Max Lucado Daily: APPROACH GOD AS A BELOVED CHILD
Jesus invites us to approach God the way a child approaches his or her daddy! And how do children approach their daddies?
When a five-year-old spots his father in the parking lot, how does he react? “Yippee!” was screamed by a redheaded boy wearing a Batman backpack. “Pop!” Over here! Push me!”—yelled a boy wearing a Boston Red Sox cap who scooted straight to the swings.
Here’s what I didn’t hear: “Father, it is most gracious of thee to drive thy car to my place of education. Please know of my deep gratitude for your benevolence. For thou art splendid in thy attentive care and diligent in thy dedication.”
I heard kids who were happy to see their dad and eager to speak to him! God invites us to approach Him in the same manner. What a relief!
1 Corinthians 1
I, Paul, have been called and sent by Jesus, the Messiah, according to God’s plan, along with my friend Sosthenes. I send this letter to you in God’s church at Corinth, believers cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life. I include in my greeting all who call out to Jesus, wherever they live. He’s their Master as well as ours!
3 May all the gifts and benefits that come from God our Father, and the Master, Jesus Christ, be yours.
4-6 Every time I think of you—and I think of you often!—I thank God for your lives of free and open access to God, given by Jesus. There’s no end to what has happened in you—it’s beyond speech, beyond knowledge. The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.
7-9 Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.
10 I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.
11-12 I bring this up because some from Chloe’s family brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves! I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, “I’m on Paul’s side,” or “I’m for Apollos,” or “Peter is my man,” or “I’m in the Messiah group.”
13-16 I ask you, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul’s name?” I was not involved with any of your baptisms—except for Crispus and Gaius—and on getting this report, I’m sure glad I wasn’t. At least no one can go around saying he was baptized in my name. (Come to think of it, I also baptized Stephanas’s family, but as far as I can recall, that’s it.)
17 God didn’t send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn’t send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.
18-21 The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written,
I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots.
So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.
22-25 While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”
26-31 Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, November 21, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Matthew 11:28–30
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Insight
Christ’s words offering rest to the weary (Matthew 11:28–29) seem to be connected to His discussion of oppression. In Judaism, the word yoke was often used as a metaphor for God’s law. A yoke was used to train an inexperienced ox by yoking it to an experienced one; in the same way, the law could function as a training guide. But the word yoke was also used to describe political rule, and rest to describe deliverance from oppressive rule. For example, in Isaiah 14 God promised to remove the Assyrian’s burdensome yoke and bring the land rest (14:7, 25).
Both the Roman Empire and religious teachers of Christ’s day (the scribes and Pharisees) used their authority in burdensome ways (see Matthew 23:4). So Jesus invited those worn and wearied by such burdens to live instead as subjects under His compassionate leadership in God’s life-giving kingdom.
By: Monica La Rose
Beautifully Burdened
My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:30
I awoke to pitch darkness. I hadn’t slept more than thirty minutes and my heart sensed that sleep wouldn’t return soon. A friend’s husband lay in the hospital, having received the dreaded news, “The cancer is back—in the brain and spine now.” My whole being hurt for my friends. What a heavy load! And yet, somehow my spirit was lifted through my sacred vigil of prayer. You might say I felt beautifully burdened for them. How could this be?
In Matthew 11:28–30, Jesus promises rest for our weary souls. Strangely, His rest comes as we bend under His yoke and embrace His burden. He clarifies in verse 30, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” When we allow Jesus to lift our burden from our backs and then tether ourselves to Jesus’s yoke, we become harnessed with Him, in step with Him and all He allows. When we bend under His burden, we share in His sufferings, which ultimately allows us to share in His comfort as well (2 Corinthians 1:5).
My concern for my friends was a heavy burden. Yet I felt grateful that God would allow me to carry them in prayer. Gradually I ebbed back to sleep and awoke—still beautifully burdened but now under the easy yoke and light load of walking with Jesus. By: Elisa Morgan
Reflect & Pray
What are you carrying today? How will you give that burden to Jesus?
