Max Lucado Daily: WHEN YOU’RE CONFUSED BY GOD’S ACTIONS
The Bible says in Matthew 1:24 that “Joseph did what the Lord’s angel had told him to do.” I wonder what Joseph was thinking while Jesus was being born? Was a stable in Bethlehem what he had in mind?
You’ve probably stood where Joseph stood when things haven’t turned out like you thought they would—maybe outside an emergency room or on the manicured grass of a cemetery. When you wondered why does God do what he does. Joseph didn’t let confusion disrupt his obedience. He shut down his business, packed up his family, and even went to another country. Why? Because that’s what God said to do. Because Joseph obeyed, God used him to change the world. He does the same with us. Be a modern day Joseph. God will use you to bring Jesus into the world.
Read more He Still Moves Stones
Psalm 58
A David Psalm
58 1-2 Is this any way to run a country?
Is there an honest politician in the house?
Behind the scenes you brew cauldrons of evil,
behind closed doors you make deals with demons.
3-5 The wicked crawl from the wrong side of the cradle;
their first words out of the womb are lies.
Poison, lethal rattlesnake poison,
drips from their forked tongues—
Deaf to threats, deaf to charm,
decades of wax built up in their ears.
6-9 God, smash their teeth to bits,
leave them toothless tigers.
Let their lives be buckets of water spilled,
all that’s left, a damp stain in the sand.
Let them be trampled grass
worn smooth by the traffic.
Let them dissolve into snail slime,
be a miscarried fetus that never sees sunlight.
Before what they cook up is half-done, God,
throw it out with the garbage!
10-11 The righteous will call up their friends
when they see the wicked get their reward,
Serve up their blood in goblets
as they toast one another,
Everyone cheering, “It’s worth it to play by the rules!
God’s handing out trophies and tending the earth!”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight: Exodus 6:1-9
God said to Moses, “Now you’ll see what I’ll do to Pharaoh: With a strong hand he’ll send them out free; with a strong hand he’ll drive them out of his land.”
2-6 God continued speaking to Moses, reassuring him, “I am God. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as The Strong God, but by my name God (I-Am-Present) I was not known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the country in which they lived as sojourners. But now I’ve heard the groanings of the Israelites whom the Egyptians continue to enslave and I’ve remembered my covenant. Therefore tell the Israelites:
6-8 “I am God. I will bring you out from under the cruel hard labor of Egypt. I will rescue you from slavery. I will redeem you, intervening with great acts of judgment. I’ll take you as my own people and I’ll be God to you. You’ll know that I am God, your God who brings you out from under the cruel hard labor of Egypt. I’ll bring you into the land that I promised to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and give it to you as your own country. I AM God.”
9 But when Moses delivered this message to the Israelites, they didn’t even hear him—they were that beaten down in spirit by the harsh slave conditions.
Insight
When God first promised to give Canaan to Abraham (Genesis 12:7), He also told him his descendants would be enslaved and mistreated in Egypt for four hundred years. But God promised He would deliver them and bring them into the promised land (15:13–16). Some seven hundred years later, God tasked Moses to carry out these two promises (Exodus 3:7–10) and said He would personally fulfill them: “I will free you from being slaves” and “I will bring you to the land” (6:6, 8). By: K. T. Sim
Fluff and Other Stuff
They did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor. Exodus 6:9
Winnie the Pooh famously said, “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”
I’ve learned over the years that Winnie might be on to something. When someone won’t listen to you even though following your counsel would be to their advantage, it may be that their reticence is nothing more than a small piece of fluff in their ear. Or there may be another hindrance: Some folks find it hard to listen well because they’re broken and discouraged.
Moses said he spoke to the people of Israel but they didn’t listen because their spirits were broken and their lives were hard (Exodus 6:9). The word discouragement in the Hebrew text is literally “short of breath,” the result of their bitter enslavement in Egypt. That being the case, Israel’s reluctance to listen to Moses’s instruction called for understanding and compassion, not censure.
What should we do when others won’t listen? Winnie the Pooh’s words enshrine wisdom: “Be patient.” God says, “Love is patient, love is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4); it’s willing to wait. He’s not finished with that individual. He’s working through their sorrow, our love, and our prayers. Perhaps, in His time, He’ll open their ears to hear. Just be patient. By David H. Roper
Today's Reflection
What can you learn about your relationship with God from those who won’t listen to you? How do love and patience fit together in a loving relationship?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Spiritual Vision Through Personal Purity
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. —Matthew 5:8
Purity is not innocence— it is much more than that. Purity is the result of continued spiritual harmony with God. We have to grow in purity. Our life with God may be right and our inner purity unblemished, yet occasionally our outer life may become spotted and stained. God intentionally does not protect us from this possibility, because this is the way we recognize the necessity of maintaining our spiritual vision through personal purity. If the outer level of our spiritual life with God is impaired to the slightest degree, we must put everything else aside until we make it right. Remember that spiritual vision depends on our character— it is “the pure in heart” who “see God.”
