Max Lucado Daily: LOVE ISN’T SELFISH
Forgive me for being the one to tell you, but you are infected. You’re a victim—a diseased carrier. You have a case of—brace yourself—selfishness!
Don’t believe me? Do your fingers ever wrap and close around possessions? Do fangs ever flare when you’re interrupted or irritated? Any inflammation from patting yourself on the back?
Listen to the words of James: “Whenever people are jealous or selfish, they cause trouble and do all sorts of cruel things” (James 3:16 CEV). Is it any wonder Paul writes, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves…” (Philippians 2:3-4 NASB).
Looking after your personal interests is proper life management. Doing so to the exclusion of the rest of the world is selfishness. Desire success? Fine. Just don’t hurt others in achieving it. Love isn’t selfish.
From A Love Worth Giving
1 Peter 3
Cultivate Inner Beauty
1-4 The same goes for you wives: Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition.
4-6 Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way, and were good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for instance, taking care of Abraham, would address him as “my dear husband.” You’ll be true daughters of Sarah if you do the same, unanxious and unintimidated.
7 The same goes for you husbands: Be good husbands to your wives. Honor them, delight in them. As women they lack some of your advantages. But in the new life of God’s grace, you’re equals. Treat your wives, then, as equals so your prayers don’t run aground.
Suffering for Doing Good
8-12 Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
Whoever wants to embrace life
and see the day fill up with good,
Here’s what you do:
Say nothing evil or hurtful;
Snub evil and cultivate good;
run after peace for all you’re worth.
God looks on all this with approval,
listening and responding well to what he’s asked;
But he turns his back
on those who do evil things.
13-18 If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.
19-22 He went and proclaimed God’s salvation to earlier generations who ended up in the prison of judgment because they wouldn’t listen. You know, even though God waited patiently all the days that Noah built his ship, only a few were saved then, eight to be exact—saved from the water by the water. The waters of baptism do that for you, not by washing away dirt from your skin but by presenting you through Jesus’ resurrection before God with a clear conscience. Jesus has the last word on everything and everyone, from angels to armies. He’s standing right alongside God, and what he says goes.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, May 19, 2017
Read: Psalm 78:1–8
An Asaph Psalm
1-4 Listen, dear friends, to God’s truth,
bend your ears to what I tell you.
I’m chewing on the morsel of a proverb;
I’ll let you in on the sweet old truths,
Stories we heard from our fathers,
counsel we learned at our mother’s knee.
We’re not keeping this to ourselves,
we’re passing it along to the next generation—
God’s fame and fortune,
the marvelous things he has done.
5-8 He planted a witness in Jacob,
set his Word firmly in Israel,
Then commanded our parents
to teach it to their children
So the next generation would know,
and all the generations to come—
Know the truth and tell the stories
so their children can trust in God,
Never forget the works of God
but keep his commands to the letter.
Heaven forbid they should be like their parents,
bullheaded and bad,
A fickle and faithless bunch
who never stayed true to God.
INSIGHT:
Psalm 78 is an “historical psalm” (a psalm full of historical facts). Other historical psalms are Psalm 105–107, 114, 135, and 136. In Psalm 78 Asaph recounts key events covering 450 years of history, reminding the Jews that God has commanded them to teach their children and children’s children about Him so that future generations will love and worship Him (vv. 5–8). In His covenant with Abraham, God said Abraham was chosen for this same purpose: “so that [Abraham] will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord” (Gen. 18:19). Deuteronomy also emphasizes that parents have been entrusted with the sacred duty and divine privilege of teaching their children about God (4:9; 6:6–9; 11:19–21).
Look for opportunities this week to talk with your children, grandchildren, or others in your life about God and His Word.
Prepare the Child
By David C. McCasland
We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done. Psalm 78:4
A phrase on many parenting websites says, “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” Instead of trying to remove all obstacles and pave the way for the children in our life, we should instead equip them to deal with the difficulties they encounter on the road ahead.
The psalmist wrote, “We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done. He decreed statutes . . . , which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them . . . and they in turn would tell their children” (Ps. 78:4–6). The goal is that “they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands” (v. 7).
It’s a wonderful privilege to share God’s Word and His plan for our lives with the next generation.
Think of the powerful spiritual impact others had on us through what they said and how they lived. Their conversation and demonstration captured our attention and kindled a fire in us to follow Jesus just as they did.
It’s a wonderful privilege and responsibility to share God’s Word and His plan for our lives with the next generation and the generations to come. No matter what lies ahead on their road through life, we want them to be prepared and equipped to face it in the strength of the Lord.
