Max Lucado Daily: Who Can Accuse You?
Romans 8:33 and 34 asks, "Who can accuse the people God has chosen? Who can say God's people are guilty?"
The answer is no one, because Christ Jesus died, he was raised from the dead, and now is on God's right side, appealing to God for us. The accusations of Satan sputter and fall like a deflated balloon.
Then why, pray tell, do we, as Christians, still feel guilt? God uses appropriate doses of guilt to awaken us to sin. His guilt brings enough regret to change us. Satan's guilt, on the other hand, brings enough regret to enslave us. Don't let him lock his shackles on you.
Remember, your life is hidden with Christ in God. Whenever God looks at you, he sees Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God covering you. So, whom do you trust…your Advocate or your Accuser?
From GRACE
Deuteronomy 6
This is the commandment, the rules and regulations, that God, your God, commanded me to teach you to live out in the land you’re about to cross into to possess. This is so that you’ll live in deep reverence before God lifelong, observing all his rules and regulations that I’m commanding you, you and your children and your grandchildren, living good long lives.
3 Listen obediently, Israel. Do what you’re told so that you’ll have a good life, a life of abundance and bounty, just as God promised, in a land abounding in milk and honey.
4 Attention, Israel!
God, our God! God the one and only!
5 Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got!
6-9 Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
10-12 When God, your God, ushers you into the land he promised through your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you, you’re going to walk into large, bustling cities you didn’t build, well-furnished houses you didn’t buy, come upon wells you didn’t dig, vineyards and olive orchards you didn’t plant. When you take it all in and settle down, pleased and content, make sure you don’t forget how you got there—God brought you out of slavery in Egypt.
13-19 Deeply respect God, your God. Serve and worship him exclusively. Back up your promises with his name only. Don’t fool around with other gods, the gods of your neighbors, because God, your God, who is alive among you is a jealous God. Don’t provoke him, igniting his hot anger that would burn you right off the face of the Earth. Don’t push God, your God, to the wall as you did that day at Massah, the Testing-Place. Carefully keep the commands of God, your God, all the requirements and regulations he gave you. Do what is right; do what is good in God’s sight so you’ll live a good life and be able to march in and take this pleasant land that God so solemnly promised through your ancestors, throwing out your enemies left and right—exactly as God said.
20-24 The next time your child asks you, “What do these requirements and regulations and rules that God, our God, has commanded mean?” tell your child, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God powerfully intervened and got us out of that country. We stood there and watched as God delivered miracle-signs, great wonders, and evil-visitations on Egypt, on Pharaoh and his household. He pulled us out of there so he could bring us here and give us the land he so solemnly promised to our ancestors. That’s why God commanded us to follow all these rules, so that we would live reverently before God, our God, as he gives us this good life, keeping us alive for a long time to come.
25 “It will be a set-right and put-together life for us if we make sure that we do this entire commandment in the Presence of God, our God, just as he commanded us to do.”
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Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Today's Scripture
1 Thessalonians 5:12–24
(NIV)
The Way He Wants You to Live
12–13 And now, friends, we ask you to honor those leaders who work so hard for you, who have been given the responsibility of urging and guiding you along in your obedience. Overwhelm them with appreciation and love!
13–15 Get along among yourselves, each of you doing your part. Our counsel is that you warn the freeloaders to get a move on. Gently encourage the stragglers, and reach out for the exhausted, pulling them to their feet. Be patient with each person, attentive to individual needs. And be careful that when you get on each other’s nerves you don’t snap at each other. Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.
16–18 Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.
19–22 Don’t suppress the Spirit, and don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master. On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil.
23–24 May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it!
Insight
A fitting title for Paul’s first epistle to the Thessalonians might be “The Must-Read Letter.” Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:27: “I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters.” Paul wanted first-century believers in Jesus to embrace his Spirit-inspired instruction. And his timeless teaching continues to benefit believers today. Among other things, the book of Thessalonians can be viewed as a “primer on eschatology” (the biblical doctrine that concerns “last things”). Each of the five chapters includes information related to Christ’s return. Commentator William Hendriksen notes: “It is a well-known fact that in 1 Thessalonians every chapter ends with a reference to the second coming. See 1:10; 2:19, 20; 3:11–13; 4:13–18; 5:23, 24.” We must not lose sight of the day when Jesus will return and rule as the righteous Judge. Reading and following 1 Thessalonians will help prepare us for that day. By: Arthur Jackson
Leaning into God
Pray continually.
1 Thessalonians 5:17
Harriet Tubman couldn’t read or write. As an adolescent, she suffered a head injury at the hands of a cruel slave master. That injury caused her to have seizures and lapses of consciousness for the rest of her life. But once she escaped slavery, God used her to rescue as many as three hundred others.
Nicknamed “Moses” by those she freed, Harriet bravely made nineteen trips back to the pre-Civil War South to rescue others. She continued even when there was a price on her head and her life was in constant danger. A devoted believer in Jesus, she carried a hymnal and a Bible on every trip and had others read her verses, which she committed to memory and quoted often. “I prayed all the time,” she said, “about my work, everywhere; I was always talking to the Lord.” She also gave God credit for the smallest successes. Her life was a powerful expression of the apostle Paul’s instruction to the earliest Christians: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18).
When we lean into God in the moment and live dependently in prayer, praising Him despite our difficulties, He gives us the strength to accomplish even the most challenging tasks. Our Savior is greater than anything we face, and He will lead us as we look to Him.
Reflect & Pray
How does spending time in God’s presence make you stronger? In what ways will you “lean into Him” today?
Loving and Almighty God, please help me to live every moment with You today and to receive the strength You alone can give.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Taking the Initiative Against Daydreaming
Arise, let us go from here. —John 14:31
Daydreaming about something in order to do it properly is right, but daydreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong. In this passage, after having said these wonderful things to His disciples, we might have expected our Lord to tell them to go away and meditate over them all. But Jesus never allowed idle daydreaming. When our purpose is to seek God and to discover His will for us, daydreaming is right and acceptable. But when our inclination is to spend time daydreaming over what we have already been told to do, it is unacceptable and God’s blessing is never on it. God will take the initiative against this kind of daydreaming by prodding us to action. His instructions to us will be along the lines of this: “Don’t sit or stand there, just go!”
If we are quietly waiting before God after He has said to us, “Come aside by yourselves…” then that is meditation before Him to seek His will (Mark 6:31). Beware, however, of giving in to mere daydreaming once God has spoken. Allow Him to be the source of all your dreams, joys, and delights, and be careful to go and obey what He has said. If you are in love with someone, you don’t sit and daydream about that person all the time— you go and do something for him. That is what Jesus Christ expects us to do. Daydreaming after God has spoken is an indication that we do not trust Him.
Wisdom From Oswald Chambers
Christianity is not consistency to conscience or to convictions; Christianity is being true to Jesus Christ. Biblical Ethics, 111 L
Bible in a Year: Leviticus 26-27; Mark 2
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.