Max Lucado Daily: ELCOME GOD’S SPIRIT - June 19, 2023
As a Christian you have all the power you need for all the problems you face. The Bible says your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you. The question isn’t, “How do I get more of the Spirit?” but rather, “How can you, Spirit, have more of me?” We’d expect a Mother Teresa-size answer! Build an orphanage. Memorize Leviticus. Bathe lepers. Do this and be filled, we think. Do this on your own and be tired, God corrects.
Do you desire God’s Spirit? Here’s what you do: He says everyone who asks will receive. You know how to give good things to your children; how much more your heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Friend, you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Welcome the Spirit into every part of your heart!
Psalm 122 When they said, “Let’s go to the house of God,”
my heart leaped for joy.
And now we’re here, O Jerusalem,
inside Jerusalem’s walls!
3-5
Jerusalem, well-built city,
built as a place for worship!
The city to which the tribes ascend,
all God’s tribes go up to worship,
To give thanks to the name of God—
this is what it means to be Israel.
Thrones for righteous judgment
are set there, famous David-thrones.
6-9
Pray for Jerusalem’s peace!
Prosperity to all you Jerusalem-lovers!
Friendly insiders, get along!
Hostile outsiders, keep your distance!
For the sake of my family and friends,
I say it again: live in peace!
For the sake of the house of our God, God,
I’ll do my very best for you.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Galatians 5:1–7, 13–15
Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
2–3 I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.
4–6 I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.
7–10 You were running superbly! Who cut in on you, deflecting you from the true course of obedience?
13–15 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
Insight
The book of Galatians addresses one of the toughest issues the early communities of believers in Jesus faced: how to understand and relate to the requirements of Mosaic law, especially for gentile believers. Should gentile believers be required to be circumcised and to follow other aspects of Mosaic law? Some were teaching this very thing. Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus, however, convinced him that the law should be interpreted differently—as leading to and finding fulfillment in Christ (Galatians 2:19–21). To require believers to follow the law when Christ had already made them right with God and won their freedom (5:1, 4–6) would be “a different gospel . . . no gospel at all” (1:6–7).
By: Monica La Rose
Live in Freedom
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Galatians 5:1
In Texas, where I grew up, there were festive parades and picnics in Black communities every June 19. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I learned the heartbreaking significance of Juneteenth (a word combining “June” and “nineteenth”) celebrations. Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation giving them their freedom—two-and-a-half years earlier. Enslaved people in Texas kept living in slavery because they didn’t know they’d been freed.
It’s possible to be free and yet live as slaves. In Galatians, Paul wrote about another kind of slavery: living life under the crushing demands of religious rules. In this pivotal verse, Paul encouraged his readers that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Believers in Jesus had been set free from external regulations, including what to eat and who to befriend. Many, however, still lived as if they were enslaved.
Unfortunately, we can do the same thing today. But the reality is that Jesus set us free from living in fear of man-made religious standards the moment we trusted in Him. Freedom has been proclaimed. Let’s live it out in His power.
By: Lisa M. Samra
Reflect & Pray
How have you been trapped by religious rules? How have you experienced freedom in Christ?
Jesus, thank You for setting me free from the burden of oppressive rules.
Learn more about finding your God-given calling
My Utmost to his highest devotional
June 19
The Service of Passionate Devotion
By Oswald Chambers
…do you love Me?…Tend My sheep. —John 21:16
Jesus did not say to make converts to your way of thinking, but He said to look after His sheep, to see that they get nourished in the knowledge of Him. We consider what we do in the way of Christian work as service, yet Jesus Christ calls service to be what we are to Him, not what we do for Him. Discipleship is based solely on devotion to Jesus Christ, not on following after a particular belief or doctrine. “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate…, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). In this verse, there is no argument and no pressure from Jesus to follow Him; He is simply saying, in effect, “If you want to be My disciple, you must be devoted solely to Me.” A person touched by the Spirit of God suddenly says, “Now I see who Jesus is!”— that is the source of devotion.
