Max Lucado Daily: STUNNED BY GRACE
I’ve never been surprised by God’s judgment, but I’m still stunned by His grace! God’s judgment has never been a problem for me. In fact, it always seemed right. Lightning bolts on Sodom. Fire on Gomorrah. Good job, God. Egyptians swallowed in the Red Sea. They had it coming.
Discipline is easy for me to swallow. It’s logical to assimilate. But God’s grace? It’s anything but. Need examples? How much time do you have? Peter denied Christ before he preached Christ. Zacchaeus, the crook. The cleanest part of his life was the money he’d laundered. But Jesus still had time for him. The thief on the cross, hung-out to die one minute, heaven-bound and smiling the next.
Story after story. Surprise after surprise! Search the pages. Read the stories! Find one person who came seeking a second chance and left with a stern lecture. Search. You won’t find it.
From Lucado Inspirational Reader
Job 27
No Place to Hide
1-6 Having waited for Zophar, Job now resumed his defense:
“God-Alive! He’s denied me justice!
God Almighty! He’s ruined my life!
But for as long as I draw breath,
and for as long as God breathes life into me,
I refuse to say one word that isn’t true.
I refuse to confess to any charge that’s false.
There is no way I’ll ever agree to your accusations.
I’ll not deny my integrity even if it costs me my life.
I’m holding fast to my integrity and not loosening my grip—
and, believe me, I’ll never regret it.
7-10 “Let my enemy be exposed as wicked!
Let my adversary be proven guilty!
What hope do people without God have when life is cut short?
when God puts an end to life?
Do you think God will listen to their cry for help
when disaster hits?
What interest have they ever shown in the Almighty?
Have they ever been known to pray before?
11-12 “I’ve given you a clear account of God in action,
suppressed nothing regarding God Almighty.
The evidence is right before you. You can all see it for yourselves,
so why do you keep talking nonsense?
13-23 “I’ll quote your own words back to you:
“‘This is how God treats the wicked,
this is what evil people can expect from God Almighty:
Their children—all of them—will die violent deaths;
they’ll never have enough bread to put on the table.
They’ll be wiped out by the plague,
and none of the widows will shed a tear when they’re gone.
Even if they make a lot of money
and are resplendent in the latest fashions,
It’s the good who will end up wearing the clothes
and the decent who will divide up the money.
They build elaborate houses
that won’t survive a single winter.
They go to bed wealthy
and wake up poor.
Terrors pour in on them like flash floods—
a tornado snatches them away in the middle of the night,
A cyclone sweeps them up—gone!
Not a trace of them left, not even a footprint.
Catastrophes relentlessly pursue them;
they run this way and that, but there’s no place to hide—
Pummeled by the weather,
blown to kingdom come by the storm.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Read: Genesis 8:15–9:3
Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”
18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”
God’s Covenant With Noah
9 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
Footnotes:
Genesis 8:21 Or humans, for
Harvest and Thanksgiving
By Dave Branon
Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. Exodus 23:16
Several thousand years ago, God spoke directly to Moses and instituted a new festival for His people. In Exodus 23:16, according to Moses’s record, God said, “Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field.”
Today countries around the world do something similar by celebrating the land’s bounty. In Ghana, the people celebrate the Yam Festival as a harvest event. In Brazil, Dia de Acao de Gracas is a time to be grateful for the crops that yielded their food. In China, there is the Mid-Autumn (Moon) Festival. In the United States and Canada: Thanksgiving.
Gratitude is the memory of a glad heart.
To understand the fitting goal of a harvest celebration, we visit Noah right after the flood. God reminded Noah and his family—and us—of His provision for our flourishing existence on the earth. Earth would have seasons, daylight and darkness and “seedtime and harvest” (Gen. 8:22). Our gratitude for the harvest, which sustains us, goes to God alone.
No matter where you live or how you celebrate your land’s bounty, take time today to express gratitude to God—for we would have no harvest to celebrate without His grand creative design.
Dear Creator God, thank You so much for the wondrous way You fashioned this world—with seasons, with harvest-time, with everything we need to exist. Please accept our gratitude.
