Max Lucado Daily: LEARNING TO TRAVEL LIGHT - May 1, 2023
I don’t know how to travel light, but I need to learn. You can’t enjoy a journey carrying so much stuff—so much luggage. Odds are, somewhere this morning between the first step on the floor and the last step out the door, you grabbed some luggage.
Don’t remember doing so? That’s because you did it without thinking. That’s because the bags we grab aren’t made of leather, they’re made of burdens. The suitcase of guilt. A duffel bag of weariness, a hanging bag of grief. A backpack of doubt, an overnight bag of fear. Lugging luggage is exhausting!
God is saying, “Set that stuff down. You are carrying burdens you don’t need to bear.” Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me all of you who’re weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Yes, I need to learn to travel light.
Psalm 1
How well God must like you—
you don’t walk in the ruts of those blind-as-bats,
you don’t stand with the good-for-nothings,
you don’t take your seat among the know-it-alls.
2-3 Instead you thrill to God’s Word,
you chew on Scripture day and night.
You’re a tree replanted in Eden,
bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf,
always in blossom.
4-5 You’re not at all like the wicked,
who are mere windblown dust—
Without defense in court,
unfit company for innocent people.
6 God charts the road you take.
The road they take leads to nowhere.
2 1-6 Why the big noise, nations?
Why the mean plots, peoples?
Earth-leaders push for position,
Demagogues and delegates meet for summit talks,
The God-deniers, the Messiah-defiers:
“Let’s get free of God!
Cast loose from Messiah!”
Heaven-throned God breaks out laughing.
At first he’s amused at their presumption;
Then he gets good and angry.
Furiously, he shuts them up:
“Don’t you know there’s a King in Zion? A coronation banquet
Is spread for him on the holy summit.”
7-9 Let me tell you what God said next.
He said, “You’re my son,
And today is your birthday.
What do you want? Name it:
Nations as a present? continents as a prize?
You can command them all to dance for you,
Or throw them out with tomorrow’s trash.”
10-12 So, rebel-kings, use your heads;
Upstart-judges, learn your lesson:
Worship God in adoring embrace,
Celebrate in trembling awe. Kiss Messiah!
Your very lives are in danger, you know;
His anger is about to explode,
But if you make a run for God—you won’t regret it!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, May 01, 2023
Today's Scripture
1 Peter 3:8–16
Suffering for Doing Good
8-12 Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
Whoever wants to embrace life
and see the day fill up with good,
Here’s what you do:
Say nothing evil or hurtful;
Snub evil and cultivate good;
run after peace for all you’re worth.
God looks on all this with approval,
listening and responding well to what he’s asked;
But he turns his back
on those who do evil things.
13-18 If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.
Insight
Peter’s first letter was primarily written to believers in Jesus who’d been scattered among the five provinces of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), no doubt because of the persecution waged against the church at Jerusalem (see 1:1–2). However, it’s clear that the churches addressed were a mix of Jews and gentiles. The Bible Knowledge Commentary offers this insight: “This epistle could be understood as a handbook written for ambassadors to a hostile foreign land. The author, knowing persecution would arise, carefully prescribed conduct designed to bring honor to the One they represented. The purpose then of 1 Peter was to encourage believers to face persecution so that the true grace of Jesus Christ would be evidenced in them (5:12).” One of Peter’s major themes is that when believers in Christ suffer for Him, they’re to focus on the eternal and not on temporal suffering (3:8–4:19). By: Bill Crowder
Seeds of Faith
Always be prepared to give an answer . . . for the hope that you have. 1 Peter 3:15
Last spring, the night before our lawn was to be aerated, a violent windstorm blew the seeds off our maple tree in one fell swoop. So when the aerating machine broke up the compacted soil by pulling small “cores” out of the ground, it planted hundreds of maple seeds in my yard. Just two short weeks later, I had the beginnings of a maple forest growing up through my lawn!
As I (frustratedly) surveyed the misplaced foliage, I was struck by the prolific abundance of new life a single tree had spawned. Each of the miniature trees became a picture for me of the new life in Christ that I—as merely one person—can share with others. We each will have countless opportunities to “give the reason for the hope that [we] have” (1 Peter 3:15) in the course of our lives.
When we “suffer for what is right” with the hope of Jesus (v. 14), it’s visible to those around us and might just become a point of curiosity to those who don’t yet know God personally. If we’re ready when they ask, then we may share the seed through which God brings forth new life. We don’t have to share it with everyone all at once—in some kind of spiritual windstorm. Rather, we gently and respectfully drop the seed of faith into a heart ready to receive it. By: Kirsten Holmberg
Reflect & Pray
Who in your life is sharing or asking about the reason for your hope? What will you share with them?
Jesus, thank You for growing the seed of faith in my life. Help me to share the reason for my hope—You—with those who ask and may they grow in their love for You.
