Max Lucado Daily: YOU ALWAYS HAVE HOPE
For many, hope is in short supply. Hopelessness is an odd bag. Unlike others, it isn’t full. It’s empty, and its emptiness creates the burden. Unzip the top and examine all the pockets. Turn it upside down and shake it hard. The bag of hopelessness is painfully empty! Not a very pretty picture, is it?
What would it take to restore your hope? One comes quickly to mind…a person. Not just any person…it’s the Lord! You need someone to look you in the face and say, This isn’t the end. Don’t give up. There’s a better place than this. And I will lead you there. David, in Psalm 23, used these words, “He restores my soul.” God majors in restoring hope to the soul. Please note… you have hope! Psalm 121:7 says, “The Lord will keep you from all harm—He will watch over your life.” And He is the perfect one to do so!
Read more Traveling Light
Matthew 23:1-22
Religious Fashion Shows
1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
4-7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
8-10 “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
11-12 “Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
Frauds!
13 “I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.
15 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.
16-22 “You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, January 22, 2018
Read: James 1:1–12
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings.
Trials and Temptations
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
Footnotes:
James 1:2 The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family; also in verses 16 and 19; and in 2:1, 5, 14; 3:10, 12; 4:11; 5:7, 9, 10, 12, 19.
INSIGHT
When James says, “Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position” (1:9), he reflects the paradox of Jesus’s words in the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” said Jesus, describing those who are spiritually humble, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).
No one wants to suffer, but without testing, there is no perseverance. And without perseverance, there is no spiritual growth and the eternal reward that comes with it.
How might you choose to respond when you find yourself in humble or difficult circumstances? - Tim Gustafson
It’s in the Attitude
By Anne Cetas
Consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds. James 1:2
Regina drove home from work discouraged and tired. The day had started with tragic news in a text message from a friend, then spiraled downward in meetings with co-workers who refused to work with any of her ideas. As Regina was talking to the Lord, she thought it best to put the stress of the day aside and made a surprise visit with flowers to an elderly friend at a care center. Her spirits lifted as Maria shared how good the Lord was to her. She said, "I have my own bed and a chair, three meals a day, and help from the nurses here. And occasionally God sends a cardinal to my window just because He knows I love them and He loves me."
Attitude. Perspective. As the saying goes, “Life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it.” The people James wrote to were scattered because of persecution, and he asked them to consider their perspective about difficulties. He challenged them with these words: “Consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2).
“Consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds.” James 1:2
We are each on our own journey of learning to trust God with hard circumstances. The kind of joy-filled perspective James talked about comes as we learn to see that God can use struggles to produce maturity in our faith.
Lord, please change my attitude about hard times. Bring about joy, perseverance, and maturity in me.
God can bring times of growth out of our times of heartache.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, January 22, 2018
Am I Looking To God?
Look to Me, and be saved… —Isaiah 45:22
Do we expect God to come to us with His blessings and save us? He says, “Look to Me, and be saved….” The greatest difficulty spiritually is to concentrate on God, and His blessings are what make it so difficult. Troubles almost always make us look to God, but His blessings tend to divert our attention elsewhere. The basic lesson of the Sermon on the Mount is to narrow all your interests until your mind, heart, and body are focused on Jesus Christ. “Look to Me….”
Many of us have a mental picture of what a Christian should be, and looking at this image in other Christians’ lives becomes a hindrance to our focusing on God. This is not salvation— it is not simple enough. He says, in effect, “Look to Me and you are saved,” not “You will be saved someday.” We will find what we are looking for if we will concentrate on Him. We get distracted from God and irritable with Him while He continues to say to us, “Look to Me, and be saved….” Our difficulties, our trials, and our worries about tomorrow all vanish when we look to God.
Wake yourself up and look to God. Build your hope on Him. No matter how many things seem to be pressing in on you, be determined to push them aside and look to Him. “Look to Me….” Salvation is yours the moment you look.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The Bible is the only Book that gives us any indication of the true nature of sin, and where it came from. The Philosophy of Sin, 1107 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, January 22, 2018
One Dollar And God - #8096
One of the most amazing Christian warriors in my lifetime was a man who came to be known as Brother Andrew, or 'God's Smuggler'. He risked everything to get God's Word into spiritually closed countries where that was virtually impossible. Many have considered him a spiritual hero. No one could doubt that he was, at the very least, a bold risk-taker for Christ.
In his biography, he tells about an incident in his early life as a follower of Christ that showed him the kind of God he was serving. After some pretty wild years without the Lord, he came to Christ and almost immediately felt the call to begin training for ministry. He went to this small Bible school in Scotland, and before the students were allowed to graduate, they were given a very unusual assignment. They were asked to go out for a month to do evangelistic outreaches in Scottish villages, and they were given some money to live on - one British pound, to be exact. For those of us who are Americans, it would be like being given a dollar to live on for a month. The students were to go with that one bill and eat, and sleep, and rent halls, and buy refreshments, and hold outreaches, and return that one bill at the end of the month. Brother Andrew's team went out and they did just that. Except he returned with enough money for the school to send out two missionaries!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One Dollar And God."
Maybe everyone in God's service should have an assignment like that - to live the adventure of what life is like when all you've got is God. Now you may be at or near that point right now. It may be that God wants you to be at that point, and you've been avoiding it. For all of us, the ultimate questions of security and obedience boil down to this: Can God be trusted? Is God really enough? Figuratively speaking, can I make it when it's just "one dollar and God?"
Our word for today from the Word of God, 1 Kings 17:1-6, the prophet Elijah has just delivered a message of God's judgment to the Jewish king. And he said there's going to be a long drought in Israel. Then the prophet is given an assignment that sounds like something in Brother Andrew's Bible school. He is sent into a situation where it's just him and God - just him and whatever God provides, that is.
Here's what the Bible says, "Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah, 'Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine. You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.' So he did what the Lord had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook."
So, God sends Elijah into this situation where God is all he has. Maybe God's doing the same thing with you right now. He will always find a way to provide what His servant needs. He is, in fact, the God of unlikely sources! His people have nowhere to get water in the wilderness, so it comes from a rock! Five thousand people have nowhere to eat lunch, so Jesus takes this one lunch there and makes 5,000 lunches from it.
Elijah is in the wilderness where there is nowhere to get food. Oh yeah? Twice a day, here come the ravens, delivering God's supply. But you have to be in a seemingly hopeless situation like this to experience God's amazingness like this. I want to tell you, after all these years in faith ministry, I can 'amen' David's testimony in Psalm 37:25. "I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread."
If God has you at a point where it's 'one dollar and God' - financially, emotionally, physically - don't stop trusting Him now. Your security isn't the resources you have in your hand, but the Heavenly Father you belong to. And if you've been holding back from God's calling because you can't see where the resources will come from, remember the God of manna, and ravens, and the endless lunch. If you don't step out of the boat, you'll never know what it is to walk on water!
A great spiritual warrior was once a Bible school student with the equivalent of a dollar to live on and a month to live on it. And he found out what you can discover in a time when there seems to be 'no way,' one dollar and God is more than enough for everything you need!
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