Max Lucado Daily: GOD’S VISION IN GOD’S LAND
Joshua 21:45 says, “Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass.” Joshua and his men went from dry land to the Promised Land, from manna to feasts, from arid deserts to fertile fields. They inherited their inheritance: the glory days of Israel. This is God’s vision for your life. You, at full throttle. You, as victor over the Jerichos and giants.
Paul describes it as a life in which “Christ’s love has the first and last word in everything we do” (2 Corinthians 5:14). A life in which Paul says, “we do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:16). A life defined by grace, refined by challenge, and aligned with a heavenly call. In God’s plan, in God’s land…God’s promises outweigh personal problems. Victory becomes a way of life! Your glory days await you!
From Glory Days
Ezekiel 6
Turn Israel into Wasteland
1-7 Then the Word of God came to me: “Son of man, now turn and face the mountains of Israel and preach against them: ‘O Mountains of Israel, listen to the Message of God, the Master. God, the Master, speaks to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and the valleys: I’m about to destroy your sacred god and goddess shrines. I’ll level your altars, bust up your sun-god pillars, and kill your people as they bow down to your no-god idols. I’ll stack the dead bodies of Israelites in front of your idols and then scatter your bones around your shrines. Every place where you’ve lived, the towns will be torn down and the pagan shrines demolished—altars busted up, idols smashed, all your custom-made sun-god pillars in ruins. Corpses everywhere you look! Then you’ll know that I am God.
8-10 “‘But I’ll let a few escape the killing as you are scattered through other lands and nations. In the foreign countries where they’re taken as prisoners of war, they’ll remember me. They’ll realize how devastated I was by their betrayals, by their voracious lust for gratifying themselves in their idolatries. They’ll be disgusted with their evil ways, disgusting to God in the way they’ve lived. They’ll know that I am God. They’ll know that my judgment against them was no empty threat.
11-14 “‘This is what God, the Master, says: Clap your hands, stamp your feet, yell out, “No, no, no!” because of all the evil obscenities rife in Israel. They’re going to be killed, dying of hunger, dying of disease—death everywhere you look, people dropping like flies, people far away dying, people nearby dying, and whoever’s left in the city starving to death. Why? Because I’m angry, furiously angry. They’ll realize that I am God when they see their people’s corpses strewn over and around all their ruined sex-and-religion shrines on the bare hills and in the lush fertility groves, in all the places where they indulged their sensual rites. I’ll bring my hand down hard on them, demolish the country wherever they live, turn it into wasteland from one end to the other, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they’ll know that I am God!’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Read: Genesis 12:1–9
Abram and Sarai
God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.
2-3 I’ll make you a great nation
and bless you.
I’ll make you famous;
you’ll be a blessing.
I’ll bless those who bless you;
those who curse you I’ll curse.
All the families of the Earth
will be blessed through you.”
4-6 So Abram left just as God said, and Lot left with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot with him, along with all the possessions and people they had gotten in Haran, and set out for the land of Canaan and arrived safe and sound.
Abram passed through the country as far as Shechem and the Oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites occupied the land.
7 God appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your children.” Abram built an altar at the place God had appeared to him.
8 He moved on from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent between Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. He built an altar there and prayed to God.
9 Abram kept moving, steadily making his way south, to the Negev.
INSIGHT:
Are you inclined to be a trusting person? Or does it all depend on how well you know the one who is leading you? It’s hard to know how much Abram knew about the Lord who asked him to follow Him to a new homeland. Many years later, Jesus asked a group of fisherman to follow Him (Matt. 4:19).
There’s a sense in which we’re all in the same boat when it comes to trusting the One who said, “Follow me.” Then as now, the challenge is to trust in God’s ability to lead rather than in our ability to follow.
Letting Go
By Kirsten Holmberg
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go . . . to the land I will show you.” Genesis 12:1
For our wedding anniversary, my husband borrowed a tandem bike so we could enjoy a romantic adventure together. As we began to pedal on our way, I quickly realized that as the rider on the back my vision of the road ahead was eclipsed by my husband’s broad shoulders. Also, my handlebars were fixed; they didn’t affect the steering of our bike. Only the front handlebars determined our direction; mine served merely as support for my upper body. I had the choice to either be frustrated by my lack of control or to embrace the journey and trust Mike would guide us safely on our route.
When God asked Abram to leave his homeland and family, He didn’t offer much information concerning the destination. No geographic coordinates. No description of the new land or its natural resources. Not even an indication of how long it would take to get there. God simply gave the instruction to “go” to the land He would show him. Abram’s obedience to God’s instruction, despite lacking the details most humans crave, is credited to him as faith (Heb. 11:8).
God can be trusted to guide us.
If we find ourselves grappling with uncertainty or a lack of control in our lives, let’s seek to adopt Abram’s example of following and trusting God. The Lord will steer us well.
