Max Lucado Daily: GOD GIVES A SECOND CHANCE
She was only five years old when you took the photo. Cheeks freckled by the summer sun, hair in pigtails. That was twenty years ago. Three marriages ago. A million flight miles and e-mails ago. Today she walks down the aisle on the arm of another father. You left your family bobbing in the wake of your high-speed career. And now that you have what you wanted, you don’t want it at all.
Oh, to have a second chance. Did you know God will give you one? 1 John 4:15 says, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” God repurposes bad decisions and squalid choices. To be saved by grace is to be saved by God. He placed a term limit on sin and his son, Jesus, danced a victory jig in a graveyard. God can do something with the mess of your life. And Grace is what you need!
Read more GRACE
Ecclesiastes 9
Well, I took all this in and thought it through, inside and out. Here’s what I understood: The good, the wise, and all that they do are in God’s hands—but, day by day, whether it’s love or hate they’re dealing with, they don’t know.
Anything’s possible. It’s one fate for everybody—righteous and wicked, good people, bad people, the nice and the nasty, worshipers and non-worshipers, committed and uncommitted. I find this outrageous—the worst thing about living on this earth—that everyone’s lumped together in one fate. Is it any wonder that so many people are obsessed with evil? Is it any wonder that people go crazy right and left? Life leads to death. That’s it.
4-6 Still, anyone selected out for life has hope, for, as they say, “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” The living at least know something, even if it’s only that they’re going to die. But the dead know nothing and get nothing. They’re a minus that no one remembers. Their loves, their hates, yes, even their dreams, are long gone. There’s not a trace of them left in the affairs of this earth.
7-10 Seize life! Eat bread with gusto,
Drink wine with a robust heart.
Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure!
Dress festively every morning.
Don’t skimp on colors and scarves.
Relish life with the spouse you love
Each and every day of your precarious life.
Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange
For the hard work of staying alive.
Make the most of each one!
Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily!
This is your last and only chance at it,
For there’s neither work to do nor thoughts to think
In the company of the dead, where you’re most certainly headed.
11 I took another walk around the neighborhood and realized that on this earth as it is—
The race is not always to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor satisfaction to the wise,
Nor riches to the smart,
Nor grace to the learned.
Sooner or later bad luck hits us all.
12 No one can predict misfortune.
Like fish caught in a cruel net or birds in a trap,
So men and women are caught
By accidents evil and sudden.
13-15 One day as I was observing how wisdom fares on this earth, I saw something that made me sit up and take notice. There was a small town with only a few people in it. A strong king came and mounted an attack, building trenches and attack posts around it. There was a poor but wise man in that town whose wisdom saved the town, but he was promptly forgotten. (He was only a poor man, after all.)
16 All the same, I still say that wisdom is better than muscle, even though the wise poor man was treated with contempt and soon forgotten.
17 The quiet words of the wise are more effective
Than the ranting of a king of fools.
18 Wisdom is better than warheads,
But one hothead can ruin the good earth.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, July 09, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Jonah 2:1-10
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying,
(A)“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
(B)out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
(C)and you heard my voice.
3 (D)For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
(E)all your waves and your billows
passed over me.
4 (F)Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
(G)yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple.’
5 (H)The waters closed in over me (I)to take my life;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
6 at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord my God.
7 When my life was fainting away,
I remembered the Lord,
(J)and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple.
8 (K)Those who pay regard to vain idols
(L)forsake their hope of steadfast love.
9 (M)But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
(N)Salvation belongs to the Lord!”
10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Insight
Jonah initially ministered to the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23–28). God reassigned him to minister to the Assyrian city of Nineveh and to warn them to repent or face God’s judgment (Jonah 1:1). After Jonah refused this new mission and instead fled in the opposite direction (v. 3), God disciplined him by causing him to be swallowed up by a big fish (vv. 4, 17). Jonah 2 records the prophet’s prayer of repentance when he was inside the fish. Jesus used this event to foreshadow His own burial and resurrection: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40; Jonah 1:17).
No More Running
In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. Jonah 2:2
On July 18, 1983, a US Air Force captain disappeared from Albuquerque, New Mexico, without a trace. Thirty-five years later, authorities found him in California. The New York Times reports that, “depressed about his job,” he’d simply run away.
Thirty-five years on the run! Half a lifetime spent looking over his shoulder! I have to imagine that anxiety and paranoia were this man’s constant companions.
But I have to admit, I also know a bit about being “on the run.” No, I’ve never abruptly fled something in my life . . . physically. But at times I know there’s something God wants me to do, something I need to face or confess. I don’t want to do it. And so, in my own way, I run too.
The prophet Jonah is infamous for literally running from God’s assignment to preach to the city of Nineveh (see Jonah 1:1–3). But, of course, he couldn’t outrun God. You’ve probably heard what happened (vv. 4,17): A storm. A fish. A swallowing. And, in the belly of the beast, a reckoning, in which Jonah faced what he’d done and cried to God for help (2:2).
