Max Lucado Daily: CHOOSE FAITH
I was on the plane when a fellow coming down the aisle called my name. He handed me a message that he had scribbled on a napkin: Six years ago Lynne and I buried our 24-year-old daughter. To unplug our daughter from life support was very hard. Although it was painful, we were confident we were doing the right thing in laying her in the arms of a mighty God. He made our daughter better than new. He restored my Erin to his eternal presence. That is his best work! Our faith is getting us through this. Faith is a choice.
How does a dad bury a daughter and then believe, so deeply believe, that God meant him good and not harm? Simple – this grieving dad believes God’s promises. “Faith is a choice” he wrote. It is.
Ezekiel 6
Turn Israel into Wasteland
Then the Word of God came to me: “Son of man, now turn and face the mountains of Israel and preach against them: ‘O Mountains of Israel, listen to the Message of God, the Master. God, the Master, speaks to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and the valleys: I’m about to destroy your sacred god and goddess shrines. I’ll level your altars, bust up your sun-god pillars, and kill your people as they bow down to your no-god idols. I’ll stack the dead bodies of Israelites in front of your idols and then scatter your bones around your shrines. Every place where you’ve lived, the towns will be torn down and the pagan shrines demolished—altars busted up, idols smashed, all your custom-made sun-god pillars in ruins. Corpses everywhere you look! Then you’ll know that I am God.
8-10 “‘But I’ll let a few escape the killing as you are scattered through other lands and nations. In the foreign countries where they’re taken as prisoners of war, they’ll remember me. They’ll realize how devastated I was by their betrayals, by their voracious lust for gratifying themselves in their idolatries. They’ll be disgusted with their evil ways, disgusting to God in the way they’ve lived. They’ll know that I am God. They’ll know that my judgment against them was no empty threat.
11-14 “‘This is what God, the Master, says: Clap your hands, stamp your feet, yell out, “No, no, no!” because of all the evil obscenities rife in Israel. They’re going to be killed, dying of hunger, dying of disease—death everywhere you look, people dropping like flies, people far away dying, people nearby dying, and whoever’s left in the city starving to death. Why? Because I’m angry, furiously angry. They’ll realize that I am God when they see their people’s corpses strewn over and around all their ruined sex-and-religion shrines on the bare hills and in the lush fertility groves, in all the places where they indulged their sensual rites. I’ll bring my hand down hard on them, demolish the country wherever they live, turn it into wasteland from one end to the other, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they’ll know that I am God!’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Philippians 3:2–8
Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
Insight
To call someone a “dog” was a terrible insult for a Jewish person to make, yet Paul applies it to those who rely on religious rules to make themselves righteous (Philippians 3:2). The rule in view here is circumcision, a physical sign of God’s covenant with His people. God implemented this practice as part of His covenant with Abram (Abraham) to make a great nation of his offspring (Genesis 17:4–19). Circumcision was “the sign of the covenant” between God and His people (v. 11), but it was only an outward sign. Moses, Jeremiah, and Paul said that God’s people are to be “circumcised in heart” (see Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 9:25–26; Romans 2:28–29). This is what God meant when He told Abram to “keep my covenant” (Genesis 17:9). Paul wrote, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation” (Galatians 6:15) that we become by placing our faith in Christ.
False Confidence
I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. Philippians 3:8
A few years ago, my doctor gave me a stern talk about my health. I took his words to heart and began going to the gym and adjusting my diet. Over time, both my cholesterol and my weight went down, and my self-esteem went up. But then something not so good happened: I began noticing other people’s dietary choices and judging them. Isn’t it funny that often when we find a scoring system that grades us well, we use it to lift ourselves up and put others down. It seems to be an innate human tendency to cling to self-made standards in an attempt to justify ourselves—systems of self-justification and guilt-management.
Paul warned the Philippians about doing such things. Some were putting their confidence in religious performance or cultural conformity, and Paul told them he had more reason to boast of such things: “If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more” (3:4). Yet Paul knew his pedigree and performance was “garbage” compared to “knowing Christ” (v. 8). Only Jesus loves us as we are, rescues us, and gives us the power to become more like Him. No earning required; no scorekeeping possible.
Boasting is bad in itself, but a boast based on false confidence is tragic. The gospel calls us away from misplaced confidence and into communion with a Savior who loves us and gave Himself for us. By: Glenn Packiam
Reflect & Pray
What would it look like to trust in God’s grace today? How can you live and work from a place of rest and trust in His love for you?
Dear Jesus, thank You for Your love for me. I set aside the scorecards of self-justification. Those are misguided grounds of confidence.
