Max Lucado Daily: A SIMPLE PHILOSOPHY - May 3, 2021
Ninety-two-year-old Johnny Barnes stands on the edge of a roundabout in Hamilton, Bermuda, and he waves at people as they drive past. He’s not asking for money or begging for food. He’s making people happy. “I love you!” he shouts. “I’ll love you forever!” And they love him. Bermudans call him Mr. Happy Man. They route their morning commute to see him. If Johnny’s not standing in his spot, people call the radio station to check on him.
Johnny’s philosophy is simple: “We human beings gotta learn how to love one another,” he says. “One of the greatest joys that can come to an individual is when you’re doing something and helping others.” Wouldn’t you love to meet a person like him? Or better still, wouldn’t you love to be like him? This is how happiness happens.
Genesis 8
Then God turned his attention to Noah and all the wild animals and farm animals with him on the ship. God caused the wind to blow and the floodwaters began to go down. The underground springs were shut off, the windows of Heaven closed and the rain quit. Inch by inch the water lowered. After 150 days the worst was over.
4-6 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ship landed on the Ararat mountain range. The water kept going down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains came into view. After forty days Noah opened the window that he had built into the ship.
7-9 He sent out a raven; it flew back and forth waiting for the floodwaters to dry up. Then he sent a dove to check on the flood conditions, but it couldn’t even find a place to perch—water still covered the Earth. Noah reached out and caught it, brought it back into the ship.
10-11 He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again. It came back in the evening with a freshly picked olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew that the flood was about finished.
12 He waited another seven days and sent the dove out a third time. This time it didn’t come back.
13-14 In the six-hundred-first year of Noah’s life, on the first day of the first month, the flood had dried up. Noah opened the hatch of the ship and saw dry ground. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the Earth was completely dry.
15-17 God spoke to Noah: “Leave the ship, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives. And take all the animals with you, the whole menagerie of birds and mammals and crawling creatures, all that swarming extravagance of life, so they can reproduce and flourish on the Earth.”
18-19 Noah disembarked with his sons and wife and his sons’ wives. Then all the animals, crawling creatures, birds—every creature on the face of the Earth—left the ship family by family.
20-21 Noah built an altar to God. He selected clean animals and birds from every species and offered them as burnt offerings on the altar. God smelled the sweet fragrance and thought to himself, “I’ll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I’ll never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done.
22 For as long as Earth lasts,
planting and harvest, cold and heat,
Summer and winter, day and night
will never stop.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, May 03, 2021
Eye for Eye
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’[a] 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
Love for Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[b] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Footnotes
Matthew 5:38 Exodus 21:24; Lev. 24:20; Deut. 19:21
Matthew 5:43 Lev. 19:18
INSIGHT
The “law of retribution” (“lex talionis”), which teaches an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21), is sometimes mistakenly understood to promote personal retaliation. But in its Old Testament legal context, the law isn’t intended to encourage personal retribution but instead to limit the human tendency to exact revenge. Rather than permit individual vigilante actions of retaliation, a court of law was to ensure that punishment should fit the crime. It gave the right for an offended person to take someone to court rather than seek revenge. Jesus doesn’t “correct” this Old Testament teaching—designed to preserve peace and justice—but calls those belonging to the kingdom of God to live by the principle of nonresistance or nonretaliation at the personal (not legal) level. This means that believers in Christ shouldn’t descend to the low standard of the perpetrator, returning evil for evil.
By Anne Cetas
Jesus’ Unpopular Ideas
Give to the one who asks you. Matthew 5:42
For fifteen years, Mike Burden held hate-filled meetings in the memorabilia shop he ran in his small town. But in 2012 when his wife began to question his involvement, his heart softened. He realized how wrong his racist views were and didn’t want to be that person any longer. The militant group retaliated by kicking his family out of the apartment they’d been renting from one of the members.
Where did he turn for help? Surprisingly, he went to a local black pastor with whom he’d clashed. The pastor and his church provided housing and groceries for Mike’s family for some time. When asked why he agreed to help, Pastor Kennedy explained, “Jesus Christ did some very unpopular things. When it’s time to help, you do what God wants you to do.” Later Mike spoke at Kennedy’s church and apologized to the black community for his part in spreading hatred.
Jesus taught some unpopular ideas in the Sermon on the Mount: “Give to the one who asks you . . . . Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:42, 44). That’s the upside-down way of thinking God calls us to follow. Though it looks like weakness, it’s actually acting out of God’s strength.
The One who teaches us is the One who gives the power to live out this upside-down life in whatever way He asks of us.
