Max Lucado Daily: YOU ARE WORTH DYING FOR
Has someone called you a lost cause? A failure? Has someone dismissed you as insignificant? Don’t listen to them. They don’t know what they’re talking about. You were conceived by God before you were conceived by your parents. You were loved in heaven before you were known on earth. You aren’t an accident.
When you say yes to God you are being made into God’s image. Print that on your resume! In the eyes of God you are worth dying for. Would you let this truth define the way you see yourself? Would you let this truth define the way you see other people? Every person you see was created by God to bear his image and deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. This is God’s plan. This is God’s promise. And he will fulfill it! And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!
2 Chronicles 12
By the time Rehoboam had secured his kingdom and was strong again, he, and all Israel with him, had virtually abandoned God and his ways.
2-4 In Rehoboam’s fifth year, because he and the people were unfaithful to God, Shishak king of Egypt invaded as far as Jerusalem. He came with twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand cavalry, and soldiers from all over—the Egyptian army included Libyans, Sukkites, and Ethiopians. They took the fortress cities of Judah and advanced as far as Jerusalem itself.
5 Then the prophet Shemaiah, accompanied by the leaders of Judah who had retreated to Jerusalem before Shishak, came to Rehoboam and said, “God’s word: You abandoned me; now I abandon you to Shishak.”
6 The leaders of Israel and the king were repentant and said, “God is right.”
7-8 When God saw that they were humbly repentant, the word of God came to Shemaiah: “Because they are humble, I’ll not destroy them—I’ll give them a break; I won’t use Shishak to express my wrath against Jerusalem. What I will do, though, is make them Shishak’s subjects—they’ll learn the difference between serving me and serving human kings.”
9 Then Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. He plundered the treasury of The Temple of God and the treasury of the royal palace—he took everything he could lay his hands on. He even took the gold shields that Solomon had made.
10-11 King Rehoboam replaced the gold shields with bronze shields and gave them to the guards who were posted at the entrance to the royal palace. Whenever the king went to God’s Temple, the guards went with him carrying the shields, but they always returned them to the guardroom.
12 Because Rehoboam was repentant, God’s anger was blunted, so he wasn’t totally destroyed. The picture wasn’t entirely bleak—there were some good things going on in Judah.
13-14 King Rehoboam regrouped and reestablished his rule in Jerusalem. He was forty-one years old when he became king and continued as king for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city God chose out of all the tribes of Israel as the special presence of his Name. His mother was Naamah from Ammon. But the final verdict on Rehoboam was that he was a bad king—God was not important to him; his heart neither cared for nor sought after God.
15-16 The history of Rehoboam, from start to finish, is written in the memoirs of Shemaiah the prophet and Iddo the seer that contain the family trees. There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam the whole time. Rehoboam died and was buried with his ancestors in the City of David. His son Abijah ruled after him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Isaiah 1:15–20
When you spread out your handsh in prayer,
I hidei my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.j
Your handsk are full of blood!l
16 Washm and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;n
stop doing wrong.o
17 Learn to do right;p seek justice.q
Defend the oppressed.a r
Take up the cause of the fatherless;s
plead the case of the widow.t
18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”u
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;v
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.w
19 If you are willing and obedient,x
you will eat the good things of the land;y
20 but if you resist and rebel,z
you will be devoured by the sword.”a
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.b
Insight
The imagery in Isaiah 1:15–20 stands as a testimony to the universal accessibility of the Bible’s wisdom. Isaiah uses the dual analogies of snow and wool to convey the idea of flawless and complete cleanliness of heart (1:18). Fresh fallen snow transforms a bleak winter landscape with its blanket of white, but readers who have never been to a cold climate can’t fully grasp that experience. However, such people would likely be familiar with the brilliant whiteness of freshly shorn sheep’s wool. In this way Isaiah clearly communicated to everyone in the world that our sins, though as red as the blood on the hands of a killer (v. 15), can be washed away. Although Isaiah prophesied to Judah specifically, the deep soul-cleansing described here applies to all and requires the blood of Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb. By: Tim Gustafson
The Miracle of White Snow
Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Isaiah 1:18
In the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton used a prism to study how light helps us see different colors. He found that when light passes through an object, the object appears to possess a specific color. While a single ice crystal looks translucent, snow is made up of many ice crystals smashed together. When light passes through all of the crystals, snow appears to be white.
The Bible mentions something else that has a certain color—sin. Through the prophet Isaiah, God confronted the sins of the people of Judah and described their sin as “like scarlet” and as “red as crimson.” But God promised they would “be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). How? Judah needed to turn away from wrongdoing and seek God’s forgiveness.
Thanks to Jesus, we have permanent access to God’s forgiveness. Jesus called Himself “the light of the world” and said whoever follows Him “will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). When we confess our sins, God forgives us and we’re seen through the light of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This means that God sees us as He sees Jesus—blameless.
