Mark 9:30-50, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: HIS PERFECT LOVE - April 23, 2018

Jesus loves us too much to leave us in doubt about his grace. His “perfect love expels all fear!” (1 John 4:18 NLT).

If God loved us with an imperfect love, we would have high cause to worry. Imperfect love keeps a list of sins and consults it often. God keeps no list of our wrongs. His love casts out fear because he casts out our sin. Tether your heart to this promise, and tighten the knot. Remember of words of John’s epistle: “If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things” (1 John 3:20).

When you feel unforgiven, evict the feelings. Emotions don’t get a vote. Go back to Scripture. God’s Word holds rank over self-criticism and self-doubt. Do you know God’s grace? Then you can love boldly and live robustly. Nothing fosters courage like a clear grasp of grace!

Read more Fearless

Mark 9:30-50

30-32 Leaving there, they went through Galilee. He didn’t want anyone to know their whereabouts, for he wanted to teach his disciples. He told them, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed to some people who want nothing to do with God. They will murder him. Three days after his murder, he will rise, alive.” They didn’t know what he was talking about, but were afraid to ask him about it.

So You Want First Place?
33 They came to Capernaum. When he was safe at home, he asked them, “What were you discussing on the road?”

34 The silence was deafening—they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest.

35 He sat down and summoned the Twelve. “So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.”

36-37 He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.”

38 John spoke up, “Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped him because he wasn’t in our group.”

39-41 Jesus wasn’t pleased. “Don’t stop him. No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down. If he’s not an enemy, he’s an ally. Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of water in my name is on our side. Count on it that God will notice.

42 “On the other hand, if you give one of these simple, childlike believers a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.

43-48 “If your hand or your foot gets in God’s way, chop it off and throw it away. You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owner of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You’re better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.

49-50 “Everyone’s going through a refining fire sooner or later, but you’ll be well-preserved, protected from the eternal flames. Be preservatives yourselves. Preserve the peace.”

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Monday, April 23, 2018
Read: 2 Thessalonians 3:16–18
Final Greetings
16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.

17 I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, which is the distinguishing mark in all my letters. This is how I write.

18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

INSIGHT
Paul, Silas, and Timothy were the first to share the gospel in Thessalonica. The response to the gospel of free grace in Christ was remarkably positive (Acts 17:1–4), but—as is often the case—the positive response to the gospel was accompanied by opposition and persecution (Acts 17:5–6; 1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2:2). Thus Paul was forced to leave the city of Thessalonica sooner than he had hoped (Acts 17:9–10). His concern for the new congregation there motivated him to write two inspired letters to that young church. As he completed his second letter, Paul stressed the peace that only Jesus Christ can offer (2 Thessalonians 3:16). The apostle was no stranger to trials, yet his confidence that everything would work out in God’s sovereignty gave him a deep, abiding peace that he wanted other believers to experience. The Prince of Peace is the source of the believer’s spiritual rest.

For further study on experiencing peace in the midst of trials see Navigating the Storms of Life at discoveryseries.org/hp061. -  Dennis Fisher

The Secret of Peace
By Keila Ochoa

The Lord of peace himself give you peace. 2 Thessalonians 3:16

Grace is a very special lady. One word comes to mind when I think of her: peace. The quiet and restful expression on her face has seldom changed in the six months I have known her, even though her husband was diagnosed with a rare disease and then hospitalized.

When I asked Grace the secret of her peace, she said, “It’s not a secret, it’s a person. It’s Jesus in me. There is no other way I can explain the quietness I feel in the midst of this storm.”

To trust in Jesus is peace.
The secret of peace is our relationship to Jesus Christ. He is our peace. When Jesus is our Savior and Lord, and as we become more like Him, peace becomes real. Things like sickness, financial difficulties, or danger may be present, but peace reassures us that God holds our lives in His hands (Daniel 5:23), and we can trust that things will work together for good.

Have we experienced this peace that goes beyond logic and understanding? Do we have the inner confidence that God is in control? My wish for all of us today echoes the words of the apostle Paul: “May the Lord of peace himself give you peace.” And may we feel this peace “at all times and in every way” (2 Thessalonians 3:16).

Dear Lord, please give us Your peace at all times and in every situation.

