Max Lucado Daily: PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Brian Reed served in a military unit in Baghdad, Iraq, in the fall of 2003. He and his unit went on regular street patrols to protect neighborhoods and build peace. It was often a thankless, fruitless assignment. Brian said his unit battled low morale daily.
An exception came in the form of a church service his men stumbled upon. It was filled with Arabic-speaking Coptic Christians who invited the soldiers to partake in the Lord’s Supper with them. Brian wrote, “Celebrating the Lord’s Supper and remembering Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins was the most important bridge builder and wall destroyer we could have experienced.”
They were “opposite yous” brought together by the cross of Christ. This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 97
God rules: there’s something to shout over!
On the double, mainlands and islands—celebrate!
2 Bright clouds and storm clouds circle ’round him;
Right and justice anchor his rule.
3 Fire blazes out before him,
Flaming high up the craggy mountains.
4 His lightnings light up the world;
Earth, wide-eyed, trembles in fear.
5 The mountains take one look at God
And melt, melt like wax before earth’s Lord.
6 The heavens announce that he’ll set everything right,
And everyone will see it happen—glorious!
7-8 All who serve handcrafted gods will be sorry—
And they were so proud of their ragamuffin gods!
On your knees, all you gods—worship him!
And Zion, you listen and take heart!
Daughters of Zion, sing your hearts out:
God has done it all, has set everything right.
9 You, God, are High God of the cosmos,
Far, far higher than any of the gods.
10 God loves all who hate evil,
And those who love him he keeps safe,
Snatches them from the grip of the wicked.
11 Light-seeds are planted in the souls of God’s people,
Joy-seeds are planted in good heart-soil.
12 So, God’s people, shout praise to God,
Give thanks to our Holy God!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, October 11, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 118:6–9, 21–25
The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?
7 The Lord is with me; he is my helper.
I look in triumph on my enemies.
8 It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in humans.
9 It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in princes.
I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
you have become my salvation.
22 The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
23 the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.
24 The Lord has done it this very day;
let us rejoice today and be glad.
25 Lord, save us!
Lord, grant us success!
Insight
Psalm 118 is one of the Hallel (praise) psalms that were sung at feast times in ancient Israel. Additionally, however, this particular song of celebration also contains elements of a messianic psalm—anticipating Israel’s Messiah. In Matthew 21:9, at Christ’s “triumphal entry,” the people affirm Psalm 118:25–26, saying, “Lord, save us! Lord, grant us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” The Hebrew word hosanna, meaning “Lord, save us,” echoes this song on the lips of the people. And when confronting the religious leadership in Matthew 21:42, Jesus claims Psalm 118:22–23 to be self-descriptive by affirming, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” While used liturgically in Israel’s feasts, Psalm 118 itself anticipates the coming of the One who would fulfill the ultimate meaning of those feasts.
By: Bill Crowder
The Main Actor
The Lord has done this. Psalm 118:23
I once heard about a student taking a class in preaching at a prominent seminary. The student, a young man who was a bit full of himself, delivered his sermon with eloquence and evident passion. He sat down self-satisfied, and the professor paused a moment before responding. “That was a powerful sermon,” he said. “It was well organized and moving. The only problem is that God was not the subject of a single one of your sentences.”
The professor highlighted a problem all of us struggle with at times: We can talk as if we’re the primary actor (emphasizing what we do, what we say) when in truth God is the primary actor in life. We often profess that God is somehow generally “in charge,” but we act as if all the outcomes depend on us.
The Scriptures insist that God is the true subject of our lives, the true force. Even our necessary acts of faith are done “in the name of the Lord”—in the Lord’s power (Psalm 118:10–11). God enacts our salvation. God rescues us. God tends to our needs. “The Lord has done this” (v. 23).
So the pressure’s off. We don’t need to fret, compare, work with compulsive energy, or feed our many anxieties. God is in charge. We need only trust and follow His lead in obedience. By: Winn Collier
Reflect & Pray
When are you most tempted to think you’re the main actor of your life? How has God invited you to let Him be the center of your life?
God, I’ve been paying lip service to You being in charge of my world. It’s exhausting, and I want to stop doing that. Help me trust You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, October 11, 2019
God’s Silence— Then What?
When He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. —John 11:6
Has God trusted you with His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences are actually His answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).
A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious— it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of His silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy— silence.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried. He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, October 11, 2019
The Avalanche Zone - #8545
He was having a great day on the slopes - a lot of fresh snow - an already deep base. It was just the kind of day an experienced skier would hope for. But then this one skier decided that he wanted more. He skied onto another part of the mountain; a section that was clearly marked with a large skull-and-crossbones sign; a warning about going any further written in bold print: "You may die. You decide." It couldn't be any plainer than that. Sadly, that skier decided to ski where he never should have gone. Yeah, that's when the massive avalanche came that drove him headlong into a tree and buried him in a snowy grave.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Avalanche Zone."
A man deliberately chose to go out-of-bounds into the forbidden zone. He ignored the warnings, and tragically, he paid for it with his life. Sadly, there's a tragedy like that being repeated every day by many, many people. They're out-of-bounds, they're in the avalanche zone, and when it comes, there's no escape.
That's actually a picture of the spiritual condition of someone who might be listening right now. In a way, it's a picture of all of us. Because the Bible says every one of us has decided to live our life outside of God's boundaries, even the most religious of us. God insists on truth, for example, and countless times, come on, we've settled for much less than telling the truth haven't we? God says we can have no other gods before Him, but we've pre-empted Him as the center of our life and many times pushed Him to the edge and put something else in the center of our universe.
The boundaries of God forbid destructive anger, lingering bitterness, hatred, and hurting other people. We're out-of-bounds with our pride, our sexual desires, our sexual involvement directed to anyone other than our husband or wife, our prejudice, our judgmental spirit. Your sins and my sins might be different - and you may think mine are more sinful than yours - but the Bible gives God's sobering bottom line: "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10) ... "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
And our sin has placed us squarely in the path of the avalanche of the judgment of Almighty God. Our instinctive fear of death is actually well-founded because we have to meet a holy God on the other side. James 1:15, our word for today from the Word of God, makes very clear the danger we're in. It says, "After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." The ultimate outcome of our sin will inevitably be death, the death of our self-respect, of relationships, of people's trust in us, of our reputation. But worst of all, our eternal separation from our God in a place Jesus called hell.
But the dying for your sin has already been done by Jesus Christ. In the words of the Bible, Jesus came to "do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26). That cross was for you. But read the warning sign: "Whoever does not believe (in Him) stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" (John 3:18). If you keep skiing past that warning, you will as the Bible says, "die in your sin" (John 8:21) and face the awful avalanche of a penalty that Jesus already paid.
That's what makes it so urgent that you turn around and reach for heaven's Rescuer, Jesus, your only hope of heaven. Don't just breeze by His cross again without doing something, without giving yourself to the One who gave Himself for you. Right where you are, you can say, "Jesus, I'm Yours. I have no hope but You."
Look, I'd love to invite you to go to our website as soon as you can today. Because I've tried to put there in the simplest of terms how you can be sure that you are forgiven and you are going to heaven when you die. The website is ANewStory.com.
Like the sign on that ski slope that day, God's warning says, "You choose." It's not a religious choice. No, it's literally a choice between life and death - heaven and hell. I pray that you will choose life.