We don’t have to wallow in the guilt and shame of what we’ve done wrong. Instead, we can hold on to the truth of God’s forgiveness, which makes us “white as snow.” By: Linda Washington
Reflect & Pray
What does it mean to be completely forgiven? What helps you remember that God has forgiven you?
Heavenly Father, thank You for the forgiveness You freely offer.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Are You Listening to God?
They said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die." —Exodus 20:19
We don’t consciously and deliberately disobey God— we simply don’t listen to Him. God has given His commands to us, but we pay no attention to them— not because of willful disobedience, but because we do not truly love and respect Him. “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Once we realize we have constantly been showing disrespect to God, we will be filled with shame and humiliation for ignoring Him.
“You speak with us,…but let not God speak with us….” We show how little love we have for God by preferring to listen to His servants rather than to Him. We like to listen to personal testimonies, but we don’t want God Himself to speak to us. Why are we so terrified for God to speak to us? It is because we know that when God speaks we must either do what He asks or tell Him we will not obey. But if it is simply one of God’s servants speaking to us, we feel obedience is optional, not imperative. We respond by saying, “Well, that’s only your own idea, even though I don’t deny that what you said is probably God’s truth.”
Am I constantly humiliating God by ignoring Him, while He lovingly continues to treat me as His child? Once I finally do hear Him, the humiliation I have heaped on Him returns to me. My response then becomes, “Lord, why was I so insensitive and obstinate?” This is always the result once we hear God. But our real delight in finally hearing Him is tempered with the shame we feel for having taken so long to do so.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation. What God looks at is what we are in the dark—the imaginations of our minds; the thoughts of our heart; the habits of our bodies; these are the things that mark us in God’s sight. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 669 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Too Good to Keep - #8633
She's only four years old, and she wasn't supposed to tell. I was talking to one of my good friends on the phone. His little girl hears me on the radio, so she said, "Daddy, can I talk to him?" So we had a great conversation on the phone. For once I didn't get to say much. And believe it or not, she got on the phone and it was non-stop four-year-old girl talk. And in the course of telling me all about her family, she just blurted out, "And mommy has a baby in her tummy." Well, my friend came back on the phone rather sheepishly and said, "Ron, that's really not public news yet. We just found out! Grandma and grandpa don't even know. It wouldn't be good if you knew before they do. She wasn't going to tell that." I said, "Well, listen; I don't even know what she said. I forget." I just made it a point to forget it. "I'll really be happy when you tell me the news. Does that work?" So, actually, I think that little girl is great. She just can't sit on good news.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Too Good To Keep."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Kings 7. It comes out of the time of Elisha when the capital city of Samaria is surrounded by the Aramean troops. And in chapter 7, beginning in verse 3, we find out there are some men who really had nothing to eat, even more so than the people in the city, who had been besieged by this enemy army. These guys were desperate for food. They were starving to death. Day after day in the city and outside the walls, more and more people were dying of starvation.
And it says here, "Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, 'Why stay here until we die?" And they decide to surrender to the enemy army. And they say, "If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, we die." They're like, "We're going to die either way, so we might as well give it a chance." Well, verse 8 says, "The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents."
What they don't know is this. God has performed a miracle and scattered the enemy army, and they have left their tents and their provisions. So it says, "They ate and drank and carried away silver and gold and clothes and went off and hid them. And they returned and entered another tent. Took some things from it and hid them. Then they said to each other, 'We are not doing right. This is the day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this.'"
You get the message here? These people - these lepers - are saying, "We've got all this food. We're stuffed! We can't sit on this kind of good news." Sounds like a little four-year-old girl that we just talked about, huh? We can't sit on the good news. People are starving to death in our city. What a picture of American Christianity sometimes! We are spiritually in America the richest Christians in history. We've got more books, and concerts, and seminars, and recordings, and videos, and websites, and TV. But like the four lepers, we're stuffed.
Now, Jesus taught us in Luke 12:48, "To whom much is given" - well, you know the rest - "much is required." That's us. It's easy to be as the late singer Keith Green said, "Asleep in the light"...going to the meetings, holding offices, quoting verses, reading all the Christian best sellers, but having no meaningful impact on the people around us who are spiritually dying.
Here's my question, "When was the last time you personally shared what Christ did on the cross with someone else who doesn't know Him?" When was the last time you played a part in changing someone's eternity from hell to heaven? Maybe when you first became a Christian you did. Could it be you've just settled into the comfort zone now? You may be very busy...very busy in Christian work, but you're sitting on the Good News. You're enjoying the fellowship, but you're not accepting the responsibility.
A little girl with a brother or sister on the way has a lot to teach us. She knows some good news is too good to keep. And you have the only news that can
change where people will spend their forever. Isn't that news too good to keep?