Jesus not only did a work for us; he does a work in us! Colossians 1:27 tells us, “The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you.” He commands our hands and feet, requisitions our minds and tongues. As Romans 8:29 declares, “He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son.”
We’ll never be sinless, but we will sin less. And when we do sin, we have assurance that the grace that saved us also preserves us. We may lose our tempers, our perspective, and our self-control. But we never lose our hope. Scripture promises, “He is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy!”
Read more Because of Bethlehem
Psalm 63
A David Psalm, When He Was out in the Judean Wilderness
63 God—you’re my God!
I can’t get enough of you!
I’ve worked up such hunger and thirst for God,
traveling across dry and weary deserts.
2-4 So here I am in the place of worship, eyes open,
drinking in your strength and glory.
In your generous love I am really living at last!
My lips brim praises like fountains.
I bless you every time I take a breath;
My arms wave like banners of praise to you.
5-8 I eat my fill of prime rib and gravy;
I smack my lips. It’s time to shout praises!
If I’m sleepless at midnight,
I spend the hours in grateful reflection.
Because you’ve always stood up for me,
I’m free to run and play.
I hold on to you for dear life,
and you hold me steady as a post.
9-11 Those who are out to get me are marked for doom,
marked for death, bound for hell.
They’ll die violent deaths;
jackals will tear them limb from limb.
But the king is glad in God;
his true friends spread the joy,
While small-minded gossips
are gagged for good.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, December 14, 2018
Read: Revelation 5:1–13
The Lion Is a Lamb
5 1-2 I saw a scroll in the right hand of the One Seated on the Throne. It was written on both sides, fastened with seven seals. I also saw a powerful Angel, calling out in a voice like thunder, “Is there anyone who can open the scroll, who can break its seals?”
3 There was no one—no one in Heaven, no one on earth, no one from the underworld—able to break open the scroll and read it.
4-5 I wept and wept and wept that no one was found able to open the scroll, able to read it. One of the Elders said, “Don’t weep. Look—the Lion from Tribe Judah, the Root of David’s Tree, has conquered. He can open the scroll, can rip through the seven seals.”
6-10 So I looked, and there, surrounded by Throne, Animals, and Elders, was a Lamb, slaughtered but standing tall. Seven horns he had, and seven eyes, the Seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. He came to the One Seated on the Throne and took the scroll from his right hand. The moment he took the scroll, the Four Animals and Twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb. Each had a harp and each had a bowl, a gold bowl filled with incense, the prayers of God’s holy people. And they sang a new song:
Worthy! Take the scroll, open its seals.
Slain! Paying in blood, you bought men and women,
Bought them back from all over the earth,
Bought them back for God.
Then you made them a Kingdom, Priests for our God,
Priest-kings to rule over the earth.
11-14 I looked again. I heard a company of Angels around the Throne, the Animals, and the Elders—ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in full song:
The slain Lamb is worthy!
Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength!
Take the honor, the glory, the blessing!
Then I heard every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea, join in, all voices in all places, singing:
To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb!
The blessing, the honor, the glory, the strength,
For age after age after age.
The Four Animals called out, “Oh, Yes!” The Elders fell to their knees and worshiped.
INSIGHT
A repeated word in today’s passage is worthy (vv. 2, 4, 9, 12), which is used to describe Jesus. But what does worthy mean? While a dictionary definition is helpful, the passage itself defines it. First, Jesus is worthy because He has triumphed (v. 5) and can therefore open the scroll and break the seals. But John goes on to describe how He has triumphed. Jesus is worthy because He has triumphed by being slain and purchasing people with His blood (v. 9). - J.R. Hudberg
Heaven’s Love Song
By Mart DeHaan
We love him because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19
In 1936, songwriter Billy Hill released a popular hit song titled “The Glory of Love.” Before long a nation was singing about the joy of doing even little things out of love for one another. Fifty years later, lyricist Peter Cetera wrote a more romantic song with a similar title. He imagined two people living forever, knowing together they did it all—for the glory of love.
Revelation, the last book in the Bible, describes a new love song that will someday lift the voices of everyone in heaven and earth (Revelation 5:9, 13). The music begins, however, in a minor key of mourning. John, our narrator, cries, seeing no answer to all that has gone wrong with the world (vv. 3–4). But his mood brightens and the music builds to a crescendo (vv. 12–13) as John learns the real glory and story of love. Soon he hears all creation praising the powerful Lion-King of Judah (v. 5), who has won the hearts of His subjects by lovingly sacrificing Himself, like a Lamb, for our rescue (v. 13).