Today we have substituted doctrinal belief for personal belief, and that is why so many people are devoted to causes and so few are devoted to Jesus Christ. People do not really want to be devoted to Jesus, but only to the cause He started. Jesus Christ is deeply offensive to the educated minds of today, to those who only want Him to be their Friend, and who are unwilling to accept Him in any other way. Our Lord’s primary obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of people— the saving of people was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father. If I am devoted solely to the cause of humanity, I will soon be exhausted and come to the point where my love will waver and stumble. But if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity, even though people may treat me like a “doormat.” The secret of a disciple’s life is devotion to Jesus Christ, and the characteristic of that life is its seeming insignificance and its meekness. Yet it is like a grain of wheat that “falls into the ground and dies”— it will spring up and change the entire landscape (John 12:24).
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
A Word With You by Ron Hutchcraft
HOPE IN THE DARKEST HOUR - #9506
It was several years ago, and this particular Super Bowl Sunday there was kind of a dark cloud over it because there had come some news that had rocked Hollywood. It rocked Broadway, and then countless everyday folks who could not forget the compelling characters that this actor had created on the screen. Academy Award-winning actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman had been found dead in his apartment of a drug overdose at the age of 46.
Hoffman was considered one of the most gifted, most admired actors in show business. The sadness was compounded by a lot of reminders that he was so talented, so young, and the circumstances of his death were so wrenchingly tragic.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hope in the Darkest Hour."
The autopsy revealed the exact cause of death. But there is no autopsy for a human soul to find out what went wrong there. Yes, this actor had admitted his addictions. Those close to him said he had beaten those problems in rehab. But on that Sunday, drugs allegedly killed him.
Comedian and actor, Jim Carrey - who is no stranger to success - in his response to Seymore's death, he said, "Dear Philip, a beautiful, beautiful soul. For the most sensitive among us the noise can be too much." I guess you don't have to be a star to know what he's talking about. So many people live in quiet desperation, closer to the edge than anybody knows.
Actor Val Kilmer suggested in his reaction that "addiction comes from trying to escape the pain of living. We all struggle with this" he said. The escapes are many: drugs or alcohol, or some have an affair, some have pornography, some are just running into a relentless schedule or a consuming workload.
But that "pain of living" afflicts virtually all of us humans. Sadly, escape is never an answer. Escape always seems to ultimately run into a wall. And wherever you go, you take you with you. But there was insight in Philip Seymour Hoffman's own words. He told the New York Times: "I try to live my life in such a way that I don't have profound regrets. That's probably why I work too much. I don't want to feel like I missed something important."
Look how many people slip away from this life, knowing they've missed something important and never knowing what it was. Like a source of untouchable peace that would sustain me when that "noise" becomes "too much." Or a source of strength that enables me to overcome "that pain of living." Rather than escaping into something that solves nothing, just creates more pain. Or a hope so strong that not even the darkest of days can erase it.
Where can I find the power to conquer my inner darkness when there's no script writer who's going to write a happy ending? I'm not going to find it in me. It's not going to be in my greatest achievements. It's not going to be my personal strength; even my deepest relationships. Life's too hard, my resources are too finite to find ultimate answers by looking in myself. Or around the people close to me.
Okay, now, our word for today from the Word of God, where the answer really is, where the hope is, Ephesians 2, beginning with verse 12 that describes people being "without hope and without God in the world." If I do not have a personal relationship with the God I was made by and made for, I'm without hope. But then it says, "In Christ Jesus, you who were once far away..." See, we've got a wall between us and God. "...you've been brought near through the blood of Christ." Jesus Christ died to tear down that wall.
And then it says, "He Himself is our peace." Peace isn't a pill. Peace is not an escape. Peace is a person. His name is Jesus. And the question I ask you today, "In the midst of the storm in your life is, do you know Him? Do you belong to Him?" If there's never been a day when you've begun a relationship with Jesus, would you make this that day?
You say, "Well, I need to know how." Go to our website and let me help you know how? It's ANewStory.com. The darkness has won long enough. It doesn't have to win any more. Not with this light that nothing can extinguish.