Max Lucado Daily: TUNE UP YOUR PRAYER LIFE
I’m a recovering prayer wimp. For years my prayers seemed to zig, then zag, then zig again. Maybe you can relate. Perhaps your prayer life could use a tune up, a reboot? If that sounds overwhelming, I’m inviting you to a simpler plan. Four minutes, plus four weeks, equals forever change! Every day for four weeks, pray for four minutes, focusing on these core elements of prayer:
“Father, You are good.
I need help.
They need help.
Thank you.”
It’s that simple. Really! Talking with God doesn’t have to be complicated or complex. The power isn’t in the words we pray—but in the One who hears them.
Here’s my challenge for you! Every day for four weeks, pray four minutes. Then get ready to connect with God like never before!
1 Thessalonians 4
One final word, friends. We ask you—urge is more like it—that you keep on doing what we told you to do to please God, not in a dogged religious plod, but in a living, spirited dance. You know the guidelines we laid out for you from the Master Jesus. God wants you to live a pure life.
Keep yourselves from sexual promiscuity.
4-5 Learn to appreciate and give dignity to your body, not abusing it, as is so common among those who know nothing of God.
6-7 Don’t run roughshod over the concerns of your brothers and sisters. Their concerns are God’s concerns, and he will take care of them. We’ve warned you about this before. God hasn’t invited us into a disorderly, unkempt life but into something holy and beautiful—as beautiful on the inside as the outside.
8 If you disregard this advice, you’re not offending your neighbors; you’re rejecting God, who is making you a gift of his Holy Spirit.
9-10 Regarding life together and getting along with each other, you don’t need me to tell you what to do. You’re God-taught in these matters. Just love one another! You’re already good at it; your friends all over the province of Macedonia are the evidence. Keep it up; get better and better at it.
11-12 Stay calm; mind your own business; do your own job. You’ve heard all this from us before, but a reminder never hurts. We want you living in a way that will command the respect of outsiders, not lying around sponging off your friends.
13-14 And regarding the question, friends, that has come up about what happens to those already dead and buried, we don’t want you in the dark any longer. First off, you must not carry on over them like people who have nothing to look forward to, as if the grave were the last word. Since Jesus died and broke loose from the grave, God will most certainly bring back to life those who died in Jesus.
15-18 And then this: We can tell you with complete confidence—we have the Master’s word on it—that when the Master comes again to get us, those of us who are still alive will not get a jump on the dead and leave them behind. In actual fact, they’ll be ahead of us. The Master himself will give the command. Archangel thunder! God’s trumpet blast! He’ll come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise—they’ll go first. Then the rest of us who are still alive at the time will be caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Master. Oh, we’ll be walking on air! And then there will be one huge family reunion with the Master. So reassure one another with these words.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, November 01, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
2 Corinthians 5:14–21
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 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. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Footnotes:
2 Corinthians 5:17 Or Christ, that person is a new creation.
2 Corinthians 5:21 Or be a sin offering
Insight
A key element of this important text is found in verse 20: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” Tyndale Bible Dictionary defines an ambassador as a “messenger or envoy officially representing a higher authority.” It explains that an ambassador in the Old Testament was “a messenger, envoy, or negotiator sent on a special, temporary mission as an official representative of the king, government, or authority who sent him.” This description gives us a valuable backdrop to the challenge to Paul (and to us) to be God’s ambassadors to our world. Our mission is to officially represent the highest of all possible authorities—the Creator of the universe—and to present His message to those we encounter in His name. By: Bill Crowder
The Door of Reconciliation
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:18
Inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland, there’s a door that tells a five-century-old tale. In 1492 two families, the Butlers and the FitzGeralds, began fighting over a high-level position in the region. The fight escalated, and the Butlers took refuge in the cathedral. When the FitzGeralds came to ask for a truce, the Butlers were afraid to open the door. So the FitzGeralds cut a hole in it, and their leader offered his hand in peace. The two families then reconciled, and adversaries became friends.
God has a door of reconciliation that the apostle Paul wrote passionately about in his letter to the church in Corinth. At His initiative and because of His infinite love, God exchanged the broken relationship with humans for a restored relationship through Christ’s death on the cross. We were far away from God, but in His mercy He didn’t leave us there. He offers us restoration with Himself—“not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Justice was fulfilled when “God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us,” so that in Him we could be at peace with God (v. 21).
