Max Lucado Daily: Bring Focus to Your Life
Want to bring focus to your life? Do what Jesus did. Go home, love your family, and take care of business! Your first mission field is under your roof. What makes you think they'll believe you overseas if they don't believe you across the hall?
But Max, I'm ready to do great things for God. Good, do them at work. Be a good employee. Show up on time with a good attitude. Don't complain or grumble. Do as Colossians 3:23 says, "Work as if you were doing it for the Lord, not for people."
Why don't you take a few moments and evaluate your direction? Ask yourself, "Am I serving God now?" Regardless of what has controlled you in the past-it's never too late to get your life on course!
From Just Like Jesus
John 19:1-22
So Pilate took Jesus and had him whipped. The soldiers, having braided a crown from thorns, set it on his head, threw a purple robe over him, and approached him with, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they greeted him with slaps in the face.
4-5 Pilate went back out again and said to them, “I present him to you, but I want you to know that I do not find him guilty of any crime.” Just then Jesus came out wearing the thorn crown and purple robe.
Pilate announced, “Here he is: the Man.”
6 When the high priests and police saw him, they shouted in a frenzy, “Crucify! Crucify!”
Pilate told them, “You take him. You crucify him. I find nothing wrong with him.”
7 The Jews answered, “We have a law, and by that law he must die because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
8-9 When Pilate heard this, he became even more scared. He went back into the palace and said to Jesus, “Where did you come from?”
Jesus gave no answer.
10 Pilate said, “You won’t talk? Don’t you know that I have the authority to pardon you, and the authority to—crucify you?”
11 Jesus said, “You haven’t a shred of authority over me except what has been given you from heaven. That’s why the one who betrayed me to you has committed a far greater fault.”
12 At this, Pilate tried his best to pardon him, but the Jews shouted him down: “If you pardon this man, you’re no friend of Caesar’s. Anyone setting himself up as ‘king’ defies Caesar.”
13-14 When Pilate heard those words, he led Jesus outside. He sat down at the judgment seat in the area designated Stone Court (in Hebrew, Gabbatha). It was the preparation day for Passover. The hour was noon. Pilate said to the Jews, “Here is your king.”
15 They shouted back, “Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him!”
Pilate said, “I am to crucify your king?”
The high priests answered, “We have no king except Caesar.”
16-19 Pilate caved in to their demand. He turned him over to be crucified.
They took Jesus away. Carrying his cross, Jesus went out to the place called Skull Hill (the name in Hebrew is Golgotha), where they crucified him, and with him two others, one on each side, Jesus in the middle. Pilate wrote a sign and had it placed on the cross. It read:
jesus the nazarene
the king of the jews.
20-21 Many of the Jews read the sign because the place where Jesus was crucified was right next to the city. It was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. The Jewish high priests objected. “Don’t write,” they said to Pilate, “‘The King of the Jews.’ Make it, ‘This man said, “I am the King of the Jews.”’”
22 Pilate said, “What I’ve written, I’ve written.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight: Ecclesiastes 3:9–13
But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I’ve had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he’s left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he’s coming or going. I’ve decided that there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That’s it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It’s God’s gift.
Insight
The book of Ecclesiastes provides little clue to its date, but the author—“the Teacher” or “Preacher”—is by most believed to be Solomon, “son of David, king in Jerusalem” (Ecclesiastes 1:1). Yet others believe the author could well be an editor-author writing of the lessons of Solomon’s life in the tradition of wisdom. What is the book’s purpose? Michael Eaton in his commentary on Ecclesiastes states, “It defends the life of faith in a generous God by pointing to the grimness of the alternative.” He summarizes the Preacher’s purpose as “to drive us to see that God is there, that he is good and generous, and that only such an outlook makes life coherent and fulfilling.”
Enjoying Beauty
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Ecclesiastes 3:11
The painting caught my eye like a beacon. Displayed along a long hallway in a big city hospital, its deep pastel hues and Navajo Native American figures were so arresting I stopped to marvel and stare. “Look at that,” I said to my husband, Dan.
He was walking ahead but I hesitated, bypassing other paintings on the wall to gaze only at that one. “Beautiful,” I whispered.
Many things in life are beautiful indeed. Master paintings. Scenic vistas. Inspired crafts. But so is a child’s smile. A friend’s hello. A robin’s blue egg. A seashell’s strong ridges. To relieve the burdens life can bring, “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In such beauty, Bible scholars explain, we get a glimpse of the perfection of God’s creation—including the glory of His perfect rule to come.
We can only imagine such perfection, so God grants us a foretaste through life’s beauty. In this way, God “has also set eternity in the human heart” (v. 11). Some days life looks drab and futile. But God mercifully provides moments of beauty to ponder.
The artist of the painting I admired, Gerard Curtis Delano, understood that. “God [gave] me a talent to create beauty,” he once said, “and this is what He wanted me to do.”
Seeing such beauty, how can we respond? We can thank God for eternity to come while pausing to enjoy the glory we already see. By Patricia Raybon
Today's Reflection
How do you respond to the beauty God has placed in this world? How does beauty reflect Him?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, April 27, 2019
What Do You Want?
Do you seek great things for yourself? —Jeremiah 45:5
Are you seeking great things for yourself, instead of seeking to be a great person? God wants you to be in a much closer relationship with Himself than simply receiving His gifts— He wants you to get to know Him. Even some large thing we want is only incidental; it comes and it goes. But God never gives us anything incidental. There is nothing easier than getting into the right relationship with God, unless it is not God you seek, but only what He can give you.
If you have only come as far as asking God for things, you have never come to the point of understanding the least bit of what surrender really means. You have become a Christian based on your own terms. You protest, saying, “I asked God for the Holy Spirit, but He didn’t give me the rest and the peace I expected.” And instantly God puts His finger on the reason– you are not seeking the Lord at all; you are seeking something for yourself. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you…” (Matthew 7:7). Ask God for what you want and do not be concerned about asking for the wrong thing, because as you draw ever closer to Him, you will cease asking for things altogether. “Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8). Then why should you ask? So that you may get to know Him.
Are you seeking great things for yourself? Have you said, “Oh, Lord, completely fill me with your Holy Spirit”? If God does not, it is because you are not totally surrendered to Him; there is something you still refuse to do. Are you prepared to ask yourself what it is you want from God and why you want it? God always ignores your present level of completeness in favor of your ultimate future completeness. He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy right now, but He’s continually working out His ultimate perfection for you— “…that they may be one just as We are one…” (John 17:22).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We never enter into the Kingdom of God by having our head questions answered, but only by commitment. The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 565 R
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