Max Lucado Daily: Take the Challenge
Here is my challenge to you today! Join me, every day for 4 weeks, to pray 4 minutes. Then get ready to connect with God like never before!
When God gives, Luke 6:38 says, He gives a gift that is “pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap.” As we redouble our commitment to pray, God redoubles his promise to bless. Nothing pleases Jesus as much as being audaciously trusted.
And you are never more like Jesus than when you pray for others. Pray for this hurting world. Present their case to the giver of bread. And bring your grocery basket. God will give you plenty of blessings to take back to them!
Take the challenge? Sign on at Beforeamen.com. Join me every day for 4 weeks, to pray 4 minutes—it’ll change your life forever!
From Before Amen
Ephesians 3
The Secret Plan of God
1–3 3 This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. I take it that you’re familiar with the part I was given in God’s plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.
4–6 As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board.
7–8 This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.
8–10 And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!
11–13 All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!
14–19 My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
20–21 God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, November 25, 2023
Today's Scripture
Hebrews 11:1–8
Faith in What We Don’t See
1–2 11 The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
3 By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.
4 By an act of faith, Abel brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain. It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference. That’s what God noticed and approved as righteous. After all these centuries, that belief continues to catch our notice.
5–6 By an act of faith, Enoch skipped death completely. “They looked all over and couldn’t find him because God had taken him.” We know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken “he pleased God.” It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.
7 By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
8–10 By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going.
Insight
The book of Hebrews was written to encourage Jewish believers in Jesus who were facing persecution (Hebrews 10:32–35) and were thus in danger of drifting away and reverting back to Judaism. The unnamed author encouraged them to live by faith and to persevere (vv. 36–39) and explained what living by faith means (11:1). The author listed examples of many people who’d lived by such faith to illustrate that this is the only way to please God: “Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (v. 6). These faithful believers trusted God despite their adverse circumstances and the disappointment of not yet “[receiving] what had been promised” (v. 39). By: K. T. Sim
Seeing by Faith
Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
During my morning walk, the sun hit the waters of Lake Michigan at a perfect angle to produce a stunning view. I asked my friend to stop and wait for me as I positioned my camera to take a pic. Because of the position of the sun, I couldn’t see the image on my phone’s screen before I snapped the shot. But having done this before, I sensed it would be a great picture. I told my friend, “We can’t see it now, but pictures like this always come out good.”
Walking by faith through this life is often like taking that picture. You can’t always see the details on the screen, but that doesn’t mean the stunning picture isn’t there. You don’t always see God working, but you can trust that He’s there. As the writer of Hebrews penned, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (11:1). By faith we place our confidence and assurance in God—especially when we can’t see or understand what He’s doing.
With faith, not seeing doesn’t prevent us from “taking the shot.” It just might make us pray more and seek God’s direction. We can also rely on knowing what’s happened in the past as others have walked by faith (vv. 4–12) as well as through our own stories. What God has done before, He can do again. By: Katara Patton
Reflect & Pray
What are you trusting God to do even though you may not see it clearly right now? How has He delivered you or your family in the past?
Heavenly Father, thank You for all the ways You’ve provided for me in the past. Help me to walk by faith even if I can’t see all You’re doing.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, November 25, 2023
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
The fiery furnaces are there by God’s direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances; we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them. The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 674 R
Bible in a Year: Ezekiel 24-26; 1 Peter 2
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