Max Lucado Daily: WHAT TO DO WITH WORRY - November 25, 2022
Romans 8:32 says, “God did not keep back his own Son, but he gave him for us. If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else?”
Take your anxieties to the cross—literally. Next time you’re worried about your health or house or finances or flights, take a mental trip up the hill. Run your thumb over the tip of the spear. Balance a spike in the palm of your hand. Read the wooden sign written in your own language. And as you do, touch the velvet dirt, moist with the blood of God. Blood he bled for you. The spear he took for you. The nails he felt for you. The sign he left for you. He did it all for you. All of this. Knowing this, knowing all he did for you there, don’t you think he will look out for you here?
Psalm 144
Blessed be God, my mountain,
who trains me to fight fair and well.
He’s the bedrock on which I stand,
the castle in which I live,
my rescuing knight,
The high crag where I run for dear life,
while he lays my enemies low.
3-4 I wonder why you care, God—
why do you bother with us at all?
All we are is a puff of air;
we’re like shadows in a campfire.
5-8 Step down out of heaven, God;
ignite volcanoes in the hearts of the mountains.
Hurl your lightnings in every direction;
shoot your arrows this way and that.
Reach all the way from sky to sea:
pull me out of the ocean of hate,
out of the grip of those barbarians
Who lie through their teeth,
who shake your hand
then knife you in the back.
9-10 O God, let me sing a new song to you,
let me play it on a twelve-string guitar—
A song to the God who saved the king,
the God who rescued David, his servant.
11 Rescue me from the enemy sword,
release me from the grip of those barbarians
Who lie through their teeth,
who shake your hand
then knife you in the back.
12-14 Make our sons in their prime
like sturdy oak trees,
Our daughters as shapely and bright
as fields of wildflowers.
Fill our barns with great harvest,
fill our fields with huge flocks;
Protect us from invasion and exile—
eliminate the crime in our streets.
15 How blessed the people who have all this!
How blessed the people who have God for God!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, November 25, 2022
Today's Scripture
Revelation 21:1–8
Everything New
I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.
2 I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband.
3-5 I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.” The Enthroned continued, “Look! I’m making everything new. Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate.”
6-8 Then he said, “It’s happened. I’m A to Z. I’m the Beginning, I’m the Conclusion. From Water-of-Life Well I give freely to the thirsty. Conquerors inherit all this. I’ll be God to them, they’ll be sons and daughters to me. But for the rest—the feckless and faithless, degenerates and murderers, sex peddlers and sorcerers, idolaters and all liars—for them it’s Lake Fire and Brimstone. Second death!”
Insight
One aid to understanding the book of Revelation is to recognize that it includes numerous Old Testament allusions. Prophetic echoes from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah resound throughout the book. Consider two such reverberations from Revelation 21. Verse 1—“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ ”—echoes Isaiah 65:17: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.” And Revelation 21:3—“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them”—sounds like Ezekiel 37:27: “My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.” By: Arthur Jackson
Enduring Hope
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Revelation 21:4
Doctors diagnosed four-year-old Solomon with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a progressive muscle-degenerating disease. A year later, doctors discussed wheelchairs with the family. But Solomon protested that he didn’t want to have to use one. Family and friends prayed for him and raised funds for a professionally trained service dog to help keep him out of that wheelchair for as long as possible. Tails for Life, the organization that trained my service dog, Callie, is currently preparing Waffles to serve Solomon.
Though Solomon accepts his treatment, often bursting out in song to praise God, some days are harder. On one of those difficult days, Solomon hugged his mom and said, “I’m happy there’s no Duchenne’s in heaven.”
The degenerating effects of sickness affect all people on this side of eternity. Like Solomon, however, we have an enduring hope that can strengthen our resolve on those inevitable tough days. God gives us the promise of “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). Our Creator and Sustainer will “dwell” among us by making His home with us (v. 3). He will “wipe every tear” from our eyes. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (v. 4). When the wait feels “too hard” or “too long,” we can experience peace because God’s promise will be fulfilled. By: Xochitl Dixon
Reflect & Pray
How has acknowledging God’s promise for a new heaven and a new earth comforted you? How can you encourage a hurting friend with the enduring hope of God’s promises?
Loving God, thank You for strengthening my resolve with the surety of my enduring hope.
