Max Lucado Daily: GOD AS A HEART SURGEON
Grace is God as heart surgeon! Grace is God cracking open your chest, removing your heart, poisoned as it is with pride and pain, and replacing it with his own. God’s dream isn’t just to get you into heaven, but to get heaven into you.
Grace lives because Jesus does, works because he works, and matters because he matters. To be saved by grace is to be saved by Jesus—not by an idea, doctrine, creed, or church membership, but by Jesus himself, who will sweep into heaven anyone who so much as gives him the nod.
Grace won’t be stage-managed. I have no tips on how to get grace. The truth is, we don’t get grace. But it can sure can get us. If you wonder whether God can do something with the mess of your life, then grace is what you need! Make certain it happens to you!
Read more GRACE
Ecclesiastes 6
I looked long and hard at what goes on around here, and let me tell you, things are bad. And people feel it. There are people, for instance, on whom God showers everything—money, property, reputation—all they ever wanted or dreamed of. And then God doesn’t let them enjoy it. Some stranger comes along and has all the fun. It’s more of what I’m calling smoke. A bad business.
3-5 Say a couple have scores of children and live a long, long life but never enjoy themselves—even though they end up with a big funeral! I’d say that a stillborn baby gets the better deal. It gets its start in a mist and ends up in the dark—unnamed. It sees nothing and knows nothing, but is better off by far than anyone living.
6 Even if someone lived a thousand years—make it two thousand!—but didn’t enjoy anything, what’s the point? Doesn’t everyone end up in the same place?
7 We work to feed our appetites;
Meanwhile our souls go hungry.
8-9 So what advantage has a sage over a fool, or over some poor wretch who barely gets by? Just grab whatever you can while you can; don’t assume something better might turn up by and by. All it amounts to anyway is smoke. And spitting into the wind.
10 Whatever happens, happens. Its destiny is fixed.
You can’t argue with fate.
11-12 The more words that are spoken, the more smoke there is in the air. And who is any better off? And who knows what’s best for us as we live out our meager smoke-and-shadow lives? And who can tell any of us the next chapter of our lives?
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, July 05, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
1 John 2:7-11
My dear friends, I’m not writing anything new here. This is the oldest commandment in the book, and you’ve known it from day one. It’s always been implicit in the Message you’ve heard. On the other hand, perhaps it is new, freshly minted as it is in both Christ and you—the darkness on its way out and the True Light already blazing!
9-11 Anyone who claims to live in God’s light and hates a brother or sister is still in the dark. It’s the person who loves brother and sister who dwells in God’s light and doesn’t block the light from others. But whoever hates is still in the dark, stumbles around in the dark, doesn’t know which end is up, blinded by the darkness.
Insight
Part of John’s purpose in 1 John is to address those who were stirring up controversy in the Christian community. The exact situation is uncertain, but John confronts it by urging the church to assess whether a person confesses the truth about Christ in both words and lifestyle (3:7–9). And the primary way to assess someone’s way of life is whether or not their life is filled with Christlike love (v. 10).
In the Bible “hatred” and “love” are not seen as primarily referring to an emotional reaction to someone or something, but to an attitude reflected in actions. John teaches that true love is sacrificial like Christ’s (vv. 16–18). Living with Christ’s love is possible because we live “in him” (2:5–6). Through the Spirit, Christ’s power and light shines in believers, filling them with His self-giving love (vv. 8–10).
Practicing What We Preach
Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. 1 John 2:9
Pastor and writer Eugene Peterson had the opportunity to hear a lecture by Swiss physician and highly respected pastoral counselor Paul Tournier. Peterson had read the doctor’s works, and admired his approach to healing. The lecture left a deep impression on Peterson. As he listened, he had the feeling that Tournier lived what he spoke and spoke what he lived. Peterson chose this word to describe his experience: “Congruence. It is the best word I can come up with.”
Congruence—it’s what some refer to as “practicing what you preach” or “walking your talk.” The apostle John stresses that if any of us “claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister,” then we’re “still in the darkness” (1 John 2:9). In essence, our lives and our words simply don’t match up. John goes further to say such people “do not know where they are going” (v. 11). The word he chose to describe how incongruence leaves us? Blind.
Living closely aligned to God by allowing the light of His Word to illuminate our paths keeps us from living blind. The result is a godly vision that gives clarity and focus to our days—our words and actions match up. When others observe this, the impression is not necessarily that of someone who knows everywhere they’re going, but of someone who clearly knows who they’re following. By John Blase
Reflect & Pray
In what ways does the word congruence describe you? How can you grow to live a more consistent life?
