Max Lucado Daily: FIVE LOAVES, TWO FISH, …AND JESUS
In Matthew 6:25 Jesus says, “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough.”
On one occasion, Jesus had taken the disciples on a retreat. Then came the hungry crowd and the disciples issued a command to Jesus. “Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus issued an assignment to them, “You give them something to eat.”
Do you suppose Jesus was hoping someone would count all the possibilities? We have “five loaves, two fish, and … Jesus!” Standing next to the disciples was the solution to their problems … but the disciples stopped their counting and worried. What about you? Are you counting your problems or are you counting on Christ?
Read more Fearless
2 Samuel 11
David’s Sin and Sorrow
When that time of year came around again, the anniversary of the Ammonite aggression, David dispatched Joab and his fighting men of Israel in full force to destroy the Ammonites for good. They laid siege to Rabbah, but David stayed in Jerusalem.
2-5 One late afternoon, David got up from taking his nap and was strolling on the roof of the palace. From his vantage point on the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was stunningly beautiful. David sent to ask about her, and was told, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite?” David sent his agents to get her. After she arrived, he went to bed with her. (This occurred during the time of “purification” following her period.) Then she returned home. Before long she realized she was pregnant.
Later she sent word to David: “I’m pregnant.”
6 David then got in touch with Joab: “Send Uriah the Hittite to me.” Joab sent him.
7-8 When he arrived, David asked him for news from the front—how things were going with Joab and the troops and with the fighting. Then he said to Uriah, “Go home. Have a refreshing bath and a good night’s rest.”
8-9 After Uriah left the palace, an informant of the king was sent after him. But Uriah didn’t go home. He slept that night at the palace entrance, along with the king’s servants.
10 David was told that Uriah had not gone home. He asked Uriah, “Didn’t you just come off a hard trip? So why didn’t you go home?”
11 Uriah replied to David, “The Chest is out there with the fighting men of Israel and Judah—in tents. My master Joab and his servants are roughing it out in the fields. So, how can I go home and eat and drink and enjoy my wife? On your life, I’ll not do it!”
12-13 “All right,” said David, “have it your way. Stay for the day and I’ll send you back tomorrow.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem the rest of the day.
The next day David invited him to eat and drink with him, and David got him drunk. But in the evening Uriah again went out and slept with his master’s servants. He didn’t go home.
14-15 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Put Uriah in the front lines where the fighting is the fiercest. Then pull back and leave him exposed so that he’s sure to be killed.”
16-17 So Joab, holding the city under siege, put Uriah in a place where he knew there were fierce enemy fighters. When the city’s defenders came out to fight Joab, some of David’s soldiers were killed, including Uriah the Hittite.
18-21 Joab sent David a full report on the battle. He instructed the messenger, “After you have given to the king a detailed report on the battle, if he flares in anger, say, ‘And by the way, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.’”
22-24 Joab’s messenger arrived in Jerusalem and gave the king a full report. He said, “The enemy was too much for us. They advanced on us in the open field, and we pushed them back to the city gate. But then arrows came hot and heavy on us from the city wall, and eighteen of the king’s soldiers died.”
25 When the messenger completed his report of the battle, David got angry at Joab. He vented it on the messenger: “Why did you get so close to the city? Didn’t you know you’d be attacked from the wall? Didn’t you remember how Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth got killed? Wasn’t it a woman who dropped a millstone on him from the wall and crushed him at Thebez? Why did you go close to the wall!”
“By the way,” said Joab’s messenger, “your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.”
Then David told the messenger, “Oh. I see. Tell Joab, ‘Don’t trouble yourself over this. War kills—sometimes one, sometimes another—you never know who’s next. Redouble your assault on the city and destroy it.’ Encourage Joab.”
26-27 When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she grieved for her husband. When the time of mourning was over, David sent someone to bring her to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Acts 10:34-38
34-36 Peter fairly exploded with his good news: “It’s God’s own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he’s doing it everywhere, among everyone.
37-38 “You know the story of what happened in Judea. It began in Galilee after John preached a total life-change. Then Jesus arrived from Nazareth, anointed by God with the Holy Spirit, ready for action. He went through the country helping people and healing everyone who was beaten down by the Devil. He was able to do all this because God was with him.
Insight
The words “show favoritism” in Acts 10:34 are translated from the Greek prosopoleptes, a word which means to receive or show regard for someone because of rank, status, beauty, or popularity. This word is a combination of prosopon, which means “face” or “person”; and lambano, “to lay hold of.” Partiality (showing favoritism) does not characterize God, as we see in these verses: “As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism” (Galatians 2:6); “Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him” (Ephesians 6:9). Neither should favoritism characterize the followers of Jesus, as James 2:1 reminds us: “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.” By: Arthur Jackson
Our Welcoming God
By Winn Collier
God does not show favoritism. Acts 10:34
Our church meets in an old elementary school, one that closed in 1958 rather than obey a US court order to integrate (the act of having African-American students attend schools previously attended by only Caucasian students). The following year, the school reopened and Elva, now a member of our church, was one of those black students who were thrust into a white world. “I was taken out of my safe community, with teachers who were part of our life,” Elva recalls, “and placed in a scary environment in a class with only one other black student.” Elva suffered because she was different, but she became a woman of courage, faith, and forgiveness.
