Max Lucado Daily: DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS
The apostle Paul said, “Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life” (Galatians 6:4-5).
Before Thomas Merton followed Christ, he followed money, fame and society. He shocked many of his colleagues when he exchanged it all for the life of a Trappist monk. Many years later a friend visited the monastery and could see no important difference in him. “Tom, he said, “you haven’t changed at all.” “Why should I? “Here,” he said, “our duty is to be more like ourselves, not less.”
God never called you to be anyone other than you. But he does call you to be the best you that you can be. The big question is, at your best, who are you?
2 Kings 12
In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash began his kingly rule. He was king for forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Gazelle. She was from Beersheba.
2-3 Taught and trained by Jehoiada the priest, Joash did what pleased God for as long as he lived. (Even so, he didn’t get rid of the sacred fertility shrines—people still frequented them, sacrificing and burning incense.)
4-5 Joash instructed the priests: “Take the money that is brought into The Temple of God for holy offerings—both mandatory offerings and freewill offerings—and, keeping a careful accounting, use them to renovate The Temple wherever it has fallen into disrepair.”
6 But by the twenty-third year of Joash’s rule, the priests hadn’t done one thing—The Temple was as dilapidated as ever.
7 King Joash called Jehoiada the priest and the company of priests and said, “Why haven’t you renovated this sorry-looking Temple? You are forbidden to take any more money for Temple repairs—from now on, hand over everything you get.”
8 The priests agreed not to take any more money or to be involved in The Temple renovation.
9-16 Then Jehoiada took a single chest and bored a hole in the lid and placed it to the right of the main entrance into The Temple of God. All the offerings that were brought to The Temple of God were placed in the chest by the priests who guarded the entrance. When they saw that a large sum of money had accumulated in the chest, the king’s secretary and the chief priest would empty the chest and count the offerings. They would give the money accounted for to the managers of The Temple project; they in turn would pay the carpenters, construction workers, masons, stoneworkers, and the buyers of timber and quarried stone for the repair and renovation of The Temple of God—any expenses connected with fixing up The Temple. But none of the money brought into The Temple of God was used for liturgical “extras” (silver chalices, candle snuffers, trumpets, various gold and silver vessels, etc.). It was given to the workmen to pay for their repairing God’s Temple. And no one even had to check on the men who handled the money given for the project—they were honest men. Offerings designated for Compensation Offerings and Absolution Offerings didn’t go into the building project—those went directly to the priests.
17-18 Around this time Hazael king of Aram ventured out and attacked Gath, and he captured it. Then he decided to try for Jerusalem. Joash king of Judah countered by gathering up all the sacred memorials—gifts dedicated for holy use by his ancestors, the kings of Judah, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, along with the holy memorials he himself had received, plus all the gold that he could find in the temple and palace storerooms—and sent it to Hazael king of Aram. Appeased, Hazael went on his way and didn’t bother Jerusalem.
19-21 The rest of the life and times of Joash and all that he did are written in The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. At the last his palace staff formed a conspiracy and assassinated Joash as he was strolling along the ramp of the fortified outside city wall. Jozabad son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer were the assassins. And so Joash died and was buried in the family plot in the City of David. His son Amaziah was king after him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
James 4:13–17
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
Insight
There are reasons to believe the New Testament letter of James bears the signature of a half-brother of Jesus (Mark 6:3). Though the letter isn’t mentioned by church fathers until the third and fourth centuries, the apostle Paul wrote of meeting with James, “the Lord’s brother,” who’d become a leader of the Jerusalem church (Galatians 1:19; 2:9). Paul seems to be referring to the James who played an important role in resolving an ethnic and religious disagreement that was dividing Jesus’s followers (Acts 15:13–21). By speaking with grace and perspective, James expressed the kind of wisdom emphasized throughout the letter of James (James 1:5; 3:17).
Such calming counsel leaves us with an intriguing possibility. A younger James might have learned something from his older brother—long before describing the kind of wisdom that comes from being servants and extended family of Jesus (James 1:1; 2:1).
Visit christianuniversity.org/NT336 to learn more about the book of James.
The Illusion of Control
You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. James 4:14
Ellen Langer’s 1975 study titled The Illusion of Control examined the level of influence we exert over life’s events. She found that we overestimate our degree of control in most situations. The study also demonstrated how reality nearly always shatters our illusion.
Langer’s conclusions are supported by experiments carried out by others since the study was published. However, James identified the phenomenon long before she named it. In James 4, he wrote, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (vv. 13–14).
Then James provides a cure for the delusion, pointing to the One who’s in absolute control: “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that’” (v. 15). In these few verses, James summarized both a key failing of the human condition and its antidote.
