Max Lucado Daily: A Lord to Lead You - December 15, 2021
“There has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). The Greek word used in this verse is Kyrios. It signifies one who rightfully holds a position of authority. Jesus was born with this title. He has a lawful right to rule over every sphere, star, galaxy, and gulf. He is the Lord of legislators, liberators, light bearers, and laborers. He bears the signet of the highest office and wears the insignia of “Lord of both the dead and the living” (Romans 14:9).
Congress doesn’t run the world. Cancer doesn’t control your destiny. Death doesn’t have the last word. The faceless hand of fate isn’t directing history. The Lord Jesus is. You have a Lord to lead you.
Mark 9:30-50
Leaving there, they went through Galilee. He didn’t want anyone to know their whereabouts, for he wanted to teach his disciples. He told them, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed to some people who want nothing to do with God. They will murder him. Three days after his murder, he will rise, alive.” They didn’t know what he was talking about, but were afraid to ask him about it.
So You Want First Place?
33 They came to Capernaum. When he was safe at home, he asked them, “What were you discussing on the road?”
34 The silence was deafening—they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest.
35 He sat down and summoned the Twelve. “So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.”
36-37 He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.”
* * *
38 John spoke up, “Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped him because he wasn’t in our group.”
39-41 Jesus wasn’t pleased. “Don’t stop him. No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath slam me. If he’s not an enemy, he’s an ally. Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of water in my name is on our side. Count on it that God will notice.
42 “On the other hand, if you give one of these simple, childlike believers a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.
43-48 “If your hand or your foot gets in God’s way, chop it off and throw it away. You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owner of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You’re better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.
49-50 “Everyone’s going through a refining fire sooner or later, but you’ll be well-preserved, protected from the eternal flames. Be preservatives yourselves. Preserve the peace.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Today's Scripture
1 Corinthians 12:12–21
(NIV)
Unity and Diversity in the Body
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body,t so it is with Christ.u 13 For we were all baptizedv byc one Spiritw so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or freex—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.y 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.z
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placeda the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.b 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.c
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
Insight
In Paul’s first New Testament letter to the Corinthians, he describes two ways his readers have been overlooking the body of Christ. First, they were ignoring the significance of sharing bread and wine in remembrance of His shed blood and broken body (1 Corinthians 11:29). In the process, they were also failing to live for the good of one another. Paul went on to explain that the Holy Spirit had gifted them to work together, just as members of our human bodies help and depend on each other (12:12–27). Paul sees his readers as members of the body of Christ brought together to share the heart of love he describes in chapter 13. By: Mart DeHaan
I Am His Hands
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!”
1 Corinthians 12:21
Jia Haixia lost his sight in the year 2000. His friend Jia Wenqi lost his arms as a child. But they’ve found a way around their disabilities. “I am his hands and he is my eyes,” Haixia says. Together, they’re transforming their village in China.
Since 2002 the friends have been on a mission to regenerate a wasteland near their home. Each day Haixia climbs on Wenqi’s back to cross a river to the site. Wenqi then “hands” Haixia a shovel with his foot, before Haixia places a pail on a pole between Wenqi’s cheek and shoulder. And as one digs and the other waters, the two plant trees—more than 10,000 so far. “Working together, we don’t feel disabled at all,” Haixia says. “We’re a team.”
The apostle Paul likens the church to a body, each part needing the other to function. If the church were all eyes, there’d be no hearing; if all ears, there’d be no sense of smell (1 Corinthians 12:14–17). “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ ” Paul says (v. 21). Each of us plays a role in the church based on our spiritual gifts (vv. 7–11, 18). Like Jia Haixia and Jia Wenqi, when we combine our strengths, we can bring change to the world.
Two men combining their abilities to regenerate a wasteland. What a picture of the church in action! By: Sheridan Voysey
Reflect & Pray
Based on your spiritual gifts, what part do you play in the body of Christ? How are you joining with others to fulfill His mission?
