Max Lucado: POWER FROM THE SPIRIT - October 14, 2022
Perhaps the greatest characteristic of fire is this: energy. It is the secret of the electric current. It has empowered countless coal-burning engines and fueled too many stoves to count. Fire combusts. Fire ignites. Fire moves things. And the Spirit? Does he not move us? “You shall receive power,” promised Jesus, “when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8 NKJV).
God doesn’t want us to give him our best effort. We don’t try our hardest and then turn to God; we turn to God and trust him to do the work for and in us. The greatest force in the universe will work within you to give you the power you need to become more and more like him. He will make you holy, in an instant, and make you holier over a lifetime.
John 10:22-42
They were celebrating Hanukkah just then in Jerusalem. It was winter. Jesus was strolling in the Temple across Solomon’s Porch. The Jews, circling him, said, “How long are you going to keep us guessing? If you’re the Messiah, tell us straight out.”
25-30 Jesus answered, “I told you, but you don’t believe. Everything I have done has been authorized by my Father, actions that speak louder than words. You don’t believe because you’re not my sheep. My sheep recognize my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them real and eternal life. They are protected from the Destroyer for good. No one can steal them from out of my hand. The Father who put them under my care is so much greater than the Destroyer and Thief. No one could ever get them away from him. I and the Father are one heart and mind.”
31-32 Again the Jews picked up rocks to throw at him. Jesus said, “I have made a present to you from the Father of a great many good actions. For which of these acts do you stone me?”
33 The Jews said, “We’re not stoning you for anything good you did, but for what you said—this blasphemy of calling yourself God.”
34-38 Jesus said, “I’m only quoting your inspired Scriptures, where God said, ‘I tell you—you are gods.’ If God called your ancestors ‘gods’—and Scripture doesn’t lie—why do you yell, ‘Blasphemer! Blasphemer!’ at the unique One the Father consecrated and sent into the world, just because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I don’t do the things my Father does, well and good; don’t believe me. But if I am doing them, put aside for a moment what you hear me say about myself and just take the evidence of the actions that are right before your eyes. Then perhaps things will come together for you, and you’ll see that not only are we doing the same thing, we are the same—Father and Son. He is in me; I am in him.”
39-42 They tried yet again to arrest him, but he slipped through their fingers. He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and stayed there. A lot of people followed him over. They were saying, “John did no miracles, but everything he said about this man has come true.” Many believed in him then and there.
Our Daily Bread Devotional
Read:
Deuteronomy 10:14–22 Look around you: Everything you see is God’s—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that’s you!—out of all the other peoples. That’s where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he’s the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn’t play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.
19-21
You must treat foreigners with the same loving care—
remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Reverently respect God, your God, serve him, hold tight to him,
back up your promises with the authority of his name.
He’s your praise! He’s your God!
He did all these tremendous, these staggering things
that you saw with your own eyes.
22 When your ancestors entered Egypt, they numbered a mere seventy souls. And now look at you—you look more like the stars in the night skies in number. And your God did it.
Insight: Today’s passage (Deuteronomy 10:14–22) is written in a more elevated style from the rest of the book; it contains more descriptive language and uses rhetorical devices—such as repetition of ideas in different forms—to allow the hearer to absorb the content. This suggests that Moses’ speech is reaching a climax. Old Testament scholar Daniel Block says that Moses “is about to declare the moral and spiritual implications of the privilege of covenant relationship that he has been preaching to this point of the second address.” The moral requirement is adherence to the law of God. Moses reiterates this three times with three different admonitions: keep the commands (vv. 12–13), circumcise your heart (v. 16), and fear and serve God (v. 20). Each of these calls to submit to and serve God is followed by an attribution of praise (see vv. 14, 17, 21).
Baby boy:
By Tim Gustafson
[God] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you. Deuteronomy 10:18
For more than a year, his legal name was “Baby Boy.” Discovered by a security guard who heard his cries, Baby Boy had been abandoned—hours old and wrapped only in a bag—in a hospital parking lot.
Soon after his discovery, Social Services called the people who would one day become his forever family. The couple took him in and called him Grayson (not his real name). Finally, the adoption was complete, and Grayson’s name became official. Today you can meet a delightful child who mispronounces his r’s as he earnestly engages you in conversation. You’d never guess he’d once been found abandoned in a bag.
Late in his life, Moses reviewed God’s character and what He’d done for the people of Israel. “The Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them,” Moses told them (Deuteronomy 10:15). This love had a broad scope. “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing,” Moses said (v. 18). “He is the one you praise; he is your God” (v. 21).
Whether it’s through adoption or simply through love and service, we’re all called to reflect God’s love. That loving couple became the hands and feet God used to extend His love to someone who might have gone unnoticed and unclaimed. We can serve as His hands and feet too.
Reflect:How have you sensed God extending His love to you in ways large and small? What small thing might you do today to reflect that love?
