Max Lucado Daily: IT IS WELL
Sometime ago I made a special visit to the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. I wanted to see the handwritten lyrics that hang on the wall, framed and visible for all to see. Horatio Spafford wrote them, never imagining they would become the words to one of the world’s best-loved hymns.
On December 2, 1873, he received a telegram from his wife that began, “Saved alone. What shall I do?” The ship she was on had collided with another ship and had sunk. Their four daughters drowned and Anna survived. While sailing on the ship to bring her home, Spafford wrote the lyrics to a song that would become an anthem to the providence of God. “Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say. . .it is well with my soul!”
Isaiah 20
In the year the field commander, sent by King Sargon of Assyria, came to Ashdod and fought and took it, God told Isaiah son of Amoz, “Go, take off your clothes and sandals,” and Isaiah did it, going about naked and barefooted.
3-6 Then God said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has walked around town naked and barefooted for three years as a warning sign to Egypt and Ethiopia, so the king of Assyria is going to come and take the Egyptians as captives and the Ethiopians as exiles. He’ll take young and old alike and march them out of there naked and barefooted, exposed to mockery and jeers—the bared buttocks of Egypt on parade! Everyone who has put hope in Ethiopia and expected help from Egypt will be thrown into confusion. Everyone who lives along this coast will say, ‘Look at them! Naked and barefooted, shuffling off to exile! And we thought they were our best hope, that they’d rescue us from the king of Assyria. Now what’s going to happen to us? How are we going to get out of this?’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Jeremiah 15:15–21
Lord, you understand;
remember me and care for me.
Avenge me on my persecutors.p
You are long-sufferingq—do not take me away;
think of how I suffer reproach for your sake.r
16 When your words came, I ates them;
they were my joy and my heart’s delight,t
for I bear your name,u
Lord God Almighty.
17 I never satv in the company of revelers,
never made merry with them;
I sat alone because your handw was on me
and you had filled me with indignation.
18 Why is my pain unending
and my wound grievous and incurable?x
You are to me like a deceptive brook,
like a spring that fails.y
19 Therefore this is what the Lord says:
“If you repent, I will restore you
that you may servez me;
if you utter worthy, not worthless, words,
you will be my spokesman.a
Let this people turn to you,
but you must not turn to them.
20 I will make you a wallb to this people,
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you
but will not overcomec you,
for I am with you
to rescue and save you,”d
declares the Lord.
21 “I will savee you from the hands of the wickedf
and deliverg you from the grasp of the cruel.”
Insight
The prophet Jeremiah is known as “the weeping prophet.” One reason is that he openly weeps over his wayward Jewish brothers and sisters and the discipline their disobedience requires. The word weep appears twelve times in Jeremiah, including 9:1: “Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.” Jeremiah also bears this title due to his book of laments, which we call Lamentations. In the book, Jeremiah uses the word weep three times, including Lamentations 2:11: “My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within; my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed.”
Hungry for God
When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight. Jeremiah 15:16
A new believer in Jesus was desperate to read the Bible. However, he’d lost his eyesight and both hands in an explosion. When he heard about a woman who read Braille with her lips, he tried to do the same—only to discover that the nerve endings of his lips had also been destroyed. Later, he was filled with joy when he discovered that he could feel the Braille characters with his tongue! He had found a way to read and enjoy the Scriptures.
Joy and delight were the emotions the prophet Jeremiah experienced when he received God’s words. “When your words came, I ate them,” he said, “they were my joy and my heart’s delight” (Jeremiah 15:16). Unlike the people of Judah who despised His words (8:9), Jeremiah had been obedient and rejoiced in them. His obedience, however, also led to the prophet being rejected by his own people and persecuted unfairly (15:17).
Some of us may have experienced something similar. We once read the Bible with joy, but obedience to God led to suffering and rejection from others. Like Jeremiah, we can bring our confusion to God. He answered Jeremiah by repeating the promise He gave him when He first called him to be a prophet (vv. 19-21; see 1:18–19). God reminded him that He never lets His people down. We can have this same confidence too. He’s faithful and will never abandon us. By: Poh Fang Chia
Reflect & Pray
When have you experienced joy in reading the Scriptures? What can help you regain your hunger and thirst for God?
