Max Lucado Daily: SPIRITUAL BAGGAGE - May 25, 2023
Carry a load of guilt? So many do. If our spiritual baggage were visible, you know what you’d see? Suitcases of guilt, bulging with binges, blowups, and compromises. The kid with the baggy jeans and the nose ring? He’d give anything to retract the words he said to his mother, but he can’t. So he tows them along. The woman in the business suit? Looks like she could run for Senator. She can’t run at all, not hauling that carpet bag wherever she goes.
So what do we do? In Psalm 23:3, David said it like this: “He leads me in the paths of righteousness.” The path of righteousness. A narrow, winding trail up a steep hill. At the top is a cross. At the base of the cross are bags, countless bags full of innumerable sins. Calvary is the compost pile for guilt. Would you like to leave yours there as well?
Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry
Read more Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry
Psalm 102
God, listen! Listen to my prayer,
listen to the pain in my cries.
Don’t turn your back on me
just when I need you so desperately.
Pay attention! This is a cry for help!
And hurry—this can’t wait!
3-11 I’m wasting away to nothing,
I’m burning up with fever.
I’m a ghost of my former self,
half-consumed already by terminal illness.
My jaws ache from gritting my teeth;
I’m nothing but skin and bones.
I’m like a buzzard in the desert,
a crow perched on the rubble.
Insomniac, I twitter away,
mournful as a sparrow in the gutter.
All day long my enemies taunt me,
while others just curse.
They bring in meals—casseroles of ashes!
I draw drink from a barrel of my tears.
And all because of your furious anger;
you swept me up and threw me out.
There’s nothing left of me—
a withered weed, swept clean from the path.
12-17 Yet you, God, are sovereign still,
always and ever sovereign.
You’ll get up from your throne and help Zion—
it’s time for compassionate help.
Oh, how your servants love this city’s rubble
and weep with compassion over its dust!
The godless nations will sit up and take notice
—see your glory, worship your name—
When God rebuilds Zion,
when he shows up in all his glory,
When he attends to the prayer of the wretched.
He won’t dismiss their prayer.
18-22 Write this down for the next generation
so people not yet born will praise God:
“God looked out from his high holy place;
from heaven he surveyed the earth.
He listened to the groans of the doomed,
he opened the doors of their death cells.”
Write it so the story can be told in Zion,
so God’s praise will be sung in Jerusalem’s streets
And wherever people gather together
along with their rulers to worship him.
23-28 God sovereignly brought me to my knees,
he cut me down in my prime.
“Oh, don’t,” I prayed, “please don’t let me die.
You have more years than you know what to do with!
You laid earth’s foundations a long time ago,
and handcrafted the very heavens;
You’ll still be around when they’re long gone,
threadbare and discarded like an old suit of clothes.
You’ll throw them away like a worn-out coat,
but year after year you’re as good as new.
Your servants’ children will have a good place to live
and their children will be at home with you.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Today's Scripture
Colossians 3:15–24
Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.
* * *
18 Wives, understand and support your husbands by submitting to them in ways that honor the Master.
19 Husbands, go all out in love for your wives. Don’t take advantage of them.
20 Children, do what your parents tell you. This delights the Master no end.
21 Parents, don’t come down too hard on your children or you’ll crush their spirits.
22-25 Servants, do what you’re told by your earthly masters. And don’t just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you’ll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you’re serving is Christ. The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t cover up bad work.
Insight
Paul wrote the book of Colossians to believers in Jesus whom he described as “God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ” (Colossians 1:2). His purpose was to correct false teaching about who Christ is—His divinity and ministry (chs. 1–2)—and to instruct readers on how to live godly lives (chs. 3–4), lives that would “always honor and please the Lord” and “produce every kind of good fruit” (1:10 nlt).
In Colossians 3, Paul taught them how to relate to one another in three key relationships: the spiritual family—the church (vv. 15–17), the natural family—husbands, wives, and children (vv. 18–21), and slaves and masters, which today pertains in principle to workers and employers (vv. 22–25; 4:1). In all these relationships, through the power of the Spirit believers are to display the character of Christ: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and unconditional love (3:12–14). By: K. T. Sim
All for Jesus
Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Colossians 3:17
When Jeff was fourteen, his mom took him to see a famous singer. Like many musicians of his era, B. J. Thomas had gotten caught up in a self-destructive lifestyle while on music tours. But that was before he and his wife were introduced to Jesus. Their lives were radically changed when they became believers in Christ.
On the night of the concert, the singer began to entertain the enthusiastic crowd. But after performing a few of his well-known songs, one guy yelled out from the audience, “Hey, sing one for Jesus!” Without any hesitation, B. J. responded, “I just sang four songs for Jesus.”
