Max Lucado Daily: REMIND GOD OF HIS PROMISES
I remember sitting in High School Algebra class, staring at my textbook as if it were written in Mandarin Chinese. Fortunately, I had a patient teacher. He issued the invitation and stuck to it: “If you cannot solve a problem, come to me and I will help you.” I wore a trail between his desk and mine. I would remind him, “Remember how you promised you would help?” I still had the problem, mind you, but I had entrusted the problem to one who knew how to solve it.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah said, “Put the Lord in remembrance of His promises, keep not silence” (Isaiah 62:6 AMPC). God invites you—yes, commands you—to remind him of his promises. Find a promise that fits your problem, and build your prayer around it! These prayers of faith touch the heart of God and miracles are set in motion!
Read more Anxious for Nothing
Matthew 6:1-18
The World Is Not a Stage
6 “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.
2-4 “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—‘playactors’ I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.
Pray with Simplicity
5 “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
6 “Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
7-13 “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:
Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best—
as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.
14-15 “In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can’t get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God’s part.
16-18 “When you practice some appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God, don’t make a production out of it. It might turn you into a small-time celebrity but it won’t make you a saint. If you ‘go into training’ inwardly, act normal outwardly. Shampoo and comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face. God doesn’t require attention-getting devices. He won’t overlook what you are doing; he’ll reward you well.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Read: Isaiah 38:1–8
Hezekiah’s Illness
38 In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”
2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, 3 “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: 5 “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life. 6 And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city.
7 “‘This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: 8 I will make the shadow cast by the sun go back the ten steps it has gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.’” So the sunlight went back the ten steps it had gone down.
INSIGHT
Hezekiah, whose name means “whom Jehovah has strengthened,” was the son of Ahaz (2 Kings 18:1), one of the worst kings of ancient Judah. Hezekiah succeeded his father on the throne, reigning for twenty-nine years. Ignoring the disastrous example of his father, Hezekiah modeled himself after his great-grandfather, Uzziah. Hezekiah’s primary impact as king was in his role as a spiritual reformer. As part of this reform he destroyed the “bronze serpent” (see Num. 21:4–9). What was once a symbol of healing in Moses’s day had become an object of idolatrous worship. Hezekiah’s reign saw a season of spiritual renewal that had a profound impact on the kingdom (adapted from Easton’s Bible Dictionary).
God honored Hezekiah’s faithfulness and compassionately answered his prayer for healing. How have you seen God respond when you’ve cried out to Him? -Bill Crowder
Two-Winged Sun
By Poh Fang Chia
[The Lord says:] I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. Isaiah 38:5
For five years, an ancient clay seal remained in a closet in Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology. After the seal was dug up at the foot of the southern part of Jerusalem’s old city wall, initial examination failed to establish the significance of the nearly 3,000-year-old object. But then a researcher carefully scrutinized the letters on the seal, resulting in a major discovery. The inscription, written in ancient Hebrew, reads: “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah.”
At the center of the seal is a two-winged sun surrounded by two images symbolizing life. The archaeologists who discovered the seal believe that King Hezekiah began using this seal as a symbol of God’s protection after the Lord healed him from a life-threatening illness (Isa. 38:1–8). Hezekiah had been pleading with the Lord to heal him. And God heard his prayer. He also gave Hezekiah a sign that He would indeed do what He had promised, saying, “I will cause the sun’s shadow to move ten steps backward” (v. 8 nlt).
Lord, help me to believe in Your power and love, and to seek Your help always.
The facts related to this archeological artifact give us an encouraging reminder that the people in the Bible were learning, as we are, to call on the Lord who hears us when we cry out to Him for help. And even when His answers are not what we want or expect, we can rest assured that He is compassionate and He is powerful. The One who orders the movement of the sun can certainly move in our hearts.
Dear God, You are great and powerful, yet You care for me. Help me to believe in Your power and love, and to seek Your help always.
Call out to God; He is wanting to hear from you.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
God’s Silence— Then What?
When He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. —John 11:6
Has God trusted you with His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences are actually His answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).
A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious— it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of His silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy— silence.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To read the Bible according to God’s providential order in your circumstances is the only way to read it, viz., in the blood and passion of personal life. Disciples Indeed, 387 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Your Life's Most Memorable Legacy - #8023
Ronald Reagan led one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th Century-a life which he sadly and progressively forgot in the last years of his life. His long battle with Alzheimer's Disease acted like a cruel eraser. It removed recollections of what he had done and even who he was. After Ronald Reagan's death, we learned a lot more about what happened during his long journey into darkness. Memory of his years in Hollywood just disappeared, and then he couldn't remember being Governor of California, and ultimately he lost all that had happened in his years as being President of the United States. But one memory stayed alive almost until the end. In the office that Nancy Reagan set up for him, there was a picture on the wall; it was a picture of the Rock River in Illinois. When visitors would ask him about it, after most of his life was there no more, he would brighten and he'd say, "Oh, that's where I was a lifeguard when I was 17. That's where I saved 77 lives!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Life's Most Memorable Legacy."
After all was said and done, the one thing Ronald Reagan could remember about his life was the lives he saved. But then, there's nothing about your life that's more worth remembering. No matter how many or how few, no matter how large or how small your life accomplishments have been, that's your greatest legacy. There's nothing more heroic, there's nothing more meaningful than being someone's difference between life and death-especially if it's eternal life or death.
Our word for today from the Word of God in Proverbs 11:30 tells us what the legacy of your life and mine ought to be. God says, "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise." What you should have to show for the one life you've lived is a trail of life-people whose souls you have helped move from sin's death penalty to the eternal life that can only be found at Jesus' cross.
There's a stretch of beach that God has assigned to each of us who belongs to Him. There's a stretch of beach where He's assigned you to be His lifeguard-the one who's responsible to do all you can to rescue the people around you who will die spiritually unless someone helps them get to Jesus. You may be looking around and saying, "Me? Surely God must have someone better than me to help these people get to heaven?"
Stop looking around. You're the one He's put in their lives. Not some highly trained spiritual professional, not some professional God salesman, not someone with a more outgoing personality, not someone who's got it more together than you have. Your Savior decided you were the person they needed as their link to Him.
Look, if you're like most of us, your fear has kept you from actively trying to introduce them to Jesus. Fear is actually from one thing: it's all about me. It's focusing on ourselves-how I'm going to look, what they'll think about me-instead of focusing on what might happen to them if we don't try to tell them.
Maybe you've been preoccupied with goals and accomplishments that won't even last for your lifetime, let alone forever. But God says those who lead many to righteousness will "shine like the stars forever and ever" (Daniel 12:3). People in heaven because you cared-there's nothing you can do in this life that can even come close to that as a legacy. Lives saved forever.
The place where you work, the activities you're involved in, the school you attend, the neighborhood you live in, the people who keep showing up in your life; they are the lives at stake on your stretch of the beach. Don't fail the Savior who died for them by letting them live and die without Him because of your silence. Don't fail them by not showing them the difference Jesus makes; by not telling them what Jesus did for them on the cross.
See, you are their chance at Jesus. You're their chance at heaven.