Max Lucado Daily: WORDS OF HOPE AND PRAYERS OF FAITH
I recently met a ten-year-old boy by the name of Joshua. His mother explained that Joshua’s father was no longer a part of the boy’s life. I squatted down eye level with Joshua and I asked, “Do you know the story of your namesake?” He nodded. “You will do what he did,” I admonished. “You will bring down Jericho’s walls and pray prayers of great faith.”
He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. But his mom? She was wiping away tears.
Strugglers don’t need our opinions. They don’t need our philosophies on suffering. They need someone to admonish them with truth. Spread words of hope and pray prayers of faith. The Bible says, “Prayers offered in faith will restore them from sickness and bring them to health…” (James 5:15 The Voice).
This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 102
A Prayer of One Whose Life Is Falling to Pieces, and Who Lets God Know Just How Bad It Is
God, listen! Listen to my prayer,
listen to the pain in my cries.
Don’t turn your back on me
just when I need you so desperately.
Pay attention! This is a cry for help!
And hurry—this can’t wait!
3-11 I’m wasting away to nothing,
I’m burning up with fever.
I’m a ghost of my former self,
half-consumed already by terminal illness.
My jaws ache from gritting my teeth;
I’m nothing but skin and bones.
I’m like a buzzard in the desert,
a crow perched on the rubble.
Insomniac, I twitter away,
mournful as a sparrow in the gutter.
All day long my enemies taunt me,
while others just curse.
They bring in meals—casseroles of ashes!
I draw drink from a barrel of my tears.
And all because of your furious anger;
you swept me up and threw me out.
There’s nothing left of me—
a withered weed, swept clean from the path.
12-17 Yet you, God, are sovereign still,
always and ever sovereign.
You’ll get up from your throne and help Zion—
it’s time for compassionate help.
Oh, how your servants love this city’s rubble
and weep with compassion over its dust!
The godless nations will sit up and take notice
—see your glory, worship your name—
When God rebuilds Zion,
when he shows up in all his glory,
When he attends to the prayer of the wretched.
He won’t dismiss their prayer.
18-22 Write this down for the next generation
so people not yet born will praise God:
“God looked out from his high holy place;
from heaven he surveyed the earth.
He listened to the groans of the doomed,
he opened the doors of their death cells.”
Write it so the story can be told in Zion,
so God’s praise will be sung in Jerusalem’s streets
And wherever people gather together
along with their rulers to worship him.
23-28 God sovereignly brought me to my knees,
he cut me down in my prime.
“Oh, don’t,” I prayed, “please don’t let me die.
You have more years than you know what to do with!
You laid earth’s foundations a long time ago,
and handcrafted the very heavens;
You’ll still be around when they’re long gone,
threadbare and discarded like an old suit of clothes.
You’ll throw them away like a worn-out coat,
but year after year you’re as good as new.
Your servants’ children will have a good place to live
and their children will be at home with you.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
1 Thessalonians 4:9–12
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Insight
Paul’s first letter to the believers in Christ at Thessalonica was one of his most pastoral letters. In chapter 2, he repeatedly refers to them with affection, calling them “brothers and sisters” (vv. 1, 14, 17). Additionally, the apostle describes his own care for them in vivid terms, saying he and his team didn’t come to them authoritatively, but as “young children” (v. 7). Also in verse 7, Paul actually describes himself as being like a “nursing mother” who lovingly nurses her children. As further evidence of his great love for them, Paul speaks of his labor for them in the gospel and ultimately closes the loop of family descriptors by portraying himself as a father caring for his children (vv. 8–11). All of these examples combine not only to make this one of Paul’s most pastoral letters, but one of his most personal as well. By: Bill Crowder
Finding a Quiet Life
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life. 1 Thessalonians 4:11
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” We all heard that question as children and sometimes even as adults. The question is born in curiosity, and the answer is often heard as an indication of ambition. My answers morphed over the years, starting with a cowboy, then a truck driver, followed by a soldier, and I entered college set on becoming a doctor. However, I can’t recall one time that someone suggested or I consciously considered pursuing “a quiet life.”
Yet that’s exactly what Paul told the Thessalonians. First, he urged them to love one another and all of God’s family even more (1 Thessalonians 4:10). Then he gave them a general admonition that would cover whatever specific plow they put their hand to. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life” (v. 11). Now what did Paul mean by that exactly? He clarified: “You should mind your own business and work with your hands” so outsiders respect you and you’re not a burden on anyone (vv. 11–12). We don’t want to discourage children from pursuing their giftedness or passions but maybe we could encourage them that whatever they choose to do, they do with a quiet spirit.
Considering the world we live in, the words ambitious and quiet couldn’t seem further apart. But the Scriptures are always relevant, so perhaps we should consider what it might look like to begin living quieter. By: John Blase
Reflect & Pray
How does Paul’s phrase—“mind your own business”—sit with you? Who comes to mind of someone who lives a quiet life that you might emulate?
