Max Lucado Daily: GOD IS DOING WHAT’S BEST FOR US
God is at work in each of us whether we know it or not, whether we want it or not. Lamentations 3:33 says, “He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way.” He doesn’t delight in our sufferings, but He delights in our development. It’s what Paul pointed out in Philippians 1:6 when he wrote, “God began doing a good work in you, and I am sure He will continue until it is finished when Jesus Christ comes again.”
Don’t see your struggle as an interruption to life but as preparation for life. No one said the road would be easy or painless. But God will use this mess for something good. This trouble you are in isn’t punishment, it’s training. It is the normal experience of children. God is doing what’s best for us, training us to live God’s holy best!
From You’ll Get Through This
1 John 5
1-3 Every person who believes that Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah, is God-begotten. If we love the One who conceives the child, we’ll surely love the child who was conceived. The reality test on whether or not we love God’s children is this: Do we love God? Do we keep his commands? The proof that we love God comes when we keep his commandments and they are not at all troublesome.
The Power That Brings the World to Its Knees
4-5 Every God-begotten person conquers the world’s ways. The conquering power that brings the world to its knees is our faith. The person who wins out over the world’s ways is simply the one who believes Jesus is the Son of God.
6-8 Jesus—the Divine Christ! He experienced a life-giving birth and a death-killing death. Not only birth from the womb, but baptismal birth of his ministry and sacrificial death. And all the while the Spirit is confirming the truth, the reality of God’s presence at Jesus’ baptism and crucifixion, bringing those occasions alive for us. A triple testimony: the Spirit, the Baptism, the Crucifixion. And the three in perfect agreement.
9-10 If we take human testimony at face value, how much more should we be reassured when God gives testimony as he does here, testifying concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God inwardly confirms God’s testimony. Whoever refuses to believe in effect calls God a liar, refusing to believe God’s own testimony regarding his Son.
11-12 This is the testimony in essence: God gave us eternal life; the life is in his Son. So, whoever has the Son, has life; whoever rejects the Son, rejects life.
The Reality, Not the Illusion
13-15 My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God’s Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the reality and not the illusion. And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he’s listening. And if we’re confident that he’s listening, we know that what we’ve asked for is as good as ours.
16-17 For instance, if we see a Christian believer sinning (clearly I’m not talking about those who make a practice of sin in a way that is “fatal,” leading to eternal death), we ask for God’s help and he gladly gives it, gives life to the sinner whose sin is not fatal. There is such a thing as a fatal sin, and I’m not urging you to pray about that. Everything we do wrong is sin, but not all sin is fatal.
18-21 We know that none of the God-begotten makes a practice of sin—fatal sin. The God-begotten are also the God-protected. The Evil One can’t lay a hand on them. We know that we are held firm by God; it’s only the people of the world who continue in the grip of the Evil One. And we know that the Son of God came so we could recognize and understand the truth of God—what a gift!—and we are living in the Truth itself, in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This Jesus is both True God and Real Life. Dear children, be on guard against all clever facsimiles.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, June 23, 2017
Read: Romans 12:3–8
I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
4-6 In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
6-8 If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
INSIGHT:
There are five listings of spiritual gifts in the New Testament: Romans 12:6–8; 1 Corinthians 12:7–11; 12:28–30; Ephesians 4:9–11; and 1 Peter 4:11. In each of these lists the emphasis is not on how many different types of gifts there are, but on how we are to use them in a loving way that promotes unity in the church, builds up the spiritual maturity of the believers, and brings glory to the Lord. To achieve this, Paul tells us not to think too highly or too lowly of ourselves (Rom. 12:3). We are to use our spiritual giftedness in humility (v. 3) and embrace diversity in the body of Christ with sincere love (v. 9) and mutual respect (v. 10).
How has God gifted you? How can you use your spiritual gifts to promote unity and harmony in the church?
Playing in Concert
By David C. McCasland
So in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. Romans 12:5–6
During our granddaughter’s school band concert, I was impressed by how well this group of 11- and 12-year-olds played together. If each of them had wanted to be a solo performer, they could not have achieved individually what the band did collectively. The woodwinds, brass, and percussion sections all played their parts and the result was beautiful music!
To the followers of Jesus in Rome, Paul wrote, “In Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us” (Rom. 12:5–6). Among the gifts Paul mentioned are prophecy, service, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, and mercy (vv. 7–8). Each gift is to be exercised freely for the good of all (1 Cor. 12:7).
Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:10
One definition of in concert is “agreement in design or plan; combined action; harmony or accord.” That’s the Lord’s plan for us as His children through faith in Jesus Christ. “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves” (v. 10). The goal is cooperation, not competition.
In a sense, we are “on stage” before a watching and listening world every day. There are no soloists in God’s concert band, but every instrument is essential. The music is best when we each play our part in unity with others.
Lord, You are the Conductor of our lives. We want to play Your song of love and grace in concert with Your children today.
There are no soloists in God’s orchestra.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, June 23, 2017
“Acquainted With Grief”
He is…a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. —Isaiah 53:3
We are not “acquainted with grief” in the same way our Lord was acquainted with it. We endure it and live through it, but we do not become intimate with it. At the beginning of our lives we do not bring ourselves to the point of dealing with the reality of sin. We look at life through the eyes of reason and say that if a person will control his instincts, and educate himself, he can produce a life that will slowly evolve into the life of God. But as we continue on through life, we find the presence of something which we have not yet taken into account, namely, sin— and it upsets all of our thinking and our plans. Sin has made the foundation of our thinking unpredictable, uncontrollable, and irrational.
We have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a shortcoming. Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue— if sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is nothing more fundamental than that. The culmination of sin was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth will also be true in your history and in mine— that is, sin will kill the life of God in us. We must mentally bring ourselves to terms with this fact of sin. It is the only explanation why Jesus Christ came to earth, and it is the explanation of the grief and sorrow of life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally. The Moral Foundations of Life, 721 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, June 23, 2017
Blooming Too Soon - #7945
When you live in the Northeastern U. S. like we did, you usually pack up your shorts and T-shirts about November and file them under "See you in April." But it was January, and that's a big winter month where we were living and people were suddenly all over the place in their shorts and their summer clothes. It was 74 degrees! We figured either our calendar or our thermometer were wacky, but they both were right. It was a great experience - June in January. Unfortunately, the weather fooled the bushes and flowers in our yard. They felt the warm temperature and said, "Ooo, this feels good. Must be spring. Time to wake up!" Sure enough, the buds started appearing all over our yard. But I wanted to yell at them, "Not yet, guys! This isn't going to last! It's too soon! It's an ambush! This isn't going to work!" Unfortunately, I don't speak "Plant" fluently. And when the inevitable freezing temperatures returned, those poor early-bloomers were in for a terrible shock.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Blooming Too Soon."
Ecclesiastes 3:1 - "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven." God has set up everything in life to run in seasons, including your life. And things that happen before their season - a season He determines - are not going to turn out well.
So God follows in verse 11 with a fundamental principle of happy endings, "He has made everything beautiful in its time." Problem: His time is almost always later than our time. So we get impatient. We think it isn't going to happen or that we need to interfere to speed things up. And just like those early January blossoms, we get ahead of the season. We try to make it bloom too soon and, though it may look good for a little while, it ends up not working.
When it comes to the plan God is working out for your life, if you rush it, you ruin it. But, again like our early blooming blossoms on a warm winter day, you may be saying, "Sure feels to me like it's time for it to happen." And you get ahead of the timing of Almighty God.
Romance for example; that's one area where a lot of people just can't wait for God to do it in His time. Maybe you've been trying to make things happen romantically, you've lowered your standards to speed up the process, but it's not God's time yet and it's probably not God's person. It's your time, but it's not God's time, and it's going to turn out all wrong.
Maybe there's a financial situation where you feel you can't wait any longer for God to come through. You can't wait for Jehovah-jireh any longer. You're going to figure out how to solve this yourself. There was a time when our ministry was going through a particularly difficult time financially and we had a deadline that was only a couple days away. One friend offered to loan us money to meet the need. Man, I appreciated that kind of concern tremendously, but I said, "Let's not do anything yet. I've really prayed that God would meet the need, and I don't want to interfere with what He's going to do." You know what? Praise God, He sent us the miracle funds just in time.
My friend said, "I guess I was trying to do an Abraham and Sarah." Actually, he was just trying to show us some wonderful love, but I got what he meant. He was referring to that time when Abraham and Sarah couldn't wait anymore for God to give them the son He had promised them, even though they were too old to have children. And they arranged for a surrogate mother scheme that messed up their family royally. All because they couldn't wait for God to do it in His way, in His time.
So whether it's a relationship, or finances, a ministry goal, getting justice or meeting a need. Wherever you're tempted to try to make it happen, don't. Just remember those blossoms whose instincts told them it was time when it wasn't. If it's blooming too soon, it probably isn't going to make it. But in God's time, which is probably later than yours, in His time, it will be beautiful.