Max Lucado Daily: SOME PRAYER GUIDANCE
When I pray, I think of a thousand things I need to do. I forget the one thing I set out to do: pray! Can you relate?
But wouldn’t we all like to pray. . .More? Better? Deeper? Stronger? With more fire, faith, or fervency? Yet we have kids to feed, bills to pay, deadlines to meet. We want to pray, but when? We want to pray, but why? We have our doubts about prayer, our checkered history of unmet expectations, unanswered questions.
We aren’t the first. The sign-up for Prayer 101 contains familiar names: John, James, Andrew, and Peter. The first followers of Jesus needed prayer guidance.
Here’s my challenge for you! Every day for four weeks, pray four minutes. Then get ready to connect with God like never before.
2 Thessalonians 1
I, Paul, together with Silas and Timothy, greet the church of the Thessalonian Christians in the name of God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ. Our God gives you everything you need, makes you everything you’re to be.
3-4 You need to know, friends, that thanking God over and over for you is not only a pleasure; it’s a must. We have to do it. Your faith is growing phenomenally; your love for each other is developing wonderfully. Why, it’s only right that we give thanks. We’re so proud of you; you’re so steady and determined in your faith despite all the hard times that have come down on you. We tell everyone we meet in the churches all about you.
5-10 All this trouble is a clear sign that God has decided to make you fit for the kingdom. You’re suffering now, but justice is on the way. When the Master Jesus appears out of heaven in a blaze of fire with his strong angels, he’ll even up the score by settling accounts with those who gave you such a bad time. His coming will be the break we’ve been waiting for. Those who refuse to know God and refuse to obey the Message will pay for what they’ve done. Eternal exile from the presence of the Master and his splendid power is their sentence. But on that very same day when he comes, he will be exalted by his followers and celebrated by all who believe—and all because you believed what we told you.
11-12 Because we know that this extraordinary day is just ahead, we pray for you all the time—pray that our God will make you fit for what he’s called you to be, pray that he’ll fill your good ideas and acts of faith with his own energy so that it all amounts to something. If your life honors the name of Jesus, he will honor you. Grace is behind and through all of this, our God giving himself freely, the Master, Jesus Christ, giving himself freely.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, November 05, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
John 14:15–21
“If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[a] in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
Footnotes:
John 14:17 Some early manuscripts and is
Insight
Today’s text comes from Christ’s Upper Room Discourse—His teaching time with the disciples (John 14–16)—just hours before His sufferings would begin at Gethsemane. Because He announces that He’s going away from them (14:1–4), one of the main topics of this discourse involved the coming of the Holy Spirit and His work in the lives of believers in Jesus. Words used to describe the Spirit are advocate and helper (v. 16), truth (v. 17), teacher (v. 26), witness (15:26–27), agent of conviction (16:7–8), and guide (v. 13). These roles, however, are more than just functional reasons for the Spirit’s coming. They come in the shadow of Christ’s declared departure. Each element was intended to bring God’s comfort and presence to believers in Jesus when He was no longer with them physically. The ministry of the Spirit was to make up for the fear, confusion, and loss those men experienced by Christ’s leaving. By: Bill Crowder
Do the Next Thing
If you love me, keep my commands. John 14:15
When was the last time you felt compelled to help someone, only to let the moment pass without a response? In The 10-Second Rule, Clare De Graaf suggests that daily impressions can be one of the ways God calls us to a deeper spiritual walk, a life of obedience prompted by love for Him. The 10-Second Rule encourages you to simply “do the next thing you’re reasonably certain Jesus wants you to do,” and to do it right away “before you change your mind.”
Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15). We might think, I do love Him, but how can I be certain of His will and follow it? In His wisdom, Jesus has provided what we need to better understand and follow the wisdom found in the Bible. He once said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and will be with you forever—the Spirit of truth” (vv. 16–17). It’s by the work of the Spirit, who is with us and in us, that we can learn to obey Jesus and “keep [His] commands” (v. 15)—responding to the promptings experienced throughout our day (v. 17).
