Max Lucado Daily: LOVE THE OVERLOOKED
May I urge you to love the overlooked? When you talk to the lonely student or befriend the weary mom, you love Jesus. He dresses in the garb of the overlooked and ignored. “Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me,” Jesus said (Matthew 25:40).
You can do that. Don’t so focus on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done. Everyday do something you don’t want to do. Pick up someone else’s trash. Call the long-winded relative. Don’t be too big to do something small. 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, “Throw yourself into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.” A good action brings God’s attention. He notices the actions of his servants. He sent his Son to be one!
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Deuteronomy 10
God responded. He said, “Shape two slabs of stone similar to the first ones. Climb the mountain and meet me. Also make yourself a wooden chest. I will engrave the stone slabs with the words that were on the first ones, the ones you smashed. Then you will put them in the Chest.”
3-5 So I made a chest out of acacia wood, shaped two slabs of stone, just like the first ones, and climbed the mountain with the two slabs in my arms. He engraved the stone slabs the same as he had the first ones, the Ten Words that he addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly. Then God gave them to me. I turned around and came down the mountain. I put the stone slabs in the Chest that I made and they’ve been there ever since, just as God commanded me.
6-7 The People of Israel went from the wells of the Jaakanites to Moserah. Aaron died there and was buried. His son Eleazar succeeded him as priest. From there they went to Gudgodah, and then to Jotbathah, a land of streams of water.
8-9 That’s when God set apart the tribe of Levi to carry God’s Covenant Chest, to be on duty in the Presence of God, to serve him, and to bless in his name, as they continue to do today. And that’s why Levites don’t have a piece of inherited land as their kinsmen do. God is their inheritance, as God, your God, promised them.
10 I stayed there on the mountain forty days and nights, just as I did the first time. And God listened to me, just as he did the first time: God decided not to destroy you.
11 God told me, “Now get going. Lead your people as they resume the journey to take possession of the land that I promised their ancestors that I’d give to them.”
12-13 So now Israel, what do you think God expects from you? Just this: Live in his presence in holy reverence, follow the road he sets out for you, love him, serve God, your God, with everything you have in you, obey the commandments and regulations of God that I’m commanding you today—live a good life.
14-18 Look around you: Everything you see is God’s—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that’s you!—out of all the other peoples. That’s where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he’s the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn’t play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.
19-21 You must treat foreigners with the same loving care—
remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Reverently respect God, your God, serve him, hold tight to him,
back up your promises with the authority of his name.
He’s your praise! He’s your God!
He did all these tremendous, these staggering things
that you saw with your own eyes.
22 When your ancestors entered Egypt, they numbered a mere seventy souls. And now look at you—you look more like the stars in the night skies in number. And your God did it.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Read: Luke 15:1–7
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
INSIGHT
The parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:1–7) is the first in a series of parables about lost things. It’s followed by the parable of the lost coin (vv. 8–10) and the parable of the lost son, better known as the prodigal son (vv. 11–32).
Although each of the parables is about something lost, there’s also something in each that isn’t lost—the sheep safe in the pen, the remaining coins, and the elder son at home. Yet the shepherd, the woman, and the father are not content with what they have; their concern is for that which is lost.
Is someone in your life lost and waiting to be found by the Savior? Whom can you trust to God’s loving and searching ways? - J.R. Hudberg
Sinners Like Us
By David H. Roper
This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Luke 15:2
I have a friend—her name is Edith—who told me about the day she decided to follow Jesus.
Edith cared nothing for religion. But one Sunday morning she walked into a church near her apartment looking for something to satisfy her discontented soul. The text that day was Luke 15:1–2, which the pastor read from the King James Version: “Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”
That’s what it said, but this is what Edith heard: “This man receives sinners and Edith with them.” She sat straight up in her pew! Eventually she realized her mistake, but the thought that Jesus welcomed sinners—and that included Edith—stayed with her. That afternoon she decided to “draw near” to Jesus and listen to Him. She began to read the Gospels, and soon she decided to put her faith in Him and follow Him.
The religious folks of Jesus’s day were scandalized by the fact that He ate and drank with sinful, awful people. Their rules prohibited them from associating with such folk. Jesus paid no attention to their made-up rules. He welcomed the down-and-out and gathered them to Him, no matter how far gone they were.
It’s still true, you know: Jesus receives sinners and (your name).
Heavenly Father, we can’t thank You enough for the radical love of Your Son, who drew all of us outcasts and moral failures to Him, and made the way for us to come to You in joy and boldness.
