Max Lucado Daily: I Choose
It's quiet. It's early. For the next 12 hours I'll be exposed to the day's demands. It's now that I must make a choice. And so I choose-love. I will love God and what God loves.
I choose joy.
I choose peace. I will live forgiven.
I choose patience-Rather than complain that the wait is too long, I'll thank God for a moment to pray.
I choose kindness-for that's how God has treated me.
I choose goodness.
I choose faithfulness. Today I'll keep my promises. My wife will not question my love.
I choose gentleness. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.
I choose self-control. I will be impassioned only by my faith and influenced only by God.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When this day is done, I'll place my head on my pillow and rest.
From When God Whispers Your Name
1 Samuel 22
Saul Murders the Priests of God
So David got away and escaped to the Cave of Adullam. When his brothers and others associated with his family heard where he was, they came down and joined him. Not only that, but all who were down on their luck came around—losers and vagrants and misfits of all sorts. David became their leader. There were about four hundred in all.
3-4 Then David went to Mizpah in Moab. He petitioned the king of Moab, “Grant asylum to my father and mother until I find out what God has planned for me.” David left his parents in the care of the king of Moab. They stayed there all through the time David was hiding out.
5 The prophet Gad told David, “Don’t go back to the cave. Go to Judah.” David did what he told him. He went to the forest of Hereth.
6-8 Saul got word of the whereabouts of David and his men. He was sitting under the big oak on the hill at Gibeah at the time, spear in hand, holding court surrounded by his officials. He said, “Listen here, you Benjaminites! Don’t think for a minute that you have any future with the son of Jesse! Do you think he’s going to hand over choice land, give you all influential jobs? Think again. Here you are, conspiring against me, whispering behind my back—not one of you is man enough to tell me that my own son is making deals with the son of Jesse, not one of you who cares enough to tell me that my son has taken the side of this, this ...outlaw!”
9-10 Then Doeg the Edomite, who was standing with Saul’s officials, spoke up: “I saw the son of Jesse meet with Ahimelech son of Ahitub, in Nob. I saw Ahimelech pray with him for God’s guidance, give him food, and arm him with the sword of Goliath the Philistine.”
11 Saul sent for the priest Ahimelech son of Ahitub, along with the whole family of priests at Nob. They all came to the king.
12 Saul said, “You listen to me, son of Ahitub!”
“Certainly, master,” he said.
13 “Why have you ganged up against me with the son of Jesse, giving him bread and a sword, even praying with him for God’s guidance, setting him up as an outlaw, out to get me?”
14-15 Ahimelech answered the king, “There’s not an official in your administration as true to you as David, your own son-in-law and captain of your bodyguard. None more honorable either. Do you think that was the first time I prayed with him for God’s guidance? Hardly! But don’t accuse me of any wrongdoing, me or my family. I have no idea what you’re trying to get at with this ‘outlaw’ talk.”
16 The king said, “Death, Ahimelech! You’re going to die—you and everyone in your family!”
17 The king ordered his henchmen, “Surround and kill the priests of God! They’re hand in glove with David. They knew he was running away from me and didn’t tell me.” But the king’s men wouldn’t do it. They refused to lay a hand on the priests of God.
18-19 Then the king told Doeg, “You do it—massacre the priests!” Doeg the Edomite led the attack and slaughtered the priests, the eighty-five men who wore the sacred robes. He then carried the massacre into Nob, the city of priests, killing man and woman, child and baby, ox, donkey, and sheep—the works.
20-21 Only one son of Ahimelech son of Ahitub escaped: Abiathar. He got away and joined up with David. Abiathar reported to David that Saul had murdered the priests of God.
22-23 David said to Abiathar, “I knew it—that day I saw Doeg the Edomite there, I knew he’d tell Saul. I’m to blame for the death of everyone in your father’s family. Stay here with me. Don’t be afraid. The one out to kill you is out to kill me, too. Stick with me. I’ll protect you.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, July 10, 2022
Today's Scripture
Zechariah 7:4–10
God-of-the-Angel-Armies gave me this Message for them, for all the people and for the priests: “When you held days of fasting every fifth and seventh month all these seventy years, were you doing it for me? And when you held feasts, was that for me? Hardly. You’re interested in religion, I’m interested in people.
