Joshua 4 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: GOD BRINGS GIFTS

Long before you knew you needed grace, your Father had you covered! “Christ died for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8). Before you knew you needed a Savior, you had one. And when you ask him for mercy, he answers, “I’ve already given it, dear child. I’ve already given it.”

There’s more!  When you place your trust in Christ, he places his Spirit in you.  And when the Spirit comes, he brings gifts, housewarming gifts of sorts.  A spiritual gift, the Bible says, is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church. (1 Corinthians 12:7). When you become a child of God, the Holy Spirit requisitions your abilities for God’s kingdom, and they become spiritual gifts. No one is gift deprived. Are you weary of an ordinary existence?  Your spiritual adventure awaits. The cure for the common life begins and ends with God.

Read more Cure for the Common Life

Joshua 4 The Message (MSG)
4 1-3 When the whole nation was finally across, God spoke to Joshua: “Select twelve men from the people, a man from each tribe, and tell them, ‘From right here, the middle of the Jordan where the feet of the priests are standing firm, take twelve stones. Carry them across with you and set them down in the place where you camp tonight.’”

4-7 Joshua called out the twelve men whom he selected from the People of Israel, one man from each tribe. Joshua directed them, “Cross to the middle of the Jordan and take your place in front of the Chest of God, your God. Each of you heft a stone to your shoulder, a stone for each of the tribes of the People of Israel, so you’ll have something later to mark the occasion. When your children ask you, ‘What are these stones to you?’ you’ll say, ‘The flow of the Jordan was stopped in front of the Chest of the Covenant of God as it crossed the Jordan—stopped in its tracks. These stones are a permanent memorial for the People of Israel.’”

8-9 The People of Israel did exactly as Joshua commanded: They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan—a stone for each of the twelve tribes, just as God had instructed Joshua—carried them across with them to the camp, and set them down there. Joshua set up the twelve stones taken from the middle of the Jordan that had marked the place where the priests who carried the Chest of the Covenant had stood. They are still there today.

10-11 The priests carrying the Chest continued standing in the middle of the Jordan until everything God had instructed Joshua to tell the people to do was done (confirming what Moses had instructed Joshua). The people crossed; no one dawdled. When the crossing of all the people was complete, they watched as the Chest of the Covenant and the priests crossed over.

12-13 The Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh had crossed over in battle formation in front of the People of Israel, obedient to Moses’ instructions. All told, about forty thousand armed soldiers crossed over before God to the plains of Jericho, ready for battle.

14 God made Joshua great that day in the sight of all Israel. They were in awe of him just as they had been in awe of Moses all his life.

15-16 God told Joshua, “Command the priests carrying the Chest of The Testimony to come up from the Jordan.”

17 Joshua commanded the priests, “Come up out of the Jordan.”

18 They did it. The priests carrying God’s Chest of the Covenant came up from the middle of the Jordan. As soon as the soles of the priests’ feet touched dry land, the Jordan’s waters resumed their flow within the banks, just as before.

19-22 The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month. They set up camp at The Gilgal (The Circle) to the east of Jericho. Joshua erected a monument at The Gilgal, using the twelve stones that they had taken from the Jordan. And then he told the People of Israel, “In the days to come, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What are these stones doing here?’ tell your children this: ‘Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry ground.’

23-24 “Yes, God, your God, dried up the Jordan’s waters for you until you had crossed, just as God, your God, did at the Red Sea, which had dried up before us until we had crossed. This was so that everybody on earth would recognize how strong God’s rescuing hand is and so that you would hold God in solemn reverence always.”

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Friday, June 29, 2018
Read: 2 John 1:1–6

My dear congregation, I, your pastor, love you in very truth. And I’m not alone—everyone who knows the Truth that has taken up permanent residence in us loves you.

3 Let grace, mercy, and peace be with us in truth and love from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, Son of the Father!

4-6 I can’t tell you how happy I am to learn that many members of your congregation are diligent in living out the Truth, exactly as commanded by the Father. But permit me a reminder, friends, and this is not a new commandment but simply a repetition of our original and basic charter: that we love each other. Love means following his commandments, and his unifying commandment is that you conduct your lives in love. This is the first thing you heard, and nothing has changed.

INSIGHT
Love is a prominent theme in the apostle John’s writings. In today’s reading (2 John 1:1–6) John writes: “It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us” (v. 4). Just as caring parents delight in the development of the gifts and character of their children, John had a father’s pride in those who walked in love. It is interesting to contemplate what John means by “walk in love” (v. 6). The Greek word translated “walk” can also mean a consistency one exhibits in speech, attitudes, and behavior. It’s clear that we’re being told to make sure the words we say, the attitudes we have toward others, and our general behavior be characterized by sensitivity and generosity. Of course, the ultimate example of love is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself (1 John 4:10). We love others because Christ first loved us. - Dennis Fisher

Pictures of Love
By Amy Peterson

I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 2 John 1:5

My children and I have started a new daily practice. Every night at bedtime, we gather colored pencils and light a candle. Asking God to light our way, we get out our journals and draw or write answers to two questions: When did I show love today? and When did I withhold love today?

