Max Lucado Daily: GOD WILL NEVER GIVE UP!
God moves us forward by healing our past! Can he really? Can God heal this ancient hurt in my heart? Of course He can. In fact, God cares more about justice than we do. He eminds us in Romans 12:17-19, “Never pay back evil for evil…never avenge yourselves. Leave that to God, for He has said that He will repay those who deserve it.”
We fear the evildoer will slip into the night, unknown and unpunished. Escape to Fiji and sip mai tais on the beach. Not to worry. Scripture says, “God will repay,” not “God might repay.” God will execute justice on behalf of truth and fairness. Unlike us, God never gives up on a person. Never. Long after we’ve moved on, God is still there, probing the conscience, stirring conviction, always orchestrating redemption. Fix your enemies? That’s God’s job.
From You’ll Get Through This
Zechariah 9
The Whole World Has Its Eyes on God
1-6 War Bulletin:
God’s Message challenges the country of Hadrach.
It will settle on Damascus.
The whole world has its eyes on God.
Israel isn’t the only one.
That includes Hamath at the border,
and Tyre and Sidon, clever as they think they are.
Tyre has put together quite a kingdom for herself;
she has stacked up silver like cordwood,
piled gold high as haystacks.
But God will certainly bankrupt her;
he will dump all that wealth into the ocean
and burn up what’s left in a big fire.
Ashkelon will see it and panic,
Gaza will wring its hands,
Ekron will face a dead end.
Gaza’s king will die.
Ashkelon will be emptied out,
And a villain will take over in Ashdod.
6-8 “I’ll take proud Philistia down a peg:
I’ll make him spit out his bloody booty
and abandon his vile ways.”
What’s left will be all God’s—a core of survivors,
a family brought together in Judah—
But enemies like Ekron will go the way of the Jebusites,
into the dustbin of history.
“I will set up camp in my home country
and defend it against invaders.
Nobody is going to hurt my people ever again.
I’m keeping my eye on them.
A Humble King Riding a Donkey
9-10 “Shout and cheer, Daughter Zion!
Raise the roof, Daughter Jerusalem!
Your king is coming!
a good king who makes all things right,
a humble king riding a donkey,
a mere colt of a donkey.
I’ve had it with war—no more chariots in Ephraim,
no more war horses in Jerusalem,
no more swords and spears, bows and arrows.
He will offer peace to the nations,
a peaceful rule worldwide,
from the four winds to the seven seas.
11-13 “And you, because of my blood covenant with you,
I’ll release your prisoners from their hopeless cells.
Come home, hope-filled prisoners!
This very day I’m declaring a double bonus—
everything you lost returned twice-over!
Judah is now my weapon, the bow I’ll pull,
setting Ephraim as an arrow to the string.
I’ll wake up your sons, O Zion,
to counter your sons, O Greece.
From now on
people are my swords.”
14-17 Then God will come into view,
his arrows flashing like lightning!
Master God will blast his trumpet
and set out in a whirlwind.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies will protect them—
all-out war,
The war to end all wars,
no holds barred.
Their God will save the day. He’ll rescue them.
They’ll become like sheep, gentle and soft,
Or like gemstones in a crown,
catching all the colors of the sun.
Then how they’ll shine! shimmer! glow!
the young men robust, the young women lovely!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, July 06, 2017
Read: 1 John 4:7–21
God Is Love
7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
13-16 This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
To Love, to Be Loved
17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
20-21 If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
INSIGHT:
Have you found it’s easier to make up after an argument if the other person makes the first move? Maybe they don’t even apologize, but you see in their eyes and hear in their voice that they care about you. If Jesus went first and showed us His love, can we now make that first move and show love to someone else? Mart DeHaan
Going First
By Kirsten Holmberg
We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19
We worked patiently to help our son heal and adjust to his new life with our family. Trauma from his early days in an orphanage was fueling some negative behaviors. While I had enormous compassion for the hardships he experienced in his early days, I felt myself begin to withdraw from him emotionally because of those behaviors. Ashamed, I shared my struggle with his therapist. Her gentle reply hit home: “He needs you to go first . . . to show him he’s worthy of love before he’ll be able to act like it.”
John pushes the recipients of his letter to an incredible depth of love, citing God’s love as both the source and the reason for loving one another (1 John 4:7, 11). I admit I often fail to show such love to others, whether strangers, friends, or my own children. Yet John’s words spark in me renewed desire and ability to do so: God went first. He sent His Son to demonstrate the fullness of His love for each of us. I’m so thankful He doesn’t respond as we all are prone to do by withdrawing His heart from us.
