Max Lucado Daily: YOU ARE TWEAKABLE
The love of people often increases with performance and decreases with mistakes. Not so with God’s love. He loves you right where you are. But he refuses to leave you that way. And so he cleanses us of filth: immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. He wants us to be just like Jesus. Isn’t that good news? You aren’t stuck with today’s personality. You are tweakable!
Where did we get the idea we cannot change? Why do we say things such as, It’s my nature to worry, or I’ll always be pessimistic? I’m just that way, or I have a bad temper. I can’t help the way I react? Who says? If our bodies malfunction we seek help. Shouldn’t we do the same for our hearts? Can’t we seek aid for our sour attitudes? Of course we can! Jesus wants to change our hearts. Can you imagine a better offer?
Read more Just Like Jesus
2 Samuel 21
There was a famine in David’s time. It went on year after year after year—three years. David went to God seeking the reason.
God said, “This is because there is blood on Saul and his house, from the time he massacred the Gibeonites.”
2 So the king called the Gibeonites together for consultation. (The Gibeonites were not part of Israel; they were what was left of the Amorites, and protected by a treaty with Israel. But Saul, a fanatic for the honor of Israel and Judah, tried to kill them off.)
3 David addressed the Gibeonites: “What can I do for you? How can I compensate you so that you will bless God’s legacy of land and people?”
4 The Gibeonites replied, “We don’t want any money from Saul and his family. And it’s not up to us to put anyone in Israel to death.”
But David persisted: “What are you saying I should do for you?”
5-6 Then they told the king, “The man who tried to get rid of us, who schemed to wipe us off the map of Israel—well, let seven of his sons be handed over to us to be executed—hanged before God at Gibeah of Saul, the holy mountain.”
And David agreed, “I’ll hand them over to you.”
7-9 The king spared Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the promise David and Jonathan had spoken before God. But the king selected Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons that Rizpah daughter of Aiah had borne to Saul, plus the five sons that Saul’s daughter Merab had borne to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite. He turned them over to the Gibeonites who hanged them on the mountain before God—all seven died together. Harvest was just getting underway, the beginning of the barley harvest, when they were executed.
10 Rizpah daughter of Aiah took rough burlap and spread it out for herself on a rock from the beginning of the harvest until the heavy rains started. She kept the birds away from the bodies by day and the wild animals by night.
11-14 David was told what she had done, this Rizpah daughter of Aiah and concubine of Saul. He then went and got the remains of Saul and Jonathan his son from the leaders at Jabesh Gilead (who had rescued them from the town square at Beth Shan where the Philistines had hung them after striking them down at Gilboa). He gathered up their remains and brought them together with the dead bodies of the seven who had just been hanged. The bodies were taken back to the land of Benjamin and given a decent burial in the tomb of Kish, Saul’s father.
They did everything the king ordered to be done. That cleared things up: from then on God responded to Israel’s prayers for the land.
15-17 War broke out again between the Philistines and Israel. David and his men went down to fight. David became exhausted. Ishbi-Benob, a warrior descended from Rapha, with a spear weighing nearly eight pounds and outfitted in brand-new armor, announced that he’d kill David. But Abishai son of Zeruiah came to the rescue, struck the Philistine, and killed him.
Then David’s men swore to him, “No more fighting on the front-lines for you! Don’t snuff out the lamp of Israel!”
18 Later there was another skirmish with the Philistines at Gob. That time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, another of the warriors descended from Rapha.
19 At yet another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaar, the weaver of Bethlehem, killed Goliath the Gittite whose spear was as big as a flagpole.
20-21 Still another fight broke out in Gath. There was a giant there with six fingers on his hands and six toes on his feet—twenty-four fingers and toes! He was another of those descended from Rapha. He insulted Israel, and Jonathan son of Shimeah, David’s brother, killed him.
