Max Lucado Daily: SALVATION IS FOUND IN CHRIST ALONE
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That phrase believes in him doesn’t digest well in our day of self-sufficient spiritual food. Believe in yourself is the common menu selection of our day. Try harder. Work longer. Dig deeper. Self-reliance is our goal.
In him smacks of exclusion. Salvation comes in many forms, right? No…salvation is found, not in self or in them, but in him! Romans 4:5 says, “To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.” Our spiritual legs have no strength. Our morality has no muscle. Our good deeds cannot carry us across the finish line…but Christ can!
Jeremiah 9
I wish my head were a well of water
and my eyes fountains of tears
So I could weep day and night
for casualties among my dear, dear people.
At times I wish I had a wilderness hut,
a backwoods cabin,
Where I could get away from my people
and never see them again.
They’re a faithless, feckless bunch,
a congregation of degenerates.
3-6 “Their tongues shoot out lies
like a bow shoots arrows—
A mighty army of liars,
the sworn enemies of truth.
They advance from one evil to the next,
ignorant of me.”
God’s Decree.
“Be wary of even longtime neighbors.
Don’t even trust your grandmother!
Brother schemes against brother,
like old cheating Jacob.
Friend against friend
spreads malicious gossip.
Neighbors gyp neighbors,
never telling the truth.
They’ve trained their tongues to tell lies,
and now they can’t tell the truth.
They pile wrong upon wrong, stack lie upon lie,
and refuse to know me.”
God’s Decree.
7-9 Therefore, God-of-the-Angel-Armies says:
“Watch this! I’ll melt them down
and see what they’re made of.
What else can I do
with a people this wicked?
Their tongues are poison arrows!
Deadly lies stream from their mouths.
Neighbor greets neighbor with a smile,
‘Good morning! How’re things?’
while scheming to do away with him.
Do you think I’m going to stand around and do nothing?”
God’s Decree.
“Don’t you think I’ll take serious measures
against a people like this?
10-11 “I’m lamenting the loss of the mountain pastures.
I’m chanting dirges for the old grazing grounds.
They’ve become deserted wastelands too dangerous for travelers.
No sounds of sheep bleating or cattle mooing.
Birds and wild animals, all gone.
Nothing stirring, no sounds of life.
I’m going to make Jerusalem a pile of rubble,
fit for nothing but stray cats and dogs.
I’m going to reduce Judah’s towns to piles of ruins
where no one lives!”
12 I asked, “Is there anyone around bright enough to tell us what’s going on here? Anyone who has the inside story from God and can let us in on it?
“Why is the country wasted?
“Why no travelers in this desert?”
13-15 God’s answer: “Because they abandoned my plain teaching. They wouldn’t listen to anything I said, refused to live the way I told them to. Instead they lived any way they wanted and took up with the Baal gods, who they thought would give them what they wanted—following the example of their parents.” And this is the consequence. God-of-the-Angel-Armies says so:
“I’ll feed them with pig slop.
“I’ll give them poison to drink.
16 “Then I’ll scatter them far and wide among godless peoples that neither they nor their parents have ever heard of, and I’ll send Death in pursuit until there’s nothing left of them.”
A Life That Is All Outside but No Inside
17-19 A Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies:
“Look over the trouble we’re in and call for help.
Send for some singers who can help us mourn our loss.
Tell them to hurry—
to help us express our loss and lament,
Help us get our tears flowing,
make tearful music of our crying.
Listen to it!
Listen to that torrent of tears out of Zion:
‘We’re a ruined people,
we’re a shamed people!
We’ve been driven from our homes
and must leave our land!’”
20-21 Mourning women! Oh, listen to God’s Message!
Open your ears. Take in what he says.
Teach your daughters songs for the dead
and your friends the songs of heartbreak.
Death has climbed in through the window,
broken into our bedrooms.
Children on the playgrounds drop dead,
and young men and women collapse at their games.
22 Speak up! “God’s Message:
“‘Dead bodies everywhere, scattered at random
like sheep and goat dung in the fields,
Like wheat cut down by reapers
and left to rot where it falls.’”
23-24 God’s Message:
“Don’t let the wise brag of their wisdom.
Don’t let heroes brag of their exploits.
Don’t let the rich brag of their riches.
If you brag, brag of this and this only:
That you understand and know me.
I’m God, and I act in loyal love.
I do what’s right and set things right and fair,
and delight in those who do the same things.
These are my trademarks.”
God’s Decree.
25-26 “Stay alert! It won’t be long now”—God’s Decree!—“when I will personally deal with everyone whose life is all outside but no inside: Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab. All these nations are big on performance religion—including Israel, who is no better.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
1 Corinthians 3:1–9
The Church and Its Leaders
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.
Insight
Greek thinkers often saw the soul or spirit as pure and eternal in contrast to the weaknesses and passions of the body, and therefore emphasized controlling the body through the mind. Followers of Aristotle, for example, emphasized moderating bodily desires and feelings, while Stoics tried to eliminate negative emotional reactions to life entirely.