Father in heaven, we seek Your wisdom and guidance to prepare the children we know and love to walk with You in faith.
Through conversation and demonstration, help prepare children to follow the Lord on the road ahead.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, May 19, 2017
Out of the Wreck I Rise
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? —Romans 8:35
God does not keep His child immune from trouble; He promises, “I will be with him in trouble…” (Psalm 91:15). It doesn’t matter how real or intense the adversities may be; nothing can ever separate him from his relationship to God. “In all these things we are more than conquerors…” (Romans 8:37). Paul was not referring here to imaginary things, but to things that are dangerously real. And he said we are “super-victors” in the midst of them, not because of our own ingenuity, nor because of our courage, but because none of them affects our essential relationship with God in Jesus Christ. I feel sorry for the Christian who doesn’t have something in the circumstances of his life that he wishes were not there.
“Shall tribulation…?” Tribulation is never a grand, highly welcomed event; but whatever it may be— whether exhausting, irritating, or simply causing some weakness— it is not able to “separate us from the love of Christ.” Never allow tribulations or the “cares of this world” to separate you from remembering that God loves you (Matthew 13:22).
“Shall…distress…?” Can God’s love continue to hold fast, even when everyone and everything around us seems to be saying that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?
“Shall…famine…?” Can we not only believe in the love of God but also be “more than conquerors,” even while we are being starved?
Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver, having deceived even Paul, or else some extraordinary thing happens to someone who holds on to the love of God when the odds are totally against him. Logic is silenced in the face of each of these things which come against him. Only one thing can account for it— the love of God in Christ Jesus. “Out of the wreck I rise” every time.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence. Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, May 19, 2017
The Honeymoon Secret - #7920
We didn't have a lot of money, but who cared? We had each other. We is my wife Karen and me, and we were on our honeymoon! Now someone has defined a honeymoon as the period between "I do" and "You'd better!", but that definition doesn't work for me. Most of us married people look back with fond memories on our honeymoon. Karen and I were married in Chicago, and we drove up to Wisconsin and Michigan for our first week as man and wife. It was a lot of years ago, but it was a week I will never forget; the tandem bike rides, where I ended up doing most of the pedaling, the chili dogs and onion rings, and the smooching as our kids later called it, the horseback ride, the boat ride. But the best part of the honeymoon wasn't the sights or the activities. It was that glorious feeling that, for one week, there was nobody else on earth but Ron and Karen. We just totally focused on each other.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Honeymoon Secret."
In a way, that honeymoon sense of "just the two of us" is the secret of a lifetime of beautiful love. We didn't take my parents along. No, nor Karen's parents, no children. My boss didn't tag along in the back-seat. None of our co-workers or none of the folks at church were there to take the focus off of each other. No. Of course, life isn't a honeymoon where those people don't take significant chunks of your time and energy. But your lifetime love is in trouble when anyone else starts to come between the original honeymoon cast, "just the two of us."
Our word for today from the Word of God, Mark 10:7. "A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate." On the honeymoon, that oneness is largely unchallenged. It's clear who the #1 person on earth is supposed to be...who gets the best of me.
But then the honeymoon's over. Your mother or father want a decisive spot in your life, your boss, or your friends. And along come children, and they seem to demand just about everything you've got to give. And even God's work - which every believer should be an active part of - can become such a controlling part of your time and energy that your husband or wife barely gets even your leftovers.
What if I asked your partner to draw a picture like this - a picture with you and your spouse as close or as far apart as they feel you really are. And what if I asked them, "Are there any people or activities that make you feel pushed out? Draw them in between you and your mate." What would they put there? Who would they put there?
If there's anyone that regularly keeps you from being what you promised to be that wedding day, it's time for major priority surgery. Even your children were never meant to keep you from the time and focus that your marriage needs. In fact, the best thing you can do for your children is give them the security that comes from feeling that the love they came from is still going strong.
I still remember hugging my wife in the kitchen, suddenly feeling we were farther apart, and here was our little boy looking up at us with his big, blue eyes going, "Mommy, Daddy, can I be in the middle of your love?" That's where our kids are supposed to be.
Actually, God created marriage to be a triangle with three people involved. You and your mate connected by that line at the base of the triangle, but with a line from you and a line from him or her connecting with the apex of the triangle with God there. The One who holds you together is God. He's the glue of a marriage. He holds you together when everything else is pulling you apart.
But humanly speaking, the secret of a great lifetime love is to keep that honeymoon picture in your mind - that wonderful sense of "the two of us". If you've allowed others to come between you in the honeymoon picture, it's time to move them to being around you but never again between you. Then maybe, in a sense, the honeymoon can last a lifetime.