To learn more about Jesus and His life, visit ChristianUniversity.org/NT111.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Winning into Freedom
If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. —John 8:36
If there is even a trace of individual self-satisfaction left in us, it always says, “I can’t surrender,” or “I can’t be free.” But the spiritual part of our being never says “I can’t”; it simply soaks up everything around it. Our spirit hungers for more and more. It is the way we are built. We are designed with a great capacity for God, but sin, our own individuality, and wrong thinking keep us from getting to Him. God delivers us from sin— we have to deliver ourselves from our individuality. This means offering our natural life to God and sacrificing it to Him, so He may transform it into spiritual life through our obedience.
God pays no attention to our natural individuality in the development of our spiritual life. His plan runs right through our natural life. We must see to it that we aid and assist God, and not stand against Him by saying, “I can’t do that.” God will not discipline us; we must discipline ourselves. God will not bring our “arguments…and every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5)— we have to do it. Don’t say, “Oh, Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts.” Don’t suffer from wandering thoughts. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individual natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life.
“If the Son makes you free….” Do not substitute Savior for Son in this passage. The Savior has set us free from sin, but this is the freedom that comes from being set free from myself by the Son. It is what Paul meant in Galatians 2:20 when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ….” His individuality had been broken and his spirit had been united with his Lord; not just merged into Him, but made one with Him. “…you shall be free indeed”— free to the very core of your being; free from the inside to the outside. We tend to rely on our own energy, instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Jesus.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself. The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest.
Disciples Indeed
Bible in a Year: Ezekiel 8-10; Hebrews 13
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Give the Medicine Some Time - #8833
You know, all those headache remedies promise fast relief, of course, but they all actually take time - even the best of them, whatever one that is. I mean, can you imagine someone with a headache and they take two aspirin, and immediately they say, "Nothing happened! My head still hurts. This stuff is bogus!" So they pop three more. In five minutes this person says, "I've still got a headache!" They pop several more.
Now, pretty soon this person is going to be in trouble, actually in the emergency room. You want to step in there and say, "Stop! You're going to hurt yourself if you keep this up!" And they say, "Yes, but I took the aspirin and nothing happened." Well, of course, you're going to come back and say, "Well, you have to wait for the result. You've got to give the medicine some time!"
Or imagine if you're taking penicillin. You take the dose that the doctor prescribed and you wait five minutes. You still have a fever, you still have a sore throat, you're still sick. So, you say, "Oh, nuts! I'm going to take the whole bottle!" No, no, no! This is not advisable! I'd hate to even think what would happen. You see, we've learned to wait for a healing effect before we use any more medicine. If we don't, we're going to cause an even greater problem. That's especially true when you're treating someone you really love.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Give the Medicine Some Time."
As we look into Mark 4, beginning in verse 26, our word for today from the Word of God, I want you to think about someone you are personally concerned about right now: a child, maybe a parent of yours, a brother or sister, or a close friend. And you've told them your concerns about them, and you've told them, and told them, and told them. And they still haven't changed. They're proceeding down a road that you're afraid will not lead to a headache, but to a heartache.
It could be that you're missing a vital step in the process of confronting people with the truth, and here's where we go to Mark 4:26. It's an agricultural passage really. "Jesus said, 'This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain - first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. And as soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.'"
Now, Jesus is saying here that the farmer has the job of scattering seed. Then he re-enters the process when the seed is bearing fruit. But in between, look what the farmer does. He backs off. He gives the seed time to germinate. Now, if he goes over, digs it up, keeps looking at it, tampers with it, "Hey, I wonder if this thing's growing? I don't see anything happening," he's going to kill the growth. Jesus is telling us, "Give truth time to work, and quit panicking because it doesn't seem to be growing right away." It's like that medicine. Give the people you love a dose of God's truth, and then settle back and let it take effect. And in the meantime, you pray like crazy for that seed to germinate.
When we're concerned about someone we love, we tend to push them too much. We actually may delay their ever coming to grips with the truth. We push them right away. They don't seem to be listening, so we say it too loud, too long, and too often. The more doses we try to force on them, we make them spit out the medicine that might change their life.
Truth requires time to germinate. It looks like nothing's happening, but don't try to force another dose. Don't interfere with the growth of the seed. They need a little space. Faith in the Lord sometimes means shutting up and letting God use the truth that you already spoke in love. Have patience while He works.
Don't try to make that loved one take a whole bottle of spiritual medicine all at once. Lovingly give a dose of truth, and then back off and let God grow it. Give the medicine some time.
From my daily reading of the bible, Our Daily Bread Devotionals, My Utmost for His Highest and Ron Hutchcraft "A Word with You" and occasionally others.