Max Lucado Daily: A Trashy World
We live in a trashy world. Unwanted garbage comes our way on a regular basis. Haven't you been handed a trash sack of mishaps and heartaches? Surely you have. What are you going to do with it?
You have several options. You could take the trash bag and cram it under your coat and pretend it isn't there. But you and I know you won't fool anyone. Besides, sooner or later it'll start to stink. Or you could disguise it. Paint it green, put it on the front lawn and tell everyone it's a tree. Again, no one will be fooled. So what will you do?
If you follow the example of Christ, you'll learn to see tough times differently. God loves you the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to have a hope-filled heart-just like Jesus!
From Just Like Jesus
2 Timothy 1
1-2 I, Paul, am on special assignment for Christ, carrying out God’s plan laid out in the Message of Life by Jesus. I write this to you, Timothy, the son I love so much. All the best from our God and Christ be yours!
To Be Bold with God’s Gifts
3-4 Every time I say your name in prayer—which is practically all the time—I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion.
5-7 That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
8-10 So don’t be embarrassed to speak up for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus.
11-12 This is the Message I’ve been set apart to proclaim as preacher, emissary, and teacher. It’s also the cause of all this trouble I’m in. But I have no regrets. I couldn’t be more sure of my ground—the One I’ve trusted in can take care of what he’s trusted me to do right to the end.
13-14 So keep at your work, this faith and love rooted in Christ, exactly as I set it out for you. It’s as sound as the day you first heard it from me. Guard this precious thing placed in your custody by the Holy Spirit who works in us.
15-18 I’m sure you know by now that everyone in the province of Asia deserted me, even Phygelus and Hermogenes. But God bless Onesiphorus and his family! Many’s the time I’ve been refreshed in that house. And he wasn’t embarrassed a bit that I was in jail. The first thing he did when he got to Rome was look me up. May God on the Last Day treat him as well as he treated me. And then there was all the help he provided in Ephesus—but you know that better than I.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Read: Psalm 4:1–8
A David Psalm
When I call, give me answers. God, take my side!
Once, in a tight place, you gave me room;
Now I’m in trouble again: grace me! hear me!
2 You rabble—how long do I put up with your scorn?
How long will you lust after lies?
How long will you live crazed by illusion?
3 Look at this: look
Who got picked by God!
He listens the split second I call to him.
4-5 Complain if you must, but don’t lash out.
Keep your mouth shut, and let your heart do the talking.
Build your case before God and wait for his verdict.
6-7 Why is everyone hungry for more? “More, more,” they say.
“More, more.”
I have God’s more-than-enough,
More joy in one ordinary day
7-8 Than they get in all their shopping sprees.
At day’s end I’m ready for sound sleep,
For you, God, have put my life back together.
INSIGHT:
How could we not care what others think or say about us? So much in life seems to depend on how others regard us. Maybe David wrote his fourth psalm after hearing rumors that he still thought he had gotten away with murder and with his scandalous affair with Bathsheba. Maybe he was told how others accused him of using his false humility and self-centered spirituality as a cover for his lust for power. As if knowing our own weak points he wrote, “How long will you people ruin my reputation? . . . How long will you continue your lies?” (v. 2 nlt).
The answer doesn’t seem to be what we might have expected. Without explanation, the songwriter seems to be like a television viewer changing channels. Suddenly the issue is no longer how long others are going to say thoughtless things about him, but rather how long his God is going to love him unconditionally—forever. The thought is better than warm milk and a soft pillow. With the love of God filling his heart, the words of enemies fade into silence. How does God’s unconditional love comfort you?
To read more about God’s love go to God Is Love at discoveryseries.org/q0612.
Forever Loved
By David H. Roper
Know that the Lord has set apart his faithful servant for himself. Psalm 4:3
It’s almost impossible for us to get through a day without being snubbed, ignored, or put down in some way. Sometimes we even do it to ourselves.
David’s enemies were talking smack—bullying, threatening, pummeling him with insults. His sense of self-worth and well-being had plummeted (Ps. 4:1–2). He asked for relief “from my distress.”
Lord, thank You that You assure us that we are loved forever.
Then David remembered, “Know that the Lord has set apart his faithful servant for himself” (v. 3). Various English versions try to capture the full essence of David’s bold statement by translating “faithful servant” as “godly.” The Hebrew word here, hesed, literally refers to God’s covenant love and might well be rendered “those whom God will love forever and ever and ever.”
Here’s what we too must remember: We are loved forever, set apart in a special way, as dear to God as His own Son. He has called us to be His children for all eternity.
Instead of despairing, we can remind ourselves of the love we freely receive from our Father. We are His dearly beloved children. The end is not despair but peace and joy (vv. 7–8). He never gives up on us, and He never ever stops loving us.
Father in heaven, the words of others can wound us deeply. Your words to us heal and comfort, and You assure us that we are loved forever.
The true measure of God’s love is that He loves without measure. Bernard of Clairvaux
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Spontaneous Love
Love suffers long and is kind… —1 Corinthians 13:4
Love is not premeditated– it is spontaneous; that is, it bursts forth in extraordinary ways. There is nothing of precise certainty in Paul’s description of love. We cannot predetermine our thoughts and actions by saying, “Now I will never think any evil thoughts, and I will believe everything that Jesus would have me to believe.” No, the characteristic of love is spontaneity. We don’t deliberately set the statements of Jesus before us as our standard, but when His Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard without even realizing it. And when we look back, we are amazed at how unconcerned we have been over our emotions, which is the very evidence that real spontaneous love was there. The nature of everything involved in the life of God in us is only discerned when we have been through it and it is in our past.
The fountains from which love flows are in God, not in us. It is absurd to think that the love of God is naturally in our hearts, as a result of our own nature. His love is there only because it “has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit…” (Romans 5:5).
If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we really don’t love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of our love, which flows naturally from His nature within us. And when we look back, we will not be able to determine why we did certain things, but we can know that we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us. The life of God exhibits itself in this spontaneous way because the fountains of His love are in the Holy Spirit.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony, 1166 R