Max Lucado Daily: WHAT LOVE IS NOT - May 17, 2018
When Paul defined what love is not, he put rudeness on the list. Love is “not rude” (1 Corinthians 13:5). Some years ago an example of rudeness was taken before the courts in Minnesota. A man fell out of his canoe and lost his temper. Though the river was lined with vacationing families, he polluted the air with obscenities. Some of those families sued him. He said, “I have my rights!”
God calls us to a higher, more noble concern. Not, “What are my rights?” but “What is loving?” Do you have the right to pretend you don’t hear your wife speaking? Perhaps so, but is it loving?
Jesus always knocks before entering. He doesn’t have to. If anyone has the right to barge in, Christ does. But he doesn’t. That gentle tap you hear? It’s Christ…“Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20). And when you answer, he awaits your invitation to cross the threshold!
Read more A Love Worth Giving
Numbers 9
Passover
1-3 God spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year after leaving Egypt: “Have the People of Israel celebrate Passover at the set time. Celebrate it on schedule, on the evening of the fourteenth day of this month, following all the rules and procedures.”
4-5 Moses told the People of Israel to celebrate the Passover and they did—in the Wilderness of Sinai at evening of the fourteenth day of the first month. The People of Israel did it all just as God had commanded Moses.
6-7 But some of them couldn’t celebrate the Passover on the assigned day because they were ritually unclean on account of a corpse. So they presented themselves before Moses and Aaron on Passover and told Moses, “We have become ritually unclean because of a corpse, but why should we be barred from bringing God’s offering along with other Israelites on the day set for Passover?”
8 Moses said, “Give me some time; I’ll find out what God says in your circumstances.”
9-12 God spoke to Moses: “Tell the People of Israel, If one or another of you is ritually unclean because of a corpse, or you happen to be off on a long trip, you may still celebrate God’s Passover. But celebrate it on the fourteenth day of the second month at evening. Eat the lamb together with unraised bread and bitter herbs. Don’t leave any of it until morning. Don’t break any of its bones. Follow all the procedures.
13 “But a man who is ritually clean and is not off on a trip and still fails to celebrate the Passover must be cut off from his people because he did not present God’s offering at the set time. That man will pay for his sin.
14 “Any foreigner living among you who wants to celebrate God’s Passover is welcome to do it, but he must follow all the rules and procedures. The same procedures go for both foreigner and native-born.”
The Cloud
15-16 The day The Dwelling was set up, the Cloud covered The Dwelling of the Tent of Testimony. From sunset until daybreak it was over The Dwelling. It looked like fire. It was like that all the time, the Cloud over The Dwelling and at night looking like fire.
17-23 When the Cloud lifted above the Tent, the People of Israel marched out; and when the Cloud descended the people camped. The People of Israel marched at God’s command and they camped at his command. As long as the Cloud was over The Dwelling, they camped. Even when the Cloud hovered over The Dwelling for many days, they honored God’s command and wouldn’t march. They stayed in camp, obedient to God’s command, as long as the Cloud was over The Dwelling, but the moment God issued orders they marched. If the Cloud stayed only from sunset to daybreak and then lifted at daybreak, they marched. Night or day, it made no difference—when the Cloud lifted, they marched. It made no difference whether the Cloud hovered over The Dwelling for two days or a month or a year, as long as the Cloud was there, they were there. And when the Cloud went up, they got up and marched. They camped at God’s command and they marched at God’s command. They lived obediently by God’s orders as delivered by Moses.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Read: Psalm 136:1-15
1-3 Thank God! He deserves your thanks.
His love never quits.
Thank the God of all gods,
His love never quits.
Thank the Lord of all lords.
His love never quits.
4-22 Thank the miracle-working God,
His love never quits.
The God whose skill formed the cosmos,
His love never quits.
The God who laid out earth on ocean foundations,
His love never quits.
The God who filled the skies with light,
His love never quits.
The sun to watch over the day,
His love never quits.
Moon and stars as guardians of the night,
His love never quits.
The God who struck down the Egyptian firstborn,
His love never quits.
And rescued Israel from Egypt’s oppression,
His love never quits.
Took Israel in hand with his powerful hand,
His love never quits.
Split the Red Sea right in half,
His love never quits.
Led Israel right through the middle,
His love never quits.
Dumped Pharaoh and his army in the sea,
His love never quits.
The God who marched his people through the desert,
His love never quits.
Smashed huge kingdoms right and left,
His love never quits.
Struck down the famous kings,
His love never quits.
Struck Sihon the Amorite king,
His love never quits.
Struck Og the Bashanite king,
His love never quits.
Then distributed their land as booty,
His love never quits.
Handed the land over to Israel.
His love never quits.
INSIGHT
As with Psalm 136, many of the psalms encourage us to remember and praise God’s goodness. In Psalm 42, when the writer’s soul is “downcast” (v. 5), he remembers “by day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me” (v. 8). He puts his “hope in God,” and praises his Savior and God (v. 11). The psalmist David remembers God in the desert and is comforted: “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings” (63:6–7). And in his distress the psalmist Asaph “[seeks] the Lord” and is prompted to “remember the deeds of the Lord; . . . [His] miracles of long ago . . . and meditate on all [His] mighty deeds” (77:2, 10–12).