Dear Jesus, please take my heavy load and lay upon me Your beautiful burden for this world.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, November 21, 2019
“It is Finished!”
I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. —John 17:4
The death of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment in history of the very mind and intent of God. There is no place for seeing Jesus Christ as a martyr. His death was not something that happened to Him— something that might have been prevented. His death was the very reason He came.
Never build your case for forgiveness on the idea that God is our Father and He will forgive us because He loves us. That contradicts the revealed truth of God in Jesus Christ. It makes the Cross unnecessary, and the redemption “much ado about nothing.” God forgives sin only because of the death of Christ. God could forgive people in no other way than by the death of His Son, and Jesus is exalted as Savior because of His death. “We see Jesus…for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor…” (Hebrews 2:9). The greatest note of triumph ever sounded in the ears of a startled universe was that sounded on the Cross of Christ— “It is finished!” (John 19:30). That is the final word in the redemption of humankind.
Anything that lessens or completely obliterates the holiness of God, through a false view of His love, contradicts the truth of God as revealed by Jesus Christ. Never allow yourself to believe that Jesus Christ stands with us, and against God, out of pity and compassion, or that He became a curse for us out of sympathy for us. Jesus Christ became a curse for us by divine decree. Our part in realizing the tremendous meaning of His curse is the conviction of sin. Conviction is given to us as a gift of shame and repentance; it is the great mercy of God. Jesus Christ hates the sin in people, and Calvary is the measure of His hatred.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
So Send I You
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, November 21, 2019
The Way to Your Father's Heart - #8574
As most children learn, there's an art to getting what you want from a parent. And most kids should get honorary degrees in psychology for how skilled they become at doing it. Our children sure did. One approach from the playbook of the three little Hutchcrafts could be called the "United Front Maneuver." One time they pulled out this tactic was when they wanted to get pizza for dinner or to go to a certain clown's hamburger joint. Often our oldest would first dispatch the youngest to approach me with a dining proposal. You know, always use the youngest as the sacrificial lamb. Right! Well, if that didn't work, send in number two child. If two out of three couldn't turn my heart to their cause, then the oldest would join in. And I have to confess, there were some times when I was able to say no to one of my children, or even two, but something happened to my heart when they all came together.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Way to Your Father's Heart."
Apparently, something happens in your Heavenly Father's heart when His children come to Him together. Jesus talked about that in our word for today from the Word of God in Matthew 18:19-20. He said, "If two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in My name, there am I with them."
Notice, Jesus is stressing the power of His children coming to Him in agreement, asking Him for something in faith. I don't know what's different between me talking to God about something alone and me talking to Him with some other believers. I only know that Jesus told us that something special happens in heaven when God the Father hears from His children together about some issue or some need.
Some of the most powerful prayer meetings in history were the ones that preceded the incredible day the Church was born, the Day of Pentecost. The Bible says, "They all joined together constantly in prayer" (Acts 1:14) and look what happened! It seems that the Father responded big-time!
Could it be that one reason we're not seeing more powerful results from our prayers is how little we pray together? We pray by ourselves a lot, we promise people we'll pray for them a lot, but why is it we often feel so awkward about suggesting that we pray with a brother or with a sister? Why is it that it doesn't even occur to us sometimes?
I went into a local florist shop. The Christian lady who owns it didn't know me, but she sure remembered my wife. Why? Well, my wife had walked in there on one of those frantic days when it was combat conditions in the florist shop. And during a brief lull, she asked if she could pray together with the workers there. They got together in a little huddle and my wife fired off a brief prayer for God's peace and strength for those floral workers. Apparently, they've never forgotten it. Because, as the owner said, no one ever does that.
You know what? That's got to change, especially when there is so much power when God's children get together to ask for something; when they pray in agreement. We're missing so much because we don't stop more often and pray together with a brother or a sister. It's Satan who doesn't want us praying together; it's probably him trying to make it hard for us. With fellow believers where you are - at home, where you work, at church, on the phone, even in a chat room, let's go to our Father together for things only our Father can do. Because honestly, that's the way to your Father's heart!