God makes us pure by an act of His sovereign grace, but we still have something that we must carefully watch. It is through our bodily life coming in contact with other people and other points of view that we tend to become tarnished. Not only must our “inner sanctuary” be kept right with God, but also the “outer courts” must be brought into perfect harmony with the purity God gives us through His grace. Our spiritual vision and understanding is immediately blurred when our “outer court” is stained. If we want to maintain personal intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ, it will mean refusing to do or even think certain things. And some things that are acceptable for others will become unacceptable for us.
A practical help in keeping your personal purity unblemished in your relations with other people is to begin to see them as God does. Say to yourself, “That man or that woman is perfect in Christ Jesus! That friend or that relative is perfect in Christ Jesus!”
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Beware of isolation; beware of the idea that you have to develop a holy life alone. It is impossible to develop a holy life alone; you will develop into an oddity and a peculiarism, into something utterly unlike what God wants you to be. The only way to develop spiritually is to go into the society of God’s own children, and you will soon find how God alters your set. God does not contradict our social instincts; He alters them. Biblical Psychology, 189 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Nothing to Pay With - #8402
Our grandson was three years old and he found something he really liked in the Christian bookstore. He brought it to his Daddy and he told him he really wanted it. Our son-in-law said, "Well, do you have any money?" Sadly, our grandson said, "No." But his disappointment was quickly replaced with determination as he went over to this display area where they have this fake money you can buy. He marched up to the cash register with the prize he wanted and the "money" to pay for it. Dad re-entered the scene at that point and said, "Is that really money?" Finally, our grandson faced the sad reality. He said, "No. It's not really money."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Nothing to Pay With."
All our grandson was able to come up with was woefully inadequate to pay the price, which, by the way, is a problem lots of folks have with God with trying to get their sins and their mistakes forgiven, with trying to be good enough to get into God's heaven when they die. But it's "not really money." As sincere as many of us may be, we don't have the only thing that will get us into heaven - a way to pay for all the sins of our life. Because the Bible makes it clear that the price for our sins is a spiritual death penalty; being cut off forever from the God we've disobeyed; the God we've neglected.
There's only one payment God can accept and that He will accept. And it's clearly spelled out in our word for today from the Word of God in Hebrews 9:22. Here's what he says plainly: "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." I'll tell you what, it should be my blood; it should be my eternal death that pays for my sin. But I will thank God forever He made another way with the greatest proof of His love for me and you that we could ever conceive. He sent His one and only Son, Jesus, to die so we don't have to! He paid for what I did. He paid for what you did.
Here's how God describes the payment He has made available. It's in that same section of the Bible. It says Christ came "to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Hebrews 9:26). And here's the miracle Jesus' sacrifice makes possible: "We have been made holy." Wow! That means our sins have been forgiven; they've been forgotten by God! We're right with God. "We have been made holy," it says, "through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." There's no way you can be forgiven without the shedding of blood; without your death penalty being paid. And Jesus died for that.
But we come to God with our little handful of religion, of being a good person, of Christian beliefs and rituals and activities. And we say, "Here, God. Can I be forgiven and go to heaven now?" And God says, "You can't use that to pay for your sin. The only way to pay a death penalty is someone has to die." That someone was the Son of God for you.
So the life-or-death, heaven-or-hell issue isn't how good you are, how religious you are, how long you've been doing Christian things. No, it's this: has there ever been a time when you told Jesus Christ you were going to depend on Him and Him alone, to have your sins forgiven and to go to heaven when you die? You can't say, as many do, "Well, I've always been a Christian." No one's always been a Christian. You may have always been in a Christian church or family, but you don't belong to Jesus until you consciously grab Him to save you like a drowning person would grab a lifeguard. Because He walked out of His grave. He's alive! He's waiting now to forgive you, for you to pin all your hopes on Him.
That breakthrough moment could come for you this very day - right now actually, as you tell Jesus with all your heart, "Lord, I'm Yours. I can't contribute a thing to being rescued from the penalty for my sin. You did it all, and I am all Yours, beginning right here and beginning right now this very day."
Look, there's some great information for you about how to begin this relationship and to be sure you have at our website. Please take that next step. Go to that website and check this out. It's ANewStory.com.
My grandson got the prize he hoped for that day, but only because someone else - his Daddy - paid for it. That's the only way you'll ever get the forgiveness and the heaven you hope for. What you could never pay for, He paid for it. So this is your day to claim what He paid for for you.
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