Max Lucado Daily: PRAY SPECIFIC PRAYERS
A father was teaching his three-year-old daughter the Lord’s Prayer. She would repeat the lines after him. Finally she decided to go solo. She carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer. “Lead us not into temptation,” she prayed, “but deliver us from e-mail.” (…not a bad prayer).
God calls us to pray about everything! We tell God exactly what we want. We pray the particulars. When the wedding ran low on wine, Mary wasn’t content to say, “Help us, Jesus.” She was specific: “They have no more wine” (John 2:3). A specific prayer is a serious prayer. If I say to you, “Do you mind if I come by your house sometime?” you may not take me seriously. But if I say, “Can I come over this Friday night? I really need your advice.” Then you know my petition is sincere. When we offer specific requests, God knows the same!
Isaiah 26
At that time, this song
will be sung in the country of Judah:
We have a strong city, Salvation City,
built and fortified with salvation.
Throw wide the gates
so good and true people can enter.
People with their minds set on you,
you keep completely whole,
Steady on their feet,
because they keep at it and don’t quit.
Depend on God and keep at it
because in the Lord God you have a sure thing.
Those who lived high and mighty
he knocked off their high horse.
He used the city built on the hill
as fill for the marshes.
All the exploited and outcast peoples
build their lives on the reclaimed land.
7-10 The path of right-living people is level.
The Leveler evens the road for the right-living.
We’re in no hurry, God. We’re content to linger
in the path sign-posted with your decisions.
Who you are and what you’ve done
are all we’ll ever want.
Through the night my soul longs for you.
Deep from within me my spirit reaches out to you.
When your decisions are on public display,
everyone learns how to live right.
If the wicked are shown grace,
they don’t seem to get it.
In the land of right living, they persist in wrong living,
blind to the splendor of God.
11-15 You hold your hand up high, God,
but they don’t see it.
Open their eyes to what you do,
to see your zealous love for your people.
Shame them. Light a fire under them.
Get the attention of these enemies of yours.
God, order a peaceful and whole life for us
because everything we’ve done, you’ve done for us.
O God, our God, we’ve had other masters rule us,
but you’re the only Master we’ve ever known.
The dead don’t talk,
ghosts don’t walk,
Because you’ve said, “Enough—that’s all for you,”
and wiped them off the books.
But the living you make larger than life.
The more life you give, the more glory you display,
and stretch the borders to accommodate more living!
16-18 O God, they begged you for help when they were in trouble,
when your discipline was so heavy
they could barely whisper a prayer.
Like a woman having a baby,
writhing in distress, screaming her pain
as the baby is being born,
That’s how we were because of you, O God.
We were pregnant full-term.
We writhed in labor but bore no baby.
We gave birth to wind.
Nothing came of our labor.
We produced nothing living.
We couldn’t save the world.
19 But friends, your dead will live,
your corpses will get to their feet.
All you dead and buried,
wake up! Sing!
Your dew is morning dew
catching the first rays of sun,
The earth bursting with life,
giving birth to the dead.
20-21 Come, my people, go home
and shut yourselves in.
Go into seclusion for a while
until the punishing wrath is past,
Because God is sure to come from his place
to punish the wrong of the people on earth.
Earth itself will point out the bloodstains;
it will show where the murdered have been hidden away.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, April 24, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Romans 11:33–36
Doxology
33 Oh, the depth of the richesy of the wisdom andi knowledge of God!z
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!a
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”j b
35 “Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”k c
36 For from him and through him and for him are all things.d
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Insight
Paul wasn’t the first author in the Bible to speak of God’s inscrutability—that He’s beyond comprehension (Romans 11:33–36). Two thousand years earlier, Job (believed to have lived at about the time of Abraham) asked, “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?” (Job 11:7). Isaiah also acknowledged that God is beyond human understanding (Isaiah 55:8–9). But God wanted us to know Him and said, “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord” (Jeremiah 24:7). Years later, John the apostle told us how we know Him: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18). To know Jesus is to know God. Jesus said, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (8:19; see also 17:3).
Divinely Aligned
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Romans 11:33
I was deeply troubled and woke in the night to pace the floor and pray. Frankly, my attitude was not one of prayerful submission to God, but one of questioning and anger. Finding no release, I sat and stared out a large window at the night sky. I was unexpectedly drawn to focus on Orion’s Belt—those three perfectly arranged stars often visible on clear nights. I knew just enough about astronomy to understand that those three stars were hundreds of light years apart.