7–10 “There’s nothing new to say on the subject. Don’t you still have the message of the earlier prophets from the time when Jerusalem was still a thriving, bustling city and the outlying countryside, the Negev and Shephelah, was populated? [This is the message that God gave Zechariah.] Well, the message hasn’t changed. God-of-the-Angel-Armies said then and says now:
“ ‘Treat one another justly.
Love your neighbors.
Be compassionate with each other.
Don’t take advantage of widows, orphans, visitors, and the poor.
Don’t plot and scheme against one another—that’s evil.’
Insight
Zechariah, whose name means “God remembers,” was both a prophet and a priest. He was among the first of the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem. In Zechariah 7, a delegation from Bethel in the neighboring tribe of Benjamin had come to seek his advice (vv. 2–3). Zechariah told them that God remembered their hypocrisy of the previous seventy years (vv. 4–7). They’d been going through the motions of worship, including fasting, but their hearts were far from God. So, they were far from meeting the needs of their neighbors, especially the oppressed (vv. 9–10). God also remembered His people and His covenant with them, however. He called them out precisely because they belonged to Him. It would run contrary to His nature to forget them. Thus, the entirety of chapter 8 outlines the ways God will again bless them. By: Tim Gustafson
Watching Out for One Another
how mercy and compassion to one another.
Zechariah 7:9
Jose, a seventy-seven-year-old substitute teacher, had been living out of his car for eight years. Every night, the elderly man bunked down in his 1997 Ford Thunderbird LX, carefully monitoring the car battery as it powered his computer for his evening’s work. Instead of using the money earmarked for rent, Jose sent it to numerous family members in Mexico who needed it more. Early every morning, one of the teacher’s former students saw Jose rummaging through his trunk. “I just felt I needed to do something about it,” the man said. So, he launched a fundraiser and weeks later handed Jose a check to help him pay for a place to live.
Though Scripture repeatedly instructs us to watch out for one another, it’s sometimes difficult to see past our own concerns. The prophet Zechariah rebuked Israel who, rather than worshiping God or serving others, were “feasting for [them]selves” (Zechariah 7:6). Ignoring their shared communal life, they disregarded their neighbors’ need. Zechariah made God’s instructions clear: the people were to “administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another . . . [and] not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor” (vv. 9–10).
While it’s easy to be consumed with our own needs, faithfulness calls us to tend to the needs of others. In the divine economy, there’s plenty for all. And God, in His mercy, chooses to use us to give some of that plenty to others.
Reflect & Pray
Who are some of the people that you’re responsible to care for? Where do you find yourself consumed with your own concerns?
God, please give me a greater vision to care for my neighbors.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, July 10, 2022
The Spiritually Lazy Saint
Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together… —Hebrews 10:24-25
We are all capable of being spiritually lazy saints. We want to stay off the rough roads of life, and our primary objective is to secure a peaceful retreat from the world. The ideas put forth in these verses from Hebrews 10 are those of stirring up one another and of keeping ourselves together. Both of these require initiative— our willingness to take the first step toward Christ-realization, not the initiative toward self-realization. To live a distant, withdrawn, and secluded life is diametrically opposed to spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it.
The true test of our spirituality occurs when we come up against injustice, degradation, ingratitude, and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritually lazy. While being tested, we want to use prayer and Bible reading for the purpose of finding a quiet retreat. We use God only for the sake of getting peace and joy. We seek only our enjoyment of Jesus Christ, not a true realization of Him. This is the first step in the wrong direction. All these things we are seeking are simply effects, and yet we try to make them causes.
“Yes, I think it is right,” Peter said, “…to stir you up by reminding you…” (2 Peter 1:13). It is a most disturbing thing to be hit squarely in the stomach by someone being used of God to stir us up— someone who is full of spiritual activity. Simple active work and spiritual activity are not the same thing. Active work can actually be the counterfeit of spiritual activity. The real danger in spiritual laziness is that we do not want to be stirred up— all we want to hear about is a spiritual retirement from the world. Yet Jesus Christ never encourages the idea of retirement— He says, “Go and tell My brethren…” (Matthew 28:10).
Wisdom From Oswald Chambers
The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
Bible in a Year: Job 41-42; Acts 16:22-40
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.