May we understand that our fate doesn’t rest in our own hands. Because God holds all things in His capable hands, we can trust His plans! By Remi Oyedele
Reflect & Pray
In what ways have you given in to the illusion that you’re in control of your fate? How can you turn over your plans to God and leave your future in His hands?
Heavenly Father, I place all of my life in Your loving hands. Thank You for Your good plans for me.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
The Discipline of the Lord
My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him. —Hebrews 12:5
It is very easy to grieve the Spirit of God; we do it by despising the discipline of the Lord, or by becoming discouraged when He rebukes us. If our experience of being set apart from sin and being made holy through the process of sanctification is still very shallow, we tend to mistake the reality of God for something else. And when the Spirit of God gives us a sense of warning or restraint, we are apt to say mistakenly, “Oh, that must be from the devil.”
“Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and do not despise Him when He says to you, in effect, “Don’t be blind on this point anymore— you are not as far along spiritually as you thought you were. Until now I have not been able to reveal this to you, but I’m revealing it to you right now.” When the Lord disciplines you like that, let Him have His way with you. Allow Him to put you into a right-standing relationship before God.
“…nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him.” We begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, “Oh well, I can’t help it. I prayed and things didn’t turn out right anyway. So I’m simply going to give up on everything.” Just think what would happen if we acted like this in any other area of our lives!
Am I fully prepared to allow God to grip me by His power and do a work in me that is truly worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me— sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me. But He has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to sanctify me completely, whatever the cost (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The Bible is the only Book that gives us any indication of the true nature of sin, and where it came from. The Philosophy of Sin, 1107 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Delegated Life Saving - #8503
Each of our three children learned the Heimlich maneuver in school. You probably know what that is. If someone is choking, you get behind them; you do the magic squeeze to dislodge whatever they're choking on and it keeps them from choking to death.
Now, can you imagine being in a restaurant and you see someone choking on a piece of food? You stand up immediately and you say, "Is there a throat specialist in the house? We need a throat specialist right now!" Well, there is none there, so you say, "Well, I guess we have to take him to the hospital."
So, as he's choking and turning several shades of colors, you get him in your car and you drive him to the hospital. But by the time you get him to the specialist - to the person who knows the most about it – it's probably going to be too late. Tragically, a lot of us are making that mistake with someone's spiritual survival. Instead of treating them where they are, we keep waiting until they get to the specialist.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Delegated Life Saving."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God; it's about delegated life saving. It's in 2 Corinthians 5. I'm reading verses 19 and 20. "God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God."
Now, Paul is saying here that the rescuing - the life saving - of people who don't know Christ isn't in the hands of some religious professionals. It's in our hands. If someone is choking to death at a restaurant, you need to have the training; you need to know how to rescue them. There's no time to get them to anyone else. The rescue's in your hands because you're there, you're close. You can't delegate life saving. The Heimlich maneuver, CPR, whatever it is, you can't just depend on a specialist being on the scene. You have to bring the help to the person, not wait for the person to come to the help.
You can't delegate spiritual life saving either. There's someone you know right now who needs your Jesus. You know Him; they don't. They need to know that what happened on that middle cross was for them. And you very much, I know, when you get to heaven, are going to want to see that they're going to be there with you.
But maybe you've been depending on getting them to a Christian meeting where someone else can tell them the Good News, or to go to church with you, or to read some Christian book, or go to some event, but maybe they just won't go. You can't seem to get them to the help! They won't go to the emergency room, and they may never go.
Well, then, are they just going to be lost? See, it's up to you to let them know in a place where both of you are already together. Would you begin right now to pray by name for that person you care about at work, in your neighborhood, wherever it is? Pray specifically for an opening where you can extend some spiritual CPR on the spot. Say, "Lord, I know it's not up to some evangelist. It's not up to the church. It's not up to getting a Christian book in their hands. It's up to me, my body, my flesh, my life, my smile, my voice to share what Christ has done.
Learn to pray on a daily basis that wonderful three-open prayer, "Lord, open a door." Which means, Lord, give me a natural opportunity to bring up my relationship with you; something going on in their life, or my life, or in the world. And then, "Lord, open their heart." Lord, get them ready for this. And then, "Lord, open my mouth." Give me the words; give me the approach, give me the courage. "Lord, open a door. Lord, open their heart. Lord, open my mouth." Because I understand I've been placed in their life. I'm the one to deliver your Good News.
See, you have more influence on that person than any Christian persuader could ever have - any specialist. You're in their life. So, don't wait for the specialist to tell them. My brother, my sister, the rescue is up to you.