Max Lucado Daily: Lists
Everyone likes a list. Lists are reassuring. They comfort us. To list is to understand, solve, and even control. Moses brought a list down from the mountain. There are lists of the gifts of the Spirit. Lists of good fruit and bad. I've compiled a list of some God-given, time-tested truths that define the way to navigate life. May I share it with you?
" When no one is watching, live as if someone is.
" Succeed at home first.
" Pray twice as much as you fret.
" Listen twice as much as you speak.
" God has forgiven you; you'd be wise to do the same.
" Once a week, let a child take you on a walk.
" Only harbor a grudge when God does.
" Never let the important be the victim of the trivial.
Those are just a few ideas on my list. Why don't you compile your own?
From In the Eye of the Storm
Psalm 85
A Korah Psalm
1–3 85 God, you smiled on your good earth!
You brought good times back to Jacob!
You lifted the cloud of guilt from your people,
you put their sins far out of sight.
You took back your sin-provoked threats,
you cooled your hot, righteous anger.
4–7 Help us again, God of our help;
don’t hold a grudge against us forever.
You aren’t going to keep this up, are you?
scowling and angry, year after year?
Why not help us make a fresh start—a resurrection life?
Then your people will laugh and sing!
Show us how much you love us, God!
Give us the salvation we need!
8–9 I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say.
God’s about to pronounce his people well,
The holy people he loves so much,
so they’ll never again live like fools.
See how close his salvation is to those who fear him?
Our country is home base for Glory!
10–13 Love and Truth meet in the street,
Right Living and Whole Living embrace and kiss!
Truth sprouts green from the ground,
Right Living pours down from the skies!
Oh yes! God gives Goodness and Beauty;
our land responds with Bounty and Blessing.
Right Living strides out before him,
and clears a path for his passage.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 19, 2023
Today's Scripture
Mark 4:35–41
The Wind Ran Out of Breath
35–38 Late that day he said to them, “Let’s go across to the other side.” They took him in the boat as he was. Other boats came along. A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! They roused him, saying, “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?”
39–40 Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, “Quiet! Settle down!” The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass. Jesus reprimanded the disciples: “Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith at all?”
41 They were in absolute awe, staggered. “Who is this, anyway?” they asked. “Wind and sea at his beck and call!”
Insight
Many of the disciples were experienced fishermen who would have faced many storms, but Mark describes this one as uniquely terrifying and life-threatening (Mark 4:37–38). In Jewish belief, the sea was associated with the chaotic forces of evil and destruction, adding an extra level of terror. Jesus and the disciples’ lives were under siege by forces of evil.
But Jewish faith also described God as the Creator who brings order out of chaos (Genesis 1:2–3, 6–9), who stills not only “the roaring of the seas” but “the turmoil of the nations” (Psalm 65:7). Jesus’ calm rebuke of the wind and waves was unmistakable evidence that the power of God was at work in Him. Through Christ, God’s kingdom was coming, and the forces of evil would be powerless to resist Him. The disciples couldn’t yet grasp this and were “terrified” by Jesus’ power (Mark 4:41). By: Monica La Rose
The Power of Christ
Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. Mark 4:41
In 2013, about six hundred on-site spectators watched aerialist Nik Wallenda walk on a tightrope across a 1,400-foot-wide gorge near the Grand Canyon. Wallenda stepped onto the 2-inch-thick steel cable and thanked Jesus for the view as his head camera pointed toward the valley below. He prayed and praised Jesus as he walked across the gorge as calmly as if he was strolling on a sidewalk. When the wind became treacherous, he stopped and crouched. He rose and regained his balance, thanking God for “calming that cable.” With every step on that tightrope, he displayed his dependence on the power of Christ to everyone listening then and now as the video is watched across the world.
When the winds of a storm caused waves to overtake the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, fear seeped through their pleas for help (Mark 4:35–38). After Jesus stilled the squall, they knew He controlled the winds and everything else (vv. 39–41). Slowly they learned to grow in their trust of Him. Their personal experiences could help others recognize Jesus' intimate availability and extraordinary might.
As we experience life’s storms or walk on the tightropes of trust stretched over the deep valleys of affliction, we can demonstrate confident faith in the power of Christ. God will use our faith-walk to inspire others to hope in Him. By: Xochitl Dixon
Reflect & Pray
How has witnessing Christ’s power in the lives of others strengthened your faith? How can prayer help you walk with confident faith?
Thank You, Father, for calming my heart as I trust You through life’s stormy seasons.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 19, 2023
Self-Awareness
Come to Me… —Matthew 11:28
God intends for us to live a well-rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. Then we tend to fall back into self-examination, a habit that we thought was gone. Self-awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self-awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives. Self-awareness is not sin, and it can be produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances. Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ-awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.
Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— “Come to Me….” The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words. Yet in every detail of our lives where we are found not to be real, we would rather dispute the findings than come to Jesus.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
God does not further our spiritual life in spite of our circumstances, but in and by our circumstances. Not Knowing Whither, 900 L
Bible in a Year: Psalms 103-104; 1 Corinthians 2