Max Lucado Daily: No Matter What
The 1989 Armenian earthquake killed thirty thousand people. Moments after the tremor stopped, a father raced to an elementary school. As he arrived to nothing but a mass of stones and rubble, he remembered a promise he'd made to his child: "No matter what happens, I'll always be there for you." Other parents arrived as he began pulling at the rocks. "It's too late," they told the man. But the father refused. For thirty six hours he dug-his hands raw, but he refused to quit.
After thirty-eight wrenching hours, he pulled back a boulder. "Arman! Arman!" and a voice answered him, "Dad, it's me." Then the boy added these priceless words, "I told the others not to worry. I told them if you were alive, you'd save me, and when you saved me, they'd be saved, too. Because you promised, "No matter what, I'll always be there for you!"
From Dad Time
Psalm 121
1-2 I look up to the mountains;
does my strength come from mountains?
No, my strength comes from God,
who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.
3-4
He won’t let you stumble,
your Guardian God won’t fall asleep.
Not on your life! Israel’s
Guardian will never doze or sleep.
5-6
God’s your Guardian,
right at your side to protect you—
Shielding you from sunstroke,
sheltering you from moonstroke.
7-8
God guards you from every evil,
he guards your very life.
He guards you when you leave and when you return,
he guards you now, he guards you always.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Today's Scripture & Insight: Ephesians 3:12–19
The Message: The Bible
When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!
14–19 My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
Insight
At the end of his second missionary journey, Paul made a brief visit to Ephesus (Acts 18:19–22) and returned there at the start of his third missionary journey (19:1–21; 20:31). When he was imprisoned (see Ephesians 3:1), probably in Rome, he wrote the letter of Ephesians to encourage the believers to remain strong, telling them that he had persistently prayed for their growth and maturity (1:15–18).
The book of Ephesians contains two prayers. In the first one, which emphasizes knowledge (1:15–23), Paul prays that the church would have “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that [they] may know [God] better,” and “know the hope” to which God had called them (vv. 17–18). In the second prayer, which focuses on love, he prays that “being rooted and established in love” (3:17), they might “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (v. 18).
By: K. T. Sim
Fixing Go-Karts
I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
Ephesians 3:14–15
The garage of my childhood home holds many memories. On Saturday mornings, my dad would roll our car down the driveway so we had room to work—with my favorite project being a broken go-kart we’d found. On that garage floor, we gave it new wheels, attached a sporty, plastic windshield, and—with Dad on the street looking out for traffic—I would race down the driveway with such excitement! Looking back, I see more was going on in that garage than simply fixing go-karts. Instead, a young boy was being shaped by his dad—and getting a glimpse of God in the process.
Human beings have been patterned on God’s own nature (Genesis 1:27–28). Human parenting has its origin in Him too, for He’s “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Ephesians 3:14–15). Just as parents imitate God’s life-giving abilities by bringing children into the world, when they nurture and protect their kids, they express qualities not sourced in themselves but in Father God. He’s the model all parenting is based on.
My father wasn’t perfect. Like every father and mother, his parenting sometimes failed to imitate heaven’s. But when it so often did imitate God, it gave me a glimpse of His own nurture and protection—right there, as we fixed go-karts on the garage floor.
By: Sheridan Voysey
Reflect & Pray
How do you see good parenting reflecting God’s nature? How can you reflect His nurture and protection to others today?
Father God, help me nurture and protect our children and others today, revealing Your good qualities to them.
My Utmost to his highest devotional
June 18
Keep Recognizing Jesus
By Oswald Chambers
…Peter…walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid… —Matthew 14:29-30
The wind really was boisterous and the waves really were high, but Peter didn’t see them at first. He didn’t consider them at all; he simply recognized his Lord, stepped out in recognition of Him, and “walked on the water.” Then he began to take those things around him into account, and instantly, down he went. Why couldn’t our Lord have enabled him to walk at the bottom of the waves, as well as on top of them? He could have, yet neither could be done without Peter’s continuing recognition of the Lord Jesus.
We step right out with recognition of God in some things, then self-consideration enters our lives and down we go. If you are truly recognizing your Lord, you have no business being concerned about how and where He engineers your circumstances. The things surrounding you are real, but when you look at them you are immediately overwhelmed, and even unable to recognize Jesus. Then comes His rebuke, “…why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). Let your actual circumstances be what they may, but keep recognizing Jesus, maintaining complete reliance upon Him.
If you debate for even one second when God has spoken, it is all over for you. Never start to say, “Well, I wonder if He really did speak to me?” Be reckless immediately— totally unrestrained and willing to risk everything— by casting your all upon Him. You do not know when His voice will come to you, but whenever the realization of God comes, even in the faintest way imaginable, be determined to recklessly abandon yourself, surrendering everything to Him. It is only through abandonment of yourself and your circumstances that you will recognize Him. You will only recognize His voice more clearly through recklessness— being willing to risk your all.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1449 L