Jesus, I want my words and actions to match up. There are times I fall short, but my desire is to grow more consistent each day. Help me, please, so that everyone listening and watching my life will be drawn to You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 05, 2019
Don’t Plan Without God
Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. —Psalm 37:5
Don’t plan without God. God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the plans we have made, when we have not taken Him into account. We get ourselves into circumstances that were not chosen by God, and suddenly we realize that we have been making our plans without Him— that we have not even considered Him to be a vital, living factor in the planning of our lives. And yet the only thing that will keep us from even the possibility of worrying is to bring God in as the greatest factor in all of our planning.
In spiritual issues it is customary for us to put God first, but we tend to think that it is inappropriate and unnecessary to put Him first in the practical, everyday issues of our lives. If we have the idea that we have to put on our “spiritual face” before we can come near to God, then we will never come near to Him. We must come as we are.
Don’t plan with a concern for evil in mind. Does God really mean for us to plan without taking the evil around us into account? “Love…thinks no evil” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). Love is not ignorant of the existence of evil, but it does not take it into account as a factor in planning. When we were apart from God, we did take evil into account, doing all of our planning with it in mind, and we tried to reason out all of our work from its standpoint.
Don’t plan with a rainy day in mind. You cannot hoard things for a rainy day if you are truly trusting Christ. Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled…” (John 14:1). God will not keep your heart from being troubled. It is a command— “Let not….” To do it, continually pick yourself up, even if you fall a hundred and one times a day, until you get into the habit of putting God first and planning with Him in mind.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Defenders of the faith are inclined to be bitter until they learn to walk in the light of the Lord. When you have learned to walk in the light of the Lord, bitterness and contention are impossible. Biblical Psychology, 199 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, July 05, 2019
Open Arms and No Closed Door - #8475
Rwanda. A lot of Americans had never heard of that African country until a few years ago, and then it became the scene of horrific bloodshed and a tribal war that left thousands of Rwandans brutally slaughtered. With this awful season of attempted genocide, Rwanda became a word that was written in blood. And then the challenge became to try to heal the nation. Leaders who helped South Africa reconcile its years of apartheid violence came to Rwanda to help them find a healing road like they have. Out of that struggle came a story I'm not going to soon forget.
The son of a lady named Deborah was murdered in an act of ethnic vengeance. Months after the killing, a young man visited Deborah with this amazing confession and request. He said, "I killed your son. So take me to the authorities and let them deal with me as they will. I have not slept since I shot your son. Every time I lie down, I see you praying, and I know you are praying for me." As extraordinary as that young man's words were, Deborah's response was even more amazing. She said, "I do want you to restore justice by replacing the son you killed. I'm asking you to become my son. When you visit me, I will care for you." Today that young man is an adopted member of her household.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Open Arms and No Closed Door."
I know just a little bit of how that young man must feel. See, I've been accepted as part of the family by someone from whom I deserved only punishment and rejection. After all, I had a part in the death of His Son. Then, so have you. The Son's name is Jesus, who was nailed to a cross for your sins and mine. God has every reason to throw the book at us. But this very day, He's offering you instead a chance to join His family and live with Him forever.
God gives us a beautiful picture of this amazing possibility in a story from the life of King David, the one from whom Jesus was descended. In 2 Samuel 9, our word for today from the Word of God, David has become the king after the previous King Saul's all-out attempts to have him killed. It was the custom of kings then to exile or execute the families of those who had wanted them dead, so they wouldn't become part of a future rebellion or plot. But there was one man left out of Saul's family. His name was Mephibosheth, and he was crippled in both feet. King David had Mephibosheth brought to him, and Saul's grandson was scared to death, of course, literally.
"'Don't be afraid,' David said to him, 'for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan" - who was Saul's son and David's friend, by the way - "I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.' ... and Mephibosheth ate at the king's table like one of the king's sons."
That's what God wants to do for you even though you have, like all of us, rebelled against His kingship and run your own life. It's that rebellion that could be paid for only with the blood of God's Son. Which means you and I were part of the reason God's Son died. But He stands ready, no matter what you've done, to throw open the door and welcome you into His family and even into His heaven when you die.
The only way you'll ever be allowed into God's heaven, though, is on the basis of your personal relationship with the person God loves most, and that is His one and only Son, Jesus. So where you stand with God and where you'll spend eternity depends totally on whether or not you have welcomed the Son of God into your life as your Savior from your sin. You could do that today and God will cancel the hell that you deserve and He'll give you instead the heaven you could never deserve.
Tell him, "Jesus, I'm yours. You are my only hope." And listen, our website is for you at a moment like this. You'll have all the information there from God's Word that will help you be sure you belong to Him. Go to ANewStory.com.
See, like me, you deserve the punishment for your sin against the King of all kings. But He's ready right now to welcome you into His family, because He wants you with Him forever!