In the most moving lyrics ever sung, we see why even simple acts of kindness rise on the wings of a song. The glory we sing about reflects the heart of our God. We sing about Him because He gave us our song.
Father, please help us to see that even the smallest acts of love and kindness can remind us of Your love for us.
In what ways can you thank God today through simple acts of kindness?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, December 14, 2018
The Great Life
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled… —John 14:27
Whenever we experience something difficult in our personal life, we are tempted to blame God. But we are the ones in the wrong, not God. Blaming God is evidence that we are refusing to let go of some disobedience somewhere in our lives. But as soon as we let go, everything becomes as clear as daylight to us. As long as we try to serve two masters, ourselves and God, there will be difficulties combined with doubt and confusion. Our attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. Once we get to that point, there is nothing easier than living the life of a saint. We encounter difficulties when we try to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own purposes.
God’s mark of approval, whenever you obey Him, is peace. He sends an immeasurable, deep peace; not a natural peace, “as the world gives,” but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, wait until it does, or seek to find out why it is not coming. If you are acting on your own impulse, or out of a sense of the heroic, to be seen by others, the peace of Jesus will not exhibit itself. This shows no unity with God or confidence in Him. The spirit of simplicity, clarity, and unity is born through the Holy Spirit, not through your decisions. God counters our self-willed decisions with an appeal for simplicity and unity.
My questions arise whenever I cease to obey. When I do obey God, problems come, not between me and God, but as a means to keep my mind examining with amazement the revealed truth of God. But any problem that comes between God and myself is the result of disobedience. Any problem that comes while I obey God (and there will be many), increases my overjoyed delight, because I know that my Father knows and cares, and I can watch and anticipate how He will unravel my problems.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us.
Disciples Indeed
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, December 14, 2018
A Tender Song in Your Troubled Times - #8330
I don't mind visiting people in the hospital. I just don't like to stay in hospitals myself. My medical value system sort of works like this: minor surgery is any operation on somebody else, and major surgery is any operation on me. I've actually learned there's something worse than being a hospital patient myself. It's having one of our grandchildren in the hospital, especially when the treatment means pain. I can take it when I'm the one hurting. It's just hard to take it when it's one of them. When our grandson was only ten months old he had to go to the emergency room in another town, and it wasn't a happy time for the little guy. They had to try multiple times to get a needle into a vein for a blood test. It was excruciating! He was increasingly traumatized by one injection after another and that big old oxygen mask they kept holding over his nose.
As soon as I got there, I decided there was just one thing I could do that might help. It's a little song I've sung to him since the first times I ever held him. It's always seemed to calm him down, even when he was unusually upset. So I leaned down so my cheek was touching his cheek and I began to gently sing our little song in his ear. With medical folks continuing their necessary but pretty scary work, he stopped his panic crying and he settled down a lot. I must have stayed there for 30 or 40 minutes. I think that song must have nearly driven a couple of nurses cuckoo. But my grandson...well, a little song made a big difference.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Tender Song in Your Troubled Times."
After that night, I got to thinking how many times God has come into my traumatic moments and, in essence, He's sung His song quietly in my heart; a song that has calmed me so many times...from the loss of a baby to losing my wife. From the body blow of very bad news to the stresses of financial crisis or an overload of responsibility. You may be in one of those troubled, even traumatizing times right now. Listen for your Father's singing. It's the song that says, "A lot has changed, My child, but the most important thing has not. I'm still here watching over you. I've helped you through times like these before, and you're OK because I'm here."
Our word for today from the Word of God in Zephaniah 3:17 paints this reassuring picture of our Heavenly Father's love for us. "The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing." He will quiet you with His love expressed in His singing over you.
You can't imagine how much you mean to Him. The more you're hurting, the more fearful you are, the closer He gets. He is, in the words of the 46th Psalm, "our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble" (Psalm 46:1 - KJV). Those verses go on to say, "Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way...the Lord Almighty is with us...Be still and know that I am God."
And the psalmist said in Psalm 32, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
As Corrie ten Boom, concentration camp survivor, said, "Don't wrestle, just nestle." In your trauma times, you can let your fears take over, or you can let your Father take over. You choose what you focus on. Isaiah says of God, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on you" (Isaiah 26:3 - NLT).
Peace for the trusting. Why? Because your one fixed point in a world where everything else is moving is your never-leaving, always-loving Heavenly Father. You're OK because He's there with you, close to you, singing to your soul the song that He's sung every time you've needed Him.