Max Lucado Daily: ANGELS WATCHING OVER YOU
Two adjectives capture the biblical image of angels: many and mighty. They are mentioned in over three hundred scriptural references. Revelations 5:11 describes angels around the heavenly throne, “and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.”
God’s angels are marked with incredible strength. It took only one angel to slay the firstborn of Egypt.
Only one sound matters to angels and that is God’s voice. Only one sight enthralls angels and that is God’s face. And as a result, they worship him. They also protect us. “All the angels are spirits who serve God and are sent to help those who will receive salvation” (Hebrews 1:14). The promise of angelic protection is limited to those who trust God. And when you cross the goal line, they’ll be the first to applaud!
Read more Come Thirsty
1 Kings 6
Four hundred and eighty years after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s rule over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, Solomon started building The Temple of God. The Temple that King Solomon built to God was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high. There was a porch across the thirty-foot width of The Temple that extended out fifteen feet. Within The Temple he made narrow, deep-silled windows. Against the outside walls he built a supporting structure in which there were smaller rooms: The lower floor was seven and a half feet wide, the middle floor nine feet, and the third floor ten and a half feet. He had projecting ledges built into the outside Temple walls to support the buttressing beams.
7 The stone blocks for the building of The Temple were all dressed at the quarry so that the building site itself was reverently quiet—no noise from hammers and chisels and other iron tools.
8-10 The entrance to the ground floor was at the south end of The Temple; stairs led to the second floor and then to the third. Solomon built and completed The Temple, finishing it off with roof beams and planks of cedar. The supporting structure along the outside walls was attached to The Temple with cedar beams and the rooms in it were seven and a half feet tall.
11-13 The word of God came to Solomon saying, “About this Temple you are building—what’s important is that you live the way I’ve set out for you and do what I tell you, following my instructions carefully and obediently. Then I’ll complete in you the promise I made to David your father. I’ll personally take up my residence among the Israelites—I won’t desert my people Israel.”
14-18 Solomon built and completed The Temple. He paneled the interior walls from floor to ceiling with cedar planks; for flooring he used cypress. The thirty feet at the rear of The Temple he made into an Inner Sanctuary, cedar planks from floor to ceiling—the Holy of Holies. The Main Sanctuary area in front was sixty feet long. The entire interior of The Temple was cedar, with carvings of fruits and flowers. All cedar—none of the stone was exposed.
19-22 The Inner Sanctuary within The Temple was for housing the Chest of the Covenant of God. This Inner Sanctuary was a cube, thirty feet each way, all plated with gold. The Altar of cedar was also gold-plated. Everywhere you looked there was pure gold: gold chains strung in front of the gold-plated Inner Sanctuary—gold everywhere—walls, ceiling, floor, and Altar. Dazzling!
23-28 Then he made two cherubim, gigantic angel-like figures, from olivewood. Each was fifteen feet tall. The outstretched wings of the cherubim (they were identical in size and shape) measured another fifteen feet. He placed the two cherubim, their wings spread, in the Inner Sanctuary. The combined wingspread stretched the width of the room, the wing of one cherub touched one wall, the wing of the other the other wall, and the wings touched in the middle. The cherubim were gold-plated.
29-30 He then carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, and flower blossoms on all the walls of both the Inner and the Main Sanctuary. And all the floors of both inner and outer rooms were gold-plated.
31-32 He constructed doors of olivewood for the entrance to the Inner Sanctuary; the lintel and doorposts were five-sided. The doors were also carved with cherubim, palm trees, and flowers, and then covered with gold leaf.
33-35 Similarly, he built the entrance to the Main Sanctuary using olivewood for the doorposts but these doorposts were four-sided. The doors were of cypress, split into two panels, each panel swinging separately. These also were carved with cherubim, palm trees, and flowers, and plated with finely hammered gold leaf.
36 He built the inner court with three courses of dressed stones topped with a course of planed cedar timbers.
37-38 The foundation for God’s Temple was laid in the fourth year in the month of Ziv. It was completed in the eleventh year in the month of Bul (the eighth month) down to the last detail, just as planned. It took Solomon seven years to build it.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 46:1-11
A Song of the Sons of Korah
God is a safe place to hide,
ready to help when we need him.
We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,
courageous in seastorm and earthquake,
Before the rush and roar of oceans,
the tremors that shift mountains.
Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.
4-6 River fountains splash joy, cooling God’s city,
this sacred haunt of the Most High.
God lives here, the streets are safe,
God at your service from crack of dawn.
Godless nations rant and rave, kings and kingdoms threaten,
but Earth does anything he says.
7 Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.
8-10 Attention, all! See the marvels of God!
He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons across his knee.
“Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
loving look at me, your High God,
above politics, above everything.”
11 Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.
Insight
In Psalm 46, the psalmist writes of the security and stability that God provides in troubled times. Natural disasters (vv. 2–3) and armed conflicts (vv. 6–7) will always be present in this world. Earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, and military conflicts have all caused untold devastation and destruction. But no matter how dire the situation, those who make God their “refuge and strength” (v. 1) “will not fear” (v. 2). The basis for this confidence is declared in verse 7 and repeated in verse 11: “The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” Based on this psalm, reformer Martin Luther wrote one of his best-known hymns: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Like the psalmist living in an uncertain and insecure world, we are invited to “be still, and know that [He is] God” (v. 10). In confident trust, we echo Luther’s words, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.”
