Mark 11:1-18 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: GOD’S LOVE IS UNFAILING - May 1, 2018

God loves you. Personally. Powerfully. Passionately! God loves you with an unfailing love. And his love—if you let it—can fill you and leave you with a love worth giving!

Could it be that the first step of love is not toward them but toward him? Could it be that the secret to loving is receiving? You give love by first receiving it. “We love, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NASB). Long to be more loving? Begin by accepting your place as a dearly loved child. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us” (Ephesians 5:1-2 NIV).

We need help from an outside source. A transfusion. Would we love as God loves? Then we start by receiving God’s love.

Read more A Love Worth Giving

Mark 11:1-18

Entering Jerusalem on a Colt
11 1-3 When they were nearing Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany on Mount Olives, he sent off two of the disciples with instructions: “Go to the village across from you. As soon as you enter, you’ll find a colt tethered, one that has never yet been ridden. Untie it and bring it. If anyone asks, ‘What are you doing?’ say, ‘The Master needs him, and will return him right away.’”

4-7 They went and found a colt tied to a door at the street corner and untied it. Some of those standing there said, “What are you doing untying that colt?” The disciples replied exactly as Jesus had instructed them, and the people let them alone. They brought the colt to Jesus, spread their coats on it, and he mounted.

8-10 The people gave him a wonderful welcome, some throwing their coats on the street, others spreading out rushes they had cut in the fields. Running ahead and following after, they were calling out,

Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in God’s name!
Blessed the coming kingdom of our father David!
Hosanna in highest heaven!

11 He entered Jerusalem, then entered the Temple. He looked around, taking it all in. But by now it was late, so he went back to Bethany with the Twelve.

The Cursed Fig Tree
12-14 As they left Bethany the next day, he was hungry. Off in the distance he saw a fig tree in full leaf. He came up to it expecting to find something for breakfast, but found nothing but fig leaves. (It wasn’t yet the season for figs.) He addressed the tree: “No one is going to eat fruit from you again—ever!” And his disciples overheard him.

15-17 They arrived at Jerusalem. Immediately on entering the Temple Jesus started throwing out everyone who had set up shop there, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of the bankers and the stalls of the pigeon merchants. He didn’t let anyone even carry a basket through the Temple. And then he taught them, quoting this text:

My house was designated a house of prayer for the nations;
You’ve turned it into a hangout for thieves.

18 The high priests and religion scholars heard what was going on and plotted how they might get rid of him. They panicked, for the entire crowd was carried away by his teaching.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Read: Psalm 130:1–6
A song of ascents.
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
2     Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
    to my cry for mercy.

3 If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
    Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

5 I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
6 I wait for the Lord
    more than watchmen wait for the morning,
    more than watchmen wait for the morning.

INSIGHT
In Psalm 130:5–6 the word wait(s) appears five times. In the Lord’s development of our personal faith, He often delays an answer to prayer to deepen our trust in Him. At times this can be perplexing. Asking for His intervention for a wayward child or for healing of a painful illness often carries a sense of urgency. We pray, “Lord, I need your help now!” But “waiting on the Lord” takes discipline and develops a perseverance in our faith that only steadfastness can yield. Abram waited years for Isaac, the child of promise, to finally be given to him. And this was through Sarah’s unlikely conception when she was advanced in years and beyond the age of childbearing. Yet God’s sovereign hand was orchestrating these events. Abram waited on God in prayer, and eventually God granted him offspring too numerous to count (Genesis 12; 16:10; 17:1–19).

What prayers are you waiting for God to answer? In what ways might your heavenly Father be developing your faith as you wait? - Dennis Fisher

Waiting in Anticipation
By Lisa Samra

I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Psalm 130:6

Every May Day (May 1) in Oxford, England, an early morning crowd gathers to welcome spring. At 6:00, the Magdalen College Choir sings from the top of Magdalen Tower. Thousands wait in anticipation for the dark night to be broken by song and the ringing of bells.

Like the revelers, I often wait. I wait for answers to prayers or guidance from the Lord. Although I don’t know the exact time my wait will end, I’m learning to wait expectantly. In Psalm 130 the psalmist writes of being in deep distress facing a situation that feels like the blackest of nights. In the midst of his troubles, he chooses to trust God and stay alert like a guard on duty charged with announcing daybreak. “I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning” (v. 6).

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The anticipation of God’s faithfulness breaking through the darkness gives the psalmist hope to endure even in the midst of his suffering. Based on the promises of God found throughout Scripture, that hope allows him to keep waiting even though he has not yet seen the first rays of light.

Be encouraged if you are in the middle of a dark night. The dawn is coming—either in this life or in heaven! In the meantime, don’t give up hope but keep watching for the deliverance of the Lord. He will be faithful.

