Max Lucado Daily: PRAY THE PARTICULARS
A father was teaching his three-year-old daughter the Lord’s Prayer. She would repeat the lines after him. Finally she decided to go solo. She carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer. “Lead us not into temptation,” she prayed, “but deliver us from e-mail.” Not a bad prayer!
God calls us to pray about everything! We tell God exactly what we want. We pray the particulars. When the wedding ran low on wine, Mary wasn’t content to say, “Help us, Jesus.” She was specific. She said, “They have no more wine” (John 2:3 NIV). A specific prayer is a serious prayer. If I say to you, “Do you mind if I come by your house sometime?” you may not take me seriously. But if I say, “Can I come over this Friday night? I really need your advice.” Then you know my petition is sincere. When we offer specific requests, God knows the same. So, offer yours!
Read more Anxious for Nothing
Genesis 13
1-2 So Abram left Egypt and went back to the Negev, he and his wife and everything he owned, and Lot still with him. By now Abram was very rich, loaded with cattle and silver and gold.
3-4 He moved on from the Negev, camping along the way, to Bethel, the place he had first set up his tent between Bethel and Ai and built his first altar. Abram prayed there to God.
5-7 Lot, who was traveling with Abram, was also rich in sheep and cattle and tents. But the land couldn’t support both of them; they had too many possessions. They couldn’t both live there—quarrels broke out between Abram’s shepherds and Lot’s shepherds. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living on the land at the time.
8-9 Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have fighting between us, between your shepherds and my shepherds. After all, we’re family. Look around. Isn’t there plenty of land out there? Let’s separate. If you go left, I’ll go right; if you go right, I’ll go left.”
10-11 Lot looked. He saw the whole plain of the Jordan spread out, well watered (this was before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah), like God’s garden, like Egypt, and stretching all the way to Zoar. Lot took the whole plain of the Jordan. Lot set out to the east.
11-12 That’s how they came to part company, uncle and nephew. Abram settled in Canaan; Lot settled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent near Sodom.
13 The people of Sodom were evil—flagrant sinners against God.
14-17 After Lot separated from him, God said to Abram, “Open your eyes, look around. Look north, south, east, and west. Everything you see, the whole land spread out before you, I will give to you and your children forever. I’ll make your descendants like dust—counting your descendants will be as impossible as counting the dust of the Earth. So—on your feet, get moving! Walk through the country, its length and breadth; I’m giving it all to you.”
18 Abram moved his tent. He went and settled by the Oaks of Mamre in Hebron. There he built an altar to God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, October 05, 2017
Read: Deuteronomy 32:7–12
Remember the days of old;
consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
your elders, and they will explain to you.
8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
according to the number of the sons of Israel.[a]
9 For the Lord’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted inheritance.
10 In a desert land he found him,
in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
11 like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them aloft.
12 The Lord alone led him;
no foreign god was with him.
Footnotes:
Deuteronomy 32:8 Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls (see also Septuagint) sons of God
INSIGHT
Deuteronomy comes from the Greek word deuteronomion (“second law”). Much of the content of the book of Deuteronomy is a retelling of the giving of the law to Israel recorded in the book of Exodus. This could be misleading, however, because Deuteronomy is more than just legal code. The first giving of the law marked Israel entering into a covenant relationship with God as His people, but this retelling prepared them for their entrance into the long-awaited land of promise. It reminded the Israelites of their covenant relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and was a reaffirmation of God’s covenant love for them—despite their repeated failures during the wilderness wanderings. God’s faithful, abiding love remained His response to His people. That same love continues today, and His perfect love never fails.
In your times of struggle, do you find it easy to question God’s love? How does God’s faithfulness to Israel encourage you to trust in His faithfulness to you? -Bill Crowder
Hovering Over Us
By Amy Boucher Pye
He shielded him and cared for him . . . like an eagle that . . . hovers over its young. Deuteronomy 32:10–11
Betty’s daughter arrived home from an overseas trip, feeling unwell. When her pain became unbearable, Betty and her husband took her to the emergency room. The doctors and nurses set to work, and after a few hours one of the nurses said to Betty, “She’s going to be okay! We’re going to take good care of her and get her healed up.” In that moment, Betty felt peace and love flood over her. She realized that while she hovered over her daughter anxiously, the Lord is the perfect parent who nurtures His children, comforting us in difficult times.
