Max Lucado Daily: THE BODY OF CHRIST
None of us can do what all of us can do. Remember Jesus’ commission to his disciples? You (speaking to all of you collectively) will be my witnesses (Acts 1:8). Jesus didn’t issue individual assignments. He works in community.
“Jesus is the head of the body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:18). I am not his body; you are not his body. We—together—are his body. But this body has been known to misbehave. The brain discounts the heart. Academics discount worshippers. The hands criticize the knees. People of action criticize people of prayer. It is a clear case of mutiny on the body. We cannot say, “I have no need of you.” Cooperation is more than a good idea; it is a command. Unity matters to God. May it matter to us.
1 Corinthians 13
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 90:4, 12–15
A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
Psalm 90:12–15
Teach us to number our days,o
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.p
13 Relent, Lord! How longq will it be?
Have compassion on your servants.r
14 Satisfys us in the morning with your unfailing love,t
that we may sing for joyu and be glad all our days.v
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
Insight
We shouldn’t be surprised to see the name of Moses in the superscription of Psalm 90. The broadly gifted Moses wasn’t only a law-giving prophet; he was also a poet. Though just one of his songs appears in the collection of the Psalms, the Bible features other lyrical compositions by him. He likely wrote Exodus 15, which chronicles God’s mighty rescue of the Israelites from Egypt. At the end of his life, Moses penned the song recorded in Deuteronomy 32, which is introduced with these words: “And Moses recited the words of this song from beginning to end in the hearing of the whole assembly of Israel” (31:30). Psalm 90:1—“Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations”—echoes Deuteronomy 33:27: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
By: Arthur Jackson
Slowing Down Time
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12
A lot has changed since the electric clock was invented in the 1840s. We now keep time on smart watches, smart phones, and laptops. The entire pace of life seems faster—with even our “leisurely” walking speeding up. This is especially true in cities and can have a negative effect on health, scholars say. “We’re just moving faster and faster and getting back to people as quickly as we can,” Professor Richard Wiseman observed. “That’s driving us to think everything has to happen now.”
Moses, the writer of one of the oldest of the Bible’s psalms, reflected on time. He reminds us that God controls life’s pace. “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night,” he wrote (Psalm 90:4).
The secret to time management, therefore, isn’t to go faster or slower. It’s to abide in God, spending more time with Him. Then we get in step with each other, but first with Him—the One who formed us (139:13) and knows our purpose and plans (v. 16).
Our time on earth won’t last forever. Yet we can manage it wisely, not by watching the clock, but by giving each day to God. As Moses said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (90:12). Then, with God we’ll always be on time, now and forever. By: Patricia Raybon
Reflect & Pray
What’s your pace in life? How could you spend more time with God, getting in step with Him?
Gracious God, when we fall out of step with You, draw us closer to abide in You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Called By God
I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me." —Isaiah 6:8
God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, “…who will go for Us?” The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude. “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). That is, few prove that they are the chosen ones. The chosen ones are those who have come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and have had their spiritual condition changed and their ears opened. Then they hear “the voice of the Lord” continually asking, “…who will go for Us?” However, God doesn’t single out someone and say, “Now, you go.” He did not force His will on Isaiah. Isaiah was in the presence of God, and he overheard the call. His response, performed in complete freedom, could only be to say, “Here am I! Send me.”
Remove the thought from your mind of expecting God to come to force you or to plead with you. When our Lord called His disciples, He did it without irresistible pressure from the outside. The quiet, yet passionate, insistence of His “Follow Me” was spoken to men whose every sense was receptive (Matthew 4:19). If we will allow the Holy Spirit to bring us face to face with God, we too will hear what Isaiah heard— “the voice of the Lord.” In perfect freedom we too will say, “Here am I! Send me.”
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
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
The Royal Switch - #8612
Tom thought he had the perfect hiding place. In fact, he told me about it the other day. Actually, Tom isn't his real name, but the incident really happened about 20 years ago when he was a teenager. He was raised in a Christian family; he was a nice Christian boy - except for some of his reading material. Yeah, and this was before the Internet, and he got into buying "Playboy" and some other similar magazines. And he hid them where he was sure no one would ever find them - in his old, unused ice box where no one ever went. Well, one day, Tom went to get his dirty magazines and they were gone. But that wasn't the worst part. There was a Bible where the magazines had been! He knew it had to be his Dad. There was never a word spoken about it, but there were no more magazines after that. Great switch, huh?
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Royal Switch."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 10:4-5. "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." "Strongholds?" Those are those well-established sinful ways of thinking-about the opposite sex, about suicide, about our relationship with someone who's hurt us, about lust, or depression. Maybe it's bitterness or self-pity. Well, God says there is power in Christ to "take captive every thought" and make it obey Jesus! But until you can master the source of your sin, your wrong thoughts and attitudes, that sin's going to continue to master you. But how can you beat the sinful thoughts that have always beaten you? Well, the royal switch.
David asks in Psalm 119:9, "How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to Your Word." Then in verse 11, he reveals the secret of living by God's Word instead of by his polluted thoughts. "I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You."
Learn a lesson from my friend Tom's very wise father. Where there has been dirt, put the Word of God. That Dad didn't just remove what was dirty, he replaced it with the Bible. That's what it's going to take for you to win the battle to make your thoughts obey Jesus. We're talking about a two-step strategy here for your thought-life victory.
First, take out the garbage thoughts and don't collect anymore. That means consciously turning your eyes away, turning the channel, don't go there, don't click on that, avoid those negative conversations, cancel your subscription, dump that music that turns your heart the wrong way.
But taking out the garbage isn't enough. The second step is to put the Bible where the dirt has been. That means giving your heart and mind a daily Bible-bath, dwelling on what you read in God's Word, journaling what God says to you each day through His Word, using what you read in practical ways that day. And there is simply no substitute for memorizing words from God. Maybe you make it part of your personality and you have it there when the pressure comes.
In the words of D. L. Moody, the great evangelist, "When you think sin, think Scripture!" He also said, "Either sin will keep you from this Book or this Book will
keep you from sin."
You have a weapon that can tear down a stronghold of sin and tame the most sinful of thoughts. "I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You." Put God's Word in the same hiding place where you've been hiding the sin He died to free you from.