Psalm 9, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: PRACTICING THE PRESENCE OF GOD

How do I detect God’s unseen hand on my shoulder and his inaudible voice in my ear?  Give God your waking thoughts.  Before you face the day, face the Father.  Psalm 5:3 says, “Every morning, I tell you what I need, and I wait for your answer.”

Give God your waiting thoughts.  Spend time with him in silence.

Give God your whispering thoughts.  During your lifetime, you could spend six months at stoplights and eight months opening junk mail.  Give these moments to God.  Simple phrases such as “Thank you, Father,” can turn a commute into a pilgrimage.

Give God your waning thoughts.  Conclude the day as you began it–  talking to God.  If you fall asleep as you pray, don’t worry.  What better place to doze off than in the arms of your Father.

Read more Just Like Jesus

Psalm 9

A David Psalm
9 1-2 I’m thanking you, God, from a full heart,
    I’m writing the book on your wonders.
I’m whistling, laughing, and jumping for joy;
    I’m singing your song, High God.

3-4 The day my enemies turned tail and ran,
    they stumbled on you and fell on their faces.
You took over and set everything right;
    when I needed you, you were there, taking charge.

5-6 You blow the whistle on godless nations;
    you throw dirty players out of the game,
    wipe their names right off the roster.
Enemies disappear from the sidelines,
    their reputation trashed,
    their names erased from the halls of fame.

7-8 God holds the high center,
    he sees and sets the world’s mess right.
He decides what is right for us earthlings,
    gives people their just deserts.

9-10 God’s a safe-house for the battered,
    a sanctuary during bad times.
The moment you arrive, you relax;
    you’re never sorry you knocked.

11-12 Sing your songs to Zion-dwelling God,
    tell his stories to everyone you meet:
How he tracks down killers
    yet keeps his eye on us,
    registers every whimper and moan.

13-14 Be kind to me, God;
    I’ve been kicked around long enough.
Once you’ve pulled me back
    from the gates of death,
I’ll write the book on Hallelujahs;
    on the corner of Main and First
    I’ll hold a street meeting;
I’ll be the song leader; we’ll fill the air
    with salvation songs.

15-16 They’re trapped, those godless countries,
    in the very snares they set,
Their feet all tangled
    in the net they spread.
They have no excuse;
    the way God works is well-known.
The cunning machinery made by the wicked
    has maimed their own hands.

17-20 The wicked bought a one-way
    ticket to hell.
No longer will the poor be nameless—
    no more humiliation for the humble.
Up, God! Aren’t you fed up with their empty strutting?
    Expose these grand pretensions!
Shake them up, God!
    Show them how silly they look.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Monday, February 18, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight: Jonah 4:1-11

Jonah was furious. He lost his temper. He yelled at God, “God! I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That’s why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness!

3 “So, God, if you won’t kill them, kill me! I’m better off dead!”

4 God said, “What do you have to be angry about?”

5 But Jonah just left. He went out of the city to the east and sat down in a sulk. He put together a makeshift shelter of leafy branches and sat there in the shade to see what would happen to the city.

6 God arranged for a broad-leafed tree to spring up. It grew over Jonah to cool him off and get him out of his angry sulk. Jonah was pleased and enjoyed the shade. Life was looking up.

7-8 But then God sent a worm. By dawn of the next day, the worm had bored into the shade tree and it withered away. The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: “I’m better off dead!”

9 Then God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?”

Jonah said, “Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!”

10-11 God said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?”

Insight
Jonah’s reluctance to forgive his enemies is a reminder that the heart of God is bigger than our own.
For more about the story of Jonah, read The Failure of Success at discoveryseries.org/q0720.

Praying and Growing
Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God. Colossians 3:17

When my friend David’s wife developed Alzheimer’s disease, the changes it brought to his life made him bitter. He needed to retire early to care for her; and as the disease progressed, she required increasingly more care.

