Max Lucado Daily: ONLY ONE OPTION - February 20, 2023
When you recognize God as Creator, you will admire Him. When you recognize His wisdom, you will learn from Him. When you discover His strength, you will rely on Him. But only when He saves you will you worship Him.
It’s a “before and after” scenario. Before your rescue, He was high on your priority list, but He shared the spot with others. Then came the storm, the rage, the fight. Despair fell like a fog. Turn to your career for help? Only if you want to hide from the storm, not escape it. Lean on your status for strength? A storm isn’t impressed with your title.
Suddenly you’re left with one option: God. And when you ask—genuinely ask—He comes. And from that moment on, He is not just a deity to admire, or a master to obey. He is the Savior. The Savior to be worshiped!
Ecclesiastes 12
Before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes,
Before your vision dims and the world blurs
And the winter years keep you close to the fire.
3-5 In old age, your body no longer serves you so well.
Muscles slacken, grip weakens, joints stiffen.
The shades are pulled down on the world.
You can’t come and go at will. Things grind to a halt.
The hum of the household fades away.
You are wakened now by bird-song.
Hikes to the mountains are a thing of the past.
Even a stroll down the road has its terrors.
Your hair turns apple-blossom white,
Adorning a fragile and impotent matchstick body.
Yes, you’re well on your way to eternal rest,
While your friends make plans for your funeral.
6-7 Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over.
Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends.
The body is put back in the same ground it came from.
The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it.
8 It’s all smoke, nothing but smoke.
The Quester says that everything’s smoke.
The Final Word
9-10 Besides being wise himself, the Quester also taught others knowledge. He weighed, examined, and arranged many proverbs. The Quester did his best to find the right words and write the plain truth.
11 The words of the wise prod us to live well.
They’re like nails hammered home, holding life together.
They are given by God, the one Shepherd.
12-13 But regarding anything beyond this, dear friend, go easy. There’s no end to the publishing of books, and constant study wears you out so you’re no good for anything else. The last and final word is this:
Fear God.
Do what he tells you.
14 And that’s it. Eventually God will bring everything that we do out into the open and judge it according to its hidden intent, whether it’s good or evil.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, February 20, 2023
Today's Scripture
Mark 7:8–13
Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact:
These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they are worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy,
Ditching God’s command
and taking up the latest fads.”
9-13 He went on, “Well, good for you. You get rid of God’s command so you won’t be inconvenienced in following the religious fashions! Moses said, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel out of that by saying that it’s perfectly acceptable to say to father or mother, ‘Gift! What I owed you I’ve given as a gift to God,’ thus relieving yourselves of obligation to father or mother. You scratch out God’s Word and scrawl a whim in its place. You do a lot of things like this.”
Insight
Mark’s gospel is unique in several ways. It presents the Savior as the divine Servant. It’s held by many conservative scholars to be the recollections of Simon Peter and is the most action-oriented of the Gospels, causing many to see it as intended for a Roman audience. This assumed Roman audience may also account for Mark’s concern in explaining some Jewish ritual practices (see Mark 7:3–4)—explanations which aren’t needed in Matthew’s gospel and its assumed Jewish audience. Ultimately, Mark’s account, which begins, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God” (1:1), reveals Jesus as the One who said, “Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45). By: Bill Crowder
What’s Truly Needed
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions. Mark 7:8
While preparing a meal, a young mother cut a pot roast in half before she put it in a large pot. Her husband asked her why she cut the meat in half. She replied, “Because that’s the way my mother does it.”
Her husband’s question, however, piqued the woman’s curiosity. So she asked her mother about the tradition. She was shocked to learn that her mother cut the meat so it would fit in the one small pot she used. And because her daughter had many large pots, the act of cutting the meat was unnecessary.
Many traditions begin out of a necessity but are carried on without question—becoming “the way we do it.” It’s natural to want to hold on to human traditions—something the Pharisees were doing in their day (Mark 7:1–2). They were distracted by what seemed like the breaking of one of their religious rules.
As Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions” (v. 8). He revealed that traditions should never replace the wisdom of Scripture. A genuine desire to follow God (vv. 6–7) will focus on the attitude of our heart rather than outward actions.
It’s a good idea to consistently evaluate traditions—anything we hold close to our heart and follow religiously. The things that God has revealed to be truly needed should always supersede traditions. By: Katara Patton
Reflect & Pray
What are some of the traditions you hold fast to? How do they line up with what’s revealed in Scripture?
