Max Lucado Daily: A NEW LIFE - October 13, 2023
You can’t move past your past without God’s help. Apart from him, you will justify it, deny it, avoid it, or suppress it. But with God’s help you can move forward.
It’s time to do so. Let God speak over you the greatest of blessings: “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians. 5:17 NLT).
You are no longer you. You are God’s child. And God fights for you. You no longer swagger in false strength; you move forward in God’s power. You need not fear your future. God has gone ahead of you. He has prepared the way and paved the path. God never gives up on you.
Joel 1
Get in Touch with Reality—and Weep!
1–3 1 God’s Message to Joel son of Pethuel:
Attention, elder statesmen! Listen closely,
everyone, whoever and wherever you are!
Have you ever heard of anything like this?
Has anything like this ever happened before—ever?
Make sure you tell your children,
and your children tell their children,
And their children their children.
Don’t let this message die out.
4 What the chewing locust left,
the gobbling locust ate;
What the gobbling locust left,
the munching locust ate;
What the munching locust left,
the chomping locust ate.
5–7 Sober up, you drunks!
Get in touch with reality—and weep!
Your supply of booze is cut off.
You’re on the wagon, like it or not.
My country’s being invaded
by an army invincible, past numbering,
Teeth like those of a lion,
fangs like those of a tiger.
It has ruined my vineyards,
stripped my orchards,
And clear-cut the country.
The landscape’s a moonscape.
8–10 Weep like a young virgin dressed in black,
mourning the loss of her fiancé.
Without grain and grapes,
worship has been brought to a standstill
in the Sanctuary of God.
The priests are at a loss.
God’s ministers don’t know what to do.
The fields are sterile.
The very ground grieves.
The wheat fields are lifeless,
vineyards dried up, olive oil gone.
11–12 Dirt farmers, despair!
Grape growers, wring your hands!
Lament the loss of wheat and barley.
All crops have failed.
Vineyards dried up,
fig trees withered,
Pomegranates, date palms, and apple trees—
deadwood everywhere!
And joy is dried up and withered
in the hearts of the people.
Nothing’s Going On in the Place of Worship
13–14 And also you priests,
put on your robes and join the outcry.
You who lead people in worship,
lead them in lament.
Spend the night dressed in gunnysacks,
you servants of my God.
Nothing’s going on in the place of worship,
no offerings, no prayers—nothing.
Declare a holy fast, call a special meeting,
get the leaders together,
Round up everyone in the country.
Get them into God’s Sanctuary for serious prayer to God.
15–18 What a day! Doomsday!
God’s Judgment Day has come.
The Strong God has arrived.
This is serious business!
Food is just a memory at our tables,
as are joy and singing from God’s Sanctuary.
The seeds in the field are dead,
barns deserted,
Grain silos abandoned.
Who needs them? The crops have failed!
The farm animals groan—oh, how they groan!
The cattle mill around.
There’s nothing for them to eat.
Not even the sheep find anything.
19–20 God! I pray, I cry out to you!
The fields are burning up,
The country is a dust bowl,
forest and prairie fires rage unchecked.
Wild animals, dying of thirst,
look to you for a drink.
Springs and streams are dried up.
The whole country is burning up.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, October 13, 2023
Today's Scripture
Isaiah 26:1–4
Stretch the Borders of Life
1–6 26 At that time, this song
will be sung in the country of Judah:
We have a strong city, Salvation City,
built and fortified with salvation.
Throw wide the gates
so good and true people can enter.
People with their minds set on you,
you keep completely whole,
Steady on their feet,
because they keep at it and don’t quit.
Depend on God and keep at it
because in the Lord God you have a sure thing.
Insight
Isaiah 26:4 includes the metaphor of a rock, which depicts the security and safety found in God: “The Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.” The Hebrew word for rock is tsur. What’s literally in view is a cliff, rock, or boulder. Figuratively, what’s described is a refuge. This word is used three times in Psalm 18 (vv. 2, 31, 46). In verse 2, the psalmist multiplies metaphors to stress divine dependability: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock [tsur], in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” In Isaiah 26:4, the word tsur is paired with olam, which means long duration, forever, everlasting, perpetual: “The Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.” The pairing of these words enhances God’s credibility exponentially. Trust Him. His faithfulness is unending! By: Arthur Jackson
Yielding to Trust
Trust in the Lord forever. Isaiah 26:4
Opening the blinds one winter morning, I faced a shocking sight. A wall of fog. “Freezing fog,” the weather forecaster called it. Rare for our location, this fog came with an even bigger surprise: a later forecast for blue skies and sunshine—“in one hour.” “Impossible,” I told my husband. “We can barely see one foot ahead.” But sure enough, in less than an hour, the fog had faded, the sky yielding to a sunny, clear blue.
Standing at a window, I pondered my level of trust when I can only see fog in life. I asked my husband, “Do I only trust God for what I can already see?”
When King Uzziah died and some corrupt rulers came to power in Judah, Isaiah asked a similar question. Whom can we trust? God responded by giving Isaiah a vision so remarkable that it convinced the prophet that He can be trusted in the present for better days ahead. As Isaiah praised, “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you” (Isaiah 26:3). The prophet added, “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal” (v. 4).
