Max Lucado Daily: Sing Again - March 31, 2022
What do we say about someone who claims to be a Christian, yet behaves like anything but? Well, God places a song in the hearts of his saved children. Some sing this song loud and long every single day of their lives. In other cases, the song falls silent. Long seasons pass in which God’s song is not sung.
Truth is, we don’t always know if someone has trusted God’s grace. A person may have feigned belief but not meant it. Whether or not someone’s faith is real isn’t ours to know. But we know this: where there is genuine conversion, there is eternal salvation. Our task is to trust God’s ability to call his children home. We join God as he walks among his wayward and wounded children, singing. Eventually his own will hear his voice, and something within them will awaken. And when it does, they will begin to sing again.
Deuteronomy 34
The Death of Moses
Moses climbed from the Plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, the peak of Pisgah facing Jericho. God showed him all the land from Gilead to Dan, all Naphtali, Ephraim, and Manasseh; all Judah reaching to the Mediterranean Sea; the Negev and the plains which encircle Jericho, City of Palms, as far south as Zoar.
4 Then and there God said to him, “This is the land I promised to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with the words ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I’ve let you see it with your own eyes. There it is. But you’re not going to go in.”
5-6 Moses died there in the land of Moab, Moses the servant of God, just as God said. God buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor. No one knows his burial site to this very day.
7-8 Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eyesight was sharp; he still walked with a spring in his step. The People of Israel wept for Moses in the Plains of Moab thirty days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end.
9 Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. The People of Israel listened obediently to him and did the same as when God had commanded Moses.
10-12 No prophet has risen since in Israel like Moses, whom God knew face-to-face. Never since has there been anything like the signs and miracle-wonders that God sent him to do in Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to all his land—nothing to compare with that all-powerful hand of his and all the great and terrible things Moses did as every eye in Israel watched.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Today's Scripture
Luke 14:7–14
(NIV)
Invite the Misfits
7–9 He went on to tell a story to the guests around the table. Noticing how each had tried to elbow into the place of honor, he said, “When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he’ll come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.’ Red-faced, you’ll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left.
10–11 “When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
12–14 Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”
Insight
In his gospel, Luke often highlights the event behind Jesus’ telling of a parable (see Luke 12:13; 15:1–2; 18:9; 19:11). In chapter 14, we read that “[Jesus] noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table” (v. 7). Ancient dining protocol dictated that the two places of highest honor were on the right and left of the host (Matthew 20:21). This parable teaches us that it’s better to humble oneself than to be humiliated by others, which is Jesus’ constant warning (Matthew 23:12; Luke 18:14). Pointing to Christ as our model, Paul teaches us to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5) who—though He was God—became a human servant. By: K. T. Sim
God’s Embassy
When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.
Luke 14:13–14
Ludmilla, a widow aged eighty-two, has declared her home in the Czech Republic an “Embassy of the Kingdom of Heaven,” saying, “My home is an extension of Christ’s kingdom.” She welcomes strangers and friends who are hurting and in need with loving hospitality, sometimes providing food and a place to sleep—always with a compassionate and prayerful spirit. Relying on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to help her care for her visitors, she delights in the ways God answers their prayers.
Ludmilla serves Jesus through opening her home and heart, in contrast to the prominent religious leader at whose home Jesus ate one Sabbath. Jesus told this teacher of the law that he should welcome “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” to his home—and not those who could repay him (Luke 14:13). While Jesus’ remarks imply that the Pharisee hosted Jesus out of pride (v. 12), Ludmilla, so many years later, invites people to her home so she can be “an instrument of God’s love and His wisdom.”
Serving others with humility is one way we can be “representatives of the kingdom of heaven,” as Ludmilla says. Whether or not we can provide a bed for strangers, we can put the needs of others before our own in different and creative ways. How will we extend God’s kingdom in our part of the world today? By: Amy Boucher Pye
Reflect & Pray
How do you think the Pharisee reacted when Jesus told him to act differently? How do you like to make people feel welcome?
Jesus, thank You for looking out for those in need. Help me to be more like You, that I would care for others, showing them Your love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Heedfulness or Hypocrisy in Ourselves?
