Max Lucado Daily: A SOLUTION FOR TOUGH TIMES
How do you handle your tough times? When you are tired of trying, tired of forgiving, tired of hard weeks or hard-headed people—how do you manage your dark days? With a bottle of pills? Alcohol? A day at the spa? Many opt for such treatments. So many, in fact, we assume they reenergize the sad life. But do they? They may numb the pain, but do they remove it? We like sheep follow each other off the ledge, falling headlong into bars, binges and beds.
Is there a better solution? Indeed there is. Be quick to pray. Talk to Christ who invites. “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out? Come to Me! Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life” (Matthew 11:28-30). Jesus says, “I will show you how to take a real rest.” God who is never downcast, never tires of your down days! Just go to Him!
From Facing Your Giants
Psalm 84
A Korah Psalm
1-2 What a beautiful home, God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
I’ve always longed to live in a place like this,
Always dreamed of a room in your house,
where I could sing for joy to God-alive!
3-4 Birds find nooks and crannies in your house,
sparrows and swallows make nests there.
They lay their eggs and raise their young,
singing their songs in the place where we worship.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies! King! God!
How blessed they are to live and sing there!
5-7 And how blessed all those in whom you live,
whose lives become roads you travel;
They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks,
discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain!
God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and
at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!
8-9 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, listen:
O God of Jacob, open your ears—I’m praying!
Look at our shields, glistening in the sun,
our faces, shining with your gracious anointing.
10-12 One day spent in your house, this beautiful place of worship,
beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches.
I’d rather scrub floors in the house of my God
than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin.
All sunshine and sovereign is God,
generous in gifts and glory.
He doesn’t scrimp with his traveling companions.
It’s smooth sailing all the way with God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, July 31, 2017
Read: Colossians 1:3–14
Working in His Orchard
Our prayers for you are always spilling over into thanksgivings. We can’t quit thanking God our Father and Jesus our Messiah for you! We keep getting reports on your steady faith in Christ, our Jesus, and the love you continuously extend to all Christians. The lines of purpose in your lives never grow slack, tightly tied as they are to your future in heaven, kept taut by hope.
5-8 The Message is as true among you today as when you first heard it. It doesn’t diminish or weaken over time. It’s the same all over the world. The Message bears fruit and gets larger and stronger, just as it has in you. From the very first day you heard and recognized the truth of what God is doing, you’ve been hungry for more. It’s as vigorous in you now as when you learned it from our friend and close associate Epaphras. He is one reliable worker for Christ! I could always depend on him. He’s the one who told us how thoroughly love had been worked into your lives by the Spirit.
9-12 Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.
13-14 God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.
INSIGHT:
Colossae, the destination of the letter to the Colossian church, was a city in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). It was a city of some significance commercially in the first century because of its location on a main trade route east from Ephesus. We are not told in the New Testament how this church was founded, but in this letter Paul writes to encourage and instruct the believers there as if it were one of the churches he himself had founded. Bill Crowder
A “New Man”
By Dave Branon
Continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. Colossians 1:23
As a group of teenagers visited a home for the elderly in Montego Bay, Jamaica, one young woman noticed a lonely looking man at the end of the room. He appeared to have little left in this world but a bed to sleep on—a bed from which he could not move because of his disability.
The teen began right away to share the story of God’s love for us and read some Bible passages to him. “As I shared with him,” she would say later, “I started to feel his eagerness to hear more.” Responding to his interest, she explained the wonder of Jesus’s sacrificial death for us. “It was hard for this man, who had no hope and no family,” she recalled, “to understand that Someone he’s never met would love him enough to die on the cross for his sins.”
Lord, thank You for the new life we have in Jesus Christ.
She told him more about Jesus—and then about the promise of heaven (including a new body) for all who believe. He asked her, “Will you dance with me up there?” She saw him begin to imagine himself free of his worn-out body and crippling limitations.
When he said he wanted to trust Jesus as his Savior, she helped him pray a prayer of forgiveness and faith. When she asked him if she could get a picture with him, he replied, “If you help me sit up. I’m a new man.”
Praise God for the life-changing, hope-giving, available-to-all gospel of Jesus Christ! It offers new life for all who trust Him (Col. 1:5, 23).
Lord, thank You for the new life we have in Jesus Christ. Help us to share the hope of that new life with others so they can be made new as well.
