Max Lucado Daily: GREAT GRACE
I can bear witness to the power of God’s grace! I could take you to the church, to the section of seats in the church auditorium. I might even be able to find the very seat in which I was sitting when this grace found me. I was a twenty-year-old college sophomore, living with a concrete block of guilt that had made a mess of my life.
But then I heard a preacher describe the divine grace that is greater than sin. At the end of the message he asked if anyone would like to come forward and receive this grace. Iron chains couldn’t have held me back. Truth be told, chains had held me back. But mercy snapped the guilt chains and set me free. I know this truth firsthand– Guilt frenzies the soul; grace calms it! The benefit of being a great sinner is dependence upon a great grace!
Ephesians 2
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
11-13 But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14-15 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16-18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 Timothy 1:6–14
Appeal for Loyalty to Paul and the Gospel
6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.n 7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid,o but gives us power,p love and self-discipline. 8 So do not be ashamedq of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner.r Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel,s by the power of God. 9 He has savedt us and calledu us to a holy life—not because of anything we have donev but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealedw through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus,x who has destroyed deathy and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11 And of this gospelz I was appointeda a herald and an apostle and a teacher.b 12 That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame,c because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guardd what I have entrusted to him until that day.e
13 What you heard from me,f keepg as the patternh of sound teaching,i with faith and love in Christ Jesus.j 14 Guardk the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.l
Insight
Along with Titus, Paul’s letters to Timothy form what are known as the Pastoral Letters. Timothy (who would serve the church in Ephesus) and Titus (who led the congregations on the island of Crete) were two of Paul’s numerous protégés that he’d mentored for spiritual service. As such, Paul’s letters to them are filled with instruction and encouragement on how to deal with situations in the local church. These situations range from qualifications for leaders to dealing with false teachers to personal example and conduct. Even while imprisoned and facing death, the apostle continued to train his students.
A New Calling
He has saved us and called us to a holy life. 2 Timothy 1:9
Teenage gang leader Casey and his followers broke into homes and cars, robbed convenience stores, and fought other gangs. Eventually, Casey was arrested and sentenced. In prison, he became a “shot caller,” someone who handed out homemade knives during riots.
Sometime later, he was placed in solitary confinement. While daydreaming in his cell, Casey experienced a “movie” of sorts replaying key events of his life—and of Jesus, being led to and nailed to the cross and telling him, “I’m doing this for you.” Casey fell to the floor weeping and confessed his sins. Later, he shared his experience with a chaplain, who explained more about Jesus and gave him a Bible. “That was the start of my journey of faith,” Casey said. Eventually, he was released into the mainline prison population, where he was mistreated for his faith. But he felt at peace, because “[he] had found a new calling: telling other inmates about Jesus.”
In his letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul talks about the power of Christ to change lives: God calls us from lives of wrongdoing to follow and serve Jesus (2 Timothy 1:9). Watch the story of Bernice Lee and Tan Soo-Inn in the devotional video, “Jesus, the Spiritual Leader.” Like Casey, they experienced God’s grace, and now the Holy Spirit empowers them to be living witnesses of Christ’s love. Through the Holy Spirit’s enabling, we too have a new calling to share the good news (v. 8). By: Alyson Kieda
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Why We Lack Understanding
He commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen, till the Son of Man had risen from the dead. —Mark 9:9
As the disciples were commanded, you should also say nothing until the Son of Man has risen in you— until the life of the risen Christ so dominates you that you truly understand what He taught while here on earth. When you grow and develop the right condition inwardly, the words Jesus spoke become so clear that you are amazed you did not grasp them before. In fact, you were not able to understand them before because you had not yet developed the proper spiritual condition to deal with them.
Our Lord doesn’t hide these things from us, but we are not prepared to receive them until we are in the right condition in our spiritual life. Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). We must have a oneness with His risen life before we are prepared to bear any particular truth from Him. Do we really know anything about the indwelling of the risen life of Jesus? The evidence that we do is that His Word is becoming understandable to us. God cannot reveal anything to us if we don’t have His Spirit. And our own unyielding and headstrong opinions will effectively prevent God from revealing anything to us. But our insensible thinking will end immediately once His resurrection life has its way with us.
“…tell no one….” But so many people do tell what they saw on the Mount of Transfiguration— their mountaintop experience. They have seen a vision and they testify to it, but there is no connection between what they say and how they live. Their lives don’t add up because the Son of Man has not yet risen in them. How long will it be before His resurrection life is formed and evident in you and in me?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 7-9; Luke 9:18-36
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Last-Second Victories - #8672
They're usually some of the most exciting moments in sports - that touchdown, that field goal that wins the game with no time left on the clock. That game-winning basket; the buzzer-beater as the final buzzer sounds. The game-winning home run with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Whatever the sport, there's nothing like a sudden victory when victory seems out of reach, and the fans go ballistic.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Last-Second Victories."
It can really be nerve-wracking when you're behind and time's running out, but it's really thrilling when a hero pulls it out at the last minute. The longer I walk with this God of ours, the more I've come to appreciate Him as the God of the last-second victory, the God of the eleventh hour.
The Bible reveals many names by which God wants us to know Him. One that has meant so much to so many for so long is the name Jehovah Jireh. It means, "The Lord will provide." You may be facing a need or situation right now where that is literally your only hope - that the Lord will provide; it's got to be God or it ain't going to be. Maybe it's a job, a friend, the funds you need, the person you need, the answer you need, maybe the house, the healing, the breakthrough you need.
We have this rock-solid promise in Philippians 4:19 that "my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." See, God's supply has nothing to do with what's happening in the economy, or in the news, or at work, in what your resources can do. It's all about His unlimited "Jesus-account" in heaven, which transcends every limitation earth has.
To be honest, God often waits a while to meet that need, though, doesn't He? And that's when we tend to panic, to come up with some desperate way to meet the need on our own, to abandon our trust in God because, well, He's taking too long. Which takes us right out of the will of God and aborts what God was going to do. It's in Genesis 22, where we find our word for today from the Word of God, that God is known as Jehovah Jireh for the very first time. We can learn a lot from how He worked that day for Abraham.
Okay, Abraham, by faith, had obeyed God's direction to take the son God had once promised to him, climb Mt. Moriah with him, and sacrifice his son there; as God Himself would do one day when Jesus died on the cross. Believing that God will somehow provide something he can't imagine, Abraham promises his servants that both he and his son, Isaac, will return from the mountain. Well, how is that going to be?
Genesis 22:10 says his faith and obedience went so far that he "reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son." At that very last moment, God stopped him and showed Abraham a ram, stuck in a thicket, who would be sacrificed instead of his son. And the Bible says, "So Abraham called that place, 'The Lord Will Provide.'" Jehovah Jireh - making His move when there was no time left.
Now, about your need. God loves to come through for us when there is absolutely no place else that answer could come from, and there is no time left on the clock. It's 11:59. The buzzer is about to sound. God shows up with His provision at a time and in a way that will blow you away, and that will give Him all the glory, that will show the people around you the greatness of your God and take you to a whole new level of faith and worship.
God's last-minute victories are some of the most awesome moments of your life. So don't lose faith now. The greater the need, the later the hour, the more amazing God's work on your behalf is going to be. Hang in there until the end of the game, because that's when God really does His stuff!