Max Lucado Daily: GOD’S GRACE COMES AFTER YOU
God’s grace! It has a wildness about it. A white-water, rip-tide, turn-you-upside-downess about it. Grace comes after you!
Some years ago I underwent a heart procedure. I asked the surgeon, “You’re burning the interior of my heart, right?”
“Correct,” he said.
“You intend to kill the misbehaving cells, yes?” I asked.
“That’s my plan,” was his response.
“As long as you’re in there, could you take your little blowtorch to some of my greed, selfishness, superiority, and guilt?”
He smiled, “Sorry, that’s out of my pay grade!”
But it’s not out of God’s, my friend! We’d be wrong to think this change happens overnight. We’d be equally wrong to assume change never happens at all. It may be in fits and spurts—but it comes! Titus 2:11 says, “The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared.” You just never know when grace will seep in. Could you use some?
Read more GRACE
Ecclesiastes 3
There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:
2-8 A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.
9-13 But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I’ve had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he’s left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he’s coming or going. I’ve decided that there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That’s it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It’s God’s gift.
14 I’ve also concluded that whatever God does, that’s the way it’s going to be, always. No addition, no subtraction. God’s done it and that’s it. That’s so we’ll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear.
15 Whatever was, is.
Whatever will be, is.
That’s how it always is with God.
16-18 I took another good look at what’s going on: The very place of judgment—corrupt! The place of righteousness—corrupt! I said to myself, “God will judge righteous and wicked.” There’s a right time for every thing, every deed—and there’s no getting around it. I said to myself regarding the human race, “God’s testing the lot of us, showing us up as nothing but animals.”
19-22 Humans and animals come to the same end—humans die, animals die. We all breathe the same air. So there’s really no advantage in being human. None. Everything’s smoke. We all end up in the same place—we all came from dust, we all end up as dust. Nobody knows for sure that the human spirit rises to heaven or that the animal spirit sinks into the earth. So I made up my mind that there’s nothing better for us men and women than to have a good time in whatever we do—that’s our lot. Who knows if there’s anything else to life?
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, July 01, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
James 2:14-18
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
18 I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I’ll handle the works department.”
Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.
Insight
James’s letter begins, “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (1:1). So who was James? Evangelical scholars are largely convinced that he was the half-brother of Jesus. In Mark 6:3, Jesus’s siblings are listed, and James is among them. While those siblings were slow in coming to faith, Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to James after the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 1:19). As a result, James and his brothers are listed among the believers in Christ in the upper room in Acts 1:14. Following the execution of James the son of Zebedee and the brother of John (Acts 12:2), Christ’s brother James would become a leader in the church (v. 17), arbitrating the first church council in Jerusalem (15:13–29). Sometimes called “James the Just,” he was martyred for his faith around ad 60.
Are You Hungry Now?
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? James 2:14
Thomas knew what he needed to do. Having been born to a poor family in India and adopted by Americans, upon a return trip to India he witnessed the dire needs of the children in his hometown. So he knew he had to help. He began making plans to return to the US, finish his education, save a lot of money, and come back in the future.
Then, after reading James 2:14–18 in which James asks, “What good is it . . . if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?” Thomas heard a little girl in his native country cry out to her mother: “But Mommy, I’m hungry now!” He was reminded of the times he had been intensely hungry as a child—searching through trash cans for food. Thomas knew he couldn’t wait years to help. He decided, “I’ll start now!”
Today the orphanage he began houses fifty well-fed and cared-for children who are learning about Jesus and getting an education—all because one man didn’t put off what he knew God was asking him to do.
James’s message applies to us as well. Our faith in Jesus Christ provides us with great advantages—a relationship with Him, an abundant life, and a future hope. But what good is it doing anyone else if we don’t reach out and help those in need? Can you hear the cry: “I’m hungry now”? By Dave Branon
Reflect & Pray
What needs around you touch your heart? What’s one thing you can do to help others—even if it seems insignificant?