God loved us first so we can love others.
Though our sinful actions don’t invite God’s love, He is unwavering in offering it to us (Rom. 5:8). His “go-first” love compels us to love one another in response to, and as a reflection of, that love.
Thank You, Lord, for loving me in spite of my sin. Help me to “go first” in loving others.
God loved us first so we can love others.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, July 06, 2017
Visions Becoming Reality
The parched ground shall become a pool… —Isaiah 35:7
We always have a vision of something before it actually becomes real to us. When we realize that the vision is real, but is not yet real in us, Satan comes to us with his temptations, and we are inclined to say that there is no point in even trying to continue. Instead of the vision becoming real to us, we have entered into a valley of humiliation.
Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And battered by the shocks of doom
To shape and use.
God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience. Just think of the enormous amount of free time God has! He is never in a hurry. Yet we are always in such a frantic hurry. While still in the light of the glory of the vision, we go right out to do things, but the vision is not yet real in us. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision. Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work. He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the Sculptor’s hand in an effort to batter ourselves into the shape of our own goal.
The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here. Allow the Potter to put you on His wheel and whirl you around as He desires. Then as surely as God is God, and you are you, you will turn out as an exact likeness of the vision. But don’t lose heart in the process. If you have ever had a vision from God, you may try as you will to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never allow it.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
If a man cannot prove his religion in the valley, it is not worth anything. Shade of His Hand, 1200 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, July 06, 2017
Why Little People Beat Big Bullies - #7954
When you grow up in the city like I did, your neighborhood usually has a neighborhood bully. Ours did. His name? Boomer! For the little kids on our block, Boomer was like the original terrorist. He'd beat us up for nothing, he'd take our stuff and generally intimidate us. One day I got tired of it! Yep! See, he took my White Sox cap. I was just a little guy. I was no match for him. But I walked boldly down our street to where no kid dared to go - to the corner apartment building where Boomer lived. I can picture it to this day. I went to the back porch, I knocked on the door, and I asked for my hat back. You say, "What a brave little boy you were." There is one detail I left out - my father went with me. And that made all the difference. See, Boomer was bigger than I was. But my father was bigger than Boomer was!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why Little People Beat Big Bullies".
If we were to think of possible subtitles for the Bible, one of them should be, "The Story of Unlikely Heroes." From cover to cover, God tells about these little people, unlikely people who took on some of life's biggest bullies and won. They are zeroes who become God's heroes. Because of five power-packed words from God that always made the difference. For them, for you.
Our word for today from the Word of God is Exhibit A - Gideon. He lived at a time when the Midianites were invading Israel every year and taking, destroying whatever they wanted. A hero was desperately needed. Judges 6:11 says, "The angel of the Lord came and sat down...where Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.'" Excuse me, mighty warrior...right. He's hiding in a hole in the ground! But God has plans for Gideon.
He says to Gideon, "'Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?' 'But, Lord,'... (Here's where we all have this little conversation isn't it?) 'But, Lord,' Gideon asked, 'how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest...and I am the least in my family.'" Gideon answers the Lord's summons in much the same way you may have responded to His calling on you. "I think You've got the wrong guy. I think you've got the wrong girl. I don't think I have what it takes." Translation: Boomer is bigger than I am.
"The Lord answered, (Here are those five power-packed words.) 'I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.'" Translation: your Father is going with you, Gideon. And I am bigger than your Boomer!
Throughout the Bible, that "I will be with you" that's the difference. It's what makes unlikely, inadequate, unqualified people into the very people God uses to win some of His greatest victories. When Moses shrank from God's challenge to deliver His people from Egyptian bondage - Moses said, "Who am I that I should go?" (Exodus 3:11) - God answered, "I will be with you." End of discussion. When we say, "But who am I, Lord?" God answers, "No, who am I?" This isn't about who you are. It's about who He is.
And when Jesus was commissioning eleven disciples to "Go make disciples of all nations." Now there's a mission impossible for eleven guys. He concludes by saying, "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:19, 20). Is there a theme here you think? The assignment is much bigger than you are, I am going with you and I am much bigger than the assignment!
As you look at what God is asking you to do and you see how huge it is and how small you are, don't hold back. Listen to your Lord speak the words that empower little people to tackle big things, "I will be with you."
Sure, your Boomer is bigger than you are, but your Father is bigger than every Boomer you will ever face!