Max Lucado Daily: GOD IS YOUR GUARDIAN
According to Psalm 91:14, “The LORD says, ‘I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name.’” God is your guardian, separating you from evil. So, why do bad things happen to us?
You and God may have different definitions for the word bad. God not only read your story…he wrote it. His perspective is different and his purpose is clear. He uses struggles to toughen our spiritual skin. James urges us to “consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides…Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way” (James 1:2,4).
Trust God’s sovereignty. He is directing your steps and delighting in every detail of your life. Don’t you feel better knowing he is in control?
Read more Come Thirsty
1 Kings 7
It took Solomon another thirteen years to finish building his own palace complex. He built the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon a hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. There were four rows of cedar columns supporting forty-five cedar beams, fifteen in each row, and then roofed with cedar. Windows in groupings of three were set high in the walls on either side. All the doors were rectangular and arranged symmetrically.
6 He built a colonnaded courtyard seventy-five feet long and forty-five wide. It had a roofed porch at the front with ample eaves.
7 He built a court room, the Hall of Justice, where he would decide judicial matters, and paneled it with cedar.
8 He built his personal residence behind the Hall on a similar plan. Solomon also built another one just like it for Pharaoh’s daughter, whom he had married.
9-12 No expense was spared—everything here, inside and out, from foundation to roof was constructed using high-quality stone, accurately cut and shaped and polished. The foundation stones were huge, ranging in size from twelve to fifteen feet, and of the very best quality. The finest stone was used above the foundation, shaped to size and trimmed with cedar. The courtyard was enclosed with a wall made of three layers of stone and topped with cedar timbers, just like the one in the porch of The Temple of God.
13-14 King Solomon sent to Tyre and asked Hiram (not the king; another Hiram) to come. Hiram’s mother was a widow from the tribe of Naphtali. His father was a Tyrian and a master worker in bronze. Hiram was a real artist—he could do anything with bronze. He came to King Solomon and did all the bronze work.
15-22 First he cast two pillars in bronze, each twenty-seven feet tall and eighteen feet in circumference. He then cast two capitals in bronze to set on the pillars; each capital was seven and a half feet high and flared at the top in the shape of a lily. Each capital was dressed with an elaborate filigree of seven braided chains and a double row of two hundred pomegranates, setting the pillars off magnificently. He set the pillars up in the entrance porch to The Temple; the pillar to the south he named Security (Jachin) and the pillar to the north Stability (Boaz). The capitals were in the shape of lilies.
22-24 When the pillars were finished, Hiram’s next project was to make the Sea—an immense round basin of cast metal fifteen feet in diameter, seven and a half feet tall, and forty-five feet in circumference. Just under the rim there were two bands of decorative gourds, ten gourds to each foot and a half. The gourds were cast in one piece with the Sea.
25-26 The Sea was set on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east; the bulls faced outward supporting the Sea on their hindquarters. The Sea was three inches thick and flared at the rim like a cup, or like a lily. It held about 11,500 gallons.
27-33 Hiram also made ten washstands of bronze. Each was six feet square and four and a half feet tall. They were made like this: Panels were fastened to the uprights. Lions, bulls, and cherubim were represented on the panels and uprights. Beveled wreath-work bordered the lions and bulls above and below. Each stand was mounted on four bronze wheels with bronze axles. The uprights were cast with decorative relief work. Each stand held a basin on a circular engraved support a foot and a half deep set on a pedestal two and a quarter feet square. The washstand itself was square. The axles were attached under the stand and the wheels fixed to them. The wheels were twenty-seven inches in diameter; they were designed like chariot wheels. Everything—axles, rims, spokes, and hubs—was of cast metal.
34-37 There was a handle at the four corners of each washstand, the handles cast in one piece with the stand. At the top of the washstand there was a ring about nine inches deep. The uprights and handles were cast with the stand. Everything and every available surface was engraved with cherubim, lions, and palm trees, bordered by arabesques. The washstands were identical, all cast in the same mold.
38-40 He also made ten bronze washbasins, each six feet in diameter with a capacity of 230 gallons, one basin for each of the ten washstands. He arranged five stands on the south side of The Temple and five on the north. The Sea was placed at the southeast corner of The Temple. Hiram then fashioned the various utensils: buckets and shovels and bowls.
40-45 Hiram completed all the work he set out to do for King Solomon on The Temple of God:
two pillars;
two capitals on top of the pillars;
two decorative filigrees for the capitals;
four hundred pomegranates for the two filigrees
(a double row of pomegranates for each filigree);
ten washstands each with its washbasin;
one Sea;
twelve bulls under the Sea;
miscellaneous buckets, shovels, and bowls.
45-47 All these artifacts that Hiram made for King Solomon for The Temple of God were of burnished bronze. He cast them in clay in a foundry on the Jordan plain between Succoth and Zarethan. These artifacts were never weighed—there were far too many! Nobody has any idea how much bronze was used.
48-50 Solomon was also responsible for all the furniture and accessories in The Temple of God:
the gold Altar;
the gold Table that held the Bread of the Presence;
the pure gold candelabras, five to the right and five to the
left in front of the Inner Sanctuary;
the gold flowers, lamps, and tongs;
the pure gold dishes, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, ladles, and
censers;
the gold sockets for the doors of the Inner Sanctuary, the Holy of
Holies, used also for the doors of the Main Sanctuary.
51 That completed all the work King Solomon did on The Temple of God. He then brought in the items consecrated by his father David, the silver and the gold and the artifacts. He placed them all in the treasury of God’s Temple.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, June 21, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Romans 6:11-14
Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.
