Max Lucado Daily: HOW PRAYERS GET HEARD - November 4, 2022
None of us pray as much as we should, but all of us pray more than we think, because the Holy Spirit turns our sighs into petitions and our tears into entreaties. He makes sure you get heard.
Now, suppose a person never learns about the sealing and the intercession of the Holy Spirit. This person may assume then, that salvation—security—resides in our works, not God’s, and that the power of prayer depends upon our prayer, not the prayers of the Spirit. What kind of life will this person lead? A parched and prayerless one.
But what if you believe in the work of the Spirit? Will you be different as a result? You bet your sweet Sunday you will. Your shoulders will lift, your knees will bend as you discover the buoyant power of praying in the Spirit. A higher walk. Deeper prayers. And most of all, a quiet confidence that comes from knowing it’s not up to you!
Psalm 61
God, listen to me shout,
bend an ear to my prayer.
When I’m far from anywhere,
down to my last gasp,
I call out, “Guide me
up High Rock Mountain!”
3-5 You’ve always given me breathing room,
a place to get away from it all,
A lifetime pass to your safe-house,
an open invitation as your guest.
You’ve always taken me seriously, God,
made me welcome among those who know and love you.
6-8 Let the days of the king add up
to years and years of good rule.
Set his throne in the full light of God;
post Steady Love and Good Faith as lookouts,
And I’ll be the poet who sings your glory—
and live what I sing every day.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, November 04, 2022
Today's Scripture
Ruth 2:20–22; 4:13–17
Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Why, God bless that man! God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!”
Naomi went on, “That man, Ruth, is one of our circle of covenant redeemers, a close relative of ours!”
21 Ruth the Moabitess said, “Well, listen to this: He also told me, ‘Stick with my workers until my harvesting is finished.’”
22 Naomi said to Ruth, “That’s wonderful, dear daughter! Do that! You’ll be safe in the company of his young women; no danger now of being raped in some stranger’s field.”
Boaz married Ruth. She became his wife. Boaz slept with her. By God’s gracious gift she conceived and had a son.
14-15 The town women said to Naomi, “Blessed be God! He didn’t leave you without family to carry on your life. May this baby grow up to be famous in Israel! He’ll make you young again! He’ll take care of you in old age. And this daughter-in-law who has brought him into the world and loves you so much, why, she’s worth more to you than seven sons!”
16 Naomi took the baby and held him in her arms, cuddling him, cooing over him, waiting on him hand and foot.
17 The neighborhood women started calling him “Naomi’s baby boy!” But his real name was Obed. Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David.
Insight
Naomi described Boaz as a “close relative; . . . one of our guardian-redeemers” (Ruth 2:20). The newborn son of Ruth and Boaz is also referred to as a “guardian-redeemer” (4:14). The “guardian-redeemer” is the central focus of the book of Ruth (see also 3:9, 12; 4:1, 3, 6, 8). The Hebrew word go’el can also be translated “family redeemer,” “kinsman-redeemer,” or “family protector” and refers to the nearest relative with the responsibility of rescuing the family in trouble (see Leviticus 25:23–55; Deuteronomy 25:5–10). Boaz, though not the nearest relative (Ruth 4:2–4), willingly assumed guardian-redeemer obligations; he bought back Elimelek’s land (vv. 3–4) and married the childless widow (Ruth) of a deceased relative (Mahlon) to carry on his family line (v. 5).
By: K. T. Sim
God Redeems Our Pain
The Lord bless him! . . . That man is our close relative. Ruth 2:20
Olive watched her friend loading her dental equipment into his car. A fellow dentist, he’d bought the brand-new supplies from her. Having her own practice had been Olive’s dream for years, but when her son Kyle was born with cerebral palsy, she realized she had to stop working to care for him.
“If I had a million lifetimes, I’d make the same choice,” my friend told me. “But giving up dentistry was difficult. It was the death of a dream.”
We often go through difficulties we can’t understand. For Olive, it was the heartache of her child’s unexpected medical condition and relinquishing her own ambitions. For Naomi, it was the heartache of losing her entire family. In Ruth 1:21 she lamented, “The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
But there was more to Naomi’s story than what she could see. God didn’t abandon her; He brought restoration by providing her with a grandson, Obed (Ruth 4:17). Obed would not only carry on the name of Naomi’s husband and son, but through him, she would be a relative of an ancestor (Boaz) of Jesus Himself (Matthew 1:5, 16).
God redeemed Naomi’s pain. He also redeemed Olive’s pain by helping her begin a ministry for children with neurological conditions. We may experience seasons of heartache, but we can trust that as we obey and follow God, He can redeem our pain. In His love and wisdom, He can make good come out of it.
By: Karen Huang
Reflect & Pray
How has God redeemed your trials in the past? How is He encouraging you in your present difficulties?
