There’s a reason the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror. Your future matters more than your past!
God’s grace is greater than your sin. You thought the problem was your calendar, your marriage, or your job. In reality, it may be unresolved guilt. Don’t indulge it! Don’t drown in the bilge of your own condemnation. What you did was not good. But your God is good and He will forgive you. He is ready to write a new chapter in your life. Say with Paul, “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us” (Philippians 3:13-14 TLB).
Your salvation has nothing to do with your work and everything to do with the finished work of Christ on the cross. Rejoice in the Lord’s mercy!
Read more Anxious for Nothing
Genesis 2
Heaven and Earth were finished,
down to the last detail.
2-4 By the seventh day
God had finished his work.
On the seventh day
he rested from all his work.
God blessed the seventh day.
He made it a Holy Day
Because on that day he rested from his work,
all the creating God had done.
This is the story of how it all started,
of Heaven and Earth when they were created.
Adam and Eve
5-7 At the time God made Earth and Heaven, before any grasses or shrubs had sprouted from the ground—God hadn’t yet sent rain on Earth, nor was there anyone around to work the ground (the whole Earth was watered by underground springs)—God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!
8-9 Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
10-14 A river flows out of Eden to water the garden and from there divides into four rivers. The first is named Pishon; it flows through Havilah where there is gold. The gold of this land is good. The land is also known for a sweet-scented resin and the onyx stone. The second river is named Gihon; it flows through the land of Cush. The third river is named Hiddekel and flows east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.
16-17 God commanded the Man, “You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don’t eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you’re dead.”
18-20 God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.” So God formed from the dirt of the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the Man to see what he would name them. Whatever the Man called each living creature, that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals; but he didn’t find a suitable companion.
21-22 God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man.
23-25 The Man said,
“Finally! Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh!
Name her Woman
for she was made from Man.”
Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh.
The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Read: Ecclesiastes 4:9–12
It’s better to have a partner than go it alone.
Share the work, share the wealth.
And if one falls down, the other helps,
But if there’s no one to help, tough!
11 Two in a bed warm each other.
Alone, you shiver all night.
12 By yourself you’re unprotected.
With a friend you can face the worst.
Can you round up a third?
A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped.
INSIGHT
Ecclesiastes is a very unusual book. For much of this inspired text, life is examined without God in the picture (1:2). Although the book concludes with moral admonitions (see 12:1–8), the majority of the book has almost a secular feel to it. Yet because King Solomon the Wise is its author, remarkable principles of life surface. Today’s reading blesses the reader with insights on the benefits of meaningful relationships. The journey of life is not to be walked alone but benefits from mutual support of another.
Can you recall a time when God used someone to help you carry your load? -Dennis Fisher
Let’s Finish the Race
By Poh Fang Chia
Two are better than one . . . . If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. Ecclesiastes 4:9–10
In the 2016 Rio Olympics, two athletes in the 5,000-meter race caught the world’s attention. About 3,200 meters into the race, New Zealander Nikki Hamblin and American Abbey D’Agostino collided and fell. Abbey was quickly up on her feet, but stopped to help Nikki. Moments after the two athletes had started running again, Abbey began faltering, her right leg injured as a result of the fall. It was now Nikki’s turn to stop and encourage her fellow athlete to finish the race. When Abbey eventually stumbled across the finish line, Nikki was waiting to embrace her. What a beautiful picture of mutual encouragement!
It reminds me of a passage in the Bible: “Two are better than one . . . . If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” (Eccl. 4:9–10). As runners in a spiritual race, we need one another—perhaps even more so, for we are not racing in competition with each other but as members of the same team. There’ll be moments where we falter and need someone to pick us up; at other times, someone may need our encouragement through our prayers or presence.
The spiritual race is not to be run alone.
The spiritual race is not to be run alone. Is God leading you to be a Nikki or Abbey in someone’s life? Respond to His prompting today, and let’s finish the race!