What are you thankful for? Share at Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
Gratitude is the memory of a glad heart.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, November 23, 2017
The Distraction of Contempt
Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us! For we are exceedingly filled with contempt. —Psalm 123:3
What we must beware of is not damage to our belief in God but damage to our Christian disposition or state of mind. “Take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously” (Malachi 2:16). Our state of mind is powerful in its effects. It can be the enemy that penetrates right into our soul and distracts our mind from God. There are certain attitudes we should never dare to indulge. If we do, we will find they have distracted us from faith in God. Until we get back into a quiet mood before Him, our faith is of no value, and our confidence in the flesh and in human ingenuity is what rules our lives.
Beware of “the cares of this world…” (Mark 4:19). They are the very things that produce the wrong attitudes in our soul. It is incredible what enormous power there is in simple things to distract our attention away from God. Refuse to be swamped by “the cares of this world.”
Another thing that distracts us is our passion for vindication. St. Augustine prayed, “O Lord, deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself.” Such a need for constant vindication destroys our soul’s faith in God. Don’t say, “I must explain myself,” or, “I must get people to understand.” Our Lord never explained anything— He left the misunderstandings or misconceptions of others to correct themselves.
When we discern that other people are not growing spiritually and allow that discernment to turn to criticism, we block our fellowship with God. God never gives us discernment so that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
God does not further our spiritual life in spite of our circumstances, but in and by our circumstances. Not Knowing Whither, 900 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Giving From the Bottom - #8054
During holiday seasons in America, and especially Thanksgiving, you can actually call the Butterball Turkey Hot Line. And, yes, you can get an answer to whatever turkey questions you may have. A famous news commentator said that they had monitored that hotline last Thanksgiving; and one lady called and she said, "I've had this turkey in my freezer for 23 years. Can I still use it?" Okay, this is a true story! The man on the hotline said, "Well, if your freezer has been set on zero degrees the whole time and it hasn't been defrosted, then the turkey is probably okay. Maybe the taste isn't though." Well, the lady decided she wouldn't use the turkey after all. She said, "I know, I'll give it to the church."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Giving From the Bottom."
When that lady gave to God's work what she really had no use for, she wasn't the only one. That's been going on for a long time. Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Malachi 1 beginning at verse 6 where God says to his ancient people, "You show contempt for my name. But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for your name?' 'You place defiled food on my altar.' But you ask, 'How have we defiled you?' 'By saying that the Lord's table is contemptible. When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?' says the Lord Almighty." This is a powerful dialogue isn't it? Well, here's what the Lord expects from us: not the lame, not the blind. No, Numbers 18:29 says, "You must present as the Lord's portion the best and holiest part of everything given to you." "The best; the holiest," he says.
But, the best is what we want to hang onto. We want a low risk commitment that gives to Jesus what doesn't matter that much to us while holding onto the things that do matter to us. Obviously, we know we need to give something to this One who loves us and gives us life forever. But we'd like to reach into the freezer and meet our responsibility with some old turkey.
God's reaction to that kind of giving? Malachi 1:10, "'Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,' says the Lord Almighty,' and I will accept no offering from your hands.'" Wow! God says, "Close the church, cancel the meetings, close your hymn books, and forget your offerings. I'm not accepting any of it anyway." What you have given to God is an insult, not a sacrifice.
We have a lot of time to put into making money, watching T.V., being online, recreation, social media, and sports, but we're just too busy to give prime time to the work of the Lord. When the call comes for young men and women to offer their lives for the Lord's work, we pull our son and daughter a littler closer. We say, "Here am I, send someone else's child." We give what we can afford to give, financially anyway, and we keep most of our income to spend on ourselves.
Remember, Jesus isn't interested in the amount of the gift. He's interested in the amount of the sacrifice. We "dedicate our life to Christ," but we only make Him Lord of the areas that aren't really that important to us anyway. Jesus is officially Lord, but we still maintain control over the things that really matter: our relationships, our marriage, our money, our business, our ministry, our dream, our prize possessions, our romance. So like the believers of Malachi's day, we give to our Savior from the bottom, not the top, and we forfeit his blessing on our lives. We miss the peace; we miss the significance that could be ours if we gave Him our best.
Maybe you've been limiting His Lordship in your life. You've been offering to Jesus your leftovers. Make this the day you say, "That's enough mediocrity Lord. I've played games with your Lordship long enough. Jesus, I am all Yours."
He deserves so much more than you've been giving. He says to you today in the words of the old hymn, "I gave, I gave My life for thee. What hast thou given for Me?"