Dear God, thank You that You’re redeeming the painful stories of my life.
For further study, read Why? Seeing God in Our Pain.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, November 04, 2022
The Authority of Truth
raw near to God and He will draw near to you. —James 4:8
It is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual— you cannot act for him. It must be his own deliberate act, but the evangelical message should always lead him to action. Refusing to act leaves a person paralyzed, exactly where he was previously. But once he acts, he is never the same. It is the apparent folly of the truth that stands in the way of hundreds who have been convicted by the Spirit of God. Once I press myself into action, I immediately begin to live. Anything less is merely existing. The moments I truly live are the moments when I act with my entire will.
When a truth of God is brought home to your soul, never allow it to pass without acting on it internally in your will, not necessarily externally in your physical life. Record it with ink and with blood— work it into your life. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts and God’s almighty power is available on his behalf. We come up to the truth of God, confess we are wrong, but go back again. Then we approach it again and turn back, until we finally learn we have no business going back. When we are confronted with such a word of truth from our redeeming Lord, we must move directly to transact business with Him. “Come to Me…” (Matthew 11:28). His word come means “to act.” Yet the last thing we want to do is come. But everyone who does come knows that, at that very moment, the supernatural power of the life of God invades him. The dominating power of the world, the flesh, and the devil is now paralyzed; not by your act, but because your act has joined you to God and tapped you in to His redemptive power.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him. Approved Unto God, 10 R
Bible in a Year: Jeremiah 32-33; Hebrews 1
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, November 04, 2022
THE CANCER THAT'S KILLING YOU - #9345
After a while I gave up trying to read those little blurbs that were next to the senior pictures in a high school yearbook. In our school, the seniors got to write their own, and it was usually in cryptic abbreviations so they could get in as many words as possible. Now, those abbreviations refer to something meaningful to the person who wrote it; some important people, some important memories, "Oh, yeah, sure." But most of those blurbs are like hopelessly cryptic. I guess you had to be there in order to understand what they're writing about, right?
But I understood Scott's when I read it. He was one of the top scholars in our recent graduating class; honored many times over. At the end of his blurb he had these words, "Miss U Mom." His Mom was a teacher at the high school. She died of cancer in his sophomore year, and it added a note of sadness to the joy of graduation to know that Scott's Mom wasn't there to see him on his night of high honor. She, with so many others, was taken by that monster we call cancer. You know what? In a way, I'm a cancer victim too. So are you.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Cancer That's Killing You."
Our word for today from the Word of God is in James 1, and I'll read verse 15 today. "After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death." This is a description of a killer disease - a spiritual disease - called sin, and we all have it. Romans 3:23 in the Bible says, "Everyone has sinned and come short of the glory of God." So, it's a disease we all have, and frankly it does work very much like cancer.
All of our cells are kind of programmed to do a certain job within the body. They sort of answer to central intelligence, and there's a master plan built into our cells; the millions of cells in your body. It's built right into the control center in that cell, and that's why some of them know that it's time to rush to a certain spot in your body when you get injured, or they build a wall around an infection so it won't spread. That's their job.
But one day one cell says, "Forget the master plan; I'm going to do as I please." And it no longer takes orders from central intelligence, goes off on its own, begins to multiply, and ultimately attacks a vein or a vital organ, and then the young man writes in a yearbook, "Miss U Mom."
Inside you and me is the spiritual cancer called sin. It's really made up of that middle letter of the word - "I" - SIN. The master plan is that I live for God and I live for others. But I've chosen to go off on my own and pretty much like the song says, "I'll do it my way." That's true of me, too.
That disease kills the people that we cut with our temper, it kills closeness, it ruins the reality and the meaning of sex, love, and families. And we all have it! We have this disease. James 1:15 says, "When it's fully conceived it gives birth to death. There's a wall between God and us. I probably didn't have to tell you that wall was there. I mean, you can already feel it. If it's there when we die, it's there forever. Cancer uncontrolled will kill your body; sin uncontrolled sends you and me to hell.
Your biggest problem in your life isn't death or family or finances. It's sin. This is your deadly condition. But listen to Jesus saying, "I let it kill me so it doesn't have to kill you." See, Jesus took all the dying for this spiritual cancer of sin when He died on the cross. There is a cure for the killer in us.
I want to invite you today on behalf of Jesus to go to the place where you get the cure. It is at the cross of Jesus Christ, where the price was paid. A blood cure! His blood is the only cure. And he invites you today to go there and say, "Jesus, I'm Yours."
Join me today at our website, would you, because I've laid out there how you can begin your personal relationship with Jesus and know you are forgiven. It's ANewStory.com. You could open your life to the Savior today and be cured of the sin that otherwise is so deadly.