Max Lucado Daily: LET YOUR UNIQUENESS DEFINE YOUR PATH
For the love of more, you might lose your purpose! Just because someone gives you advice, a job, or a promotion, you don’t have to accept it. Let your uniqueness define your path of life. Isaiah prayed, “You, LORD, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in you” (Isaiah 26:3).
Before you change your job title, examine your perspective toward life. As the Japanese proverb says, “Even if you sleep in a thousand-mat room, you can only sleep on one mat.” Success is not defined by position or pay scale but by this– doing the most what you do the best. Parents, tell your children to do what they love to do so well that someone pays them to do it. “Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have” (Hebrews 13:5).
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Jonah 2
Then Jonah prayed to his God from the belly of the fish.
He prayed:
“In trouble, deep trouble, I prayed to God.
He answered me.
From the belly of the grave I cried, ‘Help!’
You heard my cry.
You threw me into ocean’s depths,
into a watery grave,
With ocean waves, ocean breakers
crashing over me.
I said, ‘I’ve been thrown away,
thrown out, out of your sight.
I’ll never again lay eyes
on your Holy Temple.’
Ocean gripped me by the throat.
The ancient Abyss grabbed me and held tight.
My head was all tangled in seaweed
at the bottom of the sea where the mountains take root.
I was as far down as a body can go,
and the gates were slamming shut behind me forever—
Yet you pulled me up from that grave alive,
O God, my God!
When my life was slipping away,
I remembered God,
And my prayer got through to you,
made it all the way to your Holy Temple.
Those who worship hollow gods, god-frauds,
walk away from their only true love.
But I’m worshiping you, God,
calling out in thanksgiving!
And I’ll do what I promised I’d do!
Salvation belongs to God!”
10 Then God spoke to the fish, and it vomited up Jonah on the seashore.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Luke 6:27–36
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Insight
Christ’s words here echo His revolutionary teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5–7, especially 5:38–48). Some Bible scholars say both accounts refer to the same event, but others point to key differences. For instance, Luke specifically says that Jesus “went down with them and stood on a level place” (6:17). Matthew says He “went up on a mountainside and sat down” (5:1). Matthew lists eight beatitudes (vv. 2–12); Luke provides only four and in a somewhat different order (6:20–23). Luke also records a different style, reporting that Jesus said, “Blessed are you” instead of Matthew’s “blessed are those.” Importantly, the substance of Christ’s message in both accounts is the same: God’s love goes far beyond any legal requirement of what’s just and fair. Jesus is teaching us to emulate that extreme love.
Touched by Grace
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Luke 6:27
In Leif Enger’s novel Peace Like a River, Jeremiah Land is a single father of three working as a janitor at a local school. He’s also a man of deep, sometimes miraculous, faith. Throughout the book, his faith is often tested.
Jeremiah’s school is run by Chester Holden, a mean-spirited superintendent with a skin condition. Despite Jeremiah’s excellent work ethic—mopping up a sewage spill without complaint, picking up broken bottles the superintendent smashed—Holden wants him gone. One day, in front of all the students, he accuses Jeremiah of drunkenness and fires him. It’s a humiliating scene.
How does Jeremiah respond? He could threaten legal action for unfair dismissal or make accusations of his own. He could slink away, accepting the injustice. Think for a moment what you might do.
“Love your enemies,” Jesus says, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28). These challenging words aren’t meant to excuse evil or stop justice from being pursued. Instead, they call us to imitate God (v. 36) by asking a profound question: How can I help my enemy become all God wants him or her to be?
Jeremiah looks at Holden for a moment, then reaches up and touches his face. Holden steps back defensively, then feels his chin and cheeks in wonder. His scarred skin has been healed.
An enemy touched by grace. By: Sheridan Voysey
Reflect & Pray
What would your first reaction be in Jeremiah’s situation? How can you help a difficult person move closer to God’s purposes for them?
God, when faced with unfairness, injustice, or abuse, show me how to help my enemy move closer to You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Christ-Awareness
…and I will give you rest. —Matthew 11:28
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The fiery furnaces are there by God’s direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances; we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them. The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 674 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Changing Your Direction - #8507
I've flown into the Anchorage, Alaska airport before, but I've never driven around that airport before. I was returning my rental car, which had to go to one terminal, and I had to race to make my plane at the other terminal. It was still dark, which didn't help in reading the signs at an unfamiliar airport, and somebody else must have my sense of direction. I thought I was heading for the rental car return until suddenly it looked like I was heading out into nothing that looked like an airport at all. As soon as I realized I was going the wrong direction, I knew what I had to do. I turned around as fast as I could and I drove very quickly in the right direction. And hello, whew! I made it!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Changing Your Direction."
The only way I was going to get where I wanted to be was to totally change my direction, because I was lost. That might be the only way you'll get to where you want to be. God has a word for this spiritual 180-degree turn. It's called "repentance" - a word Jesus used a lot, the apostles used a lot, a word we don't hear too often in contemporary Christianity. It's the missing ingredient that's costing us so much of God's power and do much of God's blessing.
A picture of repentance might help us understand what it looks like, which leads us to our word for today from the Word of God in Luke 19:7. Zacchaeus, the crooked tax collector of Jericho, has stolen a lot of money from a lot of people in his town. Much to the villagers' surprise, it is Zacchaeus' house Jesus chooses to go to for lunch.
The Bible says, "All the people saw this and began to mutter, 'He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.' But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.' Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house.'"
Zacchaeus really repented. See, repenting is much more than just feeling bad about some sin and asking for forgiveness. It's a total turn in the other direction! Notice Zacchaeus committed himself to restore whatever his sin had damaged, to make right what he had done wrong. Repentance means setting your life up to change! Like that morning I had at the airport, I had to realize I was going the wrong direction, totally stop going the wrong direction, and aggressively start going the right direction. That's what it took for Zacchaeus to make a new beginning. That's what it will take for you.
God has so much He wants to give you, but He can't - not while you're still hanging onto that sinful attitude, that sinful action, that sinful relationship. The renewing begins when you first renounce what you've been doing, including the burning of all your bridges to that sin. Then you need to do a Zacchaeus and announce the changes you intend to make, especially to the people who are still expecting you to be the same old you. You need to go on record that things are going to change from now on.
I'm going to guess that you might be sensing God's Holy Spirit right now saying to you in your heart, "You know the wrong way you've been going." Well, if you sense that, don't drive another mile in the wrong direction. It's only taking you farther from where you really need to be, where I think you really want to be, and where you were made to be.
Stop, turn around, and drive full speed in the direction of all the power and all the blessings that Almighty God wants to give you.
