Max Lucado Daily: AN ACT OF GRATITUDE - February 23, 2023
Worship happens when you’re aware that what you’ve been given is far greater than what you can give. Worship is the awareness that were it not for God’s touch, you’d still be hobbling and hurting, bitter and broken. It’s the glazed expression on the parched face of a desert pilgrim who discovers the oasis is not a mirage.
We’ve tried to make a science out of worship; we can’t do that. We can’t do that any more than we can sell love or negotiate peace. Worship is a voluntary act of gratitude offered by the saved to the Savior, by the healed to the Healer, and by the delivered to the Deliverer. If you and I can go days without feeling an urge to say “thank you” to the One who saved, healed, and delivered us, then we’d do well to remember what He did.
1 Kings 13
And then this happened: Just as Jeroboam was at the Altar, about to make an offering, a holy man came from Judah by God’s command and preached (these were God’s orders) to the Altar: “Altar, Altar! God’s message! ‘A son will be born into David’s family named Josiah. The priests from the shrines who are making offerings on you, he will sacrifice—on you! Human bones burned on you!’” At the same time he announced a sign: “This is the proof God gives—the Altar will split into pieces and the holy offerings spill into the dirt.”
4-5 When the king heard the message the holy man preached against the Altar at Bethel, he reached out to grab him, yelling, “Arrest him!” But his arm was paralyzed and hung useless. At the same time the Altar broke apart and the holy offerings all spilled into the dirt—the very sign the holy man had announced by God’s command.
6 The king pleaded with the holy man, “Help me! Pray to your God for the healing of my arm.” The holy man prayed for him and the king’s arm was healed—as good as new!
7 Then the king invited the holy man, “Join me for a meal; I have a gift for you.”
8-10 The holy man told the king, “Not on your life! You couldn’t pay me enough to get me to sit down with you at a meal in this place. I’m here under God’s orders, and he commanded, ‘Don’t eat a crumb, don’t drink a drop, and don’t go back the way you came.’” Then he left by a different road than the one on which he had walked to Bethel.
11 There was an old prophet who lived in Bethel. His sons came and told him the story of what the holy man had done that day in Bethel, told him everything that had happened and what the holy man had said to the king.
12 Their father said, “Which way did he go?” His sons pointed out the road that the holy man from Judah had taken.
13-14 He told his sons, “Saddle my donkey.” When they had saddled it, he got on and rode after the holy man. He found him sitting under an oak tree.
He asked him, “Are you the holy man who came from Judah?”
“Yes, I am,” he said.
15 “Well, come home with me and have a meal.”
16-17 “Sorry, I can’t do that,” the holy man said. “I can neither go back with you nor eat with you in this country. I’m under strict orders from God: ‘Don’t eat a crumb; don’t drink a drop; and don’t come back the way you came.’”
18-19 But he said, “I am also a prophet, just like you. And an angel came to me with a message from God: ‘Bring him home with you, and give him a good meal!’” But the man was lying. So the holy man went home with him and they had a meal together.
20-22 There they were, sitting at the table together, when the word of God came to the prophet who had brought him back. He confronted the holy man who had come from Judah: “God’s word to you: You disobeyed God’s command; you didn’t keep the strict orders your God gave you; you came back and sat down to a good meal in the very place God told you, ‘Don’t eat a crumb; don’t drink a drop.’ For that you’re going to die far from home and not be buried in your ancestral tomb.”
23-25 When the meal was over, the prophet who had brought him back saddled his donkey for him. Down the road a way, a lion met him and killed him. His corpse lay crumpled on the road, the lion on one side and the donkey on the other. Some passersby saw the corpse in a heap on the road, with the lion standing guard beside it. They went to the village where the old prophet lived and told what they had seen.
26 When the prophet who had gotten him off track heard it, he said, “It’s the holy man who disobeyed God’s strict orders. God turned him over to the lion who knocked him around and killed him, just as God had told him.”
27-30 The prophet told his sons, “Saddle my donkey.” They did it. He rode out and found the corpse in a heap in the road, with the lion and the donkey standing there. The lion hadn’t bothered either the corpse or the donkey. The old prophet loaded the corpse of the holy man on his donkey and returned it to his own town to give it a decent burial. He placed the body in his own tomb. The people mourned, saying, “A sad day, brother!”
31-32 After the funeral, the prophet said to his sons, “When I die, bury me in the same tomb where the holy man is buried, my bones alongside his bones. The message that he preached by God’s command against the Altar at Bethel and against all the sex-and-religion shrines in the towns of Samaria will come true.”
33-34 After this happened, Jeroboam kept right on doing evil, recruiting priests for the forbidden shrines indiscriminately—anyone who wanted to could be a priest at one of the local shrines. This was the root sin of Jeroboam’s government. And it was this that ruined him.
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Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Today's Scripture
John 4:4–14
To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.
7-8 A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)
9 The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”
11-12 The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this ‘living water’? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”
13-14 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”
Insight
In John 3, Nicodemus, a respected Jewish religious leader, sought Jesus at night (v. 2). In John 4, however, Christ initiates a conversation in the middle of the day with a woman from an ethnic group despised by the Jewish people Nicodemus taught. Yet Jesus engaged both individuals in lengthy conversation, with positive results. The woman at the well immediately went and asked the townspeople, “Could this be the Messiah?” (v. 29). After Jesus’ crucifixion, Nicodemus boldly identified himself with Christ by preparing His body for burial (19:38–40). Jesus’ ministry extends across all borders. By: Tim Gustafson
Water of Life
You would have asked him and he would have given you living water. John 4:10
Andrea’s home life was unstable, and she left at fourteen, finding a job and living with friends. Yearning for love and affirmation, she later moved in with a man who introduced her to drugs, which she added to the alcohol she already drank regularly. But the relationship and the substances didn’t satisfy her longings. She kept searching, and after several years she met some believers in Jesus who reached out to her, offering to pray with her. A few months later, she finally found the One who would quench her thirst for love—Jesus.