I realized the closer I could be to those stars, the less they would appear to be aligned. Yet from my distant perspective, they looked carefully configured in the heavens. At that moment, I realized I was too close to my life to see what God sees. In His big picture, everything is in perfect alignment.
The apostle Paul, as he completes a summary of the ultimate purposes of God, breaks into a hymn of praise (Romans 11:33–36). His words lift our gaze to our sovereign God, whose ways are beyond our limited ability to understand or trace (v. 33). Yet the One who holds all things together in the heavens and on earth is intimately and lovingly involved with every detail of our lives (Matthew 6:25–34; Colossians 1:16).
Even when things seem confusing, God’s divine plans are unfolding for our good and for God’s honor and glory. By: Evan Morgan
Reflect & Pray
What questions do you long for God to answer? How can you find rest and release through faith that His perspective of our lives is in perfect alignment with His ultimate purposes?
Dear God, remind me that Your purposes and plans for my life are beyond my understanding, and help me rest in You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, April 24, 2020
The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success
Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you… —Luke 10:20
Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live. Never seek after anything other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go “outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:13). In Luke 10:20, Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice. We have a commercialized view— we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right. Yet our work only begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God’s testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.
Unless the worker lives a life that “is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an “if,” never with the forceful or dogmatic statement— “You must.” Discipleship carries with it an option.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony
Bible in a Year: 2 Samuel 19-20; Luke 18:1-23
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, April 24, 2020
One Man's Blood - #8685
I saw this news story about a highly successful New York surgeon who volunteers a month every year to donate his services in needy countries. This particular summer, he'd had set up a tent clinic in the jungles of Costa Rica. In the middle of operating on a five-year-old boy, it became apparent this boy desperately needed blood. Problem: only 2% of the human race has that boy's blood type. Suddenly the doctor excused himself, only to return a few minutes later with the needed blood. It turns out that doctor is one of the 2% with that type! There, in the middle of that jungle, that boy's life could only be saved by one man's blood. Just like me.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One Man's Blood."
That's a fact. This boy talking with you right now could only be saved by one man's blood. But then, that's your life, too.
Almost every religion on this planet recognizes that we're in trouble with the One who put us here, because we haven't lived up to whatever He's expected of us. And something needs to be done to pay for what we've done against Him.
Enter religion, with a list of things we need to do to get right with our Creator. Ceremonies. Sacrifices. Rituals. Good deeds to make up for our bad deeds. If you're like most of the human race, you're probably counting on your religion and the good things you do to have a happy ending with God when this life is over.
But we'd better check with God first on how to have our sin atoned for and how to get to his heaven. And here's what He says in Hebrews 9:22, "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness." Wow! No blood, no forgiveness. No forgiveness, I carry a lifetime of my sin right into my appointment with God after my last heartbeat. And there's no way I'm getting into His heaven with my sin. No matter what religion I've practiced. No matter how many good things I've done.
Because the Bible says, "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). That's spiritual death as in eternal separation from God. And there's only one way a death penalty can be paid. There's no good things you can do to pay a death penalty. No, someone has to die.
And someone did! Here's the greatest, most important news you will ever hear in your life. It's in 1 John 1:7, our word for today from the Word of God: "The blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin." This is what's so amazing: I did the sinning, Jesus did the dying to pay for it.
So my life could only be saved by the blood of one man. Your life can only be saved by the blood of one man--Jesus, God's sinless Son, who loved you too much to lose you. Who shed His blood on a cross to pay the price for you to have every sin of your life erased. To make it possible for you to have a personal relationship with the God of the galaxies, and for you to go to heaven when you take your last breath.
So, look, you have no more important decision to make in your life than whether or not you will pin all your hopes on Jesus or whether you will walk away from His cross unforgiven. I ask you, please, don't risk one more day without Jesus. We just don't know how much time we have to get this settled. He's alive. He walked out of His grave. He's waiting for you to tell Him you're pinning all your hopes on Him.
You ready to get this settled and know that you are right with God for now - forever? Listen, I would urge you to get to our website today and see there how to make sure you belong to Him. That site is ANewStory.com. Nothing for you to join, nothing for you to go to. It is just about you and Jesus.
This is the only chance you can be sure of. So, please, don't miss Him.