Jonah wasn’t a perfect prophet. But I take comfort in his remarkable story, because, even despite Jonah’s stubbornness, God never let go of him. The Lord still answered the man’s desperate prayer, graciously restoring His reluctant servant (v. 2)—just as He does with us. By Adam Holz
Reflect & Pray
What, if anything, have you tried to run away from in your life? How can you grow in bringing to God the pressures that overwhelm you?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, July 09, 2019
Will You Examine Yourself?
Joshua said to the people, "You cannot serve the Lord…" —Joshua 24:19
Do you have even the slightest reliance on anything or anyone other than God? Is there a remnant of reliance left on any natural quality within you, or on any particular set of circumstances? Are you relying on yourself in any manner whatsoever regarding this new proposal or plan which God has placed before you? Will you examine yourself by asking these probing questions? It really is true to say, “I cannot live a holy life,” but you can decide to let Jesus Christ make you holy. “You cannot serve the Lord…”— but you can place yourself in the proper position where God’s almighty power will flow through you. Is your relationship with God sufficient for you to expect Him to exhibit His wonderful life in you?
“The people said to Joshua, ‘No, but we will serve the Lord!’ ” (Joshua 24:21). This is not an impulsive action, but a deliberate commitment. We tend to say, “But God could never have called me to this. I’m too unworthy. It can’t mean me.” It does mean you, and the more weak and feeble you are, the better. The person who is still relying and trusting in anything within himself is the last person to even come close to saying, “I will serve the Lord.”
We say, “Oh, if only I really could believe!” The question is, “Will I believe?” No wonder Jesus Christ placed such emphasis on the sin of unbelief. “He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:58). If we really believed that God meant what He said, just imagine what we would be like! Do I really dare to let God be to me all that He says He will be?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
No one could have had a more sensitive love in human relationship than Jesus; and yet He says there are times when love to father and mother must be hatred in comparison to our love for Him. So Send I You, 1301 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, July 09, 2019
Getting Rid of What You've Hung Onto So Long - #8477
Our friend Joy became an expert on moving, I think, you'd say. Her husband was a career Air Force officer, and that means seeing a lot of different places, having a lot of different addresses, and seeing a lot of moving vans in your life. Well, we were talking some time ago about what was their last move in the military and what she considered one of the greatest gifts she's ever been given. It didn't have beautiful wrapping paper or bows on it. In fact, it was a dumpster! That might not sound all that exciting to you, but it was to her! She and her family had so much stuff to move, and everything they could get rid of, they didn't have to move. Someone said to her, "I've got this dumpster I'd like to loan to you for your move." Joy said she was overjoyed! She said there was something so exciting about the first thud of the first thing they threw into that dumpster. Then it was all about lots of thuds as they threw away mountains of stuff. They couldn't wait to go get more.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Getting Rid of What You've Hung Onto So Long."
When I asked our friend what was so exciting about having that dumpster, she said, "It was so great getting rid of so much stuff that we'd been hanging onto so long." That's the very feeling that so many people over so many years have experienced when they finally surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ. They came to the dumpster of God and unloaded so much stuff that they'd been hanging onto so long. It's an experience God wants you to have even today.
It's an experience vividly described in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. It begins with bad news about some of the dirty and useless stuff we hang onto. It says, "Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters (basically that's anyone who lets anything be more important than God in their life) nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers (that's anyone who speaks destructively about another person) nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." Woah! Now that's bad news. Our sin leaves us with no human chance of heaven.
OK, fasten your seat belt. Here comes the dumpster of God. "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified (which means you were made special), you were justified (that means you were made right with God) in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." See, because of what Jesus did when He died on the cross, you don't have to be dirty inside for one more day. You can be clean from now on. You don't have to be away from God. You can belong to God if you'll bring all your sin, your selfishness, all the junk of a life that you've run to the dumpster of God, which is at the cross of Jesus Christ! That's where every wrong thing you've ever done was paid for in full by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
It's stuff you've hung onto so long, including the guilt of it all, the shame, the regrets of what you wish you had done differently. But Jesus took all that on Himself when He died on the cross, and He's waiting to take it from you at the moment you put your total trust in Him to be your personal Savior from your personal sin. It happens the moment you give yourself to Him, turning from that sin and placing your life in His hands. How does it feel? Our friend described the feeling of getting rid of all that junk with one word. She said, "It was so cleansing." That's it. You can be cleansed today!
You have to reach out to the only one who can do that, because He's the only one that paid for your sin. So he's the only one who can forgive it. Tell Jesus that you know that you've hijacked your life from God and run it your way instead of his. That He died for that, that He rose again to be able to come into your life today. Tell Him, "Jesus I'm pinning all my hopes on you beginning right now. I'm yours."
A great step would be to go to our website and there you will find the information that will help you make sure you really do belong to Him. That's ANewStory.com. See, this could be the day that Jesus Christ enters your life, the day that you experience the wonderful relief of getting rid of so much that you've been hanging onto for so long.