Learn more about sharing and defending your faith.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, May 01, 2023
Faith— Not Emotion
We walk by faith, not by sight. —2 Corinthians 5:7
For a while, we are fully aware of God’s concern for us. But then, when God begins to use us in His work, we begin to take on a pitiful look and talk only of our trials and difficulties. And all the while God is trying to make us do our work as hidden people who are not in the spotlight. None of us would be hidden spiritually if we could help it. Can we do our work when it seems that God has sealed up heaven? Some of us always want to be brightly illuminated saints with golden halos and with the continual glow of inspiration, and to have other saints of God dealing with us all the time. A self-assured saint is of no value to God. He is abnormal, unfit for daily life, and completely unlike God. We are here, not as immature angels, but as men and women, to do the work of this world. And we are to do it with an infinitely greater power to withstand the struggle because we have been born from above.
If we continually try to bring back those exceptional moments of inspiration, it is a sign that it is not God we want. We are becoming obsessed with the moments when God did come and speak with us, and we are insisting that He do it again. But what God wants us to do is to “walk by faith.” How many of us have set ourselves aside as if to say, “I cannot do anything else until God appears to me”? He will never do it. We will have to get up on our own, without any inspiration and without any sudden touch from God. Then comes our surprise and we find ourselves exclaiming, “Why, He was there all the time, and I never knew it!” Never live for those exceptional moments— they are surprises. God will give us His touches of inspiration only when He sees that we are not in danger of being led away by them. We must never consider our moments of inspiration as the standard way of life— our work is our standard.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
An intellectual conception of God may be found in a bad vicious character. The knowledge and vision of God is dependent entirely on a pure heart. Character determines the revelation of God to the individual. The pure in heart see God. Biblical Ethics, 125 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Kings 10-11; Luke 21:20-38
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, May 01, 2023
STOPPING THE DEVIL AT THE DOOR - #9471
Well, there's an early part of my life where I didn't even know the word. Now everybody knows it - cholesterol. You'll see it in about ten commercials tonight. It's one of the most talked about words in our health and fitness vocabulary. Of course, my doctor gave me the alphabet soup...a seminar on LDL, HDL. You know. LDL is your bad cholesterol that clogs your arteries. You want to be low in that. But then there's your good cholesterol. Here we go - good guys and bad guys! Just like the old Westerns. Your good cholesterol is called your HDL; maybe that's happy. I don't know. And you want lots of that HDL. That's the good stuff. Now, my doctor says, "I'm not just concerned when a patient's bad cholesterol is high. I get concerned when you don't have enough good cholesterol."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Stopping the Devil at the Door."
So, we've got our word for today from the Word of God, and it's ultimately a battle plan for stepping on Satan. Sound like something you'd like to do? Well, then you might be interested in the two-step battle plan outlined in Romans 16:19-20. It's all about getting rid of what's damaging to your spiritual health and loading up on what builds up your spiritual health. Here's what God says: "Be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." Stay away from the bad elements in your system. Be innocent about what's evil and get a lot of what's good. Just like your physical wellbeing, your health depends on your diet - your mental and spiritual diet in this case.
So what are you filling up on? You do have to keep junk out of your heart or it's going to clog your heart. It will bring about spiritual heart trouble. The input you allow in creates the ideas you think about; and your ideas become your attitudes and your actions. So that means you've got to consciously and aggressively turn off the constant bombardment of impure ideas that are all around us. The videos, the movies, the Internet sites, the soap opera immorality, the music that makes you all too wise about what's evil. You've got to protect, you've got to restore your innocence. You can't afford even casual contact with the dark stuff.
But just like cholesterol, you can't just be against the bad input. You need to be making a conscious, daily effort to load up on God's ideas and attitudes. Jesus said if you clean out one evil spirit and you just leave an empty space there, seven spirits worse will come back and fill that space. So, you have to fill the space in your thinking and your emotions that the dark stuff was occupying.
For me, that means not just reading old news magazines but reading Christian magazines and books, making every effort to listen to Christian music and radio, and going to Christian websites. To make the last thing I read at night something about my Lord; to put the priority on reading things that have some eternal value. Be wise about what's good, and that means weaning yourself from a diet of mostly secular stuff to more things with spiritual value, with Christ at the center; using your wandering mind times to memorize or review some Scripture. As you start to load up on what's good, you start to become a more positive person, joyful, you become cleaner, you become lighter on the inside.
Does that mean you never read or listen to anything that isn't Christian? No, but you give the priority, the majority of space in your mind to God's ideas and God's way of thinking. Crushing Satan under your feet; that's a war on two fronts. You have to be against what's bad getting into your system, but that isn't enough. You have to take daily opportunities to become smarter about what's innocent. Cut the damaging stuff out of your heart-diet and go heavy on the healthy stuff!