To trust in Jesus is peace.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, April 23, 2018
Do You Worship The Work?
We are God’s fellow workers… —1 Corinthians 3:9

Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him. A great number of Christian workers worship their work. The only concern of Christian workers should be their concentration on God. This will mean that all the other boundaries of life, whether they are mental, moral, or spiritual limits, are completely free with the freedom God gives His child; that is, a worshiping child, not a wayward one. A worker who lacks this serious controlling emphasis of concentration on God is apt to become overly burdened by his work. He is a slave to his own limits, having no freedom of his body, mind, or spirit. Consequently, he becomes burned out and defeated. There is no freedom and no delight in life at all. His nerves, mind, and heart are so overwhelmed that God’s blessing cannot rest on him.

But the opposite case is equally true– once our concentration is on God, all the limits of our life are free and under the control and mastery of God alone. There is no longer any responsibility on you for the work. The only responsibility you have is to stay in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your cooperation with Him. The freedom that comes after sanctification is the freedom of a child, and the things that used to hold your life down are gone. But be careful to remember that you have been freed for only one thing– to be absolutely devoted to your co-Worker.

We have no right to decide where we should be placed, or to have preconceived ideas as to what God is preparing us to do. God engineers everything; and wherever He places us, our one supreme goal should be to pour out our lives in wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might…” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

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
Monday, April 23, 2018
The Wildness Inside - #8161

There was a movie years ago called "The Horse Whisperer." I thought it was about a man with laryngitis, but it's actually about this man who has an amazing ability to gentle horses-horses that it seems no one else can tame. In fact, the main character was modeled after a real man whose skill in gentling and training wild mustangs is almost legendary. In the past, people have used some pretty brutal methods to force a horse into submission. But the real horse whisperer doesn't "break horses." He uses body language and, yes, some quiet talking as his tools to gentle a horse that otherwise would be uncontrollable.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Wildness Inside."

We've all got it! We've got this wildness inside us. Or to use the language of "Star Wars," it's the dark side we all have. We can hide it-we can suppress it-this animal inside us, but only some of the time. And then there are times it takes over. The wildness can erupt in an angry outburst, a selfish lashing out, in a sexual sin, in words that cut people like chain saws, or in unfaithfulness to the person we love. It can surface in our deception, our secret sin, our jealousy, our prejudice, our criticism.

The things we've done because of the untamed animal inside us are the very things that make us feel ashamed and dirty inside. They're the things that hurt most the people we love the most. But through the years, millions of men and women have experienced the miracle of the animal that once controlled them being brought under control by the Master, and that's Jesus Christ. No religion, even Christianity, can tame the animal inside us. It can only give us good things that we can do to feel better about the bad things we do. No, it takes the power of the only man who's ever walked out of His grave under His own power. It takes Jesus to change us.

There's an amazing picture of His power that's just under the surface in the Bible's account of Jesus entering Jerusalem on the original Palm Sunday, just five days before He was crucified. In Luke 19, beginning with verse 30, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus tells two of His disciples to "Find a colt which no one has ever ridden. They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As He went along, people spread their cloaks on the road."

At this point, this massive crowd starts shouting praises to Jesus. Now, hold on! Imagine this: He's riding on an unbroken colt through a screaming crowd who keep throwing things in his path. I'm thinking about bucking bronco here. How about you? But no, he's as peaceful as a lamb.

It's a picture, when Jesus is aboard, the peace of Christ settles in and the untamed animal is gentled by the Master. Not by His force, but by His love. That's the miracle Jesus wants to do in your life. You need to do something about the wild and hurting animal inside for your sake, for your children's sake, for the sake of your husband or wife, for the people you love, for the people you've hurt.

Ultimately, this wildness the Bible calls sin will carry you all the way to hell. That's the eternal price for a life lived our way instead of God's way. But it's a price the very Son of God has already paid when He loved you enough to pay for all your sin on an old rugged cross. This very day you can be forgiven of every wrong thing you have ever done. You can be set free from the guilt, the shame, and the dark side.

But He doesn't force His way into your life. He leaves the choice to you. Your new freedom, your new being "clean inside" awaits your saying to Jesus, "I am Yours, because You are my only hope."

I've actually put on our website the very things that will help you know the steps to be sure that Jesus is in your life and how to let the change begin. Appropriately, the name of that website is ANewStory.com. Maybe your new story can begin there.

When Jesus comes aboard, His peace settles over your life, and it tames what no one else could tame.