22 These four were descended from Rapha in Gath. And they all were killed by David and his soldiers.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, February 04, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight: John 3:22-35
After this conversation, Jesus went on with his disciples into the Judean countryside and relaxed with them there. He was also baptizing. At the same time, John was baptizing over at Aenon near Salim, where water was abundant. This was before John was thrown into jail. John’s disciples got into an argument with the establishment Jews over the nature of baptism. They came to John and said, “Rabbi, you know the one who was with you on the other side of the Jordan? The one you authorized with your witness? Well, he’s now competing with us. He’s baptizing, too, and everyone’s going to him instead of us.”
27-29 John answered, “It’s not possible for a person to succeed—I’m talking about eternal success—without heaven’s help. You yourselves were there when I made it public that I was not the Messiah but simply the one sent ahead of him to get things ready. The one who gets the bride is, by definition, the bridegroom. And the bridegroom’s friend, his ‘best man’—that’s me—in place at his side where he can hear every word, is genuinely happy. How could he be jealous when he knows that the wedding is finished and the marriage is off to a good start?
29-30 “That’s why my cup is running over. This is the assigned moment for him to move into the center, while I slip off to the sidelines.
31-33 “The One who comes from above is head and shoulders over other messengers from God. The earthborn is earthbound and speaks earth language; the heavenborn is in a league of his own. He sets out the evidence of what he saw and heard in heaven. No one wants to deal with these facts. But anyone who examines this evidence will come to stake his life on this: that God himself is the truth.
34-36 “The One that God sent speaks God’s words. And don’t think he rations out the Spirit in bits and pieces. The Father loves the Son extravagantly. He turned everything over to him so he could give it away—a lavish distribution of gifts. That is why whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything, life complete and forever! And that is also why the person who avoids and distrusts the Son is in the dark and doesn’t see life. All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that.”
Insight
Scholars disagree about who is speaking in John 3:31–34. Does it continue John the Baptist’s endorsement of Jesus, or is it John the apostle adding his postscript to that endorsement? Since quotation marks were not used in ancient Greek, it’s open to interpretation. What is certain, however, is that the repeated phrase describes the nature of Christ—He is “above all” (v. 31). By: Bill Crowder
All I Can See
He must become greater; I must become less. John 3:30
Krista stood in the freezing cold on a winter day, looking at the beautiful snow-encased lighthouse along the lake. As she pulled out her phone to take pictures, her glasses fogged over. She couldn’t see a thing so she decided to point her camera toward the lighthouse and snapped three pictures at different angles. Looking at them later, she realized the camera had been set to take “selfies.” She laughed as she said, “My focus was me, me, and me. All I saw was me.” Krista’s photos got me thinking of a similar mistake: We can become so self-focused we lose sight of the bigger picture of God’s plan.
Jesus’s cousin John clearly knew his focus wasn’t himself. Right from the start he recognized that his position or calling was to point others to Jesus, the Son of God. “Look, the Lamb of God!” he said when he saw Jesus coming toward him and his followers (John 1:29). He continued, “The reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed” (v. 31). When John’s disciples later reported that Jesus was gaining followers, John said, “You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’ . . . He must become greater; I must become less” (3:28–30).
May the central focus of our lives be Jesus and loving Him with our whole heart. By Anne Cetas
Today's Reflection
How can I love Jesus best? Who might He want me to love?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, February 04, 2019
The Compelling Majesty of His Power
The love of Christ compels us… —2 Corinthians 5:14
Paul said that he was overpowered, subdued, and held as in a vise by “the love of Christ.” Very few of us really know what it means to be held in the grip of the love of God. We tend so often to be controlled simply by our own experience. The one thing that gripped and held Paul, to the exclusion of everything else, was the love of God. “The love of Christ compels us….” When you hear that coming from the life of a man or woman it is unmistakable. You will know that the Spirit of God is completely unhindered in that person’s life.