12-14 That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
Insight
In Romans 6, Paul proclaims that as believers in Jesus our old self has been crucified with Christ, and we’re now “dead to sin” and “alive to God in Christ Jesus” (vv. 6–7, 11). If that’s so, then why do we still sin? We’re still subject to sin and are to be on our guard against it, but sin is no longer our master (v. 14). Through our identification with Jesus, believers are given a new desire to live for God and to abandon old ways of life. Although this requires intentionality on our part, the Holy Spirit living inside us guides and transforms us into Christ’s likeness (John 16:13; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
Ending Envy
Each one should test their own actions. Galatians 6:4
The famous French artist Edgar Degas is remembered worldwide for his paintings of ballerinas. Less known is the envy he expressed of his friend and artistic rival Édouard Manet, another master painter. Said Degas of Manet, “Everything he does he always hits off straightaway, while I take endless pains and never get it right.”
It’s a curious emotion, envy—listed by the apostle Paul among the worst traits, as bad as “every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip” (Romans 1:29 nlt). It results from foolish thinking, Paul writes—the result of worshiping idols instead of worshiping God (v. 28).
Author Christina Fox says that when envy develops among believers, it’s “because our hearts have turned from our one true love.” In our envy, she said, “we are chasing after the inferior pleasures of this world instead of looking to Jesus. In effect, we’ve forgotten whose we are.”
Yet there’s a remedy. Turn back to God. “Offer every part of yourself to him,” Paul wrote (Romans 6:13)—your work and life especially. In another of his letters Paul penned, “Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else” (Galatians 6:4).
Thank God for His blessings—not just things, but for the freedom of His grace. Seeing our own God-given gifts, we find contentment again. By Patricia Raybon
Reflect & Pray
What talents, spiritual gifts, and blessings has God given you that you’ve forgotten to appreciate? Reflecting on them, how does your heart feel as you return to God?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, June 21, 2019
The Ministry of the Inner Life
You are…a royal priesthood… —1 Peter 2:9
By what right have we become “a royal priesthood”? It is by the right of the atonement by the Cross of Christ that this has been accomplished. Are we prepared to purposely disregard ourselves and to launch out into the priestly work of prayer? The continual inner-searching we do in an effort to see if we are what we ought to be generates a self-centered, sickly type of Christianity, not the vigorous and simple life of a child of God. Until we get into this right and proper relationship with God, it is simply a case of our “hanging on by the skin of our teeth,” although we say, “What a wonderful victory I have!” Yet there is nothing at all in that which indicates the miracle of redemption. Launch out in reckless, unrestrained belief that the redemption is complete. Then don’t worry anymore about yourself, but begin to do as Jesus Christ has said, in essence, “Pray for the friend who comes to you at midnight, pray for the saints of God, and pray for all men.” Pray with the realization that you are perfect only in Christ Jesus, not on the basis of this argument: “Oh, Lord, I have done my best; please hear me now.”
How long is it going to take God to free us from the unhealthy habit of thinking only about ourselves? We must get to the point of being sick to death of ourselves, until there is no longer any surprise at anything God might tell us about ourselves. We cannot reach and understand the depths of our own meagerness. There is only one place where we are right with God, and that is in Christ Jesus. Once we are there, we have to pour out our lives for all we are worth in this ministry of the inner life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself. The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest. Disciples Indeed, 395 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, June 21, 2019
Time to Leave - #8465
It was a wonderful/awful day in my life - the day my mother took my hand and walked me the two blocks over to Park Manor School in Chicago. It was the day I went to school for the first time. Kindergarten, here I come! It was exciting, but it was hard, too. We didn't do any pre-school stuff back then - my family didn't even go to Sunday School. So here was little Ronnie leaving the safety of his apartment, leaving his mother, leaving everything that was safe and familiar for a place I had never been. It sounds a little silly, knowing what I know now. Still, the fears and the feelings were very real then. But if I hadn't left home and stepped into the unknown called school, I would have missed so much!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Time to Leave."
Starting school is no longer an issue for most of us. But leaving what's safe to step into the unknown is very much an issue for many of us. And some of us are refusing to take the step that will ultimately enlarge our life, like starting school enlarged mine.
Abraham is held up in the Bible as a model of faith that we should all emulate. And it's interesting to note the very first word God ever spoke to Abraham, at least that we know (and he was called Abram actually at that time). Abraham's response, as well, is worth noting. In our word for today from the Word of God, Genesis 12:1, it says, "The Lord said to Abram, (ready? Here's His first word) 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." In other words, "Leave everything that's your security, everything you know, for a place you don't know but I do." Abram's response? "So Abram left, as the Lord had told him."
That willingness to leave at the Lord's command opened up a whole new world for Abraham and for his family in what would become the Jews' "Promised Land." But first he had to "leave." Most of the major advances in our lives begin by taking the risk of leaving. Moses had to leave his "comfy" life as a shepherd in Midian to become the deliverer of God's people. Peter had to leave the security of his business to become a world-impacting leader for Jesus Christ.
And God's expanding of your life may depend on you taking a great faith-step in the near future. Leaving what is familiar and safe and secure - what seems economically feasible. God's great adventure often begins with a command to leave - to leave what is geographically familiar, relationally familiar, and methodologically familiar. And God usually doesn't show you the whole picture of what He's leading you into, just that next step. It's take a step, see a step, take a step, see a step. He asked Abraham to leave for a future that was described simply as "the land I will show you." God wants you to trust the Planner, not the plan.
Maybe your Lord has sent this message today into your life to give you one more encouragement to obey His leading to let go of something safe and follow Him into something so much bigger and so much better, but largely unknown. Do what He's telling you to do. If you don't, I guess you'll be like a child who refuses to leave the safety of Mommy to go into the unknown of the first day of school. You will miss the step that will enlarge your whole life and take you into God's great adventure.
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