Paul also often contrasted life lived “merely” in the body (1 Corinthians 3:3–4) with a spiritual life (see for example Romans 8:4–9). But for Paul, the mind or human spirit was just as susceptible as the body to being governed by unhealthy desires. Paul emphasized instead the contrast between a life empowered by God’s Spirit and a life lived as “mere human beings” (1 Corinthians 3:4). Paul taught that only living in continual dependence on the Spirit could lift human beings from being slaves to their desires to living out their true purpose.
Working with God
We are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. 1 Corinthians 3:9
During his 1962 visit to Mexico, Bill Ashe helped fix windmill hand pumps at an orphanage. Fifteen years later, inspired by a deep desire to serve God by helping provide clean water to villages in need, Bill founded a nonprofit organization. He said, “God awoke me to ‘make the most of the time’ by finding others with a desire to bring safe drinking water to the rural poor.” Later, having learned about the global need for safe water through the requests of thousands of pastors and evangelists from more than 100 countries, Bill invited others to join the ministry’s efforts.
God welcomes us to team up to serve with Him and others in various ways. When the people of Corinth argued over which teachers they preferred, the apostle Paul affirmed his role as a servant of Jesus and a teammate of Apollos, fully dependent on God for spiritual growth (1 Corinthians 3:1–7). He reminds us that all work has God-given value (v. 8). Acknowledging the privilege of working with others while serving Him, Paul encourages us to build each other up as He transforms us in love (v. 9).
Though our mighty Father doesn’t need our help to accomplish His great works, He equips us and invites us to partner with Him. By: Xochitl Dixon
Reflect & Pray
How does leaving the results to God give you the courage to risk doing what seems impossible? What hard thing has He invited you to do with His help?
Father, thank You for providing all I need as You continue to accomplish great things in me.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Christ-Awareness
…and I will give you rest. —Matthew 11:28
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Civilization is based on principles which imply that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6). The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 565 L
Bible in a Year: Psalms 105-106; 1 Corinthians 3
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Loose Lips - #8769
Of course, I'm too young to remember World War II, right? But there was this restaurant back in New Jersey I could go to. It was a theme restaurant to get a little of the feel. Yeah, it actually was designed to create a feeling of WWII. It even had the tail of a plane sticking out of its roof! The walls were covered with WWII newspapers, posters, and buttons. There was this one poster that always stuck in my mind. There is this desperate GI in the ocean, just about to go under for the last time. And four words that don't mean a lot to us now but meant life-or-death for our troops back then, "Loose lips sink ships." Translation? When American GIs were in port, preparing to board a ship for their next mission, they were constantly reminded to talk to no one about where they were headed. Why? There were enemy spies in every port, trying to find out those destinations. If they did, the information was given to the enemy who used it to target that American ship for sinking. If a soldier talked too much, it could literally cost him his life and the lives of his comrades, because loose lips sink ships.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Loose Lips."
The war's over but loose lips still sink ships. Well, actually they sink relationships, and reputations, they sink people's trust, people's sense of worth, closeness.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Proverbs 18:21 - some sobering words, "The tongue has the power of life and death." Things we say can literally bring emotional life to people or emotional death. You've experienced both, haven't you? People's words that made you feel more alive; people's words that made you feel like you were dying inside. That's the kind of power your words have. And if we let some wrong words spill out, like a GI carelessly spilling his destination, we can do some terrible...sometimes irreparable damage.
Proverbs, this great book of down-home, real-life wisdom from God, identifies some of the kinds of loose lips that sink ships. Listen with an open heart for a moment would you? It might be that one of these has been coming out of your mouth lately, and God wants to stop it before it does any more damage.
Here's one: "A gossip separates close friends" (Proverbs 16:28). A relationship that was a good one gets tragically poisoned and alienated by a gossiping tongue - talking about a person behind their back, spreading bad things about someone. It's cheap, it's careless, it's malicious maybe unintentionally, but it's still malicious. It sinks closeness. It sinks trust between people. I need to know that my name is safe when I'm out of the room if you're in that room.
Proverbs 17:9 says, "He who covers an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." There's that separation thing again. You've got two choices when someone hurts you or offends you. Overlook it and move on. That promotes love. Or tell someone else about what happened, which promotes alienation and distance between people.
Reckless words - they also do a lot of damage. The Bible says, "Reckless words pierce like a sword" (Proverbs 12:18). The unthinking words that spill out on someone when we're angry or we're not getting our way or we just feel hurt. The thrust of the verbal sword takes only an instant. But as all of us know, the wound it leaves could last for years.
So, have your lips been too loose lately? It's time for the prayer of David in Psalm 141:3, "Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips." Maybe it's time to ask God's forgiveness for those damaging words. Maybe you need to ask for forgiveness from someone you've hurt with your words and then regularly go to God for the self-control to keep those damaging words to yourself.
Remember, your loose lips can literally sink someone that God loves very much.