Pray: Heavenly Father, have mercy on the fatherless. Help me to be Your hands and feet today.
My Utmost for His Highest
The Key to the Missionary’s Work
By Oswald Chambers
Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…" —Matthew 28:18-19
The key to the missionary’s work is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the lost. We are inclined to look on our Lord as one who assists us in our endeavors for God. Yet our Lord places Himself as the absolute sovereign and supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say that the lost will never be saved if we don’t go— He simply says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations….” He says, “Go on the basis of the revealed truth of My sovereignty, teaching and preaching out of your living experience of Me.”
“Then the eleven disciples went…to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them” (Matthew 28:16). If I want to know the universal sovereignty of Christ, I must know Him myself. I must take time to worship the One whose name I bear. Jesus says, “Come to Me…”— that is the place to meet Jesus— “all you who labor and are heavy laden…” (Matthew 11:28)— and how many missionaries are! We completely dismiss these wonderful words of the universal Sovereign of the world, but they are the words of Jesus to His disciples meant for here and now.
“Go therefore….” To “go” simply means to live. Acts 1:8 is the description of how to go. Jesus did not say in this verse, “Go into Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria,” but, “…you shall be witnesses to Me in [all these places].” He takes upon Himself the work of sending us.
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you…” (John 15:7)— that is the way to keep going. Where we are placed is then a matter of indifference to us, because God sovereignly engineers our goings.
“None of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus…” (Acts 20:24). That is how to keep going until we are gone from this life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The root of faith is the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest snares is the idea that God is sure to lead us to success. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L
Bible in a Year: Isaiah 43-44; 1 Thessalonians 2
A Word With You by Ron Hutchcraft
Your Goal or Your Soul
Our sons were - and are - crazy about baseball, and then followed the grandsons. They know the players, the standings, the stats. Did I mention they're crazy about baseball? Yeah, it's true; it runs in the family. But dark clouds again rolled in over America's baseball stadiums, because, well, there were suddenly more reports that some stars, who are a lot of kids' heroes, cheated to be great. You remember all that.
PED? No, that's not the initials for some new government program. I guess it's a performance-enhancing steroid against the rules of baseball to have in your system. But it's all about winning, right? In professional sports, the bucks are big, the pressure is big, the temptations are big.
But no one's bigger than the rules. Breaking them might help you win the game, but at a pretty high price. You trade your priceless character for some cheap victories. Your accomplishments aren't really you - they're you plus the drugs. What could have been the Hall of Fame can be overshadowed by the Hall of Shame.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Goal or Your Soul."
Before we put on our black robe to judge some baseball players, maybe we should look in the mirror. See, I'm a very goal-oriented person. I know if you've got a goal, somewhere you're going to be tempted to compromise to get there, because we're all susceptible to that "win, no matter what" drumbeat of our culture. We all want to win in business. We want to have "super kids" so we'll be "super-parents." We want to get the girl, we want to land the guy. Whatever our arena, we're driven to come out on top, no matter what the cost to our family, our integrity, our health, our future. If "winning" means backstabbing, stepping on people, neglecting people, breaking promises, lying, betraying - hey, it's all about winning, right? It's all about getting to our big goal, right?
No, it's all about your soul; your character, who you are, not what you accomplish. It's about giving the game your very best, but without regrets, without compromises, without betraying trust or leaving a trail of tears. After all, who can afford the most costly trade there is: gaining the world in exchange for your soul?
That's why integrity's so important. The Bible says, "The integrity of the upright guides them." See, your integrity's like a missile's internal guidance system. It guarantees that you stay on course and reach your target. So even if I "lose," I really win. My soul was not on sale to get to my goal. That integrity Bible verse concludes by saying, "but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity." Whatever I might gain by compromising, I have so much more to lose.
I've had some disturbingly sad conversations with folks who were nearing the end of their life; people trying to come to terms with some haunting regrets about what - or who - they sacrificed in order to succeed. Sadly, there are no "do-overs." But I'll tell you this: I am profoundly grateful there is forgiveness. In our word for today from the Word of God, Psalm 130:3, a man who had terribly failed his God, his family, his followers wrote: "If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness."
Listen, it's not cheap to have every sin of your past erased from God's book. It takes blood, but not mine, not yours. In God's words, "The blood of Jesus His Son purifies us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). All sin! However hurtful; covered by the payment that was made for it when Jesus hung on a cross dying for it.
I invite you, if you've never had that cleaning take place; that internal cleansing; the forgiving of God for every wrong thing you've ever done, let this be the day you come to Jesus who died so that could happen and give you to Him. Let me encourage you to go to our website. I'd love to show you exactly how to begin that relationship with Him there. Go to ANewStory.com.
And once you've embraced Him as the Forgiver of your sin, He gives you the grace to retrace your regrets to work to restore what - or who - you've hurt. Because you know what Jesus said, "I make all things new (Revelation 21:5)."