Direct my steps, O God, toward the actions You want me to take to help someone in need. Thank You for allowing me to be a part of Your work on earth.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, July 01, 2019
The Inevitable Penalty
You will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny. —Matthew 5:26
There is no heaven that has a little corner of hell in it. God is determined to make you pure, holy, and right, and He will not allow you to escape from the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit for even one moment. He urged you to come to judgment immediately when He convicted you, but you did not obey. Then the inevitable process began to work, bringing its inevitable penalty. Now you have been “thrown into prison, [and]…you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny” (Matthew 5:25-26). Yet you ask, “Is this a God of mercy and love?” When seen from God’s perspective, it is a glorious ministry of love. God is going to bring you out pure, spotless, and undefiled, but He wants you to recognize the nature you were exhibiting— the nature of demanding your right to yourself. The moment you are willing for God to change your nature, His recreating forces will begin to work. And the moment you realize that God’s purpose is to get you into the right relationship with Himself and then with others, He will reach to the very limits of the universe to help you take the right road. Decide to do it right now, saying, “Yes, Lord, I will write that letter,” or, “I will be reconciled to that person now.”
These sermons of Jesus Christ are meant for your will and your conscience, not for your head. If you dispute these verses from the Sermon on the Mount with your head, you will dull the appeal to your heart.
If you find yourself asking, “I wonder why I’m not growing spiritually with God?”— then ask yourself if you are paying your debts from God’s standpoint. Do now what you will have to do someday. Every moral question or call comes with an “ought” behind it— the knowledge of knowing what we ought to do.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
If a man cannot prove his religion in the valley, it is not worth anything. Shade of His Hand, 1200 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, July 01, 2019
When God Couldn't Bear to Look - #8471
It was a great day for a high school football game, and I was on the sidelines helping out our local team. And then my 12-year-old son, well he was playing a pickup game on a football field nearby. And I was surprised to see him suddenly heading my way, holding his arm, and then, oh man, I saw him wincing with pain. He'd been tackled and he'd fallen on his arm. I can tell you, it was so badly broken the bone was protruding from his skin. So, we rushed him to the emergency room where I had some of the more agonizing moments of my life. Yeah, I know it wasn't my arm. I know, but I was watching the doctor struggle to set my son's multiple fracture. Doug was a tough guy, but he was in great and obvious agony. If you're a parent, you know. It might as well have been me the doctor was working on.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When God Couldn't Bear to Look."
As a father, it really hurts to watch the son you love suffer. That's a feeling God knows all too well, and on a level I couldn't begin to comprehend. Because His one and only Son Jesus went through unbearable agony, dying an excruciating death on a cross. He wasn't crucified for things He had done. No, He died for things I've done and things you've done. In the Bible's words, "Christ died for our sins" (1 Corinthians 15:3).
The Bible records the reaction of the Father as His Son bore all this pain, not only of death by crucifixion, but of all the hell of all the sin of all the human race. In Matthew 27:46, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus cries out these words from the cross: "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?" In this moment of unspeakable agony, God the Father has turned His back on God the Son.
Why? Because the Father couldn't stand to see His Son suffer this way? No. The answer to Jesus' question is in something we learn about God in Habakkuk 1:13. It says of God, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil." That's what was going on in that unthinkable moment when God the Father turned away from His suffering Son. Jesus was carrying every evil thing I have ever done and every sin every person has committed from the beginning of time. In the words of the Bible, Jesus "bore our sins in His body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). See, God is holy. He's unable to even look at sin, even when it's His one and only Son that is carrying it.
So God turned His back on His Son so He would never have to turn His back on you. That's His amazing love. If you think somehow you'll be able to make it to God any way other than totally trusting in His Son, look at that cross. If God turned His back on His own Son when He had your sin, what hope can you possibly have if you leave this life still carrying the sins of your life unforgiven? Your religion, your Christianity, your goodness can't possibly get you into heaven. Only Jesus can do that. Only Jesus died to do that. Your only hope is what He did on the cross for you.
So you have nothing more important to think about other than this. "Has there ever been a time when I consciously gave myself to Jesus, believing that He - and He alone - can forgive my sin, make me right with God, and take me to heaven?" If not, make this the day when you finally act on the total sacrifice Jesus became for you.
You can tell him that right where you are. "Jesus, I know that I have broken your laws and I have put myself first. And I know that I deserve the death penalty for hijacking my life from my Creator. And today I turn from that sin, and there's a new driver as of today. Jesus, I believe when you died on that cross it was my sin you were paying for. I believe you're alive because you walked out of your grave. But I ask you to walk into my life today and change it forever."
This could be your new beginning, and that's why I want to invite you to go to our website, because it's all about making sure you belong to Jesus. It's called ANewStory.com. Go there as soon as you can today.
On the day you stand before the Father, He's going to want to know one thing, "What did you do with My Son?" And you can point to this day as the day you said, "Son of God, I'm Yours!"