For further study, read Prophetic Priorities: Wrestling with the End Times.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, November 25, 2022
The Secret of Spiritual Consistency
God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ… —Galatians 6:14
When a person is newly born again, he seems inconsistent due to his unrelated emotions and the state of the external things or circumstances in his life. The apostle Paul had a strong and steady underlying consistency in his life. Consequently, he could let his external life change without internal distress because he was rooted and grounded in God. Most of us are not consistent spiritually because we are more concerned about being consistent externally. In the external expression of things, Paul lived in the basement, while his critics lived on the upper level. And these two levels do not begin to touch each other. But Paul’s consistency was down deep in the fundamentals. The great basis of his consistency was the agony of God in the redemption of the world, namely, the Cross of Christ.
State your beliefs to yourself again. Get back to the foundation of the Cross of Christ, doing away with any belief not based on it. In secular history the Cross is an infinitesimally small thing, but from the biblical perspective it is of more importance than all the empires of the world. If we get away from dwelling on the tragedy of God on the Cross in our preaching, our preaching produces nothing. It will not transmit the energy of God to man; it may be interesting, but it will have no power. However, when we preach the Cross, the energy of God is released. “…it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.…we preach Christ crucified…” (1 Corinthians 1:21, 23).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Both nations and individuals have tried Christianity and abandoned it, because it has been found too difficult; but no man has ever gone through the crisis of deliberately making Jesus Lord and found Him to be a failure. The Love of God—The Making of a Christian, 680 R
Bible in a Year: Ezekiel 24-26; 1 Peter 2
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, November 25, 2022
YOUR WILL OF GOD UMPIRE - #9360
They take more abuse than anyone in professional baseball. More than the managers who make some dumb decisions. More than the players who mess up. No, it's those umpires that so many fans love to hate. Oh sure, they make some calls the fans don't like or agree with, but I'd hate to think of a ball game without some objective official deciding whether the pitch is a ball or a strike, or whether a hit is foul or fair. Let the players decide? I don't think so. It would be chaos without the umpire. Perhaps the place he's needed the most - and sometimes appreciated the least - is those close judgment calls when the runner and the ball arrive at the base at the same time. Everyone holds their breath as the umpire signals his verdict "Safe!" or "Out!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Will of God Umpire."
The umpire decides what's safe or out in baseball - a decision which should not be left to the players themselves. Of course, baseball is just a game. It's in the decisions we make in our everyday lives that we could use a good umpire - one who could make a call as to whether what we're considering is safe for us or out. From God's perspective, that is, the only perspective that is never wrong - that's always best.
If you've been around Christian things very long, you know about the importance of trying to find out what the "will of God" is in the decisions that define our life. Well, that's easier said than done. Not because God is trying to hide His plan for us, but because we have a hard time discerning what's His will and what's my will. We know His plans are better than ours. But we're pretty caught up in our own plans, and it's often confusing to figure out, "What is God's will for us"
But God has provided an umpire that will help make the call for us. He writes to us about it in Colossians 3:15-16, our word for today from the Word of God. "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts...and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." That word "rule" carries an interesting connotation in the original Greek language of the New Testament. It suggests someone officiating at an athletic contest. So it's kind of like, "Let the peace of Christ 'be the umpire' in your hearts." Or, let Christ's peace decide whether something is "safe" for you or "out" for you.
When you're struggling with a decision, one helpful guideline in getting it right is this: trust what you have peace about in the times when you are talking about it in God's presence. In other words, believe what you feel most consistently when you're praying fervently about that decision. That peace tends to get compromised when we get off our knees and start listening to all those other voices and to our roller coaster feelings. But the peace of Christ is clearest when we're closest to Him. It doesn't mean the absence of doubts or questions, but it's a sense of rightness about a certain course, especially when we're listening to Him alone.
That "peace of Christ" is, of course, tied directly to having the "word of Christ" permeating your life. The shaft of light shining on the right road comes as God illuminates a verse from His Word and makes it an arrow that points in His direction. Those who don't spend regular time in the Word of God, honestly are unlikely to recognize the will of God. As are those who come seeking God's direction, full of their own will. A lot of people have missed God's best because they tried to manipulate God or His Word so that their will would be God's will. It doesn't work that way. He's God; I'm not.
You'll never know what God wants if you come to Him with a contract containing what you want Him to sign for. No, You've got to come to God with a blank piece of paper, signed by you, accepting sight unseen what He writes there. The most powerful prayer in the Bible may be Jesus' eight words in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Yet not My will, but Yours be done" (Luke 22:42).
God promised that He would "instruct you and teach you in the way you should go" (Psalm 32:8). And if you believe Him for the answers He promised, you'll experience the peace of Christ over that road He wants you to take - God's infallible umpire to let you know if it's "safe" or "out."