Dear Lord, thank You for the encouragement of fellow believers to help me on my journey. Help me to look for ways to encourage others.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
The Divine Commandment of Life
By Oswald Chambers
…be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. —Matthew 5:48
Our Lord’s exhortation to us in Matthew 5:38-48 is to be generous in our behavior toward everyone. Beware of living according to your natural affections in your spiritual life. Everyone has natural affections— some people we like and others we don’t like. Yet we must never let those likes and dislikes rule our Christian life. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:7), even those toward whom we have no affection.
The example our Lord gave us here is not that of a good person, or even of a good Christian, but of God Himself. “…be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In other words, simply show to the other person what God has shown to you. And God will give you plenty of real life opportunities to prove whether or not you are “perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Being a disciple means deliberately identifying yourself with God’s interests in other people. Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing, but in God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not just good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian’s life is that the supernatural becomes natural in him as a result of the grace of God, and the experience of this becomes evident in the practical, everyday details of life, not in times of intimate fellowship with God. And when we come in contact with things that create confusion and a flurry of activity, we find to our own amazement that we have the power to stay wonderfully poised even in the center of it all.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Removed And Replanted - #8008
Karen's Dad didn't want the holly bush by his carport anymore. But my wife wanted that holly bush. Yep! Dad said if we would dig it up, it was ours to transplant at the little Ozark farmstead that Karen inherited from her grandparents. Sounded simple. It wasn't. It took shovels, a chain, a pickup truck, and some major engineering to get that stubborn bush out of the ground and into the truck. Well, we quickly transported "Holly" to the farm, immediately dug a new home in the ground for her, and got her replanted. Then Karen poured on the water and the nutrients. See, just removing that bush from where it was turned out to be only half the battle. We had to get it replanted quickly in new soil-or it would never make it!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Removed And Replanted."
If you belong to Jesus Christ, then He's done a lot to remove you from that old sinful soil your life was planted in. And just like our efforts to pull up that holly bush, it wasn't easy for Jesus to get you from your sin-hole to the Savior. You were deeply rooted there, you know? But Jesus gave His life on the cross to dig you out. Still, it could be that you're really struggling with the old you maybe. Could that be? Maybe you got removed but you never got firmly replanted.
Jesus told about a man who got cleaned up spiritually-and who ended up in terrible shape. Because getting rid of the old wasn't enough. Our word for today from the Word of God, Luke 11:24 says, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first." Okay, the old junk got cleaned out, but you see, nothing got put in its place. And that left a dangerous vacuum. And the devil came rushing right into it.
Well, like our removing that old holly bush from the soil it had been planted in, your Savior has pulled you out of the pit of the old ways of living. But if you're struggling, if you're sinking, it might be because you haven't been replanted deeply in some new spiritual soil. You're out of the old soil, but you're not rooted in the new. And that puts you in a very vulnerable position.
When you come to Christ, you need to get immediately rooted in His Word, the Bible. Peter talks about getting removed from the old soil when he says, "Rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind." Then he immediately talks about getting replanted in the new soil. "Like newborn babies," he says, "crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation (1 Peter 2:1-2).
You can't just survive on spiritual highs and Christian events-the soil is too shallow to dig your roots into. You're not going to have any spiritual stability and consistency until you anchor each new day with serious time in God's Word.
You've got to be an active part of His church, too. You've got to surround yourself with His teaching. If you don't, you're going to end up believing those old lies again. You need to surround yourself with His people. If you don't, you'll end up with the people who used to drag you down. You have to get busy in the activities of Jesus, or guess what. Yep, you'll drift into things that will pull you away from Him. If you don't get rooted in music that draws you closer to Jesus, you'll be into music that causes you to drift from Him. If you don't make an effort to learn God's promises, you're going to be an easy target for the devil's doubts and the devil's darts.
Yes, thanks to the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you, you've been removed from the deadly soil of sin. It took at lot-a lot-but Jesus did it all. Like a certain holly bush I know, experiencing the new life depends on you getting replanted right away in His new soil-where you can find all the nutrients you need to grow into all He rescued you to be.