Max Lucado Daily: HOW TO FACE YOUR GIANTS
Giants. We must face them. Yet we need not face them alone. Focus first, and most, on God. Read 1 Samuel 17 and list the observations David made about Goliath. I find only two. One to Saul and one to Goliath’s face, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God” (1 Samuel 17:26). David asks nothing about Goliath’s skill, age, the weight of the spear, or the size of the shield. But he gives much thought to God. The armies of the living God; The Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. In all, the God-thoughts outnumber Goliath-thoughts nine to two.
How does this ratio compare with yours? Is your list of blessings four times as long as your list of complaints? Are you four times as likely to describe the strength of God as you are the demands of your day? That’s how you face a giant.
From Facing Your Giants
Revelation 5
The Lion Is a Lamb
1-2 I saw a scroll in the right hand of the One Seated on the Throne. It was written on both sides, fastened with seven seals. I also saw a powerful Angel, calling out in a voice like thunder, “Is there anyone who can open the scroll, who can break its seals?”
3 There was no one—no one in Heaven, no one on earth, no one from the underworld—able to break open the scroll and read it.
4-5 I wept and wept and wept that no one was found able to open the scroll, able to read it. One of the Elders said, “Don’t weep. Look—the Lion from Tribe Judah, the Root of David’s Tree, has conquered. He can open the scroll, can rip through the seven seals.”
6-10 So I looked, and there, surrounded by Throne, Animals, and Elders, was a Lamb, slaughtered but standing tall. Seven horns he had, and seven eyes, the Seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. He came to the One Seated on the Throne and took the scroll from his right hand. The moment he took the scroll, the Four Animals and Twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb. Each had a harp and each had a bowl, a gold bowl filled with incense, the prayers of God’s holy people. And they sang a new song:
Worthy! Take the scroll, open its seals.
Slain! Paying in blood, you bought men and women,
Bought them back from all over the earth,
Bought them back for God.
Then you made them a Kingdom, Priests for our God,
Priest-kings to rule over the earth.
11-14 I looked again. I heard a company of Angels around the Throne, the Animals, and the Elders—ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in full song:
The slain Lamb is worthy!
Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength!
Take the honor, the glory, the blessing!
Then I heard every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea, join in, all voices in all places, singing:
To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb!
The blessing, the honor, the glory, the strength,
For age after age after age.
The Four Animals called out, “Oh, Yes!” The Elders fell to their knees and worshiped.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Read: Psalm 93
1-2 God is King, robed and ruling,
God is robed and surging with strength.
And yes, the world is firm, immovable,
Your throne ever firm—you’re Eternal!
3-4 Sea storms are up, God,
Sea storms wild and roaring,
Sea storms with thunderous breakers.
Stronger than wild sea storms,
Mightier than sea-storm breakers,
Mighty God rules from High Heaven.
5 What you say goes—it always has.
“Beauty” and “Holy” mark your palace rule,
God, to the very end of time.
INSIGHT:
Are there areas in your life that feel out of control? If so, you’re in good company. So many of the psalms were inspired by desperate feelings of fear and confusion. Yet they ended up as songs of hope in the God who has promised to never leave us or forsake us. But who is this God? The author of Psalm 93 identifies Him as the Lord (Yahweh). By contrast to legendary gods of war, fertility, weather, travel, or the hunt, He is the God who created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 2:4).
Consider the implications of such a Creator. Use the measure of modern astronomy. What kind of God speaks into existence billions of galaxies filled with trillions of suns far greater than our own? Yet even the cosmos is not the measure of His greatness. According to the New Testament (John 1:1–3, 14), the God of the Bible is the Lord who, in Jesus, showed that He is greater than our troubles by bearing our sins of indifference, neglect, and contempt. In the weakness of His crucifixion and by the power of His resurrection, He showed that even His love for us is greater than our sin. Mart DeHaan
Mightier than All
By C. P. Hia
The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength. Psalm 93:1
Iguazu Falls, on the border of Brazil and Argentina, is a spectacular waterfall system of 275 falls along 2.7 km (1.67 miles) of the Iguazu River. Etched on a wall on the Brazilian side of the Falls are the words of Psalm 93:4, “Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!” (rsv). Below it are these words, “God is always greater than all of our troubles.”
The writer of Psalm 93, who penned its words during the time that kings reigned, knew that God is the ultimate King over all. “The Lord reigns,” he wrote. “Your throne was established long ago; you are from all eternity” (vv. 1–2). No matter how high the floods or waves, the Lord remains greater than them all.
Lord, I know that You are powerful and greater than any trouble that might come my way.
The roar of a waterfall is truly majestic, but it is quite a different matter to be in the water hurtling toward the falls. That may be the situation you are in today. Physical, financial, or relational problems loom ever larger and you feel like you are about to go over the falls. In such situations, the Christian has Someone to turn to. He is the Lord, “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20) for He is greater than all our troubles.