What would you include in your psalm of remembrance? - Alyson Kieda
Praising God’s Goodness
By Lawrence Darmani
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. Psalm 136:1
Someone in our Bible-study group suggested, “Let’s write our own psalms!” Initially, some protested that they didn’t have the flair for writing, but after some encouragement everyone wrote a moving poetic song narrating how God had been working in their lives. Out of trials, protection, provision, and even pain and tears came enduring messages that gave our psalms fascinating themes. Like Psalm 136, each psalm revealed the truth that God’s love endures forever.
We all have a story to tell about God’s love—whether we write or sing or tell it. For some, our experiences may be dramatic or intense—like the writer of Psalm 136 who recounted how God delivered His people from captivity and conquered His enemies (vv. 10–15). Others may simply describe God’s marvelous creation: “who by his understanding made the heavens . . . spread out the earth upon the waters . . . made the great lights— . . . the sun to govern the day . . . the moon and stars to govern the night” (vv. 5–9).
Your gift can help bring people back to the Lord.
Remembering who God is and what He has done brings out praise and thanksgiving that glorifies Him. We can then “[speak] to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:19) about the goodness of the Lord whose love endures forever! Turn your experience of God’s love into a praise song of your own and enjoy an overflow of His never-ending goodness.
Lord, thank You for the world You made and for the blessings on my life. Fill my heart with gratitude and put words in my mouth to acknowledge and appreciate You.
For all eternity, God’s love endures forever.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, May 17, 2018
His Ascension and Our Access
It came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. —Luke 24:51
We have no experiences in our lives that correspond to the events in our Lord’s life after the transfiguration. From that moment forward His life was altogether substitutionary. Up to the time of the transfiguration, He had exhibited the normal, perfect life of a man. But from the transfiguration forward— Gethsemane, the Cross, the resurrection— everything is unfamiliar to us. His Cross is the door by which every member of the human race can enter into the life of God; by His resurrection He has the right to give eternal life to anyone, and by His ascension our Lord entered heaven, keeping the door open for humanity.
The transfiguration was completed on the Mount of Ascension. If Jesus had gone to heaven directly from the Mount of Transfiguration, He would have gone alone. He would have been nothing more to us than a glorious Figure. But He turned His back on the glory, and came down from the mountain to identify Himself with fallen humanity.
The ascension is the complete fulfillment of the transfiguration. Our Lord returned to His original glory, but not simply as the Son of God— He returned to His father as the Son of Man as well. There is now freedom of access for anyone straight to the very throne of God because of the ascension of the Son of Man. As the Son of Man, Jesus Christ deliberately limited His omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. But now they are His in absolute, full power. As the Son of Man, Jesus Christ now has all the power at the throne of God. From His ascension forward He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Winning the Battle With the Animal Inside - #8179
Several years ago on an Indian reservation, a friend there told us about an elderly neighbor of hers who had taken an unusual pet into her house. It was a half wolf and half dog. Half wild and half domesticated, and as it turned out, big trouble. One morning that wolf dog picked up the lady's granddaughter and began to carry her away. The grandmother saw it, and she screamed at the top of her lungs. The animal stopped and froze in this moment of evident struggle between his wild side and his tame side. The wolf dog looked straight at this screaming lady, totally unafraid; his wild side wasn't scared at all. His wild side wanted that child. But then in one dramatic moment, the animal dropped the child and let her go. The tame side finally won, but there were still a lot of scars.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Winning the Battle With the Animal Inside."
The battle between the wild side and the tame side is a battle that we humans know all too well, because it seems they both live inside us and they're both strong. One Biblical writer, Paul, the apostle, wrote about this struggle in these words: "What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Romans 7:15).
If you're tired of that animal inside you winning, if you're tired of the scars it's left on you and the people you care about, then you're ready for our word for today from the Word of God in Galatians 5, beginning with verse 16. You'll hear the struggle, but you'll hear the solution, too. "Live by the Spirit (that's God's Holy Spirit, who lives in everyone who belongs to Jesus), and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want." Does that kind of struggle sound familiar at all?
Here are the two menus of the kind of person you're going to be, depending on which side wins. "The acts of the sinful nature (that's that animal inside) are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. Those who live like that will not inherit the kingdom of God." That's deadly stuff that comes from our wild side.
But it goes on to say, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."
Here's the hard truth about the animal inside. You can't tame him; it's just too strong. You can strive all you want, you can make all the commitments to change that you want, the monster will still win very often. But when you get Jesus, the Holy Spirit moves into your life with all the power there is.
The winning secret is in Ephesians 5:18, "Be filled with the Spirit." That means controlled by, taken over by the Holy Spirit, which means you stop trying to change by your own efforts. You trade striving for surrendering all of you completely to the Holy Spirit of God.
If you lay my glove on this chair I'm sitting on and ask it to move the chair, the glove will just lay there. But if I put my hand in that glove, that glove will pick up the chair and do what a glove can't do by the power of the hand inside it. See, you're just God's glove, powerless to subdue your sinful side. But if you surrender all control of that glove and let God put His hand in there, His power will move what you've never been able to move and change, and He will change it.
The Bible tells us that Jesus died on the cross to rescue us from the power and the penalty of the wild side of our sin. If you've never reached out to Him in faith and said, "Jesus, you're my only hope and I am Yours," would you do that today. Go to our website. There's so much more about this there. ANewStory.com.
Go to Him to be forgiven and you'll be clean, and you'll have inside you the power to finally be free from that animal inside.