Please bring light to my darkness. Open my eyes to see You at work and to trust You. I’m grateful that You are faithful, Father.

God can be trusted in the light and in the dark.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Faith— Not Emotion
We walk by faith, not by sight. —2 Corinthians 5:7

For a while, we are fully aware of God’s concern for us. But then, when God begins to use us in His work, we begin to take on a pitiful look and talk only of our trials and difficulties. And all the while God is trying to make us do our work as hidden people who are not in the spotlight. None of us would be hidden spiritually if we could help it. Can we do our work when it seems that God has sealed up heaven? Some of us always want to be brightly illuminated saints with golden halos and with the continual glow of inspiration, and to have other saints of God dealing with us all the time. A self-assured saint is of no value to God. He is abnormal, unfit for daily life, and completely unlike God. We are here, not as immature angels, but as men and women, to do the work of this world. And we are to do it with an infinitely greater power to withstand the struggle because we have been born from above.

If we continually try to bring back those exceptional moments of inspiration, it is a sign that it is not God we want. We are becoming obsessed with the moments when God did come and speak with us, and we are insisting that He do it again. But what God wants us to do is to “walk by faith.” How many of us have set ourselves aside as if to say, “I cannot do anything else until God appears to me”? He will never do it. We will have to get up on our own, without any inspiration and without any sudden touch from God. Then comes our surprise and we find ourselves exclaiming, “Why, He was there all the time, and I never knew it!” Never live for those exceptional moments— they are surprises. God will give us His touches of inspiration only when He sees that we are not in danger of being led away by them. We must never consider our moments of inspiration as the standard way of life— our work is our standard.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

Civilization is based on principles which imply that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6). The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 565 L

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Back to Where It All Began - #8167

We were with our Native American team to Alaska, and I probably ate more salmon and learned more about salmon than I had all the rest of my life. We were in the Kodiak area one day, and our host took us to this neat little swimming area with a charming little waterfall. And I watched this salmon trying to jump up the waterfall to the stream above it. And he made it! I thought, "Man, that's the gutsiest fish I've ever seen!" Our host explained to us that the salmon was actually heading home - back to where he came from originally. Apparently, after a salmon is spawned, he heads downstream and ultimately out to sea where he spends a lot of his life. But eventually he seems to hear the call to go back to where he came from, even though it means a rugged upstream swim. Something summons him to fight his way back to where he began.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Back to Where It All Began."

I believe that the same Creator who summons salmon back to where they began does the same thing in His children. In fact, He may be issuing that call in your heart lately. It's something Jesus had in mind for His first followers as He prepared them for His return to heaven.

You find it in our word for today from the Word of God, Matthew 28:10. Jesus has just won His awesome victory over death and now He meets the devoted women who came to the tomb that first Easter. As the women fall down in worship and amazement at their risen Savior, He says, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see Me." Jesus' message for His disciples: go back to Galilee. Verse 16 tells us their response. "Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go." And there those original followers of our Lord received their Great Commission to take His message to a dying world.

When Jesus sent that "meet Me in Galilee" message, they were in Jerusalem. That's some 90 miles from Galilee. So why Galilee? Well, that's where they had first met Jesus, where they were called into His service, where they first experienced His love, His power, and His miracles. So Jesus is actually summoning them back to where it all began so they can experience Him as they've never experienced Him before.

Jesus is still calling His followers back to their Galilee. Like a salmon returning to where his life began, maybe it's time for you to get back to where your life in Christ began - that first love, that first passion, that first excitement. Since those early days in your relationship with Jesus, you've covered a lot of miles, maybe even swum in the big ocean out there. But what was once so warm; maybe it's become cool. What was once so simple has become so complicated with layers of activity and even theology. There was once a time when you had a lot of Christ, but not much Christianity. Maybe now you've got a lot of Christianity, but not a lot of Christ.

So, after all the experiences and knowledge and scars you've accumulated in that big ocean out there, Jesus is summoning you back to the simplicity of where you started. Because then it was all about Jesus; it was all about a relationship. So, you just talked openly with Jesus in simple, childlike faith that He'd meet your needs, He'd heal your hurts, and He'd move your mountains. He wants you back there again.

At the source, you were hungry to be with Him by being in His Word. You just naturally wanted the people around you to know this One who had brought you the greatest love in your life. You were eager to do anything for Him because you were responding to that love. Jesus wants you to have that again - to have that passionate "first love" relationship that is, no matter how many miles you've journeyed, what this whole Jesus-thing is all about. But that simplicity is easy to lose.

So listen to that pull in your heart right now, that homing instinct from your Creator. He is summoning you back to where you began. Even if you have to swim upstream to get there, it's the only place that your heart can really call home.