Max Lucado Daily: CHURCH, A PLACE OF HEALING
Friends, I urge you to find a church congregation that believes in confession. Avoid a fellowship of perfect people—you probably won’t fit in. Seek one where members confess their sins and show humility, where the price of admission is simply an admission of guilt. Healing happens in a church like this.
Jesus said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). 1 John 1:8-10 says, “If we say we have no sin, we’re fooling ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins, because we can trust God to do what’s right. He will cleanse us from all the wrongs we have done.”
Scripture doesn’t say he might, could, would, or has been known to do so. He said, he WILL cleanse us! Oh, the sweet certainty of his words.
Read more GRACE
2 Kings 1
After Ahab died, Moab rebelled against Israel.
2 One day Ahaziah fell through the balcony railing on the rooftop of his house in Samaria and was injured. He sent messengers off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, “Am I going to recover from this accident?”
3-4 God’s angel spoke to Elijah the Tishbite: “Up on your feet! Go out and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria with this word, ‘Is it because there’s no God in Israel that you’re running off to consult Baal-Zebub god of Ekron?’ Here’s a message from the God you’ve tried to bypass: ‘You’re not going to get out of that bed you’re in—you’re as good as dead already.’” Elijah delivered the message and was gone.
5 The messengers went back. The king said, “So why are you back so soon—what’s going on?”
6 They told him, “A man met us and said, ‘Turn around and go back to the king who sent you; tell him, God’s message: Is it because there’s no God in Israel that you’re running off to consult Baal-Zebub god of Ekron? You needn’t bother. You’re not going to get out of that bed you’re in—you’re as good as dead already.’”
7 The king said, “Tell me more about this man who met you and said these things to you. What was he like?”
8 “Shaggy,” they said, “and wearing a leather belt.”
He said, “That has to be Elijah the Tishbite!”
9 The king sent a captain with fifty men to Elijah. Meanwhile Elijah was sitting, big as life, on top of a hill. The captain said, “O Holy Man! King’s orders: Come down!”
10 Elijah answered the captain of the fifty, “If it’s true that I’m a ‘holy man,’ lightning strike you and your fifty men!” Out of the blue lightning struck and incinerated the captain and his fifty.
11 The king sent another captain with his fifty men, “O Holy Man! King’s orders: Come down. And right now!”
12 Elijah answered, “If it’s true that I’m a ‘holy man,’ lightning strike you and your fifty men!” Immediately a divine lightning bolt struck and incinerated the captain and his fifty.
13-14 The king then sent a third captain with his fifty men. For a third time, a captain with his fifty approached Elijah. This one fell on his knees in supplication: “O Holy Man, have respect for my life and the souls of these fifty men! Twice now lightning from out of the blue has struck and incinerated captains with their fifty men; please, I beg you, respect my life!”
15 The angel of God told Elijah, “Go ahead; and don’t be afraid.” Elijah got up and went down with him to the king.
16 Elijah told him, “God’s word: Because you sent messengers to consult Baal-Zebub the god of Ekron, as if there were no God in Israel to whom you could pray, you’ll never get out of that bed alive—already you’re as good as dead.”
17 And he died, exactly as God’s word spoken by Elijah had said.
Because Ahaziah had no son, his brother Joram became the next king. The succession took place in the second year of the reign of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah.
18 The rest of Ahaziah’s life is recorded in The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Acts 9:13–16
But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. 14 And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.” 15 But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. 16 For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
Insight
Paul’s conversion story is recorded three times in the book of Acts (9:1–19; 22:3–21; 26:9–29). He also testified to it in 1 Corinthians 15:9–10; Galatians 1:11–17; Philippians 3:4–6; and 1 Timothy 1:12–17. As a sworn enemy of Christ, Paul was ever grateful that God would still save him, considering himself the least qualified and the most undeserving recipient of God’s mercy and grace (1 Timothy 1:13–14). God told Ananias that Paul was to be His “chosen instrument” to take the gospel to the gentiles (Acts 9:15). But Paul saw another reason that God used him: he was “a prime example of [God’s] great patience with even the worst sinners” (1 Timothy 1:16 NLT). God had us in mind when He saved Paul. If he, the worst of sinners, could be saved, then no one is beyond the reach of God’s mercy and love.
Who We Are
This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name. Acts 9:15
I’ll never forget the time I took my future wife to meet my family. With a twinkle in their eyes, my two elder siblings asked her, “What exactly do you see in this guy?” She smiled and assured them that by God’s grace I had grown to be the man she loved.
I loved that clever reply because it also reflects how, in Christ, the Lord sees more than our past. In Acts 9, He directed Ananias to heal Saul, a known persecutor of the church whom God had blinded. Ananias was incredulous at receiving this mission, stating that Saul had been rounding up believers in Jesus for persecution and even execution. God told Ananias not to focus on who Saul had been but on who he had become: an evangelist who would bring the good news to all the known world, including to the gentiles (those who weren’t Jews) and to kings (v. 15). Ananias saw Saul the Pharisee and persecutor, but God saw Paul the apostle and evangelist.