“I was so angry at God,” he told me. “But the more I prayed about it, the more He showed me my heart and how I had been selfish for most of our marriage.” Tears welled in his eyes as he confessed, “She’s been sick ten years, but God has helped me see things differently. Now, everything I do out of love for her, I also do for Jesus. Caring for her has become the greatest privilege of my life.”

Sometimes God answers our prayers not by giving us what we want but by challenging us to change. When the prophet Jonah was angry because God spared the wicked city of Nineveh from destruction, God caused a plant to shade him from the hot sun (Jonah 4:6). Then He made it wither. When Jonah complained, God answered, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” (vv. 7–9). Jonah, focused only on himself, insisted it was. But God challenged him to think about others and have compassion.

God sometimes uses our prayers in unexpected ways to help us learn and grow. It’s a change we can welcome with open hearts because He wants to transform us with His love. By James Banks

Today's Reflection
Lord Jesus, thank You for helping me grow when I pray. Help me to be sensitive to what You want for my life today.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, February 18, 2019
Taking the Initiative Against Despair
Rise, let us be going. —Matthew 26:46

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, “Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore.” If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, “Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing.” In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.

There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing— they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, “Get up, and do the next thing.” If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption.

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1465 R

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, February 18, 2019
Ultimate Security - #8376

A local businessman was in to share with our Ministry Team, and he made a fascinating observation about his family. He's got three children; two are all grown up and in their late 20s. His youngest is just a nine year old girl. He assured us that she wasn't a "mistake." In fact, she was their choice. And he pointed out something the authorities made very clear at the time the adoption went through. There would come a time when he had a major falling out with one of his natural-born children-a time when he would conceivably, as a father, disown that child; even put him out of the will. But not with this girl he was adopting. He was legally committed to never disown her, to never put her out of his will, and to always take care of her. They said, in essence, "When you adopt a child, she's your child forever."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have "A Word With You" today about "Ultimate Security."

For my businessman friend, that experience with adoption opened up a whole new world in terms of his personal relationship with God. It could be the same for you. Because adoption plays a central part in whether or not you actually belong to God, whether or not you go to heaven when you die.

Listen to our word for today from the Word of God. The Lord's pulling back the curtain of eternity to let us see this panoramic view of how God has planned and provided for you joining His family. Ephesians 1:4 says this: "In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons (or His children) through Jesus Christ...In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." God has had His eye on you before there was a world! And He made a plan to adopt you into His family so you could be with Him forever.

There are few more comforting and more peace-giving words in the English language than this one-secure. But security may be something you've never had much of in your life. You've experienced a lot of conditional love, performance love, but not much love that would be there no matter how unlovable you are. Maybe there have been people or positions or things that were your security blanket but they're gone, and with them, so is your sense of being safe. If you've been disappointed in relationships, if you've been hurt a lot, or if you're just tired of losing what you were hanging onto, then you're ready to be adopted by God.

Remember what the authorities told my friend, "When you adopt a child, she's yours forever." That's the kind of unshakable, unlosable security that God is offering you. Adoptions can be expensive. For God to adopt you, the price was unthinkable-the sacrifice of His one and only Son on the cross. Because there's no way you could be a daughter or son in God's family with all the wrong things you've done. After all, God the Father is perfect. But, as the verse says, God offers forgiveness of sins through the blood Jesus shed on the cross. Your sin was paid for so your sin could be forgiven. And God stands ready to make you His child today.

But only if you want Him to. Only if you'll pin all your hopes on Jesus and what He did on the cross for you. At the moment you give yourself to Jesus, you are adopted into God's family, and you finally belong. You're finally secure. You're finally safe.

You want that? Would you tell Him that right now? And, please, go to our website. It's a support; it's backup for you right now to give you biblical information that will help you know that you've begun this relationship and you've got it forever. That website is ANewStory.com where a new story for your life could begin.

Your lifelong search for a love that you could never lose can end today. God has paid the price to adopt you. His arms are open wide. It's time for you to run into those big old Father's waiting arms, because once you do, He'll never let you go.