Lord, I know that You are powerful and greater than any trouble that might come my way. I trust You to carry me through.
Never measure God’s unlimited power by your limited expectations.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
The Submission of the Believer
You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. —John 13:13
Our Lord never insists on having authority over us. He never says, “You will submit to me.” No, He leaves us perfectly free to choose— so free, in fact, that we can spit in His face or we can put Him to death, as others have done; and yet He will never say a word. But once His life has been created in me through His redemption, I instantly recognize His right to absolute authority over me. It is a complete and effective domination, in which I acknowledge that “You are worthy, O Lord…” (Revelation 4:11). It is simply the unworthiness within me that refuses to bow down or to submit to one who is worthy. When I meet someone who is more holy than myself, and I don’t recognize his worthiness, nor obey his instructions for me, it is a sign of my own unworthiness being revealed. God teaches us by using these people who are a little better than we are; not better intellectually, but more holy. And He continues to do so until we willingly submit. Then the whole attitude of our life is one of obedience to Him.
If our Lord insisted on our obedience, He would simply become a taskmaster and cease to have any real authority. He never insists on obedience, but when we truly see Him we will instantly obey Him. Then He is easily Lord of our life, and we live in adoration of Him from morning till night. The level of my growth in grace is revealed by the way I look at obedience. We should have a much higher view of the word obedience, rescuing it from the mire of the world. Obedience is only possible between people who are equals in their relationship to each other; like the relationship between father and son, not that between master and servant. Jesus showed this relationship by saying, “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30). “…though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). The Son was obedient as our Redeemer, because He was the Son, not in order to become God’s Son.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Re-state to yourself what you believe, then do away with as much of it as possible, and get back to the bedrock of the Cross of Christ. My Utmost for His Highest, November 25, 848 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Something Beautiful In The Garbage - #7963
loss pain hurt struggle
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
I felt kind of bad for our friend Peter. My wife, Karen, wanted him to raid the garbage for her. See, I've been there many times myself, believe me. But this time, they were driving around, Karen turned to Peter and his wife for help. They were driving past a gas station where Karen saw it-a big, green, silk plant, upside down in the dumpster. Too big for Karen to fetch, and too good, she thought, to leave there. So, my garbage picking honey turned to poor Peter, in his suit and tie, and asked him if he would make his way over to that dumpster. Well, he did, looking both directions, desperately hoping he could be invisible for a couple minutes. Sure enough, he pulled the thing out of the trash and put it in the back of our station wagon. This is a very secure man. And about that trashed plant...well, very soon it began to greet us day after day as we entered the reception area at our office. It's a classy-looking, silk Ficus plant, or that's what my wife told me. Karen saw something in it, even though it had been thrown away; something I can tell you I would have missed.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Something Beautiful In The Garbage".
Now, if Karen taught me anything, she has taught me over and over again that something beautiful can come out of the trash. Actually, a lot of things we would have never had, if we hadn't found them in the garbage.
Now, in many ways, our painful times, our suffering times, or our hurting times, don't they feel sort of like the garbage times of our life. There's a lot you might be going through right now that is anything but beautiful. And yet, some very beautiful things can come out of that garbage. If you handle your hurting times like your Savior did.
Which brings us to our word for today from the Word of God, 1 Peter 2:21-23, "Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps. 'He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth.' When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly." Jesus showed us how to suffer; how to handle the garbage times in our life.
If He's our example of how to suffer, we've got to go back to His cross to see what that means, and see what beautiful things can come out of the garbage. At the cross of Jesus, we find, I think, three ways to redeem the hurting times of our lives. First, as He was undergoing excruciating agony, He told John to take care of His mother. The first way to redeem your hurting time is to look out for those you love even if you don't feel like it. That's what Jesus did.
Our tendency is to become all inward and self-focused when we're going through a difficult time, all about "me". And that's guaranteed to just make it even more difficult. The Jesus-way is to look out for the needs of others, when you're hurting so bad you just want everybody to be looking out for yours.
In the midst of His pain, Jesus also said, "Father, forgive them." (Luke 23:34) That's the second way to redeem your hurting times-forgive those who hurt you. If Jesus could forgive the people who nailed Him to that cross, surely He can give you the grace to forgive the people who have hurt you. If you don't, the bitterness inside you will do far more damage than any of the suffering you're going through.
And remember, Jesus said to the man on the cross next to Him, "Today you will be with Me in paradise." (Luke 23:43) There's the third way to redeem your hurting time-work on taking someone to Heaven with you. Your suffering time actually puts you in the prime position to be living proof of the difference Jesus makes. Your pain is your greatest platform to tell someone about the Man who died for them.
If you'll look out for those you love, and forgive those who hurt you, and work on taking someone to heaven with you, you'll be in the middle of God's 'garbage miracles'. I've watched my wife pull something beautiful out of a pile of ugly stuff. Well, wait till you see what God does with what you're going through right now!