LIVING WATER - June 6, 2023
Your body is 80% fluid. Stop drinking and see what happens. Coherent thoughts vanish, skin grows clammy, and vital organs wrinkle. Deprive your heart of spiritual water, and your dehydrated heart will send desperate messages. Hopelessness, loneliness, resentment. Where do you find water for your soul? Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37-38).
Let Christ be the water of your soul. Church activities might hide a thirst, but only Christ quenches it. Drink him. Receive Christ’s work on the cross, the energy of his Spirit, his lordship over your life, his unending, unfailing love. Drink deeply and often. And out of you will flow rivers of living water.
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Come Thirsty
Psalm 116
1-6 I love God because he listened to me,
listened as I begged for mercy.
He listened so intently
as I laid out my case before him.
Death stared me in the face,
hell was hard on my heels.
Up against it, I didn’t know which way to turn;
then I called out to God for help:
“Please, God!” I cried out.
“Save my life!”
God is gracious—it is he who makes things right,
our most compassionate God.
God takes the side of the helpless;
when I was at the end of my rope, he saved me.
7-8
I said to myself, “Relax and rest.
God has showered you with blessings.
Soul, you’ve been rescued from death;
Eye, you’ve been rescued from tears;
And you, Foot, were kept from stumbling.”
9-11
I’m striding in the presence of God,
alive in the land of the living!
I stayed faithful, though overwhelmed,
and despite a ton of bad luck,
Despite giving up on the human race,
saying, “They’re all liars and cheats.”
12-19
What can I give back to God
for the blessings he’s poured out on me?
I’ll lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to God!
I’ll pray in the name of God;
I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do,
and I’ll do it together with his people.
When they arrive at the gates of death,
God welcomes those who love him.
Oh, God, here I am, your servant,
your faithful servant: set me free for your service!
I’m ready to offer the thanksgiving sacrifice
and pray in the name of God.
I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do,
and I’ll do it in company with his people,
In the place of worship, in God’s house,
in Jerusalem, God’s city.
Hallelujah!
Our daily bread reading, and devotion:
Today's Scripture:
Exodus 20:1–6
The Ten Commandments
20 And God spoke all these words:
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Insight
Although the wording is different, the New Testament reiterates the teaching of the first and second commandments—worship is reserved for God alone. When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, He replied, “The most important one . . . is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ ” (Mark 12:29–30. Paul’s teaching is in the same vein: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” . Mercy
from God is the basis for dedication
to
God. John’s teaching is succinct but sure: “keep yourselves from idols”
1 John 5:21
By:
Arthur Jackson
Places of the Heart
You shall not make for yourself an image.
Exodus 20:4
Here are some vacation tips: The next time you’re traveling through Middleton, Wisconsin, you might want to visit the National Mustard Museum. For those of us who feel that one mustard is plenty, this place amazes, featuring 6,090 different mustards from around the world. In McLean, Texas, you might be surprised to run across the Barbed Wire Museum—or more surprised there is such a passion for, well . . . fencing.
It’s telling what kinds of things we choose to make important. One writer says you could do worse than spend an afternoon at the Banana Museum (though we beg to differ).
We laugh in fun, yet it’s sobering to admit we maintain our own museums—places of the heart where we celebrate certain idols of our own making. God instructs us, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 (https://biblia.com/bible/niv/Exod%2020.3)) and “you shall not bow down to them or worship them” (v. 5). But we do anyway, creating our own graven gods, perhaps of wealth or lust or success—or of some other fill-in-the-blank “treasure” we worship in secret.
It’s easy to read this passage and miss the point. Yes, God holds us accountable for the museums of sin we create. But He also speaks of “showing love to a thousand generations of those who love [Him]” (v. 6). He knows how trivial our “museums” really are. He knows our true satisfaction lies only
in our love for Him.
By:
Kenneth Petersen
Reflect & Pray
What is an area of sin that you keep secret? How will you give it to God?
Dear God, I want You to be at the center of my life. Help me rid myself of the idols I keep.
My most for his highest by Oswald Chambers
June 6th
“Work Out” What God “Works in” You
By Oswald Chambers (https://utmost.org/oswald-chambers-bio)
…work out your own salvation…for it is God who works in you… —Philippians 2:12-13 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+2%3A12-13)
Your will agrees with God, but in your flesh there is a nature that renders you powerless to do what you know you ought to do. When the Lord initially comes in contact with our conscience, the first thing our conscience does is awaken our will, and our will always agrees with God. Yet you say, “But I don’t know if my will is in agreement with God.” Look to Jesus and you will find that your will and your conscience are in agreement with Him every time. What causes you to say “I will not obey” is something less deep and penetrating than your will. It is perversity or stubbornness, and they are never in agreement with God. The most profound thing in a person is his will, not sin.
