Max Lucado Daily: THE POWER OF A SEED
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” (Matthew 5:9). Jesus said. The principle for peace is the same as the principle for crops– Never underestimate the power of a seed. Somebody in your world desperately needs a word of peace. Want to see a miracle? Plant a word of love heart-deep in that person’s life. Nurture it with a smile and a prayer, and watch what happens.
When God’s people had forgotten his name, he planted the seed of his own self in the womb of a Jewish girl. The seed shoved away the stones of legalism, oppression and prejudice. Then the stone of death was rolled by humans and sealed by Satan in front of the tomb. But the seed of God shoved, the ground trembled, the rock tumbled, and the flower of Easter blossomed. Never underestimate the power of a seed.
Read more Applause of Heaven
Acts 3
One day at three o’clock in the afternoon, Peter and John were on their way into the Temple for prayer meeting. At the same time there was a man crippled from birth being carried up. Every day he was set down at the Temple gate, the one named Beautiful, to beg from those going into the Temple. When he saw Peter and John about to enter the Temple, he asked for a handout. Peter, with John at his side, looked him straight in the eye and said, “Look here.” He looked up, expecting to get something from them.
6-8 Peter said, “I don’t have a nickel to my name, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!” He grabbed him by the right hand and pulled him up. In an instant his feet and ankles became firm. He jumped to his feet and walked.
8-10 The man went into the Temple with them, walking back and forth, dancing and praising God. Everybody there saw him walking around and praising God. They recognized him as the one who sat begging at the Temple’s Gate Beautiful and rubbed their eyes, astonished, scarcely believing what they were seeing.
11 The man threw his arms around Peter and John, ecstatic. All the people ran up to where they were at Solomon’s Porch to see it for themselves.
12-16 When Peter saw he had a congregation, he addressed the people:
“Oh, Israelites, why does this take you by such complete surprise, and why stare at us as if our power or piety made him walk? The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has glorified his Son Jesus. The very One that Pilate called innocent, you repudiated. You repudiated the Holy One, the Just One, and asked for a murderer in his place. You no sooner killed the Author of Life than God raised him from the dead—and we’re the witnesses. Faith in Jesus’ name put this man, whose condition you know so well, on his feet—yes, faith and nothing but faith put this man healed and whole right before your eyes.
17-18 “And now, friends, I know you had no idea what you were doing when you killed Jesus, and neither did your leaders. But God, who through the preaching of all the prophets had said all along that his Messiah would be killed, knew exactly what you were doing and used it to fulfill his plans.
19-23 “Now it’s time to change your ways! Turn to face God so he can wipe away your sins, pour out showers of blessing to refresh you, and send you the Messiah he prepared for you, namely, Jesus. For the time being he must remain out of sight in heaven until everything is restored to order again just the way God, through the preaching of his holy prophets of old, said it would be. Moses, for instance, said, ‘Your God will raise up for you a prophet just like me from your family. Listen to every word he speaks to you. Every last living soul who refuses to listen to that prophet will be wiped out from the people.’
24-26 “All the prophets from Samuel on down said the same thing, said most emphatically that these days would come. These prophets, along with the covenant God made with your ancestors, are your family tree. God’s covenant-word to Abraham provides the text: ‘By your offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed.’ But you are first in line: God, having raised up his Son, sent him to bless you as you turn, one by one, from your evil ways.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, May 24, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
John 8:42-47
“If God were your father,” said Jesus, “you would love me, for I came from God and arrived here. I didn’t come on my own. He sent me. Why can’t you understand one word I say? Here’s why: You can’t handle it. You’re from your father, the Devil, and all you want to do is please him. He was a killer from the very start. He couldn’t stand the truth because there wasn’t a shred of truth in him. When the Liar speaks, he makes it up out of his lying nature and fills the world with lies. I arrive on the scene, tell you the plain truth, and you refuse to have a thing to do with me. Can any one of you convict me of a single misleading word, a single sinful act? But if I’m telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Anyone on God’s side listens to God’s words. This is why you’re not listening—because you’re not on God’s side.”
Insight
In today’s passage, Jesus unequivocally declares that Satan is “the father of lies” (John 8:44). Satan (also known as the devil, the enemy, the thief, the evil one, the tempter) is in direct opposition to Jesus, “the truth” who sets us free (v. 32). Satan has “no truth in him” (v. 44), but Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” (14:6). In the last hours before His crucifixion, as Jesus stood before Pilate, He states: “The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth” (18:37). Jesus came to earth to declare the truth about Himself, to explain the Father to us, and to expose the truth about ourselves, as He did with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4). While Satan “[came] only to steal and kill and destroy” (10:10) and was “a murderer from the beginning” (8:44), Jesus brings life eternal (3:16).
“God Saved My Life”
When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44
When Aaron (not his real name) was 15, he began praying to Satan: “I felt like he and I had a partnership.” Aaron started to lie, steal, and manipulate his family and friends. He also experienced nightmares: “I woke up one morning and saw the devil at the end of the bed. He told me that I was going to pass my exams and then die.” Yet when he finished his exams, he lived. Aaron reflected, “It was clear to me that he was a liar.”
