Max Lucado Daily: THE GIFT GOD HAS GIVEN YOU
A cynic asked an elderly woman about the security of her salvation. He said, “How can you be so sure that after all these years God won’t let you sink into hell?” Her answer: “He would lose more than I would. All I would lose would be my own soul, but He would lose his good name.”
What a gift God has given to you! You’ve won the greatest lottery in the history of humanity, and you didn’t even pay for the ticket. Your soul is secure, your salvation guaranteed. Your name is written in the only book that matters. This is the message of God, the promise of grace. The Bible says “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ” (Romans 8:1). This is a promise from God. And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Joshua 3
The Jordan
Joshua was up early and on his way from Shittim with all the People of Israel with him. He arrived at the Jordan and camped before crossing over. After three days, leaders went through the camp and gave out orders to the people: “When you see the Covenant-Chest of God, your God, carried by the Levitical priests, start moving. Follow it. Make sure you keep a proper distance between you and it, about half a mile—be sure now to keep your distance!—and you’ll see clearly the route to take. You’ve never been on this road before.”
5 Then Joshua addressed the people: “Sanctify yourselves. Tomorrow God will work miracle-wonders among you.”
6 Joshua instructed the priests, “Take up the Chest of the Covenant and step out before the people.” So they took it up and processed before the people.
7-8 God said to Joshua, “This very day I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all Israel. They’ll see for themselves that I’m with you in the same way that I was with Moses. You will command the priests who are carrying the Chest of the Covenant: ‘When you come to the edge of the Jordan’s waters, stand there on the river bank.’”
9-13 Then Joshua addressed the People of Israel: “Attention! Listen to what God, your God, has to say. This is how you’ll know that God is alive among you—he will completely dispossess before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. Look at what’s before you: the Chest of the Covenant. Think of it—the Master of the entire earth is crossing the Jordan as you watch. Now take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one man from each tribe. When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the Chest of God, Master of all the earth, touch the Jordan’s water, the flow of water will be stopped—the water coming from upstream will pile up in a heap.”
14-16 And that’s what happened. The people left their tents to cross the Jordan, led by the priests carrying the Chest of the Covenant. When the priests got to the Jordan and their feet touched the water at the edge (the Jordan overflows its banks throughout the harvest), the flow of water stopped. It piled up in a heap—a long way off—at Adam, which is near Zarethan. The river went dry all the way down to the Arabah Sea (the Salt Sea). And the people crossed, facing Jericho.
17 And there they stood; those priests carrying the Chest of the Covenant stood firmly planted on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground. Finally the whole nation was across the Jordan, and not one wet foot.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, September 07, 2018
Read: Psalm 103:13–22
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
14 For he knows our frame;[a]
he remembers that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
18 to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
19 The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his word,
obeying the voice of his word!
21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts,
his ministers, who do his will!
22 Bless the Lord, all his works,
in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Footnotes:
Psalm 103:14 Or knows how we are formed
INSIGHT
In the middle of Psalm 103 a potentially dark subtheme surfaces: life passes by all too quickly (vv. 15–16). As David poetically responds to this sobering awareness, we might well expect his song to become one of resignation or despondency. Yet the psalm remains joyful from beginning to end. Is David in denial? No! He frames the psalm, and his whole life, with praise to God, beginning and ending with this phrase: “Praise the Lord, my soul” (vv. 1, 22). The truth of God’s goodness provides the platform from which David’s whole life becomes a song of triumph.
Our awareness that life is fleeting need not cause us to panic or sink into despair. Rather, it can remind us that our life is in God. We find joy and meaning in singing His praises.
As seasons change and we sense life’s transience, what questions come to mind? Do those big questions cause us to reevaluate our priorities? Are we finding joy and fulfillment in relationship with our Creator? - Tim Gustafson
Unchanging Love
By James Banks
The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17
When I was in high school I played on the varsity tennis team. I spent many hours of my teenage years trying to improve my skills on four concrete courts located just two blocks from my home.
The last time I visited that city, one of the first things I did was drive to the tennis courts, hoping to watch others play and reminisce for a moment. But the old courts, so familiar to my memory, were nowhere to be seen. In their place was a vacant field, inhabited only by an occasional weed waving silently in the breeze.
That afternoon remains in my mind as a stark reminder of the brevity of life. One of the places where I expended some of my best youthful strength no longer existed! Reflecting on that experience later brought me to this truth, expressed by an aging King David: “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him” (Psalm 103:15–17).
We grow older and the world around us may change, but God’s love doesn’t. He can always be trusted to take care of those who turn to Him.
Faithful Father, thank You for Your love that never changes! Help me to love You by serving You faithfully today.