Her witness is profound because of how much evil she endured at the hands of some members of a society that denied the truth that every human being, regardless of race or heritage, is loved by God. Some members of the early church struggled with this same truth, believing that certain people were, by birth, loved by God while others were rejected. After receiving a divine vision, however, Peter stunned everyone who would listen with this astounding revelation: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34–35).
God opens His arms wide to extend love to everyone. May we do the same in His power.
Consider your neighborhood, your family, and your social sphere. Where do you find a temptation to exclude others? Why?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, January 10, 2019
The Opened Sight
I now send you, to open their eyes…that they may receive forgiveness of sins… —Acts 26:17-18
This verse is the greatest example of the true essence of the message of a disciple of Jesus Christ in all of the New Testament.
God’s first sovereign work of grace is summed up in the words, “…that they may receive forgiveness of sins….” When a person fails in his personal Christian life, it is usually because he has never received anything. The only sign that a person is saved is that he has received something from Jesus Christ. Our job as workers for God is to open people’s eyes so that they may turn themselves from darkness to light. But that is not salvation; it is conversion— only the effort of an awakened human being. I do not think it is too broad a statement to say that the majority of so-called Christians are like this. Their eyes are open, but they have received nothing. Conversion is not regeneration. This is a neglected fact in our preaching today. When a person is born again, he knows that it is because he has received something as a gift from Almighty God and not because of his own decision. People may make vows and promises, and may be determined to follow through, but none of this is salvation. Salvation means that we are brought to the place where we are able to receive something from God on the authority of Jesus Christ, namely, forgiveness of sins.
This is followed by God’s second mighty work of grace: “…an inheritance among those who are sanctified….” In sanctification, the one who has been born again deliberately gives up his right to himself to Jesus Christ, and identifies himself entirely with God’s ministry to others.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Beauty In Your Desert - #8349
We've got a close friend who moved from Arizona to the Midwest. She loves the green. There's not much of that in the semi-arid area that she's from. And she loves all the things that bloom in that new part of the country, but that's not to say she doesn't miss what she grew up with. She really misses the beauty of the Southwest. Some might travel through the long, largely barren stretches of her part of the country and not see much beauty, but it's there. Yeah, it's a different beauty from the lush, green parts of America, but there is a stark, wild, wide-open majesty in the desert. It's got a beauty all its own.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Beauty In Your Desert."
Every one of us gets to spend some time in the desert, or the wilderness, as it's often called in the Bible. It's not our permanent home, but it's part of the journey. Maybe you're in one of those difficult dry spells right now. It's time to remember that while the desert is hard, it does have a beauty all its own. There are things you see there that you can't see when you're in the green and blooming times.
God's ancient people learned that when they spent their time in the wilderness. God describes some of that in Deuteronomy 1:30-33. It's our word for today from the Word of God. "The Lord your God who is going before you will fight for you, as He did...before your very eyes in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son...The Lord your God...went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go."
Wilderness times can be tough for several reasons-you feel depleted, the devil's doing everything he can to exploit this vulnerable time with his lies, fear of what may happen starts to take over, and sometimes it just plain hurts.
But what we just read from God's Word about desert times reminds us of several very important encouragements which the dry time tends to make us forget. First, the desert is part of the plan. It's God who leads you into a wilderness time, knowing that it will take a wilderness to take you to your next level in Him. Even though the devil was all over Jesus when He spent forty days in the wilderness, the Bible makes it very clear that the Lord led Him into the wilderness. The God who loves you passionately has decided that wilderness is what will bring you the greatest good and Him the greatest glory at this point in your life.
Secondly, the wilderness is a place of miracles. It was in a wilderness that God's people saw manna from heaven, water come from rocks, and a pillar of cloud and fire providing daily guidance. If you'll remain faithful, even when you don't have the feelings, God will show you His power in the desert in ways you will never see in the Promised Land.
The third desert encouragement is that the wilderness is a growing time. Paul saw his greatest revelations of God (the things you read in the New Testament now) while he was in the desert. Jesus emerged from the wilderness it says, "full of the Holy Spirit and power" and He exploded into His public ministry. God wants to use the desert time to drive you more deeply into Him because He's all you've got there. And as you go deeper, you develop a new spiritual power that prepares you for a whole new level of impact on the other side of the wilderness.
Two other desert encouragements; the wilderness will not last forever. There's a Promised Land on the other side. And the desert is a place where God will carry you when you've got nothing left-like a daddy carries a tired little boy to places that little boy could never go in his own strength. And there's something very special about collapsing on the shoulder of your all-loving, all-powerful Heavenly Daddy.
Your assignment in the desert? Keep showing up, keep being faithful even when you don't feel it. If you're in a desert stretch, trust the One who's allowed or directed you to be there. And while you're there, don't miss the strange beauty of the desert.
