Max Lucado Daily: THE SECRET OF SATISFACTION - November 21, 2022
Are you in prison? You are if you feel better when you have more and worse when you have less. If your happiness comes from something you deposit, drive, drink, or digest, then face it – you are in prison, the prison of want.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, you have a visitor. And your visitor has a message that can get you released. Make your way into the receiving room, take your seat in the chair, and look across the table at the psalmist David. He motions for you to lean forward. “I have a secret to tell you,” he whispers. “The secret of satisfaction: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” It’s as if he is saying, “What I have in God is greater than what I don’t have in life.” You think you and I could learn to say the same?
Psalm 140
God, get me out of here, away from this evil;
protect me from these vicious people.
All they do is think up new ways to be bad;
they spend their days plotting war games.
They practice the sharp rhetoric of hate and hurt,
speak venomous words that maim and kill.
God, keep me out of the clutch of these wicked ones,
protect me from these vicious people;
All boast and swagger, they plot ways to trip me up,
determined to bring me down.
These crooks invent traps to catch me
and do their best to incriminate me.
6-8 I prayed, “God, you’re my God!
Listen, God! Mercy!
God, my Lord, Strong Savior,
protect me when the fighting breaks out!
Don’t let the wicked have their way, God,
don’t give them an inch!”
9-11 These troublemakers all around me—
let them drown in their own verbal poison.
Let God pile hellfire on them,
let him bury them alive in crevasses!
These loudmouths—
don’t let them be taken seriously;
These savages—
let the Devil hunt them down!
12-13 I know that you, God, are on the side of victims,
that you care for the rights of the poor.
And I know that the righteous personally thank you,
that good people are secure in your presence.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, November 21, 2022
Today's Scripture
John 2:13–22
Tear Down This Temple?.?.?.
13-14 When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.
15-17 Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.”
18-19 But the Jews were upset. They asked, “What credentials can you present to justify this?” Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple and in three days I’ll put it back together.”
20-22 They were indignant: “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you’re going to rebuild it in three days?” But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said.
Insight
John’s gospel is commonly accepted as the last of the gospel accounts to be written. The apostle wrote to a specific group of readers—believers in Jesus with a Hellenistic (Greek) background—and spent time reflecting on the life of Jesus. John 2:13–22 provides an important insight into faith. John linked the belief of the first disciples with Jesus’ resurrection. After He rose from the dead, the disciples’ belief in Him was confirmed and solidified in a way that reinforced Christ’s own words (vv. 19–22).
Those early disciples didn’t have all the pieces to their puzzle of faith. We, however, have been given a fuller account of Jesus and can see the relationship between His life and His actions. John said the point of his gospel is that we “may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing [we] may have life in his name” (20:31). By: J.R. Hudberg
Reading Backwards
After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. John 2:22
Reading the last chapter of a mystery novel first may sound like a bad idea to those who love the suspense of a good story. But some people enjoy reading a book more if they know how it ends.
In Reading Backwards, author Richard Hays shows how important the practice is for our understanding of the Bible. By illustrating how the unfolding words and events of Scripture anticipate, echo, and throw light on one another, Professor Hays gives us reason to read our Bibles forward and backward.
Hays reminds readers that it was only after Jesus’ resurrection that His disciples understood His claim to rebuild a destroyed temple in three days. The apostle John tells us, “The temple he had spoken of was his body” (John 2:21). Only then could they understand a meaning of their Passover celebration never before understood (see Matthew 26:17–29). Only in retrospect could they reflect on how Jesus gave fullness of meaning to an ancient king’s deep feelings for the house of God (Psalm 69:9; John 2:16–17). Only by rereading their Scriptures in light of the true temple of God (Jesus Himself) could the disciples grasp how the ritual of Israel’s religion and Messiah would throw light on one another.
And now, only by reading these same Scriptures backward and forward, can we see in Jesus everything that any of us has ever needed or longed for. By: Mart DeHaan
Reflect & Pray
What difficulties concern you about your future? When reflecting on your life, how are you learning to understand and believe God’s story that's best understood and loved when read with eternity in view?
Father in heaven, thank You for letting me live long enough to see Your ability to show up and reveal the wonder of Your presence in ways I could not have foreseen.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, November 21, 2022
“It is Finished!”
