Max Lucado Daily: GOD CAN STILL CHANGE FAMILIES - March 16, 2023
Having your family’s approval is desirable but not necessary for happiness and not always possible. Jesus did not let the difficult dynamic of his family overshadow his call from God.
What happened to Jesus’ family? Mine with me a golden nugget hidden in a vein of the book of Acts. Acts chapter one: “Then [the disciples] went back to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. They all continued praying together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and Jesus’ brothers” (Acts 1:12, 14 NCV). What a change! The ones who had mocked him now worship him. The ones who had pitied him now pray to him.
What if Jesus had disowned them? Or worse still, what if he’d suffocated his family with his demand for change? He didn’t. He instead gave them space, time, and grace. So don’t lose heart – God still changes families.
2 Kings 6
One day the guild of prophets came to Elisha and said, “You can see that this place where we’re living under your leadership is getting cramped—we have no elbow room. Give us permission to go down to the Jordan where each of us will get a log. We’ll build a roomier place.”
Elisha said, “Go ahead.”
3 One of them then said, “Please! Come along with us!”
He said, “Certainly.”
4-5 He went with them. They came to the Jordan and started chopping down trees. As one of them was felling a timber, his axhead flew off and sank in the river.
“Oh no, master!” he cried out. “And it was borrowed!”
6 The Holy Man said, “Where did it sink?”
The man showed him the place.
He cut off a branch and tossed it at the spot. The axhead floated up.
7 “Grab it,” he said. The man reached out and took it.
8 One time when the king of Aram was at war with Israel, after consulting with his officers, he said, “At such and such a place I want an ambush set.”
9 The Holy Man sent a message to the king of Israel: “Watch out when you’re passing this place, because Aram has set an ambush there.”
10 So the king of Israel sent word concerning the place of which the Holy Man had warned him.
This kind of thing happened all the time.
11 The king of Aram was furious over all this. He called his officers together and said, “Tell me, who is leaking information to the king of Israel? Who is the spy in our ranks?”
12 But one of his men said, “No, my master, dear king. It’s not any of us. It’s Elisha the prophet in Israel. He tells the king of Israel everything you say, even what you whisper in your bedroom.”
13 The king said, “Go and find out where he is. I’ll send someone and capture him.”
The report came back, “He’s in Dothan.”
14 Then he dispatched horses and chariots, an impressive fighting force. They came by night and surrounded the city.
15 Early in the morning a servant of the Holy Man got up and went out. Surprise! Horses and chariots surrounding the city! The young man exclaimed, “Oh, master! What shall we do?”
16 He said, “Don’t worry about it—there are more on our side than on their side.”
17 Then Elisha prayed, “O God, open his eyes and let him see.”
The eyes of the young man were opened and he saw. A wonder! The whole mountainside full of horses and chariots of fire surrounding Elisha!
18 When the Arameans attacked, Elisha prayed to God, “Strike these people blind!” And God struck them blind, just as Elisha said.
19 Then Elisha called out to them, “Not that way! Not this city! Follow me and I’ll lead you to the man you’re looking for.” And he led them into Samaria.
20 As they entered the city, Elisha prayed, “O God, open their eyes so they can see where they are.” God opened their eyes. They looked around—they were trapped in Samaria!
21 When the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I massacre the lot?”
22 “Not on your life!” said Elisha. “You didn’t lift a hand to capture them, and now you’re going to kill them? No sir, make a feast for them and send them back to their master.”
23 So he prepared a huge feast for them. After they ate and drank their fill he dismissed them. Then they returned home to their master. The raiding bands of Aram didn’t bother Israel anymore.
24-25 At a later time, this: Ben-Hadad king of Aram pulled together his troops and launched a siege on Samaria. This brought on a terrible famine, so bad that food prices soared astronomically. Eighty shekels for a donkey’s head! Five shekels for a bowl of field greens!