In our changing world, we can always depend on our unchanging God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, September 07, 2018
Fountains of Blessings
The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. —John 4:14
The picture our Lord described here is not that of a simple stream of water, but an overflowing fountain. Continue to “be filled” (Ephesians 5:18) and the sweetness of your vital relationship to Jesus will flow as generously out of you as it has been given to you. If you find that His life is not springing up as it should, you are to blame— something is obstructing the flow. Was Jesus saying to stay focused on the Source so that you may be blessed personally? No, you are to focus on the Source so that out of you “will flow rivers of living water”— irrepressible life (John 7:38).
We are to be fountains through which Jesus can flow as “rivers of living water” in blessing to everyone. Yet some of us are like the Dead Sea, always receiving but never giving, because our relationship is not right with the Lord Jesus. As surely as we receive blessings from Him, He will pour out blessings through us. But whenever the blessings are not being poured out in the same measure they are received, there is a defect in our relationship with Him. Is there anything between you and Jesus Christ? Is there anything hindering your faith in Him? If not, then Jesus says that out of you “will flow rivers of living water.” It is not a blessing that you pass on, or an experience that you share with others, but a river that continually flows through you. Stay at the Source, closely guarding your faith in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow into the lives of others with no dryness or deadness whatsoever.
Is it excessive to say that rivers will flow out of one individual believer? Do you look at yourself and say, “But I don’t see the rivers”? Through the history of God’s work you will usually find that He has started with the obscure, the unknown, the ignored, but those who have been steadfastly true to Jesus Christ.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. Baffled to Fight Better, 69 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, September 07, 2018
One Fatal Flaw - #8260
Each generation has its unforgettable events and photographs that sort of sear those events into our memories. So often, those images are tragedies: the falling towers, of course, of September 11, the bombed out Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. Before either of those, came the images of the sudden explosion of the Challenger shuttle over Cape Canaveral-those horrible trails of smoke against the sky, reminding us of the deaths of all those heroic astronauts aboard. After an extensive investigation, that cataclysmic explosion was traced to a simple O-ring that malfunctioned in cold weather and started a chain of events that doomed the shuttle and its crew. Then came the more recent explosion of the shuttle Columbia; this time apparently traceable to a loose piece of foam that came off during liftoff and ended up causing the loss of everyone aboard.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One Fatal Flaw."
Great crews, great ships, great missions-doomed by one fatal flaw. You know, one fatal flaw can be very costly. Eternally costly if it's a spiritual condition that can keep you from the God who made you; that can keep you from heaven some day.
Our word for today from the Word of God tells the story of a man whose fatal flaw almost cost him everything, and man, he had a lot to lose. It vividly represents the life of someone who's listening today, I believe, and it comes as a loving warning from a God who just does not want to lose you. 2 Kings 5, beginning at verse 1, tells the story of a Syrian military hero named Naaman, who was, in the Bible's words, "a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded...he was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy." Here's a man with a great reputation, great victories, a great life and a deadly condition totally beyond his control, in spite of all he's got going for him.
The Bible diagnoses our spiritual leprosy as sin, our rebellion against God that's caused us to hijack the running of our life from the God who gave us our life. The Bible says, "The wages of our sin is death" (Romans 6:23), as in separation from God here, and then eternal separation from Him forever in hell. Sin, like leprosy in those days, carries the sentence of death.
Someone points Naaman to God's man in Israel, the only man who can save him. And Naaman heads out with this great entourage and with 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold. He's planning to buy his cure! But God's man tells him the only way he can be saved is to humble himself and wash seven times in the muddy Jordan River and he says, "your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed." Naaman's pride almost causes him to miss God's answer, but ultimately he surrenders any efforts of his own to be saved and he does it God's way. And the Bible says that "his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy."
Many a man has been too proud to come to God on just the terms God has; to lay aside any hope of earning his way to heaven, of buying his way to heaven, of doing something great to get to heaven. See, your fatal sin condition can only be cured one way. You have to humble yourself at the foot of Jesus' cross, confessing that He, and He alone, is your only hope. Without that, you will die of your spiritual leprosy. But with that step of humble faith, you can finally be clean, and forgiven, and right with God, and you can be ready for eternity whenever it comes, however it comes.
Please, don't let your pride keep you from the only one who can save you. It's arrogance, it's stubbornness that will cost you heaven and give you hell; a hell that Jesus already took in your place. Will you go to Him today? Give yourself to Him.
I'd love to invite you to our website, because I think you'll find there some very practical information of how to be sure your sins have been erased from God's book and you belong to Jesus. It's ANewStory.com. Please take some time to go there today.
In the words of the Bible: "Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed...and get a new heart. Why will you die? Repent and live!" (Ezekiel 18:31-32).
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