I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. —John 17:4
The death of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment in history of the very mind and intent of God. There is no place for seeing Jesus Christ as a martyr. His death was not something that happened to Him— something that might have been prevented. His death was the very reason He came.
Never build your case for forgiveness on the idea that God is our Father and He will forgive us because He loves us. That contradicts the revealed truth of God in Jesus Christ. It makes the Cross unnecessary, and the redemption “much ado about nothing.” God forgives sin only because of the death of Christ. God could forgive people in no other way than by the death of His Son, and Jesus is exalted as Savior because of His death. “We see Jesus…for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor…” (Hebrews 2:9). The greatest note of triumph ever sounded in the ears of a startled universe was that sounded on the Cross of Christ— “It is finished!” (John 19:30). That is the final word in the redemption of humankind.
Anything that lessens or completely obliterates the holiness of God, through a false view of His love, contradicts the truth of God as revealed by Jesus Christ. Never allow yourself to believe that Jesus Christ stands with us, and against God, out of pity and compassion, or that He became a curse for us out of sympathy for us. Jesus Christ became a curse for us by divine decree. Our part in realizing the tremendous meaning of His curse is the conviction of sin. Conviction is given to us as a gift of shame and repentance; it is the great mercy of God. Jesus Christ hates the sin in people, and Calvary is the measure of His hatred.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The Bible does not thrill; the Bible nourishes. Give time to the reading of the Bible and the recreating effect is as real as that of fresh air physically. Disciples Indeed, 387 R
Bible in a Year: Ezekiel 16-17; James 3
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, November 21, 2022
THE GOOD THING ABOUT BAD STORMS - #9356
When my wife would get her hands on the TV's remote control, which was seldom, she'd usually choose something educational. One night she was watching a feature on what the host called "good things hurricanes do." Well, I've seen some of the bad things hurricanes do, I was intrigued to hear about this. The feature told about these Australian pine trees that somehow had taken root in a place in Florida that hosted attractive plants which, in turn, attracted many beautiful birds and small animals. Well, as those pines grew and got tall, they literally created a canopy over those plants, and blocked out the sun. What had once been an area thriving with plant and animal life became this stretch of sterile underbrush - until the hurricane hit. The storm literally snapped those trees in two and I'm sure did a lot of terrible things. But the sun was back. For this little area, well, it had become a beautiful park with pools, greenery, flowers, herons, and lots of interesting wildlife. But it took a hurricane.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Good Thing About Bad Storms."
The storm blew in and removed what didn't belong there. Strangely, I understand that. You see, God has sent or allowed storms to come roaring into my life over the years, and they did damage. But it also had that same effect. It's true in nature, it's true in our lives - what devastates can also be God's tool to cleanse, to improve, and ultimately to make something beautiful! I've seen it even through losing the love of my life.
There's a picture of that in Acts 27, beginning with verse 14. It's our word for today from the Word of God. The Apostle Paul is being transported to Rome for trial on a large cargo ship that's carrying 276 passengers. They suddenly get hit by a massive storm system that batters and threatens to destroy them for two weeks.
The Bible says, "A wind of hurricane force...swept down from the island. The ship was caught by the storm...and we were driven along...We took such a violent battering from the storm that the next day they began to throw the cargo overboard. On the third day, they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands."
Eventually, Paul is visited by an angelic messenger. And here's how Paul reported that visit to his fellow passengers: "Keep up your courage, because only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, 'Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar, and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you'."
Storms have a way of clarifying the things that really matter and the things that really don't. In this case, they threw overboard cargo they thought they needed but apparently they didn't really need. That might be what God's trying to get you to do as the storm is battering you - set some new priorities, get rid of some cargo you've accumulated, even some sin you've taken on. Maybe there's stuff that needs to go.
Just as God clarified for Paul what really mattered in that night during the storm. It was his life mission and the people on the ship. That's what really mattered. Not the cargo, not the ship. It could be that God wants to use your personal hurricane to get you to focus on the things that really matter. The ship might not make it, but it's the people who matter! Maybe people you've been neglecting because you've been all about the ship and the voyage. And your life mission is what matters; the things God's given you to do that also may have been marginalized. And that, too, will survive the storm.
The hurricanes of God seem devastating sometimes, and they can hurt. But He sends them to accomplish things that might not happen any other way as well - the cleansing that your life needs. The new priorities your life needs. He's removing what has blocked the sun so something beautiful can grow there.