Max Lucado Daily: GOD’S GREAT AND PRECIOUS PROMISES
According to Peter, God’s promises aren’t just great, they are very great. They aren’t just valuable, they are precious! (2 Peter 1:4).
It is God’s great and precious promises that lead us into a new reality, a holy environment. They are direction signs intended to guide us away from the toxic swampland and into the clean air of heaven. They are strong boulders that form the bridge over which we walk from our sin to salvation.
Promises are the stitching in the spine of the Bible. Receive them. Allow them to soak you like a spring shower. Let’s be what we were intended to be —people of the Promise. Fill your heart with hope, and let the devil himself hear you declare your belief in God’s goodness! Because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!
2 Chronicles 7
When Solomon finished praying, a bolt of lightning out of heaven struck the Whole-Burnt-Offering and sacrifices and the Glory of God filled The Temple. The Glory was so dense that the priests couldn’t get in—God so filled The Temple that there was no room for the priests! When all Israel saw the fire fall from heaven and the Glory of God fill The Temple, they fell on their knees, bowed their heads, and worshiped, thanking God:
Yes! God is good!
His love never quits!
4-6 Then the king and all Israel worshiped, offering sacrifices to God. King Solomon worshiped by sacrificing 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep at the dedication of The Temple. The priests were all on duty; the choir and orchestra of Levites that David had provided for singing and playing anthems to the praise and love of God were all there; across the courtyard the priests blew trumpets. All Israelites were on their feet.
7-10 Solomon set apart the central area of the courtyard in front of God’s Temple for sacred use and there sacrificed the Whole-Burnt-Offerings, Grain-Offerings, and fat from the Peace-Offerings—the Bronze Altar was too small to handle all these offerings. This is how Solomon kept the great autumn Feast of Booths. For seven days there were people there all the way from the far northeast (the Entrance to Hamath) to the far southwest (the Brook of Egypt)—a huge congregation. They started out celebrating for seven days, and then did it for another seven days, a week for dedicating the Altar and another for the Feast itself—two solid weeks of celebration! On the twenty-third day of the seventh month Solomon dismissed his congregation. They left rejoicing, exuberant over all the good God had done for David and Solomon and his people Israel.
11 Solomon completed building The Temple of God and the royal palace—the projects he had set his heart on doing. Everything was done—success! Satisfaction!
12-18 God appeared to Solomon that very night and said, “I accept your prayer; yes, I have chosen this place as a temple for sacrifice, a house of worship. If I ever shut off the supply of rain from the skies or order the locusts to eat the crops or send a plague on my people, and my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health. From now on I’m alert day and night to the prayers offered at this place. Believe me, I’ve chosen and sanctified this Temple that you have built: My Name is stamped on it forever; my eyes are on it and my heart in it always. As for you, if you live in my presence as your father David lived, pure in heart and action, living the life I’ve set out for you, attentively obedient to my guidance and judgments, then I’ll back your kingly rule over Israel—make it a sure thing on a sure foundation. The same covenant guarantee I gave to David your father I’m giving to you, namely, ‘You can count on always having a descendant on Israel’s throne.’
19-22 “But if you or your sons betray me, ignoring my guidance and judgments, taking up with alien gods by serving and worshiping them, then the guarantee is off: I’ll wipe Israel right off the map and repudiate this Temple I’ve just sanctified to honor my Name. And Israel will be nothing but a bad joke among the peoples of the world. And this Temple, splendid as it now is, will become an object of contempt; tourists will shake their heads, saying, ‘What happened here? What’s the story behind these ruins?’ Then they’ll be told, ‘The people who used to live here betrayed their God, the very God who rescued their ancestors from Egypt; they took up with alien gods, worshiping and serving them. That’s what’s behind this God-visited devastation.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, February 06, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Lamentations 2:10–13, 18–19
The elders of Daughter Zion
sit on the ground in silence;h
they have sprinkled dusti on their headsj
and put on sackcloth.k
The young women of Jerusalem
have bowed their heads to the ground.l
11 My eyes fail from weeping,m
I am in torment withinn;
my hearto is poured outp on the ground
because my people are destroyed,q
because children and infants faintr
in the streets of the city.
12 They say to their mothers,
“Where is bread and wine?”s
as they faint like the wounded
in the streets of the city,
as their lives ebb awayt
in their mothers’ arms.u
13 What can I say for you?v
With what can I compare you,
Daughterw Jerusalem?
To what can I liken you,
that I may comfort you,
Virgin Daughter Zion?x
Your wound is as deep as the sea.y
Who can heal you?
The hearts of the people
cry out to the Lord.r
You walls of Daughter Zion,s
let your tearst flow like a river
day and night;u
give yourself no relief,
your eyes no rest.v
19 Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heartw like water
in the presence of the Lord.x
Lift up your handsy to him
for the lives of your children,
who faintz from hunger
at every street corner.
Insight
Jeremiah, known as the “weeping prophet,” is traditionally believed to be the author of Lamentations. The book contains five poems. The first four are written as acrostics using the twenty-two consonants of the Hebrew alphabet to mark the individual stanzas. The book mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 587 bc when Babylon defeated the nation of Judah and took its people captive. Commentator R. K. Harrison in Jeremiah and Lamentations writes: “[The poems] make it clear that the real tragedy inherent in the destruction of Judah lies in the fact that it could almost certainly have been avoided. The actual causes of the calamity were the people themselves.” Despite the repeated warnings of God’s prophets, they chose idolatry over following the one true God.
By: Alyson Kieda
Mercy’s Lament
My heart is poured out on the ground . . . because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.
