Max Lucado Daily: Stand Up and Walk - May 11, 2022
Believe in the Jesus who believes in you. He believes that you can rise up, take up, and move on. You are stronger than you think. “‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).
He certainly gave a bright future to the Bethesda beggar. “And immediately the man was made well” (John 5:9). Jesus did nothing but speak, and the miracle was accomplished. What will God do for you? I cannot say. God’s help, while ever present, is ever specific. It is not ours to say what God will do. Our job is to believe he will do something. It simply falls to us to stand up, to take up, and walk. Remember, friends, you are never alone.
Luke 13:1-22
Unless You Turn to God
About that time some people came up and told him about the Galileans Pilate had killed while they were at worship, mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices on the altar. Jesus responded, “Do you think those murdered Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die. And those eighteen in Jerusalem the other day, the ones crushed and killed when the Tower of Siloam collapsed and fell on them, do you think they were worse citizens than all other Jerusalemites? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die.”
6-7 Then he told them a story: “A man had an apple tree planted in his front yard. He came to it expecting to find apples, but there weren’t any. He said to his gardener, ‘What’s going on here? For three years now I’ve come to this tree expecting apples and not one apple have I found. Chop it down! Why waste good ground with it any longer?’
8-9 “The gardener said, ‘Let’s give it another year. I’ll dig around it and fertilize, and maybe it will produce next year; if it doesn’t, then chop it down.’”
Healing on the Sabbath
10-13 He was teaching in one of the meeting places on the Sabbath. There was a woman present, so twisted and bent over with arthritis that she couldn’t even look up. She had been afflicted with this for eighteen years. When Jesus saw her, he called her over. “Woman, you’re free!” He laid hands on her and suddenly she was standing straight and tall, giving glory to God.
14 The meeting-place president, furious because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the congregation, “Six days have been defined as work days. Come on one of the six if you want to be healed, but not on the seventh, the Sabbath.”
15-16 But Jesus shot back, “You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water, and thinks nothing of it. So why isn’t it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?”
17 When he put it that way, his critics were left looking quite silly and red-faced. The congregation was delighted and cheered him on.
The Way to God
18-19 Then he said, “How can I picture God’s kingdom for you? What kind of story can I use? It’s like an acorn that a man plants in his front yard. It grows into a huge oak tree with thick branches, and eagles build nests in it.”
20-21 He tried again. “How can I picture God’s kingdom? It’s like yeast that a woman works into enough dough for three loaves of bread—and waits while the dough rises.”
22 He went on teaching from town to village, village to town, but keeping on a steady course toward Jerusalem.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Today's Scripture
2 Corinthians 2:12–17
An Open Door
12–14 When I arrived in Troas to proclaim the Message of the Messiah, I found the place wide open: God had opened the door; all I had to do was walk through it. But when I didn’t find Titus waiting for me with news of your condition, I couldn’t relax. Worried about you, I left and came on to Macedonia province looking for Titus and a reassuring word on you. And I got it, thank God!
14–16 In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, he brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.
16–17 This is a terrific responsibility. Is anyone competent to take it on? No—but at least we don’t take God’s Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets to sell it cheap. We stand in Christ’s presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. We get what we say straight from God and say it as honestly as we can.
Insight
Believers in Jesus have been rescued from death by faith in Him. But another way to view believers in Christ is as “commissioned captives” in that they’ve also been tasked with sharing with others the same good news that has brought them from darkness to light, from death to life. When Paul notes that “God . . . leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14), he uses images from military conquests of the ancient world. After significant victories, Roman military commanders would lead those who’d been captured in procession. Some of the processionals included the use of fragrant spices, perfumes, and incense. This is what Paul is likely referring to in these verses. Believers in Jesus are His “sanctified spoils,” crucial and now useful for His mission in the world. By: Arthur Jackson
Always Worth Sharing
Thanks be to God, who always . . . uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.
2 Corinthians 2:14
After I became a believer in Jesus, I shared the gospel with my mother. Instead of making a decision to trust Jesus, as I expected, she stopped speaking to me for a year. Her bad experiences with people who claimed to follow Jesus made her distrust believers in Christ. I prayed for her and reached out to her weekly. The Holy Spirit comforted me and continued working on my heart as my mom gave me the silent treatment. When she finally answered my phone call, I committed to loving her and sharing God’s truth with her whenever I had the opportunity. Months after our reconciliation, she said I’d changed. Almost a year later, she received Jesus as her Savior, and, as a result, our relationship deepened.
Believers in Jesus have access to the greatest gift given to humanity—Christ. The apostle Paul says we’re to “spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14). He refers to those who share the gospel as “the pleasing aroma of Christ” to those who believe, but acknowledges we reek of death to those who reject Jesus (vv. 15–16).
After we receive Christ as our Savior, we have the privilege of using our limited time on earth to spread His life-changing truth while loving others. Even during our hardest and loneliest moments, we can trust He’ll provide what we need. No matter what the personal cost, God’s good news is always worth sharing. By: Xochitl Dixon
Reflect & Pray
How has God encouraged you to not give up after you shared the gospel with someone who reacted in a negative way? How did God bring you close to someone after you both connected as believers in Jesus?