The Samaritan woman at the well whom Jesus approached for water found her thirst satisfied too. She was there in the heat of the day (John 4:5–7), probably to avoid the stares and gossip of other women, who would have known her history of multiple husbands and her current adulterous relationship (vv. 17–18). When Jesus approached her and asked her for a drink, He bucked the social conventions of the day, for He, as a Jewish teacher, would not normally have associated with a Samaritan woman. But He wanted to give her the gift of living water that would lead her to eternal life (v. 10). He wanted to satisfy her thirst.
When we receive Jesus as our Savior, we too drink of this living water. We can then share a cup with others as we invite them to follow Him. By: Amy Boucher Pye
Reflect & Pray
How do you think the woman at the well felt when Jesus asked her for some water? What does it mean to you to receive His living water?
Father God, You welcome all who are thirsty to come to the waters and drink. Satisfy my thirst through Your living water.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, February 23, 2023
The Determination to Serve
The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve… —Matthew 20:28
Jesus also said, “Yet I am among you as the One who serves” (Luke 22:27). Paul’s idea of service was the same as our Lord’s— “…ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). We somehow have the idea that a person called to the ministry is called to be different and above other people. But according to Jesus Christ, he is called to be a “doormat” for others— called to be their spiritual leader, but never their superior. Paul said, “I know how to be abased…” (Philippians 4:12). Paul’s idea of service was to pour his life out to the last drop for others. And whether he received praise or blame made no difference. As long as there was one human being who did not know Jesus, Paul felt a debt of service to that person until he did come to know Him. But the chief motivation behind Paul’s service was not love for others but love for his Lord. If our devotion is to the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and broken-hearted, since we will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people. But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be able to hinder us from serving one another.
Paul’s understanding of how Christ had dealt with him is the secret behind his determination to serve others. “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man…” (1 Timothy 1:13). In other words, no matter how badly others may have treated Paul, they could never have treated him with the same degree of spite and hatred with which he had treated Jesus Christ. Once we realize that Jesus has served us even to the depths of our meagerness, our selfishness, and our sin, nothing we encounter from others will be able to exhaust our determination to serve others for His sake.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We all have the trick of saying—If only I were not where I am!—If only I had not got the kind of people I have to live with! If our faith or our religion does not help us in the conditions we are in, we have either a further struggle to go through, or we had better abandon that faith and religion. The Shadow of an Agony, 1178 L
Bible in a Year: Numbers 7-8; Mark 4:21-41
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, February 23, 2023
TURBULENCE THAT TRANSFORMS - #9424
Our grandson's always had an inquiring mind, even when he was little. So he really liked this gift he got for Christmas - a rock tumbler. You'll never guess what it does. Yeah, it tumbles rocks. The rock tumbler is placed in water, and these boring old rocks are placed in the rock tumbler, you turn it on and you let the good times roll! Those rocks start spinning, flying, and crashing into each other as they churn around in that water. All they need is some music so they could have a rock concert. Right? Oh, sorry. The atmosphere inside that rock tumbler is pure mayhem. But after all the rockin' and rollin' and clashin' and crashin', something pretty amazing happens. Before those rocks went through the tumbler, they were just drab, boring hunks of stone. They come out displaying a beauty you'd have never guessed they had!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Turbulence That Transforms."
If the real beauty of a dumb old rock is uncovered through turmoil and turbulence, don't you suppose that could be true of us as people; of you as a "people"? Could it be that all the hits you've been taking right now are actually part of God's "tumbler" to give you a beauty that you've never had before? That's very much His way. Pressure and heat make a lump of coal into a diamond. An oyster's irritation and aggravation from a grain of sand, well you know, ultimately emerges as a pearl of great price.
Maybe you need to just kind of stand back from what's been happening to see what God is doing through what's happening. Isaiah 61, beginning with verse 1, our word for today from the Word of God, reveals some of how turbulence can transform you. The Son of God says: "The Lord...has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners." You might feel like you're in one of those categories: you're brokenhearted, you're captive, or you're a prisoner to darkness. Well, that's not the end of the story.
God's Son goes on to say that He was sent "to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion; to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." Jesus makes beauty from the ashes of your life, gladness from the grieving times, and praise emerging from a time of despair.
Here's how God wants to help you look when you come out of the tumbler: "They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor." God wants to use the tumbler to make you strong and indestructible like an oak. Suffering makes wimps into warriors. And He wants to use the turbulence to give you such a beautiful relationship with Him that you will be a stage to show His glory. Ultimately, the Bible says, "you will be named ministers of our God." That means you'll be equipped by the hard times to be a powerful instrument of God in other hurting lives.
The shaking you're enduring, the hits you're taking, those are tools in God's hands to bring out an amazing beauty in you: a strength, a tenderness, a maturity, a confidence, a compassion that comes only from being beautified in God's tumbler. So don't wallow in "why is this happening?" That's a quagmire. Instead, keep asking, "How can God use this?"
Don't despair when you keep running into things and things keep running into you, when your whole world is spinning and colliding. This isn't to destroy you. This is to give you a beauty you've never had before. If you let God have His way in this turbulence, you will, as it says, "display His splendor" for the rest of your life!