiet before the words of my God. But when the rhythm of my days is rooted in reliance on Him, I bear good fruit. Patience and gentleness characterize my interactions with others; it’s easier to choose gratitude over complaint.
The God who has revealed Himself to us is our source of strength, wisdom, joy, understanding, and peace (Ps. 119:28, 98, 111, 144, 165). As we steep our souls in the words that point us to Him, the work of God’s Spirit will be evident in our lives.
God’s Spirit lives in His people, in order to work through them.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, March 28, 2017
Isn’t There Some Misunderstanding?
"Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to Him, "…are You going there again?" —John 11:7-8
Just because I don’t understand what Jesus Christ says, I have no right to determine that He must be mistaken in what He says. That is a dangerous view, and it is never right to think that my obedience to God’s directive will bring dishonor to Jesus. The only thing that will bring dishonor is not obeying Him. To put my view of His honor ahead of what He is plainly guiding me to do is never right, even though it may come from a real desire to prevent Him from being put to an open shame. I know when the instructions have come from God because of their quiet persistence. But when I begin to weigh the pros and cons, and doubt and debate enter into my mind, I am bringing in an element that is not of God. This will only result in my concluding that His instructions to me were not right. Many of us are faithful to our ideas about Jesus Christ, but how many of us are faithful to Jesus Himself? Faithfulness to Jesus means that I must step out even when and where I can’t see anything (see Matthew 14:29). But faithfulness to my own ideas means that I first clear the way mentally. Faith, however, is not intellectual understanding; faith is a deliberate commitment to the Person of Jesus Christ, even when I can’t see the way ahead.
Are you debating whether you should take a step of faith in Jesus, or whether you should wait until you can clearly see how to do what He has asked? Simply obey Him with unrestrained joy. When He tells you something and you begin to debate, it is because you have a misunderstanding of what honors Him and what doesn’t. Are you faithful to Jesus, or faithful to your ideas about Him? Are you faithful to what He says, or are you trying to compromise His words with thoughts that never came from Him? “Whatever He says to you, do it” (John 2:5).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves. The Place of Help, 1051 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Do - #7882
Professional tennis star-a nun. What? Sounds like two different stories doesn't it? In this case, it's the same life story. Andrea Jaeger first picked up a tennis racket at the age of eight. By 14, she was a tennis pro. Soon she was challenging tennis greats like Chris Evert and Tracy Austin; she was ranked number two in the world. Then came a serious shoulder injury that required seven surgeries and she was forced to retire. She took her prize money, she moved to Colorado, and started a charitable foundation that helps sick, abused, and at-risk children. So she became an Episcopal nun, and she was actually burying her life in a ministry to needy children. According to USA Today, after her injury she was told, "Your life's over. You've failed. You'll never amount to anything." Oh, were they wrong. The article on her new life concluded this way: "Her name will never be etched on Grand Slam hardware, but she can live with that. 'It's like I have kids' names in my heart,' and she says, 'That is life's trophy.'"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Do."
Priorities. They keep getting jumbled, don't they? Stuff that really matters slips to the edges, and stuff that really doesn't matter much fills up our life. Until something happens that reminds us what really matters; like a tragedy, a funeral, or some kind of wakeup call. There was a little saying I heard so many times as a teenager that I think I became immune to it. But it's still packed with truth that can give you the most significant, most satisfying life possible. It simply says, "Only one life, 'twill soon be past; only what's done for Christ will last."
A tennis pro turned angel of mercy said the trophy she wants for life is those "names in her heart." The Apostle Paul was thinking like that when he penned our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20. He's looking ahead to eternity where only things that last forever will survive. He said to the people he had introduced to Jesus Christ, "What is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy." See, Paul had names in his heart; the names of people who were going to be in heaven because he loved them enough to tell them about Jesus.
I hope you have names like that. Do you? There's something so much more important than a championship, or a scholarship, or a business accomplishment. And that's the people who will be in heaven forever because you introduced them to your Jesus. We pour out so much of our life-energy into things that won't last. But the people you work with every day, go to school with every day, recreate with, live around; those are people who will live forever in heaven or hell. For some, you are God's designated rescuer, positioned in their life by Jesus to be their hope of knowing about Jesus. And it starts when you allow God to burn in your heart the names of people He wants you to reach. You carry those names in your heart all day, every day. You pray for those names in your heart every day. You ask God for open doors to tell them about Jesus. You look for those open doors, and you go through them when they open.
The great legacy of your life will be the names you carry in your heart. Because when you rescue someone spiritually, that name in your heart is written by God in His Book of Life in heaven. And you can't do anything more important or more lasting than that.
The prophet Daniel tells us about the two groups of people we will see on Judgment Day: "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." Then he explains the part you could play in helping to change someone's eternal address: "Those who lead many to righteousness, (will shine) like the stars for ever and ever" (Daniel 12:3). Now, that is a life that matters.