Help me share Your good news wherever You send me, God!
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
“Love One Another”
…add to your…brotherly kindness love. —2 Peter 1:5, 7
Love is an indefinite thing to most of us; we don’t know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the loftiest preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that this sovereign preference be for Himself (see Luke 14:26). Initially, when “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5), it is easy to put Jesus first. But then we must practice the things mentioned in 2 Peter 1 to see them worked out in our lives.
The first thing God does is forcibly remove any insincerity, pride, and vanity from my life. And the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now He commands me to show the same love to others by saying, “…love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). He is saying, “I will bring a number of people around you whom you cannot respect, but you must exhibit My love to them, just as I have exhibited it to you.” This kind of love is not a patronizing love for the unlovable— it is His love, and it will not be evidenced in us overnight. Some of us may have tried to force it, but we were soon tired and frustrated.
“The Lord…is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish…” (2 Peter 3:9). I should look within and remember how wonderfully He has dealt with me. The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to go into the world to love others in the same way. I may get irritated because I have to live with an unusually difficult person. But just think how disagreeable I have been with God! Am I prepared to be identified so closely with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness will be continually poured out through Me? Neither natural love nor God’s divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is nurtured. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through discipline.
Wisdom From Oswald Chambers
When a man’s heart is right with God the mysterious utterances of the Bible are spirit and life to him. Spiritual truth is discernible only to a pure heart, not to a keen intellect. It is not a question of profundity of intellect, but of purity of heart. Bringing Sons Unto Glory, 231 L
Bible in a Year: 2 Kings 13-14; John 2
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Having People You Know In Heaven With You - #9218
Our oldest son worked as a missionary among young people in a Native American tribe in the Southwest. In his first few days there he ended up helping a Native American man weed his corn field. The tribe lives in a place where it's really tough to grow anything. I mean, corn is the most important crop, but it doesn't come easily because they're in a place where I think they only get about 10-12 inches of rain a year.
Well, they have perfected a method called dry farming. It means a lot of back-breaking work. One key is getting the weeds out of that garden before they can steal some of the corn's moisture. Well, that's what my son was doing for this man. And at the end of a hard, hot afternoon he said to the farmer, "How much of your corn are you actually going to be able to harvest?" And the man said, "Oh, about 10%." To which my son replied, "Oh, man, after all this work, that's too bad. What happened?" And he said, "Well, I'll tell you where I lose most of my crop." The answer was surprising.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Having People You Know In Heaven With You."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 9, beginning at verse 36. By the way, that farmer told my son, "I could harvest it all if I only had a few more workers." Wow! Jesus knows that feeling. The Bible: "And when He saw the crowds He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.'"
Jesus said here, "the harvest is plentiful." He's talking there about lost people; people without Christ. When I talk to farmers about what the word harvest means to them, you know what the first word is most of them will bring up? "Ready." Yeah, it's ready. That's what harvest is. So Jesus is saying, "We're surrounded by lost people who are ready for Jesus."
The harvest is plentiful. You say, "Well, they don't seem very interested in Jesus." That's only because they don't know what Jesus can do.
Relationships these days have never been more broken, more disappointing, more unfulfilling. Loneliness has never been more rampant and more incurable. It seems like the future's never been this uncertain. They're dangerous. And families are tough. The pain is widespread. There's fertile ground there for the love that only God can give you; the peace that only He can give you, the security, the power, the healing.
They're ready, but there's a problem. The laborers are few. Jesus can't get His people to go get them. That's the harvest hang-up! It's not the hardness of lost people; that's not the problem. It's the apathy of God's people. There are not enough workers!
What a tragic reason to lose the harvest; to let people slip into a Christ-less eternity. But right now God is trying to send workers out to His harvest field - maybe you. Could it be you've gotten so comfortable in the farmhouse that you've forgotten the urgent need of the lost people out there? A lot of us are just sitting around tables, passing around another helping of spiritual blessings while the harvest dies.
Maybe you've become preoccupied with your own pressures and your own problems. In the days of Haggai, the prophet, he said, "My house (God is speaking here) remains a ruin while each of you is busy with his own house." Could it be God's agenda, the lost people His Son died for, have gotten lost in your agenda?
Could it be you feel inadequate to tell people about Him? But God decided you were the one to be His personal representative in that circle of people. He's going to give you the words. He's going to open the doors. Harvest time will not wait for you.
Time is short. This is urgent stuff! Harvest always is. You've got a limited amount of time to bring in what's ready. You have nothing more important to do, my friend, than this.
My heart broke when I heard what that farmer said, "I could harvest it all if I had a few more workers." We're not harvesting corn. We're harvesting ever living, never dying souls. Would you step up to the task today and say, "Lord, you can bring in a few more, because You've got one more worker."
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.