26 One day the king of Israel was walking along the city wall. A woman cried out, “Help! Your majesty!”
27 He answered, “If God won’t help you, where on earth canI go for help? To the granary? To the dairy?”
28-29 The king continued, “Tell me your story.”
She said, “This woman came to me and said, ‘Give up your son and we’ll have him for today’s supper; tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I told her, ‘Your turn—bring your son so we can have him for supper.’ But she had hidden her son away.”
30-31 When the king heard the woman’s story he ripped apart his robe. Since he was walking on the city wall, everyone saw that next to his skin he was wearing coarse burlap. And he called out, “God do his worst to me—and more—if Elisha son of Shaphat still has a head on his shoulders at this day’s end.”
32 Elisha was sitting at home, the elders sitting with him. The king had already dispatched an executioner, but before the man arrived Elisha spoke to the elders: “Do you know that this murderer has just now sent a man to take off my head? Look, when the executioner arrives, shut the door and lock it. Don’t I even now hear the footsteps of his master behind him?”
33 While he was giving his instructions, the king showed up, accusing, “This trouble is directly from God! And what’s next? I’m fed up with God!”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Today's Scripture
2 Timothy 3:1–9, 14–17
Difficult Times Ahead
Don’t be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God. They’ll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.
6-9 These are the kind of people who smooth-talk themselves into the homes of unstable and needy women and take advantage of them; women who, depressed by their sinfulness, take up with every new religious fad that calls itself “truth.” They get exploited every time and never really learn. These men are like those old Egyptian frauds Jannes and Jambres, who challenged Moses. They were rejects from the faith, twisted in their thinking, defying truth itself. But nothing will come of these latest impostors. Everyone will see through them, just as people saw through that Egyptian hoax.
But don’t let it faze you. Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother’s milk! There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.
Insight
Timothy first appears on the pages of Scripture in Acts 16:1, where he joins Paul and Silas on their missionary journey. He’s described there as having a Greek father but a Jewish mother who was a believer in Jesus. This corresponds with Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 1:5, where he cites Timothy’s grandmother (Lois) and mother (Eunice) as being positive spiritual influences in his development. It seems that this is the influence to which the apostle refers in 2 Timothy 3:15, where Paul says that Timothy had been taught the Scriptures “from infancy.” By: Bill Crowder
Scripture Training
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16
In the late 1800s, people in different places developed similar ministry resources at the same time. The first was in Montreal, Canada, in 1877. In 1898, another concept was launched in New York City. By 1922, some five thousand of these programs were active in North America each summer.
Thus began the early history of Vacation Bible School. The passion that fueled those VBS pioneers was a desire for young people to know the Bible.
Paul had a similar passion for his young protégé Timothy, writing that “Scripture is God-breathed” and equips us “for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). But this wasn’t just the benign suggestion that “it’s good to read your Bible.” Paul’s admonition follows the dire warning that “there will be terrible times in the last days” (v. 1), with false teachers who are “never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (v. 7). It’s essential we protect ourselves with Scripture, for it immerses us in the knowledge of our Savior, making us “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 15).
Studying the Bible isn’t just for kids; it’s for adults too. And it isn’t just for summer; it’s for every day. Paul wrote to Timothy, “from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures” (v. 15), but it’s never too late to begin. Whatever stage of life we’re in, the wisdom of the Bible connects us to Jesus. This is God’s VBS lesson to us all. By: Kenneth Petersen
Reflect & Pray
What are your favorite Scripture passages? How do they point to Christ?
