Max Lucado Daily: YOU ARE FREE TO GO
GUARD: “You’re free to go!”
BARRABAS: ”Wh…what?”
GUARD: “They took the Nazarene instead of you!”
It happened so fast. One minute Barabbas was in his cell on death row playing tic-tac-toe on the dirt walls. The next, he’s squinting his eyes at the bright sun. In many ways Barabbas stands for us; a prisoner freed because someone he’d never seen took his place. Someone tossed him a life preserver and he grabbed it; no questions asked.
I can’t imagine him pulling some of our stunts. We take our free gift of God’s grace and try to earn it or pay for it ourselves instead of simply saying, “thank you”, and accepting it. Barabbas may not have understood mercy and he surely didn’t deserve it, but he wasn’t about to refuse it. We, too, are prisoners with no chance for appeal. Why some prefer to stay in prison while the cell door has been unlocked is a mystery worth pondering!
Psalm 150
Hallelujah!
Praise God in his holy house of worship,
praise him under the open skies;
Praise him for his acts of power,
praise him for his magnificent greatness;
Praise with a blast on the trumpet,
praise by strumming soft strings;
Praise him with castanets and dance,
praise him with banjo and flute;
Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum,
praise him with fiddles and mandolin.
Let every living, breathing creature praise God!
Hallelujah!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, December 02, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 John 1:1–11
The elder,
To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth— 2 because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever:
3 Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.
4 It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. 5 And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 6 And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
7 I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8 Watch out that you do not lose what we[a] have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. 9 Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. 11 Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.
Footnotes:
2 John 1:8 Some manuscripts you
Insight
The author of 1, 2, and 3 John isn’t explicitly identified. First John has no author identification at all, and 2 and 3 John simply refer to the author as “the elder” (2 John 1:1; 3 John 1:1). However, there’s much evidence to link these three letters to John the disciple. For example, the gospel of John (which is attributed to John the disciple) and the epistles of John all share similar themes. In today’s reading from 2 John, three key ideas echo themes in John’s gospel: truth (John 14:6), love (John 3:16), and love leading to obedience (John 15:9–17).
The Flip Side of Love
Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love. 2 John 1:3
The Roman inns during the time of Christ had a reputation so bad that rabbis wouldn’t even permit cattle to be left at them. Faced with such bad conditions, traveling Christians usually sought out other believers for hospitality.
Among those early travelers were false teachers who denied that Jesus was the Messiah. This is why the letter of 2 John tells its readers there is a time to refuse to extend hospitality. John had said in a previous letter that these false teachers were “antichrist—denying the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). In 2 John he elaborated on this, telling his readers that whoever believes Jesus is the Messiah “has both the Father and the Son” (v. 9).
Then he warned, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them” (v. 10). To extend hospitality to someone preaching a false gospel would actually help keep people separated from God.
John’s second letter shows us a “flip side” of God’s love. We serve a God who welcomes everyone with open arms. But genuine love won’t enable those who deceitfully harm themselves and others. God wraps His arms around those who come to Him in repentance, but He never embraces a lie. By: Tim Gustafson
Reflect & Pray
How can you reflect God’s love in your relationships today? What issues might you need to confront in your own life or in the lives of others?
Father, You love us in Your truth. Help us extend that love to others with the unwavering grace that comes only from Your Spirit.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, December 02, 2019
Christian Perfection
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect… —Philippians 3:12
It is a trap to presume that God wants to make us perfect specimens of what He can do— God’s purpose is to make us one with Himself. The emphasis of holiness movements tends to be that God is producing specimens of holiness to put in His museum. If you accept this concept of personal holiness, your life’s determined purpose will not be for God, but for what you call the evidence of God in your life. How can we say, “It could never be God’s will for me to be sick”? If it was God’s will to bruise His own Son (Isaiah 53:10), why shouldn’t He bruise you? What shines forth and reveals God in your life is not your relative consistency to an idea of what a saint should be, but your genuine, living relationship with Jesus Christ, and your unrestrained devotion to Him whether you are well or sick.
Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship with God that shows itself to be true even amid the seemingly unimportant aspects of human life. When you obey the call of Jesus Christ, the first thing that hits you is the pointlessness of the things you have to do. The next thought that strikes you is that other people seem to be living perfectly consistent lives. Such lives may leave you with the idea that God is unnecessary— that through your own human effort and devotion you can attain God’s standard for your life. In a fallen world this can never be done. I am called to live in such a perfect relationship with God that my life produces a yearning for God in the lives of others, not admiration for myself. Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God’s purpose is not to perfect me to make me a trophy in His showcase; He is getting me to the place where He can use me. Let Him do what He wants.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God. Not Knowing Whither, 903 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, December 02, 2019
Stopping to Recharge - #8581
Oh, you can see it at an airport. You can see it in a conference. You can see it whenever people are in a new place. Right away they're looking for a plug. Yeah, you know why? Because we all have cell phones. That's why. And because those cell phones don't run forever. And it's not a good thing when you really need to communicate with somebody and that thing has a battery that's dying. So we're all trying to recharge the battery. I sometimes think I'm like that. We all are like that. Wouldn't it be nice if people could plug in and get recharged like one of those batteries? I think it's called a night's sleep probably. Well, I can't allow my cell phone to be dead. There's too much going on in this ministry, so I need to put that little phone down sometimes, plug it into recharge so it's good to go again.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Stopping to Recharge."
A cell phone needs some down time to recharge so it can serve again, and so do you and I. In fact, God created you that way. That's the Sabbath principle that He built into our creation, and He doesn't intend for us to work all the time. He made us so we would take regular rest. It's part of the creation.
Maybe you're running down fast. You're stressed, you're fatigued, you're more impatient, on edge, more irritable, and you're addicted to your own adrenaline. If you keep driving at this speed, you're going to go over the edge…or the people around you are. It's time for the stress-reduction prescription in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in Psalm 23 beginning in verse 1. Familiar words: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul." So where do you get restored? By quiet waters where your Shepherd might be trying to lead you right now. But you haven't allowed any time lately for quiet waters, have you? You're saying, "I'm too busy to take a timeout." Well, you're too busy not to.
It's the down time that recharges the battery of my cell phone. And it's not wasted time. If I don't give it that recovery time, it eventually won't work at all! It's down time that recharges your battery. And it's not wasted time. If you don't allow that recovery time, eventually you won't work at all!
I know how a make-it-happen, conscientious, goal-oriented, driven person can fill up their life until there are just no margins. I'm that kind of person. I've done it. But I also know it costs way too much. It costs you in your personal peace, in your close relationships, even in your performance and your creativity. God created us in such a way that when we take time out to rest and restore, we actually get a lot more done in a lot less time!
You may very well need some "quiet waters" time. And it won't happen unless you make a non-negotiable commitment to it - put it in your calendar. And then you need to stand back, re-examine your priorities, and literally schedule regular times to recharge; to put some margins back in your life, like setting a firm quitting time, getting to bed earlier, or time off to balance extended time on. Without those balancing mechanisms, you literally begin to burn out. And if you don't get your Sabbaths, the Bible seems to indicate that one day your Sabbaths will come to get you all at once.
The alternative is just continuing to run down, like you have been. Your physical and emotional battery cannot run indefinitely. You have to stop to recharge. And when you do, you'll be able to run again at full strength.