Max Lucado Daily: CALL ON GOD
Imagine you receive a call from the doctor’s office. “The doctor has reviewed your tests and would like you to come into the office for a consultation.” As quickly as you can say “uh-oh,” you have a choice: anxiety or trust.
Anxiety says. . .Why does God let bad things happen to me? Have I done something wrong? I’m too young for this tragedy. If you aren’t already sick, you will be by the time you get to the doctor. “Anxiety weighs down the human heart,” the Bible says in Proverbs 12:25.
But there is a better way. Before you call your mom, spouse, or friend, call on God. Invite him to speak to the problem. Slap handcuffs on the culprit, the anxious thought, and march it before the One who has all authority, Jesus Christ. For all you know, the doctor may have good news. God may want you to be a poster child of good health and healing. All you can do is pray and trust.
Read more Anxious for Nothing
Job 10
To Find Some Skeleton in My Closet
“I can’t stand my life—I hate it!
I’m putting it all out on the table,
all the bitterness of my life—I’m holding back nothing.”
2-7 Job prayed:
“Here’s what I want to say:
Don’t, God, bring in a verdict of guilty
without letting me know the charges you’re bringing.
How does this fit into what you once called ‘good’—
giving me a hard time, spurning me,
a life you shaped by your very own hands,
and then blessing the plots of the wicked?
You don’t look at things the way we mortals do.
You’re not taken in by appearances, are you?
Unlike us, you’re not working against a deadline.
You have all eternity to work things out.
So what’s this all about, anyway—this compulsion
to dig up some dirt, to find some skeleton in my closet?
You know good and well I’m not guilty.
You also know no one can help me.
8-12 “You made me like a handcrafted piece of pottery—
and now are you going to smash me to pieces?
Don’t you remember how beautifully you worked my clay?
Will you reduce me now to a mud pie?
Oh, that marvel of conception as you stirred together
semen and ovum—
What a miracle of skin and bone,
muscle and brain!
You gave me life itself, and incredible love.
You watched and guarded every breath I took.
13-17 “But you never told me about this part.
I should have known that there was more to it—
That if I so much as missed a step, you’d notice and pounce,
wouldn’t let me get by with a thing.
If I’m truly guilty, I’m doomed.
But if I’m innocent, it’s no better—I’m still doomed.
My belly is full of bitterness.
I’m up to my ears in a swamp of affliction.
I try to make the best of it, try to brave it out,
but you’re too much for me,
relentless, like a lion on the prowl.
You line up fresh witnesses against me.
You compound your anger
and pile on the grief and pain!
18-22 “So why did you have me born?
I wish no one had ever laid eyes on me!
I wish I’d never lived—a stillborn,
buried without ever having breathed.
Isn’t it time to call it quits on my life?
Can’t you let up, and let me smile just once
Before I die and am buried,
before I’m nailed into my coffin, sealed in the ground,
And banished for good to the land of the dead,
blind in the final dark?”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Read: Romans 10:1–13 |
Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3 Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
5 Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.”[a] 6 But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’”[b] (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’”[c] (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,”[d] that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: 9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 11 As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”[e] 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”[f]
Footnotes:
Romans 10:5 Lev. 18:5
Romans 10:6 Deut. 30:12
Romans 10:7 Deut. 30:13
Romans 10:8 Deut. 30:14
Romans 10:11 Isaiah 28:16 (see Septuagint)
Romans 10:13 Joel 2:32
INSIGHT
The redemption provided by Christ is the only basis for receiving eternal life. Why is it impossible to be saved through our own good works? -Dennis Fisher
Ruth’s Story
By Dave Branon
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Romans 10:13
Ruth cannot tell her story without tears. In her mid-eighties and unable to get around much anymore, Ruth may not appear to be a central figure in our church’s life. She depends on others for rides, and because she lives alone she doesn’t have a huge circle of influence.
But when she tells us her story of salvation—as she does often—Ruth stands out as a remarkable example of God’s grace. Back when she was in her thirties, a friend invited her to go to a meeting one night. Ruth didn’t know she was going to hear a preacher. “I wouldn’t have gone if I knew,” she says. She already had “religion,” and it wasn’t doing her any good. But go she did. And she heard the good news about Jesus that night.
Jesus redeems, transforms, and gives us new life.