When our minds are fixed on God, we can trust Him even during foggy and confusing times. We might not see it clearly now, but if we trust God, we can be assured His help is on the way. By: Patricia Raybon
Reflect & Pray
When life looks foggy and confusing, where can you put your trust? How can you turn your mind from today’s problems to our eternal God?
The world looks foggy and confusing today, dear God, so please help me fix my mind on You, in whom I can forever trust.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, October 13, 2023
Individual Discouragement and Personal Growth
…when Moses was grown…he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. —Exodus 2:11
Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After he launched his first strike for God and for what was right, God allowed Moses to be driven into empty discouragement, sending him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared to Moses and said to him, “ ‘…bring My people…out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go…?’ ” (Exodus 3:10-11). In the beginning Moses had realized that he was the one to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in his individual perspective, but he was not the person for the work until he had learned true fellowship and oneness with God.
We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and yet when we start to do it, there comes to us something equivalent to Moses’ forty years in the wilderness. It’s as if God had ignored the entire thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged, God comes back and revives His call to us. And then we begin to tremble and say, “Who am I that I should go…?” We must learn that God’s great stride is summed up in these words— “I AM WHO I AM…has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). We must also learn that our individual effort for God shows nothing but disrespect for Him— our individuality is to be rendered radiant through a personal relationship with God, so that He may be “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). We are focused on the right individual perspective of things; we have the vision and can say, “I know this is what God wants me to do.” But we have not yet learned to get into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Much of the misery in our Christian life comes not because the devil tackles us, but because we have never understood the simple laws of our make-up. We have to treat the body as the servant of Jesus Christ: when the body says “Sit,” and He says “Go,” go! When the body says “Eat,” and He says “Fast,” fast! When the body says “Yawn,” and He says “Pray,” pray! Biblical Ethics, 107 R
Bible in a Year: Isaiah 41-42; 1 Thessalonians 1
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, October 13, 2023
No Greater Gift You Can Give Your Child - #9590
If a flight attendant ever faints during a safety briefing on a flight, well, I think I could take over. Yeah, I've heard about the seat belt, and the seat and the tray being in the right position. Oh yeah! There's one thing that they mention that I've never experienced, and that's fine with me-the oxygen mask. It goes something like this, "In the event of a sudden change in cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down from the compartment above your head." And then they explain this, "If you're traveling with a child, please make sure you put your mask on first, and then put it on your child." That's a good idea. Make sure you can breathe, and then take care of your child.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Greater Gift You Can Give Your Child."
Our word for today from the Word of God; we're in Deuteronomy 6. I guess I'd call it flight instructions for parents. It's addressed to parents who are raising kids in a culture that is more pagan than the one they grew up in, where their kids are going to be handed what their parents had to work for. That's kind of true of the generation this was written to, and it's kind of true today.
Deuteronomy 6:5, the flight instructions begin this way. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your heart. Then impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your foreheads and hands, and write them on the door frames of your houses."
But verse 12 warns, "Be careful that you do not forget the Lord." Well, the Bible says here that your children are going to need a love relationship with the Lord if they're going to make it, where they love the Lord their God with everything they've got. That's an inner guidance system that you can plant in a child that will keep them from crashing when you're not with them. It's that internal spiritual strength that keeps them from collapsing when the external pressure on them is insane and intense. They need this deep, real, personal relationship with the God who made them, who is the key to their purpose for living.
But you've got to breathe that spiritual oxygen before you can give it to them. That's why it says this has got to be impressed on your heart before it can be impressed on theirs. You've got to love Him first. Frankly, there's nothing like the needs of our kids' lives to expose the needs of our own lives. Right? I mean, you look in your son's or daughter's eyes, and you're face-to-face with your own inadequacies, your own needs, your pain, your failures; parts of you that you may want to deny or excuse. But when we look at our kids those things stare at us in the mirror right there in the lives of our children. And their spiritual needs? Well, they're the mirror of your own. We can't lead them where we haven't been.
Maybe it's time for you to experience for yourself as a Mom or Dad this love relationship with God. First, we have to recognize why we don't have one. Because of this monster called sin, it's the self-rule of our life really. Secondly, we need to recognize how we can have that relationship. And the Bible makes that really clear. It's by visiting the cross where God's Son took the rap for our sin and made it possible for the sin wall between us and God to finally come down. And then thirdly, we need to pin all our hopes on that Savior; telling Jesus He's in charge from this day on and then beyond that commitment.
We can't settle for a relationship that's just mostly rules and rituals and religion and meetings, and beliefs. They're not going to sign up for that. The only Christianity that our kids will breathe themselves is one that is lived out before them.
But if you've never experienced Jesus for yourself, you can have Him change your family by changing Mom, by changing a Dad. By saying, "Jesus, I bring you all of my needs, my failures, my sins, my inadequacies and I lay them at your cross where you died for me. Beginning this day I'm Yours."
Man, I'd love to help you nail down that relationship so you know you have Jesus for sure. Would you go to our website? It's ANewStory.com. Because it will be a new story for you and for your family.