Lamentations 2:11
Her father blamed his illness on witchcraft. It was AIDS. When he died, his daughter, ten-year-old Mercy, grew even closer to her mother. But her mother was sick too, and three years later she died. From then on, Mercy’s sister raised the five siblings. That’s when Mercy began to keep a journal of her deep pain.
The prophet Jeremiah kept a record of his pain too. In the grim book of Lamentations, he wrote of atrocities done to Judah by the Babylonian army. Jeremiah’s heart was especially grieved for the youngest victims. “My heart is poured out on the ground,” he cried, “because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city” (2:11). The people of Judah had a history of ignoring God, but their children were paying the price too. “Their lives ebb away in their mothers’ arms,” wrote Jeremiah (v. 12).
We might have expected Jeremiah to reject God in the face of such suffering. Instead, he urged the survivors, “Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children” (v. 19).
It’s good, as Mercy and Jeremiah did, to pour out our hearts to God. Lament is a crucial part of being human. Even when God permits such pain, He grieves with us. Made as we are in His image, He must lament too!
By: Tim Gustafson
Reflect & Pray
How do you handle the painful situations in your life? How might it help you to write it down and share your journal with a friend?
Dear God, I’m hurting because of ____________________. You see my grief. Please show Your strength in my life today.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, February 06, 2020
Are You Ready To Be Poured Out As an Offering? (2)
I am already being poured out as a drink offering… —2 Timothy 4:6
Are you ready to be poured out as an offering? It is an act of your will, not your emotions. Tell God you are ready to be offered as a sacrifice for Him. Then accept the consequences as they come, without any complaints, in spite of what God may send your way. God sends you through a crisis in private, where no other person can help you. From the outside your life may appear to be the same, but the difference is taking place in your will. Once you have experienced the crisis in your will, you will take no thought of the cost when it begins to affect you externally. If you don’t deal with God on the level of your will first, the result will be only to arouse sympathy for yourself.
“Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar” (Psalm 118:27). You must be willing to be placed on the altar and go through the fire; willing to experience what the altar represents— burning, purification, and separation for only one purpose— the elimination of every desire and affection not grounded in or directed toward God. But you don’t eliminate it, God does. You “bind the sacrifice…to the horns of the altar” and see to it that you don’t wallow in self-pity once the fire begins. After you have gone through the fire, there will be nothing that will be able to trouble or depress you. When another crisis arises, you will realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do. What fire lies ahead in your life?
Tell God you are ready to be poured out as an offering, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
No one could have had a more sensitive love in human relationship than Jesus; and yet He says there are times when love to father and mother must be hatred in comparison to our love for Him. So Send I You, 1301 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, February 06, 2020
Your Personal Life Support System - #8629
You know, we celebrated not too long ago the wonderful first guys to land on the moon and walk on the moon. Neil Armstrong, of course. But, you know, when he first stepped onto the surface of the moon for his "one small step for man," he really didn't look like himself. No, he was totally wrapped up in that modern-day armor we call a space suit. Well, there is a reason of course. The moon is an environment hostile to humans. An unequipped, unprotected astronaut would have died in an instant of lunar exposure. Why? No oxygen. That big pack on his back - that was the margin of survival.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Personal Life Support System."
Now if the Apollo astronauts had depended on their surroundings for their lives, they would have died on the moon. Instead, they depended on the life-support system that they carried with them!
Actually, you don't have to go to the moon to find a hostile atmosphere to survive in. We've got that right here. Spiritually speaking, we live in an environment where the air is often pretty polluted with temptation, with totally un-God ways of thinking, with stress, with negativity. When that's pretty much what your soul breathes all day long, you end up gasping for air and sometimes going under.
What we need is something like the Apollo astronauts had; we need a life-support system that will sustain us through the bombardment of the day. But it needs to be something totally dependable and highly mobile - a life-pack that you can have with you everywhere you go. And there is one. Our word for today from the Word of God, Psalm 119:11, says, "I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You." David says, "I have planted God's words in my heart to answer the sinful pressures that are coming against me."
So what's your personal life-support system in a spiritually and emotionally hostile environment: the words of God, committed to memory, so you'll always have them when you need them. You can't always carry a Bible around with you, and if you do, you wouldn't usually have time to start looking up verses in the middle of your situation. In fact, you'd probably have to carry a concordance, too, so you'd know where to look in the Bible!
But you can always carry Scripture that you have "hidden in your heart." During the Vietnam War, and you may have heard this, there were American pilots imprisoned for years in a prison they call the "Hanoi Hilton." And they tried to piece together as much of the Bible as they could from memory. I wonder how much of a Bible you'd have if all you had was what you've memorized? In a sense, that is all you have when you're in the middle of a real life situation.
So, maybe it's time for you to get serious about a regular program of committing Bible verses to memory. What you're doing is you're actually planting the responses of God in your personality so you can respond to what's happening with a heaven-answer, not an earth-answer. How many times have I been sustained by saying Deuteronomy 33:25 aloud, "Your strength will equal your days, Ron" ... or Isaiah 40:31, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." How many times have I been helped by the battle cry of 2 Corinthians 10:5, "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Man, I'll tell you, the list of times I've been rescued by a verse that I've made my own is endless.
D.L. Moody said, "When you're thinking sin, think Scripture." You can't think Scripture if you don't know any Scripture. Our minds are cluttered with tons of earth-trivia. We need more of heaven in our heart, don't we? So, load up on heaven's oxygen - God's own words - and you'll be breathing better air all day long from that life-support system that you carry in your heart.
