Max Lucado Daily: FORGIVING ONE ANOTHER - June 24, 2021
The question is not “Did you get hurt?” The question is “Are you going to let the hurt harden you?” Wouldn’t you prefer to be “tenderhearted, forgiving one another”? Try these steps:
Decide what you need to forgive. Be specific. Narrow it down to the identifiable offense.
Ask yourself why it hurts. Why does this offense sting? What about it leaves you wounded?
Take it to Jesus. Talk to Jesus about the offense until the anger subsides. And when it returns, talk to Jesus again.
Tell your offender. If it feels safe, simply explain the offense and the way it makes you feel.
Pray for your offender. You cannot force reconciliation, but you can offer intercession.
Conduct a funeral. Bury the offense in the cemetery known as “Moving on with Life.”
This is how happiness happens.
Job 24
An Illusion of Security
“But if Judgment Day isn’t hidden from the Almighty,
why are we kept in the dark?
There are people out there getting by with murder—
stealing and lying and cheating.
They rip off the poor
and exploit the unfortunate,
Push the helpless into the ditch,
bully the weak so that they fear for their lives.
The poor, like stray dogs and cats,
scavenge for food in back alleys.
They sort through the garbage of the rich,
eke out survival on handouts.
Homeless, they shiver through cold nights on the street;
they’ve no place to lay their heads.
Exposed to the weather, wet and frozen,
they huddle in makeshift shelters.
Nursing mothers have their babies snatched from them;
the infants of the poor are kidnapped and sold.
They go about patched and threadbare;
even the hard workers go hungry.
No matter how backbreaking their labor,
they can never make ends meet.
People are dying right and left, groaning in torment.
The wretched cry out for help
and God does nothing, acts like nothing’s wrong!
13-17 “Then there are those who avoid light at all costs,
who scorn the light-filled path.
When the sun goes down, the murderer gets up—
kills the poor and robs the defenseless.
Sexual predators can’t wait for nightfall,
thinking, ‘No one can see us now.’
Burglars do their work at night,
but keep well out of sight through the day.
They want nothing to do with light.
Deep darkness is morning for that bunch;
they make the terrors of darkness their companions in crime.
18-25 “They are scraps of wood floating on the water—
useless, cursed junk, good for nothing.
As surely as snow melts under the hot, summer sun,
sinners disappear in the grave.
The womb has forgotten them, worms have relished them—
nothing that is evil lasts.
Unscrupulous,
they prey on those less fortunate.
However much they strut and flex their muscles,
there’s nothing to them. They’re hollow.
They may have an illusion of security,
but God has his eye on them.
They may get their brief successes,
but then it’s over, nothing to show for it.
Like yesterday’s newspaper,
they’re used to wrap up the garbage.
You’re free to try to prove me a liar,
but you won’t be able to do it.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Read: 2 Corinthians 12:5–10
I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6 Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, 7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
INSIGHT
Responding to false teachers who said he wasn’t a genuine apostle because he didn’t have ecstatic spiritual experiences, Paul deliberately boasted about the many visions he had (2 Corinthians 12:1–4; see Acts 9:1–9; 16:6–10). Paul considered such boasting utterly distasteful (2 Corinthians 12:1, 6) but necessary to appropriately respond to his critics’ misguided spirituality and pride. Paul preferred to boast about his weaknesses (v. 5), speaking of “a thorn in [his] flesh” (v. 7). The word thorn was used for anything pointed such as a stake, the sharp end of a fishhook, or a splinter. The implication is that Paul endured physical pain. Some think he may have had an eye affliction (Galatians 4:14–15; 6:11), a weakness resulting from his being blinded on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:9), or a chronic ailment like migraine headaches or epilepsy. While we don’t know what the thorn was, its purpose was to keep Paul humble (2 Corinthians 12:7).
By Amy Boucher Pye
Sharing Your Faith
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9
When author and evangelist Becky Pippert lived in Ireland, she longed to share the good news of Jesus with Heather, who’d done her nails for two years. But Heather hadn’t seemed remotely interested. Feeling unable to start a conversation, Becky prayed before her appointment.
While Heather worked on her nails, Becky flipped through an old magazine and paused at a picture of one of the models. When Heather asked why she was so riveted, Becky told her the photograph was of a close friend who’d years before been a Vogue cover model. Becky shared some of her friend’s story of coming to faith in God, which Heather listened to with rapt attention.
Becky left for a trip, and later when she returned to Ireland, she learned that Heather had moved to a new location. Becky reflected, “I had asked God to provide an opportunity to share the gospel, and He did!”
Becky looked to God for help in her weakness, inspired by the apostle Paul. When Paul was weak and pleaded with God to remove the thorn in his flesh, the Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul had learned to rely on God in all things—the big and the small.
When we depend on God to help us love those around us, we too will find opportunities to share our faith authentically.