Faithful God, thank You for speaking to me through the words of the Bible. Help me to seek You earnestly and to obey You faithfully.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Can You Come Down From the Mountain?
While you have the light, believe in the light… —John 12:36
We all have moments when we feel better than ever before, and we say, “I feel fit for anything; if only I could always be like this!” We are not meant to be. Those moments are moments of insight which we have to live up to even when we do not feel like it. Many of us are no good for the everyday world when we are not on the mountaintop. Yet we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there.
Never allow a feeling that was awakened in you on the mountaintop to evaporate. Don’t place yourself on the shelf by thinking, “How great to be in such a wonderful state of mind!” Act immediately— do something, even if your only reason to act is that you would rather not. If, during a prayer meeting, God shows you something to do, don’t say, “I’ll do it”— just do it! Pick yourself up by the back of the neck and shake off your fleshly laziness. Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience; all we talk about is our planning for our time on the mountain. We must learn to live in the ordinary “gray” day according to what we saw on the mountain.
Don’t give up because you have been blocked and confused once— go after it again. Burn your bridges behind you, and stand committed to God by an act of your own will. Never change your decisions, but be sure to make your decisions in the light of what you saw and learned on the mountain.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us.
Disciples Indeed
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 30-31; Luke 13:23-35
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Who You Are and What You Do - #8679
Our four-year-old grandson loved that Sunday night program the church had for boys his age. He learned lots of Bible verses there, he made friends, and he participated enthusiastically in the special activities they offered. And then they announced that the next week the kids should come dressed as what they wanted to be when they grew up. Our daughter asked our grandson what he wanted to be. He said, "I want to be a grandfather." She shouldn't have told me. I know, that kind of made me melted grandfather all over our carpet. I expect his other grandfather probably felt the same way. They borrowed some of my clothes and they went to work making a grandson into a grandfather. He said, "I even smell like Grandpa!" I'm not sure what that meant. But it did feel good that a grandfather is what he wants to be.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Who You Are and What You Do."
It could be that that four-year-old has actually figured out something about who we really are that has eluded some of us older folks. When he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he didn't answer with something he wants to do. That distinction is really easy to miss in a world that seems to be all about winning and achieving and doing. Years ago, people even got their name from what they did: baker, fisher, tanner, weaver. But God never meant for you to anchor your identity to the work you do, the position you hold, the milestones you accomplish.
Those sources of identity all have one thing in common: they're all "losable." Just ask anyone who's been downsized, or disabled, or demoted, or dumped. Now a daddy, or a granddaddy, that's something you are and no one can take that away from you. Generous, compassionate, honest, humble, and godly, those are things you are; things no one can take from you.
You have to go all the way back to the beginning to get a clear picture of what we're supposed to get our worth from and our identity, and it is not from our work. Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the first book in the Bible, Genesis, and takes us back to the creation of the first human being. Genesis 1:27 says, "God created man in His own image ... male and female He created them." It is that image of God that ultimately defines who you are and that's something no one can take from you.
Then, in Genesis 2:18, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." First, the vertical relationship with God, then horizontal relationships with others. It wasn't until after man sinned in Genesis 3 that God said, "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life ... by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground." (Genesis 3:17-19) So, for a person to be defined by what they do is part of the curse of the fall.
But it's clear that your Creator meant for you to be defined by your relationships, not your occupation. You're a child of Almighty God. You're a son or daughter, a husband or wife, and in case my grandson is listening, a grandparent, a friend, an aunt or uncle. After all my dad did in his life, only two words sum up his life on his tombstone "Husband - father."
When you are what you do and you lose your job, or your capabilities, your sport, your career, then in fact, you've lost you. But, in fact, you've not even lost a tiny fraction of who you are. No one can take that from you unless you forget who you really are. And when you realize who you really are, then you know what really matters.
You know how to set your priorities, and you're anchored to a meaning in life that you cannot lose. Because it isn't about what you do, it's about who you are.
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