In the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord reminded His people how, when they were wandering in the desert, He cared for them as a loving parent who hovers over its young. He never left them, but was like an eagle “that spreads its wings” to catch its children and “carries them aloft” (32:11). He wanted them to remember that although they experienced hardship and strife in the desert, He didn’t abandon them.
We can take comfort and courage in this reminder that our God will never leave us.
We too may face challenges of many kinds, but we can take comfort and courage in this reminder that our God will never leave us. When we feel that we are falling, the Lord like an eagle will spread His wings to catch us (v. 11) as He brings us peace.
Father God, Your love as a parent is greater than anything I can imagine. May my confidence rest in You, and may I share Your love with others.
Our God hovers over us with love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, October 05, 2017
The Nature of Degeneration
Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… —Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own god.” This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light…” (John 3:19).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We all have the trick of saying—If only I were not where I am!—If only I had not got the kind of people I have to live with! If our faith or our religion does not help us in the conditions we are in, we have either a further struggle to go through, or we had better abandon that faith and religion. The Shadow of an Agony, 1178 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, October 05, 2017
The Souvenirs Of Sin - #8019
If you grew up on a farm, there's probably a dog in your memories. For my farm girl, Karen, that dog was a Collie cattle dog named King. King was great at rounding up her Dad's cattle. All Dad would have to do was to whistle that certain whistle, and King would start circling and circling those cattle until he herded them in. But there was a problem. One day a chicken got out, and King killed that chicken-which gave that valuable dog the taste of blood. They tell me if you can't cure that in a dog, you can't afford to keep that dog. The dog either has to be killed or disciplined so he'll never forget. So Dad took that dead chicken (now, get this) tied its legs around King's neck with some twine. Needless to say, this dog tried everything to shake that dead chicken, but as the day wore on, the bird he killed did not improve with age. No, by the end of the day, King's head and tail were hanging very low. Look, it's a painful way to learn the seriousness of what he had done, but not nearly as painful as the alternative.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Souvenirs of Sin."
If you have to carry some of the consequences of what you've done wrong, it can be powerful incentive not to do it again-which can save you from consequences that will be far worse. Now that's why God sometimes allows you and me to experience some unpleasant results of our sin. It's not that He didn't forgive us or that He doesn't love us. It's actually because He does.
God had great plans for Jacob-among other things, he would father the fathers of twelve tribes of Israel. But all his life this stubborn, self-willed, survival-oriented man had been wrestling with God for the control of his life. And then came the final wrestling match. Our word for today from the Word of God, Genesis 32:24, "Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man."
Eventually, Jacob realizes who he's been wrestling with that night-and all these years. The Bible says, "Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, 'It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared...He was limping (the Bible says) because of his hip" (Genesis 32:30-31). As far as we know, Jacob walked with a painful limp for the rest of his life. Was he right with God? Well, he asked for God's blessing that night, and God changed his name from Jacob, the cheat-to Israel, which means prince with God.
But even though it seems Jacob had made his peace with God, he was like that Collie, King. In essence, he carried the dead chicken around with him the rest of his life to remind him of how much it hurts to be self-willed and stubborn and manipulative. It wasn't that my father-in-law didn't value that dog of his-he did value the dog. That's why he made him live with those consequences, because the alternative was destruction.
That may be why God has allowed you to continue to experience some of the scars and pain and consequences of your sin. If you have brought that sin to Jesus' cross in true repentance, God promises He will "remember that sin no more" (Hebrews 8:12). Isn't that awesome? You are forgiven, you are clean, your sin is forever covered by the blood that Jesus shed for it. But God doesn't ever want you to go back where you were. So maybe today there are still the memories, the regrets, some of the brokenness, those scars. God has left you with that aftermath so you will be protected by those consequences from ever doing it again. You won't forget how much it hurts. You won't forget how much it costs.
It's another dimension of that same grace that forgave you and cleansed you. It's God's keeping grace; enough pain from the past to keep you from ever going back to what would destroy you. Sometimes God in His grace saves us from the consequences of our sin and sometimes He leaves the consequences there. Either way, it's His love.