God pursues us in our restlessness, receives us in our sinfulness, holds us in our brokenness. Scotty Smith
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Becoming Entirely His
Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. —James 1:4
Many of us appear to be all right in general, but there are still some areas in which we are careless and lazy; it is not a matter of sin, but the remnants of our carnal life that tend to make us careless. Carelessness is an insult to the Holy Spirit. We should have no carelessness about us either in the way we worship God, or even in the way we eat and drink.
Not only must our relationship to God be right, but the outward expression of that relationship must also be right. Ultimately, God will allow nothing to escape; every detail of our lives is under His scrutiny. God will bring us back in countless ways to the same point over and over again. And He never tires of bringing us back to that one point until we learn the lesson, because His purpose is to produce the finished product. It may be a problem arising from our impulsive nature, but again and again, with the most persistent patience, God has brought us back to that one particular point. Or the problem may be our idle and wandering thinking, or our independent nature and self-interest. Through this process, God is trying to impress upon us the one thing that is not entirely right in our lives.
We have been having a wonderful time in our studies over the revealed truth of God’s redemption, and our hearts are perfect toward Him. And His wonderful work in us makes us know that overall we are right with Him. “Let patience have its perfect work….” The Holy Spirit speaking through James said, “Now let your patience become a finished product.” Beware of becoming careless over the small details of life and saying, “Oh, that will have to do for now.” Whatever it may be, God will point it out with persistence until we become entirely His.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great word of Jesus to His disciples is Abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on His word; trust entirely to Him and watch that when He brings us to the venture, we take it. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1459 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Hurried, Worried, and Blurry - #8232
The Lord's been good to our ministry and given us vehicles when we needed them through His people. It's been a wonderful thing. And I remember years ago, He provided our ministry with a used car. It was the easiest car to drive we've ever had up to that time. The windows were interesting. Looking out the windshield, everything looks clear. Looking out the side windows; that was another story. They were tinted for privacy. But over the years and the miles and all the heat, the tinting had started to create ripples in the glass. So everything you looked at through those windows just didn't look quite right. It's was blurred, it was distorted, it was dark.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hurried, Worried, and Blurry."
The view isn't right, you know, when you're looking through a window that's dark or blurred. And sadly, a lot of us are looking at life through a window like that too much of the time. You know, it doesn't have to be that way. In the way He created us, God has provided something that can keep your view clear most of the time and help you actually avoid the mistakes we make because we're looking at things through a dirty window or a distorted window. One reason a lot of us are way more stressed than we need to be is that we neglect this vision-clearing gift from God.
It's clear that God built the need for it right into our creation when you go back 3,000 years to what He said in Leviticus 23:13, our word for today from the Word of God. "There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest ... you are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the Lord."
Okay, so God designed us to work six days a week - not seven - and to focus on worship and rest one day out of seven. Like a car, we can't be all accelerator and no brakes or we're going to be out of control; we're going to crash. The Sabbath principle is the brakes that our creator has built into our lives to keep that from happening. And we can't continue to defy our created order and end up in good shape.
Unfortunately, our society, our careers, our churches, even our own drivenness often push us to keep driving all the time - all accelerator, no brakes. God even included the Sabbath requirement in His Ten Commandments. He's serious about it. This isn't about legalism. It's about respecting our creator and living as we were created to live. It's about personal sanity!
You might be experiencing right now what neglecting your Sabbaths does to the window through which you look at life. Prolonged stretches without timeouts start to distort your judgment; they cause you to make mistakes, to be more vulnerable to temptation and choices you'll regret. When you don't stop regularly to rest, your creativity starts to dry up, your sensitivity starts to turn to hardness, you're meaner, you're more short-tempered, you're more negative, more cutting. People look worse than they are, problems look bigger than they are, and God seems farther than He is.
You make some of your biggest mistakes when you're fatigued, and one major reason you're fatigued may be that you've simply blown by one Sabbath rest after another. Your Sabbaths are pretty consistently delayed, or abbreviated, or canceled. And you, and probably people around you, are suffering unnecessarily for it.
In Exodus 31:13, God says, "You must observe my Sabbaths ... so you may know that I am the Lord." When you tithe your money, you are acknowledging that, as Lord of your finances, God can do more in your life with your obedient 90% than your disobedient 100% that you want to keep. When you take the Sabbath timeouts God has commanded, you're acknowledging His Lordship over your time; that He will enable you to do more in six days than you can do in seven days when you're dishonoring His Sabbath rest.
Your outlook may be getting increasingly blurred, dark, and distorted. You've probably not been stopping for the window cleaning that God does only when you have stopped to rest. You need to get your Sabbaths, so God doesn't one day have to violently throw on your brakes. Then your Sabbaths will come and get you.