Now, more than fifty years later, she cries tears of joy when she talks of how Jesus transformed her life. That evening, she became a child of God. Her story never grows old.
It doesn’t matter if our story is similar to Ruth’s or not. What does matter is that we take the simple step of putting our faith in Jesus and His death and resurrection. The apostle Paul said, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9).
That’s what Ruth did. You can do that too. Jesus redeems, transforms, and gives us new life.
To learn about having a relationship with Jesus, read Following Jesus.
Belonging to Christ is not rehabilitation; it’s re-creation.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
The Trial of Faith
If you have faith as a mustard seed…nothing will be impossible for you. —Matthew 17:20
We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, and it may be so in the initial stages. But we do not earn anything through faith— faith brings us into the right relationship with God and gives Him His opportunity to work. Yet God frequently has to knock the bottom out of your experience as His saint to get you in direct contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of emotional enjoyment of His blessings. The beginning of your life of faith was very narrow and intense, centered around a small amount of experience that had as much emotion as faith in it, and it was full of light and sweetness. Then God withdrew His conscious blessings to teach you to “walk by faith” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And you are worth much more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight with your thrilling testimony.
Faith by its very nature must be tested and tried. And the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character must be proven as trustworthy in our own minds. Faith being worked out into reality must experience times of unbroken isolation. Never confuse the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life, because a great deal of what we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him— a faith that says, “I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.” The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is— “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth. The Place of Help, 1005 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Following The People or Leading The People - #8037
When historian Stephen Ambrose wrote the bestseller about their amazing adventure, he appropriately titled it Undaunted Courage. It's one of the many accounts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the daring group who explored America's new Louisiana Purchase 200 years ago. As they made their way along the Missouri River, traveling from St. Louis all the way to the Pacific Ocean, most every bend in the river revealed sights and wildlife that no white man had ever seen. One of the many critical moments on their two-year expedition was the point in Montana where they encountered a fork in the Missouri River. There was no map to guide them, and a wrong choice could exhaust their resources for a very long journey. The river to the right was muddy like the Missouri had been. The crew wanted to go that way. But Captain Lewis and Captain Clark assessed the situation, and led their reluctant men down the left fork. When the expedition reached the massive waterfalls that Indian friends had told them they would find, they all knew they had chosen the right way.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Following The People or Leading The People."
The captains on the Lewis and Clark Expedition had the courage and conviction to lead their crew where the crew didn't think they should go. That's called leadership. And some people you're responsible for may need for you to be leading them with that kind of courage right now.
See, the troops are often wrong about which way to go. They were in Moses' day when the majority said it was too dangerous to go into the Promised Land. Two men exercised godly leadership that day, defying the popular opinion-Joshua and Caleb. And though the people refused to follow their lead, Joshua and Caleb were the only ones of their generation who did not die during the forty years in the wilderness. And forty years later, God gave Joshua the amazing assignment of leading His people into the land where Joshua had tried to take them before. Nehemiah steadfastly led a sometimes frightened, sometimes reluctant majority to stay on mission and finish the Jerusalem wall against overwhelming odds.
In Exodus 17, beginning with verse 4, our word for today from the Word of God, we find a revealing picture of what real, principled leadership requires-whether it's leading your family, your business, a church, a ministry, or any people who look to you. As usual, the Israelites were complaining and quarreling and grumbling against Moses. They're desperate for water, and there's none around. "Then Moses cried out to the Lord, 'What am I to do with these people? They are ready to stone me.' The Lord answered Moses, 'Walk on ahead of the people (Listen to that!)...take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile. I will stand before you by the rock of Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out.'" And Moses' leadership was again vindicated as water for a nation flowed from that rock.
That's the kind of leadership I hope you and I are prepared to give. Walk ahead of the people you're leading-you can't hear the Lord as long as you're listening to the crowd. You have to extricate yourself from the fray and get some perspective, get above the fray. Then cry out to God, "What am I to do with these people?" And listen for where He is headed and do what He says. Your job is to let God show you what He is up to, and then to join Him in what He's doing by obeying Him, and then leading the people in that direction even if another way seems right to them.
Don't follow your biases. Don't follow your own wisdom. Don't follow the people that you're supposed to be leading. Follow the Lord where He's going. When you lead with that kind of courage and that kind of conviction, you can take the people to their destiny instead of to a detour.