Max Lucado Daily: THE PRESCRIPTION FOR JUSTICE
The Bible says “vengeance is God’s; He will repay” (Romans 12:19). What a great reminder. Forgiveness doesn’t diminish justice, it just entrusts it to God. We tend to give too much or too little, but the God of justice has the precise prescription. God can discipline your abusive boss. He can soften your angry parent. He can bring your ex to his knees or her senses.
Forgiveness doesn’t diminish justice, it just entrusts it to God. Unlike us, God never gives up on a person. Never. Long after we’ve moved on, God is still there, probing the conscience, stirring conviction, always orchestrating redemption. Fix your enemies? That’s God’s job.
When it comes to forgiveness, all of us are beginners. No one owns a secret formula. Remember this: as long as you’re trying to forgive, you are forgiving. Just stay the course, and you’ll find a way to be strong even when you’ve been hurt. You’ll get through this.
Romans 5
By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
3-5 There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
6-8 Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
9-11 Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!
12-14 You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
15-17 Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
18-19 Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
2 Samuel 22:1–7, 17–20
David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. 2 He said:
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
3 my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield[a] and the horn[b] of my salvation.
He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—
from violent people you save me.
4 “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and have been saved from my enemies.
5 The waves of death swirled about me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
6 The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
7 “In my distress I called to the Lord;
I called out to my God.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came to his ears.
Footnotes:
2 Samuel 22:3 Or sovereign
2 Samuel 22:3 Horn here symbolizes strength.
“He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
18 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
19 They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the Lord was my support.
20 He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.
Insight
Second Samuel 22 is nearly identical to Psalm 18. This psalm celebrates David’s deliverance and military victories, giving God all the credit, and may also have been used more generally to celebrate other military victories. Psalm 18 is one of a group of psalms often labeled “royal psalms” (others include Psalms 2; 20; 21; 45; 72; 89; 101; 110; 132), each of which draws a connection between an earthly king’s reign and God’s own reign over the universe.
Open Arms
In my distress I called to the Lord . . . . My cry came to his ears. 2 Samuel 22:7
Saydee and his family have an “open arms and open home” philosophy. People are always welcome in their home, “especially those who are in distress,” he says. That’s the kind of household he had growing up in Liberia with his nine siblings. Their parents always welcomed others into their family. He says, “We grew up as a community. We loved one another. Everybody was responsible for everybody. My dad taught us to love each other, care for each other, protect each other.”
When King David was in need, he found this type of loving care in God. Second Samuel 22 (and Psalm 18) records his song of praise to God for the ways He had been a refuge for him throughout his life. He recalled, “In my distress I called to the Lord; I called out to my God. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came to his ears” (2 Samuel 22:7). God had delivered him from his enemies, including King Saul, many times. He praised God for being his fortress and deliverer in whom he took refuge (vv. 2–3).
While our distresses may be small in comparison to David’s, God welcomes us to run to Him to find the shelter we long for. His arms are always open. Therefore we “sing the praises of [His] name” (v. 50). By: Anne Cetas
Reflect & Pray
When has God been your refuge? How can you help someone else run to Him?
God, I’m grateful You’ve always been and will always be my secure place to land.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
The Habit of Having No Habits
If these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful… —2 Peter 1:8
When we first begin to form a habit, we are fully aware of it. There are times when we are aware of becoming virtuous and godly, but this awareness should only be a stage we quickly pass through as we grow spiritually. If we stop at this stage, we will develop a sense of spiritual pride. The right thing to do with godly habits is to immerse them in the life of the Lord until they become such a spontaneous expression of our lives that we are no longer aware of them. Our spiritual life continually causes us to focus our attention inwardly for the determined purpose of self-examination, because each of us has some qualities we have not yet added to our lives.
Your god may be your little Christian habit— the habit of prayer or Bible reading at certain times of your day. Watch how your Father will upset your schedule if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes. We say, “I can’t do that right now; this is my time alone with God.” No, this is your time alone with your habit. There is a quality that is still lacking in you. Identify your shortcoming and then look for opportunities to work into your life that missing quality.
Love means that there are no visible habits— that your habits are so immersed in the Lord that you practice them without realizing it. If you are consciously aware of your own holiness, you place limitations on yourself from doing certain things— things God is not restricting you from at all. This means there is a missing quality that needs to be added to your life. The only supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and He was at home with God anywhere. Is there someplace where you are not at home with God? Then allow God to work through whatever that particular circumstance may be until you increase in Him, adding His qualities. Your life will then become the simple life of a child.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” My Utmost for His Highest, April 23, 773 L
Bible in a Year: 2 Kings 15-16; John 3:1-18
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Someone Else's Ticket - #8697
Okay, you book your airline flights in advance to get the best possible fare. The only problem is occasionally something will change and I can't use that ticket. They'll let me use it later, but sometimes I wish I could give it to one of our staff or a family member to use toward a trip they're taking. No can do. No, see, that ticket has my name on it. The person using it has to prove with photo I. D. that they are me because that's the rules. Only I can go on my ticket.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Someone Else's Ticket."
You just can't fly on someone else's ticket. That's a hard and fast rule with the airlines, and with God. There's no way you can get into heaven on someone else's ticket. You have to make your own arrangements with God on His terms.
Romans 14:12, our word for today from the Word of God, "Each of us will give an account of himself to God." You won't be standing before God with your Christian husband or your Christian wife, your Christian parents, your son or daughter who's in Christian work, or your Christian friends, the folks from church. No, on Judgment Day it will be you and God, and you won't be allowed in on someone else's ticket.
Jesus clearly described the only way to have a ticket to heaven. In John 3:3, He said, "No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." "Born again" is not some cult or something a TV evangelist thought up. It's the experience Jesus said makes it possible for us to go to heaven when we die. John 1:12 describes how this new beginning happens: "To all who received Him (that's Jesus), to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." That's what happens when you're reborn. At that moment you become a part of God's family. And only His family is in heaven.
That's what happens when you "receive" Jesus - when you "believe" in Him. When the Bible talks about that it means you're welcoming Jesus into your life as your only hope of having your sins forgiven and of going to heaven. It's the total trust that a drowning person would have in the lifeguard who comes to save them. And if you've ever given yourself to Jesus in that way, you know you have. If you don't know you have, you probably haven't.
But thank God, He's given you another opportunity, this opportunity to take Jesus for yourself, to make Him not just the Savior, but your personal Savior. You may have people all around you who belong to Jesus, and maybe you've been hoping that your relationship with them, even the fact that they think you belong to Jesus, will somehow get you into heaven. You can't get in on their ticket. But you can get one of your own today. Jesus paid your way with His life. It's when He died on the cross for every wrong thing you've ever done.
So if you want to finally begin your own personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you need to tell Him that right where you are today. "Jesus, I was created by you and for you, but I've lived for me. I've run the life that you were supposed to run, and I know there's a spiritual death penalty for that. But I believe you absorbed that death penalty of mine on the cross when you died for me and that you are alive today because you walked out of your grave. And so, today I am willing to turn from the running of my own life and my sinful choices, and hold onto you like you are my only hope. Jesus, beginning right here and right now, I'm yours." You know what? In that holy moment your sins are forgiven and your ticket to heaven is secured.
Our website's all about how to get started with Him. It's called ANewStory.com. It might be where your new story begins. I hope you'll go there. I want you to know for sure today you belong to Jesus.
It's so good to know you've got your eternity settled, that if you died today you know you would go to heaven. But remember, only Jesus can take you there.