Jesus offers new life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, July 31, 2017
Becoming Entirely His
Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. —James 1:4
Many of us appear to be all right in general, but there are still some areas in which we are careless and lazy; it is not a matter of sin, but the remnants of our carnal life that tend to make us careless. Carelessness is an insult to the Holy Spirit. We should have no carelessness about us either in the way we worship God, or even in the way we eat and drink.
Not only must our relationship to God be right, but the outward expression of that relationship must also be right. Ultimately, God will allow nothing to escape; every detail of our lives is under His scrutiny. God will bring us back in countless ways to the same point over and over again. And He never tires of bringing us back to that one point until we learn the lesson, because His purpose is to produce the finished product. It may be a problem arising from our impulsive nature, but again and again, with the most persistent patience, God has brought us back to that one particular point. Or the problem may be our idle and wandering thinking, or our independent nature and self-interest. Through this process, God is trying to impress upon us the one thing that is not entirely right in our lives.
We have been having a wonderful time in our studies over the revealed truth of God’s redemption, and our hearts are perfect toward Him. And His wonderful work in us makes us know that overall we are right with Him. “Let patience have its perfect work….” The Holy Spirit speaking through James said, “Now let your patience become a finished product.” Beware of becoming careless over the small details of life and saying, “Oh, that will have to do for now.” Whatever it may be, God will point it out with persistence until we become entirely His.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God. Not Knowing Whither, 903 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, July 31, 2017
The Shock at the End - #7971
For a long time, I have been fascinated with the story of the Titanic. The sinking of that seemingly "unsinkable" ship after a collision with an iceberg is filled with so much human drama that has inspired endless movies, books, and documentaries. Finding the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic fueled even greater interest and greater information than ever before. Some of the drama of those discoveries has been within our reach as the Titanic artifacts exhibit went across the country in some of America's leading museums. You could see many personal items recovered from the Titanic's debris field along with displays that recreated the feeling of being a passenger on that doomed ship. And now there's at least one permanent Titanic museum in the country. When I went into this one on the early tour, I was given a boarding pass with the name of a real person who'd been aboard that awful night. At the end of the exhibit, there's this big wall with the names of everyone aboard – first class, second class, third class, crew. Every person is either on the list that says "saved" or "lost." I looked hard for my name, and I discovered that I was one of the few crewmen who was "saved."
A pastor I know, who I had told about my experience there, well, he went to see the exhibit for himself. But he told me about it. He looked me in the eye and he said very soberly, "Except I was lost."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Shock at the End".
One of the most sobering truths in the Bible is this: God has two lists. Each of us is on one of those lists. Everyone we know, everyone we care about, is on one of these two lists. In 1 John 5:11-12, God plainly says, "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." There it is – the "saved" and the "lost." And it all depends on one thing – whether or not you have Jesus in your heart.
It doesn't say, "Whoever has religion has life" or "whoever lives a good life has life." No, it's all about Jesus and whether or not you've ever begun a personal relationship with Him. That life-saving relationship begins when you realize that Jesus' dying on that cross was the only thing that can pay the death penalty that you deserve for running your own life, for hijacking your life from your Creator. And that means you know now that you've got to put all your trust in Him to save you, because you can't do a thing to save yourself.
For my pastor friend, it was a shock to get to the end and find out he was "lost." That's the shock that for real so many are going to experience when they meet God. My friend didn't know until the end. But we can know right now which list we're on – depending on whether or not we've given ourselves to Jesus. If you know you've done that, you are among God's rescued.
But now it's up to you to rescue those around you who are still on the "lost" list. The "saved" and "lost" list from the Titanic can never be changed. But there's still time for people you know to be moved from God's "lost" list to His list of those who are "saved." But you've got to do something about their lostness. You'll have to step up to tell them about Jesus, to be their rescuer.
The devil – who wants as many lost as possible – is working hard to keep people on both lists preoccupied with something other than eternity. If you're lost, he's trying desperately to keep you from Jesus, even right now, until time runs out. If you're saved, he's trying to desperately keep you from reaching out to rescue the people around you until time runs out.
If you've never reached out to Jesus to rescue you, grab the hand of the Rescuer who came all the way from heaven to come and die so He could rescue you. If you want to go to sleep tonight knowing you belong to Jesus, tell Him now, "Jesus, I'm Yours. The battle's over. I'm Yours!"
Get over to our website as soon as you can today, ANewStory.com, because I think you will find there everything you need at what is truly the eternal crossroads moments of your life.
When you've taken your last breath, lost is forever; but not yet. This very day, you can move from death to life, and from lost to saved.