We can sometimes view ourselves only as we have been—with all of our failures and shortcomings. But God sees us as new creations, not who we were but who we are in Jesus and who we’re becoming through the power of the Holy Spirit. O God, teach us to view ourselves and others in this way! By Peter Chin
Reflect & Pray
How can you begin to better view yourself and others in light of who you are in Christ today? How does it encourage you to know God isn’t through growing and refining you?
Heavenly Father, help me to find my full identity in You. Allow me to humbly see others through Your eyes of grace!
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Becoming Entirely His
Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. —James 1:4
Many of us appear to be all right in general, but there are still some areas in which we are careless and lazy; it is not a matter of sin, but the remnants of our carnal life that tend to make us careless. Carelessness is an insult to the Holy Spirit. We should have no carelessness about us either in the way we worship God, or even in the way we eat and drink.
Not only must our relationship to God be right, but the outward expression of that relationship must also be right. Ultimately, God will allow nothing to escape; every detail of our lives is under His scrutiny. God will bring us back in countless ways to the same point over and over again. And He never tires of bringing us back to that one point until we learn the lesson, because His purpose is to produce the finished product. It may be a problem arising from our impulsive nature, but again and again, with the most persistent patience, God has brought us back to that one particular point. Or the problem may be our idle and wandering thinking, or our independent nature and self-interest. Through this process, God is trying to impress upon us the one thing that is not entirely right in our lives.
We have been having a wonderful time in our studies over the revealed truth of God’s redemption, and our hearts are perfect toward Him. And His wonderful work in us makes us know that overall we are right with Him. “Let patience have its perfect work….” The Holy Spirit speaking through James said, “Now let your patience become a finished product.” Beware of becoming careless over the small details of life and saying, “Oh, that will have to do for now.” Whatever it may be, God will point it out with persistence until we become entirely His.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The fiery furnaces are there by God’s direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances; we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them. The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 674 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
A Loving Knockout Punch - #8493
Why would a teenage girl go swimming in the ocean at night? Nobody knows. Well, we do know she was in serious trouble by the time the rescuers finally rescued her. It was nighttime; there were no lifeguards on duty. We were at Ocean City, New Jersey, and the only people who could help her were people who ran from the boardwalk, stripped off their shoes and some of their clothes to try to get in there and help her. Now, one person had the presence of mind to bring a life preserver. The girl who was drowning refused it. She actually fought off the rescuers who were battling this strong undertow, and then you heard this strange cry out there, "Hit her!" Sounds cruel but they thought that was the only way to save her. And they hit her. She did go under; she ended up unconscious. They grabbed her. They brought her in and finally rescued her. When I heard "Hit her!" I remembered what my friend Jim had told me. He was a lifeguard on the Pacific Coast for a couple of years and he described what he called a hard rescue. He said, "Ron, if they keep fighting a rescue, we go to our last resort. We knock them out." Wow!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Loving Knockout Punch."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 1. I'll begin reading at verse 8 from the writings of the Apostle Paul. It said, "We do not want you to be uninformed about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia." Okay, now see if any of these words apply to you: "hardship," "We were under great pressure." Does that sound familiar to you at all? "Far beyond our ability to endure, so we despaired" Maybe that's where you are. He says, "we despaired even of life. Indeed in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." Maybe this sounds somewhat like a recent chapter in your life and there could be several reasons.
If you're a child of God, there might be a very major reason for the crushing pressure you felt, and that's to cure your self-reliance by making self-reliance useless. Powerless moments are the moments when we finally do what we should have been doing all along. We surrender to our Lord. Like that drowning girl, we still want to get there on our own. But we're drowning. We often can't be rescued until God gives us a loving knockout punch. It might be that the Holy Spirit has often knocked on your door and said, "Hey, I can drive. I will drive." You say, "I can handle it by myself." You've never surrendered maybe to the one who died for you.
Maybe there's never been a first time when you've given yourself to Him. Or maybe there's an area of your life you really want to keep control of. Well, God will hit you pretty hard sometimes. He loves you too much to let you go down. It's still your choice. Look, if you've never grabbed Jesus to be your personal Savior, your Rescuer from your sin and its penalty, would you do that right now? That's why you have gone through all this. It's to focus your attention on the Rescuer, who came all the way from heaven to a cross to rescue you.
Just tell him today, "Jesus, I'm yours." And you know what? I would suggest as soon as you can to get to our website. Because it is for you at a moment like this. That's why that website is there. It's called ANewStory.com. You'll find what you need to know there - to know you've been forgiven and you belong to Jesus and you're going to heaven when you die.
If you know Him personally, but you have drifted from what was once a childlike dependency to this self-powered life, He's still officially Lord - right? But at least in this one area, you're splashing and you're struggling and you're grasping to keep yourself afloat. "Listen," He's saying, "if you'll finally let go, I can do more than you could ever do with that part of your life."
Jesus has seen you struggle. He's come close to you to save you - even today through this little visit. He may have even knocked you out, not to drown you but to bring you home. And the pain you're feeling, it just could be God's loving knockout punch.
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