It’s been a few decades since then, but Jeff still remembers that moment when he realized that everything we do should be for Jesus—even things that some might consider to be “nonreligious.”
We’re sometimes tempted to divvy up the things we do in life. Read the Bible. Share our story of coming to faith. Sing a hymn. Sacred stuff. Mow the lawn. Go for a run. Sing a country song. Secular stuff.
Colossians 3:16 reminds us that the message of Christ indwells us in activities like teaching, singing, and being thankful, but verse 17 goes even further. It emphasizes that as God’s children, “whatever [we] do, whether in word or deed, [we] do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
We do it all for Him. By: Cindy Hess Kasper
Reflect & Pray
How can you do all things in the name of Jesus? How might you allow God to use your actions and words for His glory?
Loving God, help me to surrender every one of my activities and words to You.
For further study, read God’s Expectations.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, May 25, 2023
The Good or The Best?
If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left. —Genesis 13:9
As soon as you begin to live the life of faith in God, fascinating and physically gratifying possibilities will open up before you. These things are yours by right, but if you are living the life of faith you will exercise your right to waive your rights, and let God make your choice for you. God sometimes allows you to get into a place of testing where your own welfare would be the appropriate thing to consider, if you were not living the life of faith. But if you are, you will joyfully waive your right and allow God to make your choice for you. This is the discipline God uses to transform the natural into the spiritual through obedience to His voice.
Whenever our right becomes the guiding factor of our lives, it dulls our spiritual insight. The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. In this passage, it would seem that the wisest thing in the world for Abram to do would be to choose. It was his right, and the people around him would consider him to be a fool for not choosing.
Many of us do not continue to grow spiritually because we prefer to choose on the basis of our rights, instead of relying on God to make the choice for us. We have to learn to walk according to the standard which has its eyes focused on God. And God says to us, as He did to Abram, “…walk before Me…” (Genesis 17:1).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L
Bible in a Year: 1 Chronicles 25-27; John 9:1-23
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, May 25, 2023
WHY OUR ENEMY WINS - #9489
Several years ago, there was a blockbuster movie called "Independence Day." You can catch it occasionally on TV now. From what I heard, it wasn't about Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. No, it was about an alien invasion of Planet Earth. A unique concept. As this alien force moves across the world, the American military throws its most sophisticated weapons at it. They can't stop it. Even the White House gets destroyed and the President barely escapes with his life. Other countries try to resist with their military. No one's even close to a match for this invading force. Well, something very interesting happens. The world's leaders begin to wake up to the fact that suddenly they all have a common enemy and it isn't each other anymore. Allies and enemies begin to work together to defeat their enemy, and they win big! Yea!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why Our Enemy Wins."
If that movie had a moral, it had something to do with uniting to beat an enemy that threatened them all; an enemy that no one could have ever beaten alone.
Now, our enemy - the enemy of every believer in Jesus, every Christian church, every Christian family - has his way all too often. Not so much because he's so strong, but because he exploits our tendency to fight each other and to forget the real enemy that threatens us all. Someone said, "Christians are the only soldiers who form their firing squads in a circle." Isn't it true! We shoot at each other so much; wasting our ammunition that should only be aimed one direction - at Satan and his forces.
Okay, our word for today from the Word of God - Ephesians 6:11-12. It's a clarion call to fight the right enemy. "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood." Woah, let's stop there. I want you to think of someone in your family that maybe there's conflict with right now, or in your church or your ministry; someone who's driving you crazy. Put their name in that verse. "My struggle is not against ______." Fill in the blank with another Christian group or denomination you don't agree with. Your struggle is not ultimately against them!
It says it's "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." The one to shoot at is the devil.
And the one who is trying to drive a wedge between you and that family member or that fellow believer is none other than the prince of darkness himself. But he wants you to think that they're the problem. He's the problem!
We play right into his hands when we allow ourselves to focus on our differences, on our wounded feelings, on our turf, on our frustrations. We're doing what Paul calls two chapters earlier giving "the devil a foothold." My guess is that somewhere in your life right now, your enemy is trying to divide you from another believer or believers so he can divide and conquer. The question is, are you falling for it?
In that movie, until the forces of earth realized they were up against a common enemy, they fought separately and they lost. God is calling us to wake up to our common enemy and to do whatever we have to do to remove the walls and fight together. To, as it says in Philippians 1, "stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the Gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed."
We've battled the enemy separately long enough haven't we? It's time we come together to win what we could never win alone.