If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. —1 John 5:16
If we are not heedful and pay no attention to the way the Spirit of God works in us, we will become spiritual hypocrites. We see where other people are failing, and then we take our discernment and turn it into comments of ridicule and criticism, instead of turning it into intercession on their behalf. God reveals this truth about others to us not through the sharpness of our minds but through the direct penetration of His Spirit. If we are not attentive, we will be completely unaware of the source of the discernment God has given us, becoming critical of others and forgetting that God says, “…he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death.” Be careful that you don’t become a hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself.
One of the most subtle and illusive burdens God ever places on us as saints is this burden of discernment concerning others. He gives us discernment so that we may accept the responsibility for those souls before Him and form the mind of Christ about them (see Philippians 2:5). We should intercede in accordance with what God says He will give us, namely, “life for those who commit sin not leading to death.” It is not that we are able to bring God into contact with our minds, but that we awaken ourselves to the point where God is able to convey His mind to us regarding the people for whom we intercede.
Can Jesus Christ see the agony of His soul in us? He can’t unless we are so closely identified with Him that we have His view concerning the people for whom we pray. May we learn to intercede so wholeheartedly that Jesus Christ will be completely and overwhelmingly satisfied with us as intercessors.
Wisdom From Oswald Chambers
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
So Send I You
Bible in a Year: Judges 11-12; Luke 6:1-26
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, March 31, 2022
The Excitement of Exploring - #9189
"Shun piking"! Yeah, our kids learned that at a very early age. That expression actually goes back to Colonial days when people would leave or "shun" the pike, the main road, and take side roads. Today, it's just a good word for describing getting intentionally lost - just exploring some of those side roads you've never been on to see things you've never seen. Apparently, this shun piking thing has been inherited by the next generation. Yeah, there was the day that our daughter took our then three-year-old grandson on one of those crazy adventures on some unexplored back roads. And he saw lots of things he never saw before. When she asked him if he was ready to go home, he told her he wanted to keep going. His reason? "I liked exploring."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Excitement of Exploring."
The same old scenery gets boring after a while. It's exciting to explore some new ground. That might be exactly what your Lord is trying to get you to do right now - to dare to leave that safe, predictable road you always travel on and follow Him into something new and exciting. And, yes, unknown and unpredictable.
Listen to His invitation, and command, in our word for today from the Word of God in Isaiah 43:18-19. "Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" Could it be that God is setting out before you some new ground to explore? You'll miss it if you insist on hanging on to the same old way of doing things, the same old security blankets. Spiritual cocooning - curling up in this "status quo" comfort zone - is a sure way to miss the ever-dynamic, ever-groundbreaking will of God.
God may be saying, "Look at the new thing I'm putting right in front of you, man!" But you can't see it because you keep looking back at the old thing. This addiction to what's safe and comfortable and familiar afflicts individual believers...it afflicts churches...ministries. God may even be trying to stretch your understanding of Him and how He works; to see Him, to see your relationship with Him in a new way, a more powerful way.
Of course, exploring new ground implies that you don't know exactly what you're going to encounter, right? How you're going to have what you need to meet whatever is on the new road. Listen to God's next statement: "I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." OK, you can't see a way - God says, "I'm going to amaze you by making a way where there is no way." You can't see where the resources are going to come from - God says, "I'm going to send resources where there seem to be no resources - 'streams in the wasteland.'"
But you'll miss all of it if you won't leave the road you've been on for so long. You're stuck there. There is incredible beauty; there are thrilling discoveries on unexplored roads. It's time to say to the Lord, "I'm ready for more, Lord. I'm opening your Word now looking for some new discoveries. I'm listening to Bible teaching and worshiping, looking for the new things You want to say to me. And Lord, I'm following You wherever You want to take me...whatever the risks." The Bible calls that "the good and perfect and pleasing will of God."
So could it be that God's leading you to a new season in your life, or maybe a new approach or a new challenge? Don't be afraid to go with your Father onto a road you've never been on before. Like my grandson, you may end up saying, "Father, I like exploring!"