Loving our neighbors has been an important part of the Christian life “from the beginning” (2 John 1:5). That’s what John writes in his second letter to his congregation, asking them to love one another in obedience to God (2 John 1:5–6). Love is one of John’s favorite topics throughout his letters. He says that practicing real love is one way to know that we “belong to the truth,” that we’re living in God’s presence (1 John 3:18–19). When my kids and I reflect, we find that in our lives love takes shape in simple actions: sharing an umbrella, encouraging someone who is sad, or cooking a favorite meal. The moments when we’re withholding love are equally practical: we gossip, refuse to share, or satisfy our own desires without thinking of others’ needs.

Paying attention each night helps us be more aware each day, more tuned in to what the Spirit might be showing us as we walk through our lives. With the Spirit’s help, we’re learning to walk in love (2 John 1:6).

Lord, let us not love just in words, but in actions and in truth. Teach us to be obedient to Your call to love.

How can I show love today?

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, June 29, 2018
The Strictest Discipline

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. —Matthew 5:30

Jesus did not say that everyone must cut off his right hand, but that “if your right hand causes you to sin” in your walk with Him, then it is better to “cut it off.” There are many things that are perfectly legitimate, but if you are going to concentrate on God you cannot do them. Your right hand is one of the best things you have, but Jesus says that if it hinders you in following His precepts, then “cut it off.” The principle taught here is the strictest discipline or lesson that ever hit humankind.

When God changes you through regeneration, giving you new life through spiritual rebirth, your life initially has the characteristic of being maimed. There are a hundred and one things that you dare not do— things that would be sin for you, and would be recognized as sin by those who really know you. But the unspiritual people around you will say, “What’s so wrong with doing that? How absurd you are!” There has never yet been a saint who has not lived a maimed life initially. Yet it is better to enter into life maimed but lovely in God’s sight than to appear lovely to man’s eyes but lame to God’s. At first, Jesus Christ through His Spirit has to restrain you from doing a great many things that may be perfectly right for everyone else but not right for you. Yet, see that you don’t use your restrictions to criticize someone else.

The Christian life is a maimed life initially, but in Matthew 5:48 Jesus gave us the picture of a perfectly well-rounded life— “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."

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
Friday, June 29, 2018
Nice Ways to Miss God - #8210

Usually, the only way we know a musical artist we like is through listening to their CD or maybe watching their music video. We've come a long way from Grandma's old 78 RPM records. In fact, someone's listening and saying, "What's a record?" But there's something much better than either the audio or video recording of a great musician. It's called going to their concert where you can actually see them and hear them live in person. There's nothing like the live concert.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Nice Ways to Miss God."

If you can see a musician in person, or better yet, if you have a chance to meet that person, why would you just settle for something they've made like a recording? Sadly, many a person in their search for spiritual answers has made a tragic mistake like that. They've gotten all involved with something God made or a religion that represents Him, but they've missed meeting Him in person!

In Mark 12:34, which is our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus made a sobering statement about what I would call a spiritual "near miss." The man He said it to had a lot of Bible knowledge and spiritual understanding but he didn't have a personal commitment to Jesus. Jesus said, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Almost there, but not in. That means there will be people who came very close to doing what they must do in order to get to heaven. But like a man who misses his airplane flight by only seconds, they still won't get there. If Jesus were to appear to you personally where you are today, I wonder if He might say those same words to you, "You're not far from the kingdom of God. But you're not in."

Maybe you've found your spiritual experience in creation: the mountains, the ocean, the universe. That's good, but that's not God. God talks about that in Romans 1. "Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-His eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile..." See, that's what happens when you stop at what God made and you don't go on to a personal relationship with the God who made it! If you think what He's produced is impressive, wait until you meet Him!

Or maybe you've gotten as close to Jesus as a religion that's about Him. But your church, your religion, is just a representation of the One that you need to know personally; it's only an introduction to Him. Religion can be a very nice way to miss God. If you think your religion does something for you, well wait until you meet the One the religion is just representing! Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). It's Jesus that gets you to heaven, not Christianity. And one of the greatest spiritual dangers in the world is to put your trust in a Christian religion or a Christian belief and miss putting your trust in Jesus himself.

And today I've just got to believe He's inviting someone who's listening to finally experience the real thing-an eternal love relationship with Jesus himself. It's not practicing a religion. It's responding to His love with total trust, responding with all your heart to His pouring out all His life for you when He died on the cross to take your place. He absorbed all of God's punishment for your sin there. Responding to this Rescuer from heaven who blew the doors off His grave on Easter morning. That's what begins a relationship; it's not enough just to know He did those things, any more than it would be enough for a drowning person to know that a lifeguard could save him. You've got to grab Him; you've got to hold onto Him as your only hope.

For all your spirituality and all your religion, the hole in your heart is still empty because the missing person in your life is Jesus. The Bible says you "...were made by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16). This is the day you can finally have Him in your soul! Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours." He promised that upon your invitation, He's coming into your heart.

Look, if you want to be sure you have begun a relationship with Him; you want to know how to do that, would you go to our website today. It's ANewStory.com.

Your lifelong search for meaning, for love, for God, do you know where it ends? It ends at the feet of Jesus, and it's time to come home.