Max Lucado Daily: God Uses Failures
What was I thinking taking this job? I should have done better. It’s all my fault. The voices—you’ve heard them all. When you lost your job, flunked the exam, or when your marriage went south…when you failed. The voices began to howl, laughing at you. You heard them and you joined them. You disqualified yourself and berated yourself. You sentenced yourself to hard labor in the Leavenworth of poor self-worth. Oh, the voices of failure. Failure finds us all.
But God’s Word is written for failures. It’s full of folks who were foul-ups. David was a failure, yet God used him. Jonah was in the belly of a fish and God heard his prayer. Perfect people? No. Perfect messes? You bet! A surprising and welcome discovery of the Bible is this: God uses failures! Miss this truth and you miss your Glory Days. God’s grace is greater than your failures.
From Glory Days
Psalm 115
Not for our sake, God, no, not for our sake,
but for your name’s sake, show your glory.
Do it on account of your merciful love,
do it on account of your faithful ways.
Do it so none of the nations can say,
“Where now, oh where is their God?”
3-8 Our God is in heaven
doing whatever he wants to do.
Their gods are metal and wood,
handmade in a basement shop:
Carved mouths that can’t talk,
painted eyes that can’t see,
Tin ears that can’t hear,
molded noses that can’t smell,
Hands that can’t grasp, feet that can’t walk or run,
throats that never utter a sound.
Those who make them have become just like them,
have become just like the gods they trust.
9-11 But you, Israel: put your trust in God!
—trust your Helper! trust your Ruler!
Clan of Aaron, trust in God!
—trust your Helper! trust your Ruler!
You who fear God, trust in God!
—trust your Helper! trust your Ruler!
12-16 O God, remember us and bless us,
bless the families of Israel and Aaron.
And let God bless all who fear God—
bless the small, bless the great.
Oh, let God enlarge your families—
giving growth to you, growth to your children.
May you be blessed by God,
by God, who made heaven and earth.
The heaven of heavens is for God,
but he put us in charge of the earth.
17-18 Dead people can’t praise God—
not a word to be heard from those buried in the ground.
But we bless God, oh yes—
we bless him now, we bless him always!
Hallelujah!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Mark 2:13–17
Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Insight
Tax collectors were despised and hated by the Jews because they were regarded as mercenaries and traitors who worked for the hated Roman conquerors who subjugated them. They also collected more than what was legally mandated, pocketing the excess and dishonestly enriching themselves at the expense of their own people (Luke 3:13–14). The term “sinners” was used to describe the notoriously wicked—reprobates who rejected God’s law. The Pharisees also used “sinners” to include anyone who didn’t meticulously maintain ceremonial purity or follow their rigid standards. Tax collectors were deliberately lumped together with sinners to show how degenerate and wicked the tax collectors were. Jesus was invited to dine with all sorts of people, even with the Pharisees (Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1). But He ate so often with social and religious outcasts—considered to be the scum of society—that He earned the reputation of being “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).
Join the Street Team
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Mark 2:17
City health workers in San Francisco are taking medical care to the streets to supply the homeless who are suffering from opioid addiction with medicine to treat their addiction. The program began in response to the rising number of homeless who are injecting. Customarily, doctors wait for patients to come to a clinic. By taking medical care to the afflicted instead, patients don’t have to overcome the challenges of transportation or needing to remember the appointment.
The health workers’ willingness to go to those in need of care reminds me of the way Jesus has come to us in our need. In His ministry, Jesus sought out those who the religious elite were quick to ignore: He ate with “sinners and tax collectors” (Mark 2:16). When asked why He would do that, Jesus replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (v. 17). He went on to say that His intention was to call sinners, not the righteous, into relationship with Him.
When we realize that we’re all “sick” and in need of a doctor (Romans 3:10), we can better appreciate Jesus’s willingness to eat with the “sinners and tax collectors”—us. In turn, like the health care workers in San Francisco, Jesus appointed us as His “street team” to take His saving message to others in need. By: Kirsten Holmberg
Reflect & Pray
How did Jesus seek you out? To whom can you take the medicine of Jesus?
Thank You, Jesus, for meeting me in my condition.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, October 27, 2019
The Method of Missions
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations… —Matthew 28:19
Jesus Christ did not say, “Go and save souls” (the salvation of souls is the supernatural work of God), but He said, “Go…make disciples of all the nations….” Yet you cannot make disciples unless you are a disciple yourself. When the disciples returned from their first mission, they were filled with joy because even the demons were subject to them. But Jesus said, in effect, “Don’t rejoice in successful service— the great secret of joy is that you have the right relationship with Me” (see Luke 10:17-20). The missionary’s great essential is remaining true to the call of God, and realizing that his one and only purpose is to disciple men and women to Jesus. Remember that there is a passion for souls that does not come from God, but from our desire to make converts to our point of view.
The challenge to the missionary does not come from the fact that people are difficult to bring to salvation, that backsliders are difficult to reclaim, or that there is a barrier of callous indifference. No, the challenge comes from the perspective of the missionary’s own personal relationship with Jesus Christ— “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” (Matthew 9:28). Our Lord unwaveringly asks us that question, and it confronts us in every individual situation we encounter. The one great challenge to us is— do I know my risen Lord? Do I know the power of His indwelling Spirit? Am I wise enough in God’s sight, but foolish enough according to the wisdom of the world, to trust in what Jesus Christ has said? Or am I abandoning the great supernatural position of limitless confidence in Christ Jesus, which is really God’s only call for a missionary? If I follow any other method, I depart altogether from the methods prescribed by our Lord— “All authority has been given to Me….Go therefore…” (Matthew 28:18-19).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed. Our Brilliant Heritage
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