Max Lucado Daily: WHEN IT’S TIME TO GROW UP
Children have a tendency to say, “Look at me!” On the tricycle– “Look at me go!” On the trampoline– “Look at me bounce!” On the swing set– “Look at me swing!” Such behavior is acceptable for children. Yet many adults spend their grown-up years saying the same thing. “Look at me drive this fancy car!” “Look at me make money!” “Look at me wear provocative clothes, or use big words, or flex my muscles. Look at me!”
Isn’t it time we grew up? We were made to live a life that says, “Look at God!” People are to look at us and see not us but the image of our Maker. This is God’s plan. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “We…are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” Because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!
2 Corinthians 3
Does it sound like we’re patting ourselves on the back, insisting on our credentials, asserting our authority? Well, we’re not. Neither do we need letters of endorsement, either to you or from you. You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.
4-6 We couldn’t be more sure of ourselves in this—that you, written by Christ himself for God, are our letter of recommendation. We wouldn’t think of writing this kind of letter about ourselves. Only God can write such a letter. His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn’t written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It’s written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!
7-8 The Government of Death, its constitution chiseled on stone tablets, had a dazzling inaugural. Moses’ face as he delivered the tablets was so bright that day (even though it would fade soon enough) that the people of Israel could no more look right at him than stare into the sun. How much more dazzling, then, the Government of Living Spirit?
9-11 If the Government of Condemnation was impressive, how about this Government of Affirmation? Bright as that old government was, it would look downright dull alongside this new one. If that makeshift arrangement impressed us, how much more this brightly shining government installed for eternity?
12-15 With that kind of hope to excite us, nothing holds us back. Unlike Moses, we have nothing to hide. Everything is out in the open with us. He wore a veil so the children of Israel wouldn’t notice that the glory was fading away—and they didn’t notice. They didn’t notice it then and they don’t notice it now, don’t notice that there’s nothing left behind that veil. Even today when the proclamations of that old, bankrupt government are read out, they can’t see through it. Only Christ can get rid of the veil so they can see for themselves that there’s nothing there.
16-18 Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 18:3–6, 16–19
I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,t
and I have been saved from my enemies.u
4 The cords of deathv entangled me;
the torrentsw of destruction overwhelmed me.
5 The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of deathx confronted me.
6 In my distressy I called to the Lord;z
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;a
my cry cameb before him, into his ears.
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.a
17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,b
from my foes, who were too strong for me.c
18 They confronted me in the day of my disaster,d
but the Lord was my support.e
19 He brought me out into a spacious place;f
he rescued me because he delighted in me.
Insight
Poetry is compact language which says a lot using few words. The poets who wrote much of the Old Testament spoke Hebrew. Hebrew poetry is slightly different than poetry written in modern languages, so we need to ask how poetry worked in that ancient Near Eastern culture.
Today we might be familiar with poetry that has rhyme and meter (a patterned rhythm). Hebrew poetry, on the other hand, doesn’t use either rhyme or meter. We learn how to read it when we become familiar with the tools the ancient poet used, particularly parallelism, imagery, and acrostics.
Parallelism is used throughout Psalm 18. It’s a term that describes the echoing effect within a single poetic line or verse by way of contrast or repetition. It may be the single most important poetic tool because it’s used so frequently in Hebrew poetry. Tremper Longman
Freed from Our Cage
[God] brought me out into a spacious place. Psalm 18:19
While out taking walks, writer Martin Laird would often encounter a man with four Kerry Blue Terriers. Three of the dogs ran wild through the open fields, but one stayed near its owner, running in tight circles. When Laird finally stopped and asked about this odd behavior, the owner explained that it was a rescue dog that had spent most of his life locked in a cage. The terrier continued to run in circles as though contained inside a confined box.
The Scriptures reveal that we’re trapped and hopeless unless God rescues us. The psalmist spoke of being afflicted by an enemy, entrapped by “the snares of death” with the “cords of death . . . coiled around” him (Psalm 18:4–5). Enclosed and shackled, he cried to God for help (v. 6). And with thundering power, He “reached down . . . and took hold” of him (v. 16).
God can do the same for us. He can break the chains and release us from our confining cages. He can set us free and carry us “out into a spacious place” (v. 19). How sad it is, then, when we keep running in small circles, as if we’re still confined in our old prisons. In His strength, may we no longer be bound by fear, shame, or oppression. God has rescued us from those cages of death. We can run free. By: Winn Collier
Reflect & Pray
What are the cages that have you confined? How are you living as though an old cage still traps and holds you?