When has God helped you to share your faith with someone? How could you pray for someone today whom you wish would come to know God?
Loving Jesus, You work through my weaknesses to bring glory to Your Father. Move in my life today, that I might share Your good news of grace.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Reconciling Yourself to the Fact of Sin
This is your hour, and the power of darkness. —Luke 22:53
Not being reconciled to the fact of sin— not recognizing it and refusing to deal with it— produces all the disasters in life. You may talk about the lofty virtues of human nature, but there is something in human nature that will mockingly laugh in the face of every principle you have. If you refuse to agree with the fact that there is wickedness and selfishness, something downright hateful and wrong, in human beings, when it attacks your life, instead of reconciling yourself to it, you will compromise with it and say that it is of no use to battle against it. Have you taken this “hour, and the power of darkness” into account, or do you have a view of yourself which includes no recognition of sin whatsoever? In your human relationships and friendships, have you reconciled yourself to the fact of sin? If not, just around the next corner you will find yourself trapped and you will compromise with it. But if you will reconcile yourself to the fact of sin, you will realize the danger immediately and say, “Yes, I see what this sin would mean.” The recognition of sin does not destroy the basis of friendship— it simply establishes a mutual respect for the fact that the basis of sinful life is disastrous. Always beware of any assessment of life which does not recognize the fact that there is sin.
Jesus Christ never trusted human nature, yet He was never cynical nor suspicious, because He had absolute trust in what He could do for human nature. The pure man or woman is the one who is shielded from harm, not the innocent person. The so-called innocent man or woman is never safe. Men and women have no business trying to be innocent; God demands that they be pure and virtuous. Innocence is the characteristic of a child. Any person is deserving of blame if he is unwilling to reconcile himself to the fact of sin.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are in danger of being stern where God is tender, and of being tender where God is stern. The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 673 L
Bible in a Year: Job 1-2; Acts 7:22-43
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Everything You Need - #8989
Nobody thought Gladys Aylward was good enough. During the 1920s, she had heard about the great spiritual need of China, and she sensed God's strong call on her life to go there. But she was only a chambermaid. When she applied to China Inland Mission in London, they rejected her because she wasn't educated enough and she was probably too old to learn the language they said. But Gladys Aylward made it to China and she made such a difference there that a number of books have been written about her life. Hollywood even based a movie on her life, "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" got an Academy Award winning actress in it too.
In her later years, as she told her story to audiences in many places, they were surprised to hear the commanding speech coming from this very tiny lady who had to stand on a box to even be seen over the pulpit. She said to them: "As I was growing up, I had two great sorrows. First, as my friends kept getting taller, I stopped growing. Secondly, as my friends grew beautiful blonde curly hair, mine was straight black. Then I went to China. And as I looked over the people to whom Jehovah God had sent me, I said to myself, 'These people have hair as black and straight as mine...and they stopped growing when I did.' I bowed my head and I said, 'Lord God, you know what you are doing!'" Yes, He does.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Everything You Need."
Much to her surprise, and much to everyone's surprise, little Gladys Aylward had been equipped with God for everything she needed to carry out His plan for her life. And so have you. I know that because He says so in Ephesians 2:10, our word for today from the Word of God: "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
That's the message I've given to each of my grandchildren on the day they were born. It's the message I hope will grip your heart and help shape the rest of your life. God has created you for a destiny, and whether or not anyone else can see it, whether or not you've seen it, you are God's workmanship. And don't tell me that God makes things with parts missing or mistakes in them. There are some things God put you on this planet to do for Him. He's had them planned since before there was a you, and He's wired you with everything you need to get it done - everything.
Maybe you're thinking of all the things you're not, all the things you don't have that others have. Stop it! Everything you need for carrying out God's mission for you, you have. And what you don't have, you don't need! Moses argued with God that he wasn't qualified to go to Pharaoh and rescue God's people. But what kind of person did God need? Well, let's see. Someone who knew Egypt, who knew the Jews, and who knew the wilderness. Well, that's three different guys right there. Wrong! Moses was a Jew who had been raised by the Egyptians and who had spent many ye
ars in the wilderness. Moses was perfectly equipped to make a difference for the Lord, and so are you. When Moses continued to plead his inadequacy, he asked, "Who am I that I should go?" God's answer was: "I will be with you...go; I will help you" (Exodus 3:11-12; 4:12).
When you ask, "Who am I, Lord?" He answers, "Wrong question. Who am I?" It's not about who you are. It's about who He is. And all your abilities, your experiences, your battles, your weaknesses, and your strengths - they're all a divine tapestry to make you everything you need to be to do everything He put you here to do. Maybe you've been under-living!
You're His workmanship; you're His masterpiece. This day, open yourself up to Moses' God, to Gladys Aylward's God - the One who loves to use ordinary people to do extraordinary things for Him. Make this the day that you surrender to everything He wants you to be, everything He wants you to do. And let the adventure begin!
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.