Heavenly Father, help me to follow Your commands and to forgo any tradition that conflicts with the Scriptures.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, February 20, 2023
Taking the Initiative Against Daydreaming
Arise, let us go from here. —John 14:31
Daydreaming about something in order to do it properly is right, but daydreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong. In this passage, after having said these wonderful things to His disciples, we might have expected our Lord to tell them to go away and meditate over them all. But Jesus never allowed idle daydreaming. When our purpose is to seek God and to discover His will for us, daydreaming is right and acceptable. But when our inclination is to spend time daydreaming over what we have already been told to do, it is unacceptable and God’s blessing is never on it. God will take the initiative against this kind of daydreaming by prodding us to action. His instructions to us will be along the lines of this: “Don’t sit or stand there, just go!”
If we are quietly waiting before God after He has said to us, “Come aside by yourselves…” then that is meditation before Him to seek His will (Mark 6:31). Beware, however, of giving in to mere daydreaming once God has spoken. Allow Him to be the source of all your dreams, joys, and delights, and be careful to go and obey what He has said. If you are in love with someone, you don’t sit and daydream about that person all the time— you go and do something for him. That is what Jesus Christ expects us to do. Daydreaming after God has spoken is an indication that we do not trust Him.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.
Bible in a Year: Leviticus 26-27; Mark 2
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, February 20, 2023
ENTERTAINMENT FAITH - #9420
OK, try to picture this. Here's a group of maybe 100 teenagers in a seminar for two hours, sitting on concrete the whole time, taking notes the whole time, and asking for more when the seminar is dismissed. You say, "Whoa! What planet were you on?" It was in Haiti when I was there a few years ago, teaching in a workshop in the gymnasium. Now, the only place to sit was in the balcony, and in the balcony of that gym it was all concrete. They told me to take two hours. Wow! I said, "Oh, I could talk here all the time!" I could probably figure out something to say for two hours, and I did. Believe it or not, I was the first one finished! I know that's pretty hard for you to believe that I finished first, but I really did. Give me two hours and I can. Well, they quickly ran to the next seminar to get some more.
Now, I returned to America, and you know you'd better be done in 20 minutes here or you'll be talking to yourself. Unless, of course, you're funny enough to be like a Christian comedian or something. Let's not be too rough on our teenagers though; they happen to have a disease that afflicts the whole American church. And it is a disease that produces spiritual wimps.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Entertainment Faith."
Our word for today from the Word of God follows the feeding of the 5,000, where it says in John 6:14, "After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, 'Surely this is the prophet who was to come into the world.'" Well, they chased Him all the way across the lake of Galilee, and when they found Him on the other side of the lake, it says they asked Him, "'Rabbi, when did you get here?' Jesus answered, 'I tell you the truth, you're looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.'" In verse 30 they asked Him, "What miraculous sign will You give that we may see it and believe You? What will you do?"
Finally, after Jesus begins to talk to them about the shedding of blood and a cross, in verse 66 it says, "From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him." Now, here's a crowd, and they're ready to follow Jesus as long as there was a good show: miracles, excited crowds, cheers, surprises, songs, good feelings. But as soon as it got serious or demanding, as soon as it cost something, they checked out - the first known case of entertainitis. Yep, interest in spiritual input as long as it's easy to take.
I didn't realize how shallow our faith here is until I met Christians in other countries. They know how to pray powerfully, extensively. They're hungry, not for jokes and stories. They want solid, biblical teaching. They're interested in the substance of Christianity, not the style of the speaker. And while we're having socials, they're having revivals. While we accept mediocrity, they're expecting miracles.
Now, we're a product of a media culture; kind of a Sesame Street, Internet pop-up approach that changes the subject every 60 seconds. But compared to believers in the rest of the world, they have a Sesame Street faith. The first step toward the cure of entertainitis is to recognize the disease and to want a cure. We need to begin to re-train our hearts to look for the truth in a message, not the entertainment value; to look for the Bible in a song, not the beat; to quit expecting speakers to do all the work for us; to pack the auditorium for a sermon, not just for a concert or a special event; to understand this is a war, not a picnic.
Most important, we need to commit ourselves to the spiritual discipline of a personal Bible study, just plain ol' time with Jesus that starts your day every day. That is the anchor of an authentic Christian life. Maybe it's time we say, "Lord, I'm tired of being so deep into my shallow, entertaining faith. I want to get rid of this disease of shallowness, or entertainitis."
Remember what happened to the people who had it first? They eventually abandoned Jesus.