The will is the essential element in God’s creation of human beings— sin is a perverse nature which entered into people. In someone who has been born again, the source of the will is Almighty God. “…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” With focused attention and great care, you have to “work out” what God “works in” you— not work to accomplish or earn “your own salvation,” but work it out so you will exhibit the evidence of a life based with determined, unshakable faith on the complete and perfect redemption of the Lord. As you do this, you do not bring an opposing will up against God’s will— God’s will is your will. Your natural choices will be in accordance with God’s will, and living this life will be as natural as breathing. Stubbornness is an unintelligent barrier, refusing enlightenment and blocking its flow. The only thing to do with this barrier of stubbornness is to blow it up with “dynamite,” and the “dynamite” is obedience to the Holy Spirit.
Do I believe
that Almighty God is the Source of my will? God not only expects me to do His will, but He is in me to do it.
friend
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not fundamentally free; external circumstances are not in our hands, they are in God’s hands, the one thing in which we are free is in our personal relationship to God. We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be. Conformed to His Image, 354 L
A word with you by Ron Hutchcraft
WHY YOUR NEST DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT - #9497
Recently, a friend of mine had a ringside seat on a family of birds. They actually decided to nest under the roof on the porch. The fun part was watching the birth and development of those baby birds. My friend actually got to see them hatching out and then settling down into their nest. They all fit in there so nicely - at first. See, Mama kept filling their open mouths with more and more food, and the little birdies didn't stay little! They grew and the nest seemed to shrink. As it got more and more crowded, each baby did more and more wiggling around to kind of keep his position in the nest. Then they feathered out and they forgot about all of them sitting in the nest ever again! Well, they began to perch on the edges of the nest until they were pushed off the edge by their siblings in a battle for whatever food Mama brought. One by one, as crowding pushed those little birds to the edge - and then over the edge - they were forced to fly or die. They decided to fly. The last nester stayed in the nest for actually another full week, being fed as an only child by Mama Bird. Finally, Mama must have gotten disgusted with her nest-addicted child. She quit feeding him. First, there was a lot of squawking and fussing, and then even he abandoned the nest to finally touch the sky.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why Your Nest Doesn't Feel Right."
We all know what those baby birds have to discover - that they weren't made to just hunker down in their comfortable nest. Neither are we. Those birds are destined to leave where it's safe so they can finally fly, and so are we.
In fact, God uses an example just like this to describe His loving plan for our lives. It's in our word for today from the Word of God in Deuteronomy 32:10-11 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/index.php?search=Deuteronomy+32%3A10-11;&version=31;&interface=print). It says of a child of God, "He shielded him and cared for him; He guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions." The mother eagle actually removes all the cushioning in her nest, and that leaves her eaglets living on just the rocks and the sticks underneath. Ultimately, the stirring of that nest leads to their willingness to leave the nest where they had been so comfortable and then they ultimately take to the sky.
Maybe your nest isn't quite as comfy as it once was. Things are stirring - they're changing. In your environment and in your heart there's this gnawing restlessness that seems to say, "God's got more for you than this." He does, and He's making you restless for it because restlessness almost always precedes a great work of God. Your Lord's trying to move you into a new season of your life where you can make a far greater difference than you have ever made before.
But you'll miss it if you insist on staying where it's safe; financially safe, geographically safe, occupationally safe, where it's methodologically safe, socially safe. Abraham would never have discovered God's amazing plans for his life unless he was first willing to leave the safety and prosperity of a familiar and secure place. The disciples would have always been just another bunch of fishermen unless they had been willing to abandon the security of their career for the call of Jesus. Peter could have never known what it was to walk on water if he hadn't gotten out of the boat. Neither will you.
God has much more of Him that He wants you to experience, but it will only happen as you move beyond all your usual security blankets and you abandon yourself to total trust in Him. He has so much more He wants to do with your life, but it's beyond your comfort zone.
Like those baby birds, you weren't created to just hunker down in your safe, secure little nest -
a nest that's becoming increasingly unsatisfying isn't it? You see, that's because you're destined to fly.