God, You say You set the captives free. Help me to believe it. Help me to live it. I want to be free. I want to be in Your spacious place.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, February 13, 2020
The Devotion of Hearing
Samuel answered, "Speak, for Your servant hears." —1 Samuel 3:10
Just because I have listened carefully and intently to one thing from God does not mean that I will listen to everything He says. I show God my lack of love and respect for Him by the insensitivity of my heart and mind toward what He says. If I love my friend, I will instinctively understand what he wants. And Jesus said, “You are My friends…” (John 15:14). Have I disobeyed some command of my Lord’s this week? If I had realized that it was a command of Jesus, I would not have deliberately disobeyed it. But most of us show incredible disrespect to God because we don’t even hear Him. He might as well never have spoken to us.
The goal of my spiritual life is such close identification with Jesus Christ that I will always hear God and know that God always hears me (see John 11:41). If I am united with Jesus Christ, I hear God all the time through the devotion of hearing. A flower, a tree, or a servant of God may convey God’s message to me. What hinders me from hearing is my attention to other things. It is not that I don’t want to hear God, but I am not devoted in the right areas of my life. I am devoted to things and even to service and my own convictions. God may say whatever He wants, but I just don’t hear Him. The attitude of a child of God should always be, “Speak, for Your servant hears.” If I have not developed and nurtured this devotion of hearing, I can only hear God’s voice at certain times. At other times I become deaf to Him because my attention is to other things— things which I think I must do. This is not living the life of a child of God. Have you heard God’s voice today?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence. Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Big Issues - Bite-Size Chunks - #8634
First, our kids couldn't feed themselves. Then they slowly began to learn to do it themselves. Right? Yeah. And then they got really good at it. But in those very early days of teaching them to feed themselves, we didn't just hand them this big slab of meat to eat and say, "Go for it kid." Every parent knows the drill: you cut the big piece into bite-size chunks so it's manageable. I got so used to doing it, it was kind of embarrassing when I'd got out to lunch with a businessman and I started cutting up his meat up for him!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Big Issues - Bite-Size Chunks."
I love our word for today from the Word of God in Zephaniah 3:5. It's just seven reassuring words, but in those words, God points us to the way He wants us to handle this "big piece of meat" called our life. It simply says, "Every new day He does not fail." Come on, isn't that great? God says instead of trying to do weeks and months and years, would you do life in these 24-hour increments that He's obviously wired us for? Do days.
We try to drag yesterday, with all of its baggage and its failures into today, we start to sink. We try to drag tomorrow into today, with its worries and its fears, we run ahead of His resources, which are issued each new day for that day. I've got Thursday's resources for Thursday's needs. When I start worrying about Friday, or a week from Friday, I'm on my own and I'm going down.
There has never been and there never will be a day that our Lord has failed us. On different days our spouse might fail us, our family might fail us, our boss, our friends, our coworkers, the folks at church, our income, even our health. But "every new day, He does not fail." That's called days without fear.
And here is your Lord's guarantee for each new day. He's promised new mercies for every battle. Surrounded by the collapse of everything around him, Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3, "I remember my affliction and my wandering" In other words, on many new days, he had failed - just like you and me. But then he goes on to say, "I remember the bitterness and the gall ... my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." Wow!
God knows how to balance the grief with His goodness. He knows just when you need to have an encouragement, and He sends it. He knows just when you need a hopeful sign, or some comfort, when you need some rest, an extra shot of strength, or even a miracle. And He sends it right on time.
God knows when you've had all you can take and He raises His almighty hand and says, "Enough! No more!" He's promised to never let you have "more than you can bear" (1 Corinthians 10:13). "Because of the Lord's great love," you are "not consumed." You serve the God of daily bread, the God of what the Bible calls the "strength that will equal your days" (Deuteronomy 33:25). The God of whom you can say every new day, "This is the day my Lord has made" (Psalm 118:24). Not the day my condition has made, or my boss has made, or my frustrations have made, or my spouse has made. My Lord made this day and He's promised me everything I'll need to live it. Hallelujah!
Don't even try to handle that
big piece of life you've got in front of you right now. Your Heavenly Father cuts it into bite-size chunks so it's manageable, and those bite-size chunks are called "every new day"!