When we are born again by the Spirit of God, our testimony is based solely on what God has done for us, and rightly so. But that will change and be removed forever once you “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” (Acts 1:8). Only then will you begin to realize what Jesus meant when He went on to say, “…you shall be witnesses to Me….” Not witnesses to what Jesus can do— that is basic and understood— but “witnesses to Me….” We will accept everything that happens as if it were happening to Him, whether we receive praise or blame, persecution or reward. No one is able to take this stand for Jesus Christ who is not totally compelled by the majesty of His power. It is the only thing that matters, and yet it is strange that it’s the last thing we as Christian workers realize. Paul said that he was gripped by the love of God and that is why he acted as he did. People could perceive him as mad or sane— he did not care. There was only one thing he lived for— to persuade people of the coming judgment of God and to tell them of “the love of Christ.” This total surrender to “the love of Christ” is the only thing that will bear fruit in your life. And it will always leave the mark of God’s holiness and His power, never drawing attention to your personal holiness.
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
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, February 04, 2019
Something's Wrong - #8366
My wife and I had gone to a friend's house by the New Jersey Shore to start writing a book. For breaks, I wanted to go for walks on the beach, but Karen said she was feeling so fatigued she couldn't find the energy. As we returned home, that fatigue got worse. Then came the severe stomach upset and finally the fever that climbed to 105 degrees. We had no idea that one of mankind's most virulent diseases was taking over in Karen's body. It turned out she had hepatitis. We knew she had some terrible symptoms. We sure didn't know what was causing them, and what ultimately almost cost Karen her life.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Something's Wrong."
Thankfully, Karen got to the doctor, got treatment, and made a full recovery over time. But we had no idea the medical monster that was behind her suffering. We could see the symptoms. We knew something was wrong - very wrong, but we didn't know the disease that was causing it all.
Increasingly, a lot of us watch the news and we think something like this, "Man, something's wrong. Something's very wrong!" We hear about violent murders and shootings in all kinds of locations these days; people doing things to other people that are unspeakable, families ripped apart, a lot of garbage. It just feels like something's wrong in our world. But even closer to home, you know, with the people we love most - sometimes it feels like something's wrong in our family, in our friends.
In fact, we look at how we act ourselves all too often and we think, "Something's wrong in me." The anger, the selfishness, the unfaithfulness, those cutting words, the depression, the hurting - terrible symptoms of something very wrong inside each of us. If we can face the disease that causes so much of this darkness, we can start to fix what's wrong.
Our seemingly incurable spiritual disease can be traced all the way back to the first family, the first man and woman. Our word for today from the Word of God, from Genesis 2:16. It describes that scene in the Garden of Eden when God tells Adam, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." Now, nothing was wrong until Adam and Eve decided to go against God and do it their way.
You know what? We're all Adam and Eve. We've all made the same choice about who will run our life. And that's what God calls sin. For which God says there is an eternal death penalty. The greatest problem of all in your life is that you're away from your Creator.
The "something's wrong" is sin, and it twists everything. It twists your sense of worth, the relationship between a man and a woman, between a parent and a child. It twists the way we treat others. It causes addictions and it causes the darkness inside of us we can't shake. Religion and spirituality, well they're nice, but they can't cure this terminal disease or the symptoms that are poisoning our life and our relationships. Our only hope of curing what's wrong is the same as it was for Adam and Eve; the Bible says God came looking for them to bring them back to Him.
God came looking for you when Jesus died for your sin on the cross. And He's come looking for you today, right where you are. Jesus becomes the Savior from your sin, the Healer of its awful symptoms when you commit yourself to Him. And as your spiritual fever is climbing, the symptoms become more damaging. It's becoming critical that you let the healing begin now.
You want to begin this relationship with Jesus and be forgiven of every wrong thing you've ever done, erased from God's Book forever, have the wall gone between you and Him and finally a new you possible? Well, then, tell Him today, "Jesus, I believe you died for my sin and I'm yours beginning today." Check out our website, because it's all set up to help you be sure you belong to Him and show you how you can begin that relationship. It's ANewStory.com. Go there as soon as you can.
Until your deadly disease of sin is treated by Jesus, the "something wrong" is going to continue to darken and threaten your life. But Jesus bought your cure with His life. And He's ready today to heal what no one else has, and what no one else can.
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