Holy Spirit, thank You for giving me spiritual gifts and arranging me in a body where I’m needed.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
“Approved to God”
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. —2 Timothy 2:15
If you cannot express yourself well on each of your beliefs, work and study until you can. If you don’t, other people may miss out on the blessings that come from knowing the truth. Strive to re-express a truth of God to yourself clearly and understandably, and God will use that same explanation when you share it with someone else. But you must be willing to go through God’s winepress where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle, experiment, and rehearse your words to express God’s truth clearly. Then the time will come when that very expression will become God’s wine of strength to someone else. But if you are not diligent and say, “I’m not going to study and struggle to express this truth in my own words; I’ll just borrow my words from someone else,” then the words will be of no value to you or to others. Try to state to yourself what you believe to be the absolute truth of God, and you will be allowing God the opportunity to pass it on through you to someone else.
Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn’t know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.
Wisdom From Oswald Chambers
The emphasis to-day is placed on the furtherance of an organization; the note is, “We must keep this thing going.” If we are in God’s order the thing will go; if we are not in His order, it won’t. Conformed to His Image, 357 R
Bible in a Year: Amos 1-3; Revelation 6
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Beyond the Backyard - #9113
Pierre lived in a pretty small world most of the time. But that's okay, he was our parrot. We had him in this cage in the kitchen so he would be around people a lot. By day his cage was uncovered. By night it was covered, just like the bird people said to do. Since I was usually the first one up in the morning, I was the one who lifted the blanket that covered him at night.
For a while, I just opened the side that allowed him to see what was going on in the kitchen, and then it dawned on me that I was leaving the back side of his cage covered. That was the side that faced outside the house, and it gave Pierre a view of the neighborhood beyond our kitchen. So once I lifted that side of the cover, there was no way he was going to be stuck just looking in the kitchen. No, he immediately turned around! He looked out the window at that strange world out there.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Beyond the Backyard."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 24:14. It's a peek at the exciting plans of God before Jesus Christ returns. It says this: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come." God's people are going to be involved in the great gospel explosion; the miracle spread of the good news about Jesus to millions and probably billions who have never heard, and it very well could be happening in our day or beginning to.
The problem is Jesus said that many of His potential warriors would be asleep in the middle of it. In verse 12, just before this, He says, "Because of the increase of wickedness, the love" - and He's talking about His followers - "the love of most will grow cold." Oh, great! They're going to be all tied up in their small world - their cage; missing the big world that God wants to show them at the most decisive time in human history.
Think about the times you and I have been chosen to live in. Lost people have never been more ready for Jesus. Oh, they may not know much about Him; they may be living pretty lost lives. But the things that have made them lost have made them ready: the uncertainty, the stress, the relationship failures. They've made people realize that they need something outside themselves, but they don't know what it is. And then God's people, I don't think they've ever been more restless. There's this feeling, maybe you know what it is. I have it. That there's got to be something more, more powerful, more significant in our lives, that we could make a greater difference than we've made until now .
And then the reaching of the world has never been more possible, and the return of Christ has never been closer. Man, it's time to make a difference! What a time! It could be that like our parrot, we've been looking inward most of the time: my needs, my family, my job, my church, my little world. A lot of churches are mired in their own backyard with petty issues, committee meetings, building campaigns.
We're at an incredible moment of opportunity, but the missionary force from the United States has dropped dramatically in just a short period of time. Hundreds of missionaries are stranded in the United States because it's taking them years to raise their support. Partly because we're spending our money on ourselves instead of on this world that Jesus died for.
Right now I believe Jesus is lifting the cover off the cage of those of us who have been mired in our own little world. He's saying, "Hey, would you look outside this little window? There's a world of billions of people I died for; most of whom have no one to tell them." And did you know that every day 150,000 people go into eternity ready or not? Probably not. And today they will, and tomorrow they will, and the day after that they will. Jesus said, "The fields are ready for harvest; look at the fields."
Isn't it time you begin to invest the best of your energy, the best of your money, your gifts, your influence in the cause for which your Savior sacrificed everything? These are days we need to be working together.
There's a whole world out there. Don't keep staring at the little world just around you. Remember what the Bible says, "God so loved the world." He wants you to love it too.
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.