Help me, Lord, to trust You with the uncertainty in my life.
What do you need to trust God with today? Share your prayer request at Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
God can be trusted to guide us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Can a Saint Falsely Accuse God?
All the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen… —2 Corinthians 1:20
Jesus’ parable of the talents recorded in Matthew 25:14-30 was a warning that it is possible for us to misjudge our capacities. This parable has nothing to do with natural gifts and abilities, but relates to the gift of the Holy Spirit as He was first given at Pentecost. We must never measure our spiritual capacity on the basis of our education or our intellect; our capacity in spiritual things is measured on the basis of the promises of God. If we get less than God wants us to have, we will falsely accuse Him as the servant falsely accused his master when he said, “You expect more of me than you gave me the power to do. You demand too much of me, and I cannot stand true to you here where you have placed me.” When it is a question of God’s Almighty Spirit, never say, “I can’t.” Never allow the limitation of your own natural ability to enter into the matter. If we have received the Holy Spirit, God expects the work of the Holy Spirit to be exhibited in us.
The servant justified himself, while condemning his lord on every point, as if to say, “Your demand on me is way out of proportion to what you gave to me.” Have we been falsely accusing God by daring to worry after He has said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you”? (Matthew 6:33). Worrying means exactly what this servant implied— “I know your intent is to leave me unprotected and vulnerable.” A person who is lazy in the natural realm is always critical, saying, “I haven’t had a decent chance,” and someone who is lazy in the spiritual realm is critical of God. Lazy people always strike out at others in an independent way.
Never forget that our capacity and capability in spiritual matters is measured by, and based on, the promises of God. Is God able to fulfill His promises? Our answer depends on whether or not we have received the Holy Spirit.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The Bible is a relation of facts, the truth of which must be tested. Life may go on all right for a while, when suddenly a bereavement comes, or some crisis; unrequited love or a new love, a disaster, a business collapse, or a shocking sin, and we turn up our Bibles again and God’s word comes straight home, and we say, “Why, I never saw that there before.” Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Immune To The Smell - #7899
I have some friends who live near this industrial area - it's a steel mill type of industrial. You could take me there blindfolded and I'd know where I am, because the mills produce a distinctive aroma - OK, smell? Stink? Yeah. All day long you can smell this sulfur-like, rotten eggs type of odor. When you go there for the first time, you sniff and you go, "What's that?" Funniest thing - the people who live there answer, "What's what?" They've lived around that stench so long it doesn't even register anymore. It's gross, but they've gotten used to gross.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Immune to the Smell."
The prophet Ezekiel was called to represent God in a time when people's lives were creating a moral stench. God shows the prophet what He wants done in these words, in our word for today from the Word of God - Ezekiel 9:2-4. "And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate...each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. They came in and stood beside the bronze altar. Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. Then the Lord called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at this side and said to him, 'Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.'"
God seems to be saying, "I'm looking for some people who don't gloss over sin - people who grieve over sin." That kind of person was hard to find then, and they're hard to find now. That kind of person was special then; they're special now. That's why God says, "Mark them." They are God's heroes in any culture, including ours. People who don't get so used to living in the middle of sin that they don't notice the smell anymore.
Chances are, you come in contact with a lot of sinful garbage each day. Lying that's just considered smart business, a flippant attitude toward sexual purity, adultery, a flippant - "who cares" approach to a sacred act of love created by God for a lifetime bond. When we're around a casual attitude toward sin we tend to get used to it. It doesn't break our heart anymore. It still breaks God's heart and He's looking for people who've got His heart.
We hear people treat God's name and Jesus' name like dirt - Jesus, the name at which every knee will bow. We're spiritually seduced by attitudes that are really just dressed up idol worship, but still we've stopped being bothered by it - like living for money, living for a guy or girl, for the next party, for conquest. We live in the middle of the stench of gossip, backstabbing, disrespect, hard-heartedness, and callousness toward stuff that killed our Savior.
It's time we prayed, "God, please give me back my sense of smell." Unless we daily get with God and see what He sees, we'll be worn down and we'll be eroded until sin doesn't really look all that bad.
Imagine someone telling drunk driving jokes to a man and the man just isn't laughing. You ask him "Why?" He says, "Because a drunk driver killed my son." That's why God is not laughing at the sin that we tend to take so lightly. If you want to see what sin looks like, go to Skull Hill and see God's Son hanging on a blood-stained tree, screaming, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?" We'll grieve over the sin in us and the sin around us when we remember what sin did to our Savior.
Ask God to make you what Romans 16:19 calls "wise about what is good and innocent about what is evil." Sin stinks. It's the rotting odor of eternal death, no matter how glamorously it is perfumed. Don't ever get used to the smell.