Loving God, thank You for the gift of Scripture and how it helps me learn about Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, March 16, 2023
The Master Will Judge
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ… —2 Corinthians 5:10
Paul says that we must all, preachers and other people alike, “appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” But if you will learn here and now to live under the scrutiny of Christ’s pure light, your final judgment will bring you only delight in seeing the work God has done in you. Live constantly reminding yourself of the judgment seat of Christ, and walk in the knowledge of the holiness He has given you. Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One carnal judgment of another person only serves the purposes of hell in you. Bring it immediately into the light and confess, “Oh, Lord, I have been guilty there.” If you don’t, your heart will become hardened through and through. One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It is not only God who punishes for sin, but sin establishes itself in the sinner and takes its toll. No struggling or praying will enable you to stop doing certain things, and the penalty of sin is that you gradually get used to it, until you finally come to the place where you no longer even realize that it is sin. No power, except the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, can change or prevent the inherent consequences of sin.
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light…” (1 John 1:7). For many of us, walking in the light means walking according to the standard we have set up for another person. The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We never enter into the Kingdom of God by having our head questions answered, but only by commitment. The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 565 R
Bible in a Year: Deuteronomy 28-29; Mark 14:54-72
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, March 16, 2023
HOW TO ACCESS ALL YOU NEED - #9439
I've got this card in my wallet that has bailed me out on several occasions. It has the simple word "Treasurer" on it. No, it has nothing to do with any offices that I hold; it's my bank card. Okay, so I go to the money machine at my bank, the ATM. You can just stick your card in it and you get the money you need, provided there are some resources in your account to cover it. I guess the faster paced our lives get the more we need these quick fixes. I mean, we need instant access to the resources we need.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Access All You Need."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Hebrews 4, and I'm going to read a verse that might be familiar to you in verse 16. "Let us, then, approach the Throne of Grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." There you go. You just heard about God's treasury account, and this is His instant access plan. You come to His Throne with confidence it says; that's the invitation.
Now, the word confidence, if you look it up in the original Greek that the New Testament was written in, literally means "outspokenness" or "plainness of speech." And it's often used to describe seriousness in the presence of someone of high rank. So the first invitation, the way that you access God's grace for your particular need - the card you stick in - is to come to the Throne of Grace talking straight, reverently but honestly.
So when you come to pray, don't come with all your religious rhetoric. You come with straight talk just like you really are. You go to the treasury machine in our neighborhood and you don't pretend you're rolling in money. I go there and I know I'm broke. Well, I'm honest about that. It's my broke that brought me to the machine; that's why I'm there. This giving isn't automatic. You do have to go to the machine. You do have to approach the Throne of Grace with confidence. And you come, talking plainly and honestly about your need, about your sin, about your feelings, your doubts, you're honest.
When you do that, you find grace. The word found there means to discover or come upon. Surprise! I didn't expect to find this much grace! When you come and honestly unload your need on the Lord at His Throne of Grace He gives surprising grace. You say, "I didn't know there was grace available like this before." And it says when that happens it will help us in our time of need. And in our time of need, that phrase in the Greek language, was one word meaning "well timed." God's grace will come to you in a personal, customized way at just the right time.
The word "help" there is used only one other time in the Bible, in Acts 27, when they had to pull ropes underneath a ship to keep it from coming apart during a storm. And the word rope is that word help. It's what holds you together during your storm - God's grace. So let's put it all together. God invites you to come confidently, talking straight. And we come to His Throne so that we can find surprising grace to hold us together during our storm. Wow!
Now, I wonder if you have ever experienced the grace of God for yourself. You know it begins - your first approach to the Throne of God - when you come to Him with the sin of a lifetime and say, "Jesus' death on the cross is my only hope of having my sins erased." You don't come to God because you deserve it, because of what you've got in your moral bank. You come bankrupt and He says, "I will pour out My grace." It is amazing grace! If you have never experienced that, I hope you will today. Say, today, "God, I want today...I want my record to be clean. I want to go to heaven. I want to be with You forever."
If I can help you begin that relationship with Him, then would you go to our website at ANewStory.com. I hope you will. See, at the Throne of Grace, you'll find powerful grace. But you've got to go for the grace this moment requires. And you'll find there a bottomless account supplied by the resources of Almighty God. You don't ever have to be emotionally or spiritually broke again.