How are you living out Jesus’ words of giving to those who ask and loving your enemies? What would you like to change?
God, help me to love others as You love me. Show me how to do that today.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, May 03, 2021
Vital Intercession
…praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit… —Ephesians 6:18
As we continue on in our intercession for others, we may find that our obedience to God in interceding is going to cost those for whom we intercede more than we ever thought. The danger in this is that we begin to intercede in sympathy with those whom God was gradually lifting up to a totally different level in direct answer to our prayers. Whenever we step back from our close identification with God’s interest and concern for others and step into having emotional sympathy with them, the vital connection with God is gone. We have then put our sympathy and concern for them in the way, and this is a deliberate rebuke to God.
It is impossible for us to have living and vital intercession unless we are perfectly and completely sure of God. And the greatest destroyer of that confident relationship to God, so necessary for intercession, is our own personal sympathy and preconceived bias. Identification with God is the key to intercession, and whenever we stop being identified with Him it is because of our sympathy with others, not because of sin. It is not likely that sin will interfere with our intercessory relationship with God, but sympathy will. It is sympathy with ourselves or with others that makes us say, “I will not allow that thing to happen.” And instantly we are out of that vital connection with God.
Vital intercession leaves you with neither the time nor the inclination to pray for your own “sad and pitiful self.” You do not have to struggle to keep thoughts of yourself out, because they are not even there to be kept out of your thinking. You are completely and entirely identified with God’s interests and concerns in other lives. God gives us discernment in the lives of others to call us to intercession for them, never so that we may find fault with them.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We all have the trick of saying—If only I were not where I am!—If only I had not got the kind of people I have to live with! If our faith or our religion does not help us in the conditions we are in, we have either a further struggle to go through, or we had better abandon that faith and religion. The Shadow of an Agony, 1178 L
Bible in a Year: 1 Kings 14-15; Luke 22:21-46
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, May 03, 2021
How to Carry the People You Need to Carry - #8951
When our kids were growing up, we made a lot of memories hiking up mountains and through some really great forests. And then, of course, grandsons. They started making those same kinds of memories with their daddy. In fact, they were on one of those forest hikes with Dad, and the older brother had an idea. One that he had, no doubt, gotten from watching his father and what he had done with him. Little brother's legs started to tire out, and big brother said he wanted to carry little brother on his back. Well, there actually is now a photo showing big brother with little brother on his shoulders. Is he Super Boy? No. There's a third person in the picture. It's Daddy standing behind, supporting little brother on big brother's shoulders.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Carry the People You Need to Carry."
So oldest grandson learned something that day in the woods: "I can carry my brother - with help from above." So can you. It may be that at this time in your life you've been assigned by God to carry someone who can't make it on their own. Or maybe you've got more than one person to carry - even a bunch of people.
You're living our word for today from the Word of God. It's in Galatians 6:2. Your Lord's command is: "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." See, when you pick up the burdens of someone God leads you to help, you're living out the life of your Savior and you're making Him proud.
That doesn't mean the load doesn't get pretty heavy sometimes, honestly even overwhelming and nearly unbearable. There's only one way you can do this. The only way our grandson could have his little brother on his shoulders. You have to depend on help from above. And since carrying someone else is a divine mission, you can release the weight to a Heavenly Father who is so much stronger. In fact, in Psalm 55:22, He gives you this invitation: "Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall." That means casting the cares of those you're carrying on Him, too.
Long-haul carriers learn the strange secret of what I call compassionate distance; offering yourself lovingly and wholeheartedly to that hurting person you're with, but leaving them completely in God's hands then, and especially when you're not with them. You're not supposed to carry them all the time. And they'll never learn to walk on their own if you get a "messiah complex" and act as if you're their Savior. That's called codependency, not burden-bearing.
Just as God enlarges the capacity of a single kidney, you know, to do the work of two kidneys when one is removed, well God will enlarge your capacity to carry a load you never thought you could handle. If you go to Him consistently for His sustaining grace, you're going to feel that miracle.
Daily, you need to download His promise in Isaiah 46:3-4 - anchor verses of mine. "I have upheld you since you were conceived and have carried you since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you." WOW! That is a promise of heaven's support that has no loopholes, it's without interruption, it's without limit. After all is said and done, you can carry someone else because someone stronger is carrying you.
Or as a great old Gospel song says, "When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed ere the day is half done; when we've reached the end of our hoarded resources, our Father's full giving has only begun. His love has no limit, His grace has no measure, His power has no boundary known unto men; for out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth and giveth and giveth again."