In the big and little things, the Spirit motivates us to confidently do by faith what will honor God and reveal our love for Him and others (v. 21). By: Ruth O’Reilly-Smith
Reflect & Pray
Why is it important for you to follow through on promptings that line up with Scripture? How can you seek to live a more obedient life by the power of the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit provides what we need to follow Jesus in obedience.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, November 05, 2019
Partakers of His Suffering
…but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings… —1 Peter 4:13
If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way. You say, “Oh, I can’t deal with that person.” Why can’t you? God gave you sufficient opportunities to learn from Him about that problem; but you turned away, not heeding the lesson, because it seemed foolish to spend your time that way.
The sufferings of Christ were not those of ordinary people. He suffered “according to the will of God” (1 Peter 4:19), having a different point of view of suffering from ours. It is only through our relationship with Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. When it comes to suffering, it is part of our Christian culture to want to know God’s purpose beforehand. In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to avoid being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. People have sought to carry out God’s orders through a shortcut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering— the way of the “long road home.”
Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through— we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize— “God has strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!”
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Much of the misery in our Christian life comes not because the devil tackles us, but because we have never understood the simple laws of our make-up. We have to treat the body as the servant of Jesus Christ: when the body says “Sit,” and He says “Go,” go! When the body says “Eat,” and He says “Fast,” fast! When the body says “Yawn,” and He says “Pray,” pray! Biblical Ethics, 107 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, November 05, 2019
Life's Two Columns - #8562
Every World Series has its memorable moments, but the 1989 World Series will always have a distinctive claim to fame. The game was being played in Candlestick Park in San Francisco. And you might remember, in the third inning, the ground suddenly started shaking - an earthquake hit the stadium! People began to flee, the players quickly left the field, and many suddenly only cared about one thing - whether the people they loved were safe. The Giants catcher, Terry Kennedy, was living his dream that day. He was playing in the World Series. But suddenly, in one redefining moment, that changed. When a sportscaster inquired about his reaction to the quake, that catcher summed it up pretty well. He said, "Sure does change your priorities, doesn't it?"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Life's Two Columns."
I was talking recently with some friends whose church and home were basically wiped out from floods that were caused by a hurricane. We concluded that disasters have a way of suddenly dividing your life into two distinct columns: the things that really matter and the things that really don't. The problem is, that until a disaster hits, we tend to have them all in one list; all of it seems to matter. The hard times are God's reminder that a lot of it really doesn't.
That church lost its sanctuary, its pews, its piano, its sound system, its hymn books - basically everything. The next Sunday they were holding their service on the field up the road from their church building, but the real Church had been untouched by the flood. They were out there praising God together in that field. Yeah, their props were all gone and it hurt. It would be a struggle to restore what they had lost, but they had not lost the things that really matter!
The Apostle Paul understood life's two columns. He talked about everything being in one of two categories in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 4:8. He talked about how hard hit he and his associates had been. He said, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." They were unsinkable. You know why? Because they understood the difference between the stuff that matters and the stuff that doesn't.
Paul says, "We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles" - did you get that? "Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
Paul's troubles didn't defeat him or discourage him because he'd figured out the difference between what matters and what doesn't. The things that matter are the things that last - they're eternal. And those are the things you can never lose. If you keep your focus on those things, you can be knocked down but you can't be knocked out.
Don't wait for a disaster for you to see life's two columns. Make your list now, and you'll make much better decisions; you'll have priorities that you'll never regret. After the smoke clears, there are things that seem so important that really aren't - your earth-stuff, your positions, your business, your career, people's approval, even your house, or your wardrobe. Many people have lost all of that and realized they still had the things that really matter, the things that last.
If you're going through a time of loss right now, would you please focus on the really important things that you've not lost. And if your hard time is somewhere out there in the future, this is the time to make sure you're giving your best to that short list of lasting treasures. They are meant to be life's non-negotiables.
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