Jesus, living a quiet life sounds so inviting, but I know it won’t come easily. I ask for the grace to mind my own business, not so I can close myself off from the world, but that I won’t add to the noise.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
The Key to the Master’s Orders
Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. —Matthew 9:38
The key to the missionary’s difficult task is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work— that is, not work as the word is commonly used today, which often results in the shifting of our focus away from God. The key to the missionary’s difficult task is also not the key of common sense, nor is it the key of medicine, civilization, education, or even evangelization. The key is in following the Master’s orders— the key is prayer. “Pray the Lord of the harvest….” In the natural realm, prayer is not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view.
From Jesus Christ’s perspective, there are no nations, but only the world. How many of us pray without regard to the persons, but with regard to only one Person— Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced through distress and through conviction of sin. This is the harvest for which we have to pray that laborers be sent out to reap. We stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe and ready to be harvested; we do not reap even one of them, but simply waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities and programs. Suppose a crisis were to come into your father’s or your brother’s life— are you there as a laborer to reap the harvest for Jesus Christ? Is your response, “Oh, but I have a special work to do!” No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, “a servant [who] is not greater than his master” (John 13:16), and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls us to no special work— He calls us to Himself. “Pray the Lord of the harvest,” and He will engineer your circumstances to send you out as His laborer.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We all have the trick of saying—If only I were not where I am!—If only I had not got the kind of people I have to live with! If our faith or our religion does not help us in the conditions we are in, we have either a further struggle to go through, or we had better abandon that faith and religion. The Shadow of an Agony, 1178 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Lying Scales and Twisted Scriptures - #8548
Every morning I have a date with my bathroom scale. Some days it makes me smile. Other days, I'm sad. So I need comfort food. Like donuts.
But years ago, our son had an unusually uplifting scale. He was working in youth ministry on a reservation and living in a trailer. He urged Karen and me to weigh on his scale in the morning. Karen was thrilled - she'd lost 15 pounds in a day! And so had I! Of course, we got wildly different results every time we weighed.
Oh, how I wanted to believe that scale. But no matter how welcome the news is on a wacko scale, it won't fool my heart; it sure won't fool my hips. Or my doctor. You know, he's got one of those "whole truth, however ugly" scales. And there, in numbers that will drive you to lunches of celery and water, is the truth. The inconvenient, but uncompromising, truth. And then there's the Bible. The scale that doesn't lie.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Lying Scales and Twisted Scriptures."
"All Scripture is inspired by God," the Bible says. In the original language, it's "God-breathed" and it says "is useful for teaching what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives" (2 Timothy 3:16). Here's the problem. Many times God's Book doesn't tell us what we want to be true. It tells us what is true. Like it or not. Often, not.
I call it inconvenient truth. Now, where the "lying scales" often tell us what we'd like to be true. And Scripture tells us truth that means we need to (guess what?) change. It may be the inconvenient truth about marriage or divorce. About what it means to be a husband or a wife, a parent. About sex or forgiving or our money. About loving our enemy or blessing those who curse us. About Jesus being the only way to God. Our responsibility to the poor. Maybe our prejudice, or maybe about what God says about an unwanted pregnancy. About reconciling or loving our enemies or being unashamed of our Jesus. Or even about the very origins of us and of our world.
Somewhere in a list like that is going to be some divine truth that makes you squirm, and that may mean changing. That may mean paying a price. The temptation is to try to do an end run around what God has said. And all across the Christian landscape, people are twisting and turning, rationalizing and redefining to create a loophole that just isn't there. "Times have changed." "Well, if you understood the culture when that was written..." "God is love - He would never be like that."
The idea is this: if you're out of bounds, just move the boundaries. But God's not moving. No, listen to our word for today from the Word of God in Psalm 119:89. "Your word, Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens." Cultures change. Polls change. God's Word does not. It's just always the truth, whether millions believe it or no one believes it.
Telling someone the truth - especially if it's unwelcome truth - is not unloving. Oh, it can be delivered unlovingly, as all too often it is these days. But parents know that loving your child sometimes means giving them the truth they don't want to hear. But they need to hear. About playing in the street or bad friends or Internet relationships or texting while driving, sexual predators charmingly disguised. We love them enough to tell them the truth.
That's how much God loves us. He sees the big picture, where certain choices will end up. His boundaries aren't to deprive us, they're to protect us. That's why compromising His life instructions is patently unloving.
In a Roman prison, awaiting execution, in Paul's final written words he gives us warning, and it's about lying scales. "A time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear."
That's convenient truth. Funny thing about the real truth, though. It will always be true. And one day, I'll face the consequences for not believing it. So, as everything is changing and our culture, our friends, our mentors, and even some spiritual brothers and sisters find a scale that means we don't have to change, remember the real truth is "all Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:23-24).
The stormy crosswinds of conflicting ideas and moralities, they're going to intensify. Without an anchor, we'll be blown out to sea. And there is one, the unchanging, forever true Word of Almighty God.