Hoping to meet girls, Aaron went to a Christian festival, where a man offered to pray for him. “While he was praying, I felt a sense of peace flood my body.” He felt something “more powerful, and more liberating,” than what he felt from Satan. The man who prayed told Aaron God had a plan and Satan was a liar. This man echoed what Jesus said of Satan when He responded to some who opposed him: “He is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Aaron turned to Christ from Satanism and now “belongs to God” (v. 47). He ministers in an urban community, sharing the difference following Jesus makes. He’s a living testament of God’s saving power: “I can say with confidence that God saved my life.”
God is the source of all that is good, holy, and true. We can turn to Him to find truth. By Amy Boucher Pye
Reflect & Pray
How have you experienced God rescuing you from evil? Who can you share your story with this week?
God is more powerful than the father of lies.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, May 24, 2019
The Delight of Despair
When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. —Revelation 1:17
It may be that, like the apostle John, you know Jesus Christ intimately. Yet when He suddenly appears to you with totally unfamiliar characteristics, the only thing you can do is fall “at His feet as dead.” There are times when God cannot reveal Himself in any other way than in His majesty, and it is the awesomeness of the vision which brings you to the delight of despair. You experience this joy in hopelessness, realizing that if you are ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God.
“He laid His right hand on me…” (Revelation 1:17). In the midst of the awesomeness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. You know it is not the hand of restraint, correction, nor chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it gives inexpressible peace and comfort, and the sense that “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27), full of support, provision, comfort, and strength. And once His touch comes, nothing at all can throw you into fear again. In the midst of all His ascended glory, the Lord Jesus comes to speak to an insignificant disciple, saying, “Do not be afraid” (Revelation 1:17). His tenderness is inexpressibly sweet. Do I know Him like that?
Take a look at some of the things that cause despair. There is despair which has no delight, no limits whatsoever, and no hope of anything brighter. But the delight of despair comes when “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells…” (Romans 7:18). I delight in knowing that there is something in me which must fall prostrate before God when He reveals Himself to me, and also in knowing that if I am ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God. God can do nothing for me until I recognize the limits of what is humanly possible, allowing Him to do the impossible.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony, 1166 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, May 24, 2019
The End of the Maze - #8445
During a break for our hard working Native American team, we took them to an action park. Many of them were attracted to the maze at the park. We love to capture team memories on video, so one of our guys managed to find a spot looking down on the maze to shoot some video. And, it's really pretty funny because everyone is running down these twisting passageways, hoping to be the first person to find the exit. Unfortunately, most of those passageways of course lead to dead ends. So people are going full tilt, right into a dead end, hoping - even expecting - that this is the path that will get them where they want to go.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The End of the Maze."
There's a much bigger, much more important maze out there these days - the one that offers all kinds of paths to get to God. If you're an honest seeker, sincerely wanting to experience God for yourself, to know Him here and to be with Him when this life is over, frankly, there's a confusing assortment of roads out there. But the Bible's warning goes like this: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" (Proverbs 14:12). In other words, a lot of seemingly promising paths in the spiritual maze end up in an awful dead end.
But maybe you've already experienced the disappointment of some spiritual roads you've traveled. They've left you without peace...still without fulfillment. So you've gone on searching. The trendy thing to do today is to go to the "buffet" route spiritually - don't fully commit yourself to any one way, just try a little of that one and a little of this one. Then there's the "any god is fine" approach that seems so open-minded, so desirable. But we don't believe that about treating disease - any surgery, any medication is fine. We don't believe it about mathematics - either your sum or my sum is fine, even though they contradict one another.
If you want to come to a location where I'm waiting for you, you can't come any way you choose to any location you choose. Only I can tell you how to get where I am. Only God can tell you how to get where He is. And He has. The God of the Bible is unlike any other god in the world. Every other god, every other religion gives us a way to go looking for him. Only the God of the Bible comes looking for us, and dies for the sin that we deserve to pay for, and then comes back from the dead, and lives inside those who belong to Him, and makes it possible for us to know right here and now that we're going to go to heaven when we die. To know it right now, that's fantastic!
The God of the Bible is Jesus Christ who says in John 14:6, our word for today from the Word of God: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." He didn't say Christianity is the way - no religion is. The way that leads out of the mazec the way that leads to God's forgiveness, to personal peace and to heaven is the Man who died for every sin you have ever done and who walked out of His grave and proved that He alone can give eternal life. You can't give eternal life if you don't have it! And only Jesus has proven he has it.
If you're tired of searchingc if you're ready to finally find, Jesus is one step of faith away. Picture yourself at the foot of the cross where He loved you enough to die for you and tell Him that you want to be His from this day on. If you want a religion, go somewhere else. But if you want the relationship you were made for, well you tell Jesus today, "Jesus, I'm Yours. You have captured my heart with a love that would love me enough to die for what I've done against You. And You're alive! Be alive in my life today."
That will be the beginning of a whole new story for you. In fact, that's what our website is called, ANewStory.com. Where you can find there the Biblical information that will help you know for sure your eternity is settled, you belong to Jesus.
You don't have to keep looking for God anymore. He's come looking for you, and His name is Jesus. And He is everything that your heart has been restless for.
