Max Lucado Daily: Every Spiritual Blessing
You possess (get this!) every spiritual blessing possible. Ephesians 1:3 promises that "in Christ, God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms." This is the gift offered to the lowliest sinner on earth. Who could make such an offer but God? John 1:16 says, "From him we all received one gift after another."
Romans 11:33 asks, have you ever come upon anything quite like this extravagant love of God, this deep, deep, wisdom? It's way over our heads. We'll never figure it out. Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do? Anyone who's done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice? Everything comes from him. Everything comes through him. Everything ends up in him. Always glory! Always praise! Yes, yes, and yes!
From In the Grip of Grace
You possess (get this!) every spiritual blessing possible. Ephesians 1:3 promises that "in Christ, God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms." This is the gift offered to the lowliest sinner on earth. Who could make such an offer but God? John 1:16 says, "From him we all received one gift after another."
Romans 11:33 asks, have you ever come upon anything quite like this extravagant love of God, this deep, deep, wisdom? It's way over our heads. We'll never figure it out. Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do? Anyone who's done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice? Everything comes from him. Everything comes through him. Everything ends up in him. Always glory! Always praise! Yes, yes, and yes!
From In the Grip of Grace
John 8:1-27
To Throw the Stone
Jesus went across to Mount Olives, but he was soon back in the Temple again. Swarms of people came to him. He sat down and taught them.
3-6 The religion scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in an act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?” They were trying to trap him into saying something incriminating so they could bring charges against him.
6-8 Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.” Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt.
9-10 Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?”
11 “No one, Master.”
“Neither do I,” said Jesus. “Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.”]
Note: John 7:53–8:11 [the portion in brackets] is not found in the earliest handwritten copies.
You’re Missing God in All This
12 Jesus once again addressed them: “I am the world’s Light. No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness. I provide plenty of light to live in.”
13 The Pharisees objected, “All we have is your word on this. We need more than this to go on.”
14-18 Jesus replied, “You’re right that you only have my word. But you can depend on it being true. I know where I’ve come from and where I go next. You don’t know where I’m from or where I’m headed. You decide according to what you can see and touch. I don’t make judgments like that. But even if I did, my judgment would be true because I wouldn’t make it out of the narrowness of my experience but in the largeness of the One who sent me, the Father. That fulfills the conditions set down in God’s Law: that you can count on the testimony of two witnesses. And that is what you have: You have my word and you have the word of the Father who sent me.”
19 They said, “Where is this so-called Father of yours?”
Jesus said, “You’re looking right at me and you don’t see me. How do you expect to see the Father? If you knew me, you would at the same time know the Father.”
20 He gave this speech in the Treasury while teaching in the Temple. No one arrested him because his time wasn’t yet up.
21 Then he went over the same ground again. “I’m leaving and you are going to look for me, but you’re missing God in this and are headed for a dead end. There is no way you can come with me.”
22 The Jews said, “So, is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by ‘You can’t come with me’?”
23-24 Jesus said, “You’re tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing God in all this. You’re at a dead end. If you won’t believe I am who I say I am, you’re at the dead end of sins. You’re missing God in your lives.”
25-26 They said to him, “Just who are you anyway?”
Jesus said, “What I’ve said from the start. I have so many things to say that concern you, judgments to make that affect you, but if you don’t accept the trustworthiness of the One who commanded my words and acts, none of it matters. That is who you are questioning—not me but the One who sent me.”
27-29 They still didn’t get it, didn’t realize that he was referring to the Father. So Jesus tried again. “When you raise up the Son of Man, then you will know who I am—that I’m not making this up, but speaking only what the Father taught me. The One who sent me stays with me. He doesn’t abandon me. He sees how much joy I take in pleasing him.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, September 25, 2022
Today's Scripture
Mark 8:34–38
Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?
38 “If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I’m leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you’ll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.”
Insight
Jesus’ words in Mark 8 come in the context of a situation in which He first praised Peter and then rebuked him. In Mark, we read how Peter recognized Jesus as “the Messiah” (8:29). Matthew’s gospel includes more details: Christ praised Peter for this confession (Matthew 16:17–19). Mark then tells us how Jesus explained that the Messiah would be killed (Mark 8:31). For this, “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him” (v. 32). Christ’s response was strong: “Get behind me, Satan! . . . You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (v. 33). This is the context in which Jesus makes His well-known statement: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (v. 35). Jesus led by example, giving up His life for our benefit and His Father’s glory.
By: Tim Gustafson
Choose Wisely
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Mark 8:36
Astronaut Chris Ferguson made a difficult decision as the commander of the flight crew scheduled for a journey to the International Space Station. But that decision didn’t have anything to do with the mechanics of flight or the safety of his fellow astronauts. Instead, it pertained to what he considers his most important work: his family. Ferguson opted to keep his feet planted firmly on Earth so he could be present for his daughter’s wedding.
We all face difficult decisions at times—decisions that cause us to evaluate what matters most to us in life, because one option comes at the expense of the other. Jesus aimed to communicate this truth to His disciples and a crowd of onlookers regarding life’s most important decision—to follow Him. To be a disciple, He said, would require them to “deny themselves” in order to walk with Him (Mark 8:34). They might have been tempted to spare themselves the sacrifices required of following Christ and instead seek their own desires, but He reminded them it would come at the price of that which matters much more.
We’re often tempted to pursue things that seem of great value, yet they distract us from following Jesus. Let’s ask God to guide us in the choices we face each day so we’ll choose wisely and honor Him.
By: Kirsten Holmberg
Reflect & Pray
What choices have you made that drew you away from Jesus? What choices have drawn you nearer?
Jesus, I want to walk with You. Please help me to recognize and choose the paths that will foster a deeper connection to You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, September 25, 2022
The “Go” of Relationship
Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. —Matthew 5:41
Our Lord’s teaching can be summed up in this: the relationship that He demands for us is an impossible one unless He has done a supernatural work in us. Jesus Christ demands that His disciple does not allow even the slightest trace of resentment in his heart when faced with tyranny and injustice. No amount of enthusiasm will ever stand up to the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His servant. Only one thing will bear the strain, and that is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ Himself— a relationship that has been examined, purified, and tested until only one purpose remains and I can truly say, “I am here for God to send me where He will.” Everything else may become blurred, but this relationship with Jesus Christ must never be.
The Sermon on the Mount is not some unattainable goal; it is a statement of what will happen in me when Jesus Christ has changed my nature by putting His own nature in me. Jesus Christ is the only One who can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount.
If we are to be disciples of Jesus, we must be made disciples supernaturally. And as long as we consciously maintain the determined purpose to be His disciples, we can be sure that we are not disciples. Jesus says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you…” (John 15:16). That is the way the grace of God begins. It is a constraint we can never escape; we can disobey it, but we can never start it or produce it ourselves. We are drawn to God by a work of His supernatural grace, and we can never trace back to find where the work began. Our Lord’s making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity of ours at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are naturally easy for us— He only asks us to do the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The vital relationship which the Christian has to the Bible is not that he worships the letter, but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible spirit and life to him. The Psychology of Redemption, 1066 L
Bible in a Year: Song of Solomon 6-8; Galatians 4