Max Lucado Daily: Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
If people love you at 6:00 a.m. one thing is sure. They love you! No makeup. No power tie. No status jewelry. No layers of images. Just unkempt honesty. Just you. "Love," wrote one forgiven soul, "covers over a multitude of sins."
Sounds like God's love. Hebrews 10:14 says, "He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Note that the word is not improving. God doesn't improve; he perfects. He doesn't enhance; he completes. When it comes to our position before God, we are perfect. When he sees each of us, he sees one who has been made perfect through the One who is perfect-Jesus Christ. He sees perfection. Not perfection earned by us, mind you, but perfection paid by him.
Scripture says, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21 NCV).
From In the Eye of the Storm
If people love you at 6:00 a.m. one thing is sure. They love you! No makeup. No power tie. No status jewelry. No layers of images. Just unkempt honesty. Just you. "Love," wrote one forgiven soul, "covers over a multitude of sins."
Sounds like God's love. Hebrews 10:14 says, "He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Note that the word is not improving. God doesn't improve; he perfects. He doesn't enhance; he completes. When it comes to our position before God, we are perfect. When he sees each of us, he sees one who has been made perfect through the One who is perfect-Jesus Christ. He sees perfection. Not perfection earned by us, mind you, but perfection paid by him.
Scripture says, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21 NCV).
From In the Eye of the Storm
Psalm 3
God! Look! Enemies past counting!
Enemies sprouting like mushrooms,
Mobs of them all around me, roaring their mockery:
“Hah! No help for him from God!”
3-4 But you, God, shield me on all sides;
You ground my feet, you lift my head high;
With all my might I shout up to God,
His answers thunder from the holy mountain.
5-6 I stretch myself out. I sleep.
Then I’m up again—rested, tall and steady,
Fearless before the enemy mobs
Coming at me from all sides.
7 Up, God! My God, help me!
Slap their faces,
First this cheek, then the other,
Your fist hard in their teeth!
8 Real help comes from God.
Your blessing clothes your people!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 27, 2022
Today's Scripture
James 4:13–17
Nothing but a Wisp of Fog
13–15 And now I have a word for you who brashly announce, “Today—at the latest, tomorrow—we’re off to such and such a city for the year. We’re going to start a business and make a lot of money.” You don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. You’re nothing but a wisp of fog, catching a brief bit of sun before disappearing. Instead, make it a habit to say, “If the Master wills it and we’re still alive, we’ll do this or that.”
16–17 As it is, you are full of your grandiose selves. All such vaunting self-importance is evil. In fact, if you know the right thing to do and don’t do it, that, for you, is evil.
Insight
Is it wrong to plan? Certainly not. Those who come away from James 4:13–17 thinking that good planning is a bad thing miss the point of the passage and ignore Scripture’s teaching elsewhere. Students of life know the value of having a plan. So did the writer in Proverbs 21:5: “Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; hurry and scurry puts you further behind” (the message). A good plan is a good thing. What James critiques and condemns, however, is the kind of planning that ignores life’s uncertainty and brevity (James 4:14) and God as the giver of life (v. 15). The book of James has been called the “Proverbs of the New Testament.” James 4:13–17 echoes Proverbs 27:1: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” and encourages us to “trust in the Lord with all [our] heart and lean not on [our] own understanding” (3:5).
By: Arthur Jackson
Plans and Providence
If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.
James 4:15
In 2000, an upstart company operating on a movie-rental-by-mail system offered to sell their company for $50 million to Blockbuster, the home movies and video game rentals king at that time. Netflix had roughly 300,000 subscribers, while Blockbuster had millions and millions of them. Blockbuster passed on the opportunity to purchase their little competitor. The result? Today Netflix has more than 180 million subscribers and is worth nearly $200 billion. As for Blockbuster, well . . . it went bust. None of us can predict the future.
We’re tempted to believe that we’re in control of our lives and that our plans for the future will succeed. But James says, “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (4:14). Life is brief, quick, and more fragile than we often realize. Planning is necessary, but the sin of presumption is in the assumption that we’re in control. That’s why James warns us not to “boast in [our] arrogant schemes,” for “all such boasting is evil” (v. 16).
The way to avoid this sinful practice is through grateful participation with God. Gratitude reminds us that He’s the source of every “good and perfect gift” (1:17). Then when we come to God, we ask Him not to simply bless our present and future plans but to help us join Him in what He’s doing. This is what it means to pray, “If it is the Lord’s will” (4:15).
Reflect & Pray
How are you tempted to be in control of your life? What will it mean for you to surrender to God and participate with Him?
Dear Jesus, I relinquish my plans to You. Help me to put my trust in You, because You never fail.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 27, 2022
Living Your Theology
Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you… —John 12:35
Beware of not acting upon what you see in your moments on the mountaintop with God. If you do not obey the light, it will turn into darkness. “If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23). The moment you forsake the matter of sanctification or neglect anything else on which God has given you His light, your spiritual life begins to disintegrate within you. Continually bring the truth out into your real life, working it out into every area, or else even the light that you possess will itself prove to be a curse.
The most difficult person to deal with is the one who has the prideful self-satisfaction of a past experience, but is not working that experience out in his everyday life. If you say you are sanctified, show it. The experience must be so genuine that it shows in your life. Beware of any belief that makes you self-indulgent or self-gratifying; that belief came from the pit of hell itself, regardless of how beautiful it may sound.
Your theology must work itself out, exhibiting itself in your most common everyday relationships. Our Lord said, “…unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). In other words, you must be more moral than the most moral person you know. You may know all about the doctrine of sanctification, but are you working it out in the everyday issues of your life? Every detail of your life, whether physical, moral, or spiritual, is to be judged and measured by the standard of the atonement by the Cross of Christ.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed God, not a confused God, not a God who stands apart from the problems, but One who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man. Disciples Indeed, 388 L
Bible in a Year: Psalms 120-122; 1 Corinthians 9
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