Present in the Storm
The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Psalm 46:7
Fire swept through the home of a family of six from our church. Although the father and son survived, the father was still hospitalized while his wife, mother, and two small children were laid to rest. Unfortunately, heartbreaking events like this continue to happen again and again. When they’re replayed, so is the age-old question: Why do bad things happen to good people? And it doesn’t surprise us that this old question doesn’t have new answers.
Yet the truth that the psalmist puts forth in Psalm 46 has also been replayed and rehearsed and embraced repeatedly. “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble” (v. 1). The conditions described in verses 2–3 are catastrophic—earth and mountains moving and sea waters raging. We shudder when we imagine being in the midst of the stormy conditions poetically pictured here. But sometimes we do find ourselves there—in the swirling throes of a terminal illness, tossed about by a devastating financial crisis, stung and stunned by the deaths of loved ones.
It’s tempting to rationalize that the presence of trouble means the absence of God. But the truth of Scripture counters such notions. “The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (vv. 7, 11). He is present when our circumstances are unbearable, and we find comfort in His character: He is good, loving, and trustworthy. By Arthur Jackson
Reflect & Pray
When did a challenge in life cause you to question if God was present? What helped to turn the situation around for you?
Father, help me to trust the truth of Your Word when it’s hard for me to sense Your care or presence.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Have You Come to “When” Yet?
The Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. —Job 42:10
A pitiful, sickly, and self-centered kind of prayer and a determined effort and selfish desire to be right with God are never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is actually a sign that I am rebelling against the atonement by the Cross of Christ. I pray, “Lord, I will purify my heart if You will answer my prayer— I will walk rightly before You if You will help me.” But I cannot make myself right with God; I cannot make my life perfect. I can only be right with God if I accept the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it? I have to surrender all my rights and demands, and cease from every self-effort. I must leave myself completely alone in His hands, and then I can begin to pour my life out in the priestly work of intercession. There is a great deal of prayer that comes from actual disbelief in the atonement. Jesus is not just beginning to save us— He has already saved us completely. It is an accomplished fact, and it is an insult to Him for us to ask Him to do what He has already done.
If you are not now receiving the “hundredfold” which Jesus promised (see Matthew 19:29), and not getting insight into God’s Word, then start praying for your friends— enter into the ministry of the inner life. “The Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends.” As a saved soul, the real business of your life is intercessory prayer. Whatever circumstances God may place you in, always pray immediately that His atonement may be recognized and as fully understood in the lives of others as it has been in yours. Pray for your friends now, and pray for those with whom you come in contact now.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
God created man to be master of the life in the earth and sea and sky, and the reason he is not is because he took the law into his own hands, and became master of himself, but of nothing else. The Shadow of an Agony, 1163 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Amazing Cleanup - #8464
My sister-in-law used to be involved with insurance claims. And it was not uncommon for her to have clients who had major messes to clean up. Imagine the damage flood waters could do to a home, or a major fire, or even frozen pipes that burst in the winter. That's when they called on a major company known for their specialty - they come in and clean those grossly soaked carpets, they restore that damaged furniture and those smoke-saturated drapes. They are known for being the ones who can clean up a mess that folks could never clean themselves.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Amazing Cleanup."
When you have too much to clean up, it is great to know that there's someone you can call to remove and restore what you never could. Well, for 20 centuries now, men and women have been calling on Jesus Christ for that very reason, and they have found, sometimes much to their surprise, that He is actually drawn to people who know how much they need Him.
Maybe as you look back over the last few months or even the past years, you see messes you've made that seem impossible to clean up. There are people we've hurt, things we've done we never thought we'd do, shameful memories, things that have us hooked, things we've hidden and we hope no one ever finds out about them - so many mistakes, so many sins, regrets, messes. Like a homeowner who feels helpless in the midst of a disaster-ravaged house, we're kind of standing there overwhelmed sometimes with the guilt, the shame, and the dirty, unworthy feeling inside.
We are in desperate need of someone who can clean up the messes of a lifetime, and that is what Jesus specializes in. It is, in fact, the reason He went to a cross and allowed men He had created to crucify Him. He's the Son of God. He went there to pay for every sin you and I have ever committed, from the lies, immorality, the abuse, selfishness, and even the most heinous of human sins. He didn't miss any sin when He took on Himself all the guilt, all the shame, and all the hell for every act of rebellion against God.
No matter how guilty, no matter how dirty, no matter how unforgivable you feel, Jesus stands ready to wash it all away. In Hebrews 10:10, our word for today from the Word of God, we're told, "We have been made holy (that means totally clean before God!) through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." That's one death for all sins!
Jesus is actually drawn to those who know they're sinners. His enemies called Him the "friend of sinners." Jesus only resists those who are too proud, too religious to see how much they need what He did on the cross for them.
For you, this could be the day that Jesus moves into every sin-mess of your life with His total forgiving and His power to restore what no man can restore. You woke up this morning dirty inside. You can go to sleep tonight totally clean for the first time in your life. But you have to reach out to the Great Forgiver with total trust that He will be your personal Savior from your personal sin. The promise of God from the Bible is that "everyone who believes in (Jesus) receives forgiveness of sins through His name" (Acts 10:43). That could be you, that could be today.
If you've never told Jesus you're putting all your faith in Him to do what He died to do - to forgive you, to change you - you can tell Him that right now, right where you are. And if that's what you want and you're ready to begin that relationship and you're ready to experience His shower of forgiveness, then let me encourage you to check out our website sometime before the day is over. It's full of the Biblical information you need to get started with Jesus. It's ANewStory.com. That's good name for it because this could be the beginning of your new story
Yes today, this can actually be your new beginning.