Once we accept God’s hand in peace, we’re given the important task of bringing that message to others. We represent the amazing, loving God who offers complete forgiveness and restoration to everyone who believes.
By: Estera Pirosca Escobar
Reflect & Pray
What does God’s offer of reconciliation mean to you? How will you extend His offer to those who need to hear it today?
God, thank You for not leaving me in a place of no hope, separated from You forever. Thank You that the sacrifice of Your beloved Son, Jesus, has provided the way for me to come to You.
To learn more about forgiveness, see bit.ly/2F5wVhT.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, November 01, 2019
“You Are Not Your Own”
Do you not know that…you are not your own? —1 Corinthians 6:19
There is no such thing as a private life, or a place to hide in this world, for a man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. God divides the private life of His saints and makes it a highway for the world on one hand and for Himself on the other. No human being can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified for ourselves. We are called into intimacy with the gospel, and things happen that appear to have nothing to do with us. But God is getting us into fellowship with Himself. Let Him have His way. If you refuse, you will be of no value to God in His redemptive work in the world, but will be a hindrance and a stumbling block.
The first thing God does is get us grounded on strong reality and truth. He does this until our cares for ourselves individually have been brought into submission to His way for the purpose of His redemption. Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, “Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.” If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony, 1166 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, November 01, 2019
Trampling On a Masterpiece - #8560
I was on a mission in England and Ireland, and I had a day to spend in the beautiful city of York. What a place! I mean, it's surrounded by a medieval wall actually and it's dominated by this cathedral that might be second only to Westminster Abbey in London. There was an unusual scene out in front. There was an artist actually on his knees, and he's working painstakingly on this chalk drawing on the sidewalk right in front of the cathedral. When I got closer, I looked at it. It was really easy to recognize it. He actually had drawn the Mona Lisa. He had to be working on it all day, and it was really beautifully done. Well, I went inside a restaurant, and while I was there, I saw that the artist had left. Within minutes, this little boy came up, and he intentionally ran over the artwork, stomped back and forth and made footprints all over it. Other kids followed what he had done. They had just trampled all over the work of an artist who had worked very hard on it. I'll tell you what, it hurts to see someone doing that.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Trampling on a Masterpiece."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians 4:29-30. It says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God." God is saying here don't tear down somebody with your words. Don't trample them with your words. Why does it bother Him so much? Why does it grieve and break the heart of the Holy Spirit of God? It's like we can make God cry it sounds like. I mean, what does that?
We have to go back to Ephesians 2:10. It says, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which He prepared in advance for us to do." So, God is working on this unique masterpiece creation in every person you'll ever meet. He has a job for them to do. He's trying to build them up and help them know what that job is. In a world that tears down our worth from every direction, He's trying to get them to believe they are the workmanship that He created in Christ Jesus. No matter how difficult that person might be, no matter how hard to get along with they might be, no matter how obscured the work of God might be, God is trying to finish a work of art in someone He created. That's why it hurts Him so much when we trample on one of those masterpieces in progress.
In our angry moments, our impatient moments, our critical moments - listen, have you maybe left some verbal footprints on your son or your daughter, your husband or your wife? Social scientists tell us that our kids need seven positives to come back to zero after they've heard just one negative. You know this: we never forget the names that we're called by a parent (good or bad), or things that we were accused of by a parent. I'm sure you haven't forgotten those voices as much as we'd like to. Every time you have fired careless words at your husband or your wife when you're tired, or you want to win or you want to get your way, you've been ripping a person God is trying to build.
What about the attacks that the other person doesn't even hear? Maybe damaging words have been said at work, or at church, among friends, behind their back. You are still trampling on God's work, marking them up in the eyes of others. We don't usually do trampling with our feet, we do it with our mouth. I can still visualize those footprints on that artist's skillful work in front of the cathedral. It was ugly. It's ugly when you do it to somebody else with your mouth.
Maybe it's time you did something about the footprints that you have left on a masterpiece of God. Maybe it's time you go back and make it right, and make a commitment to not ever again let your mouth markup the artwork of Almighty God.