Max
Lucado Daily:NEW POWER - November 18, 2024
Suppose that for most of your life, you’ve had a heart condition. Your activities have been restricted. But then comes the transplant. You have a new heart. Within you dwells a new power. You might say, “I can’t climb stairs, I’m too weak.” Does your choice negate the presence of a new heart? Dismiss the work of the surgeon? No, it would suggest you haven’t learned to trust your new power. At some point you gotta to try those stairs.
The same is true in our walk with Christ. You have a new heart. You are not who you used to be. As a result, you can do what you could not do – you can forgive, you can love, you can live! Put your new heart to the test. You will climb the stairs, not by your strength, but by his.
Nextdoor Savior: Near Enough to Touch, Strong Enough to Trust
Psalm 82
An Asaph Psalm
1 82 God calls the judges into his courtroom,
he puts all the judges in the dock.
2–4 “Enough! You’ve corrupted justice long enough,
you’ve let the wicked get away with murder.
You’re here to defend the defenseless,
to make sure that underdogs get a fair break;
Your job is to stand up for the powerless,
and prosecute all those who exploit them.”
5 Ignorant judges! Head-in-the-sand judges!
They haven’t a clue to what’s going on.
And now everything’s falling apart,
the world’s coming unglued.
6–7 “I commissioned you judges, each one of you,
deputies of the High God,
But you’ve betrayed your commission
and now you’re stripped of your rank, busted.”
8 O God, give them their just deserts!
You’ve got the whole world in your hands!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, November 18, 2024
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
John 14:15-24
The Spirit of Truth
15–17 “If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!
18–20 “I will not leave you orphaned. I’m coming back. In just a little while the world will no longer see me, but you’re going to see me because I am alive and you’re about to come alive. At that moment you will know absolutely that I’m in my Father, and you’re in me, and I’m in you.
21 “The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that’s who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him.”
22 Judas (not Iscariot) said, “Master, why is it that you are about to make yourself plain to us but not to the world?”
23–24 “Because a loveless world,” said Jesus, “is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him—we’ll move right into the neighborhood! Not loving me means not keeping my words. The message you are hearing isn’t mine. It’s the message of the Father who sent me.
Today's Insights
Four times in John 14:15-24, Jesus emphasized that obeying Him would be proof of the disciples’ love for Him (vv. 15, 21, 23, 24). They weren’t left alone to obey Christ by their own volition and human strength. God the Father would give them “another advocate to help [them]— the Spirit of truth” (vv. 16-17). The Holy Spirit would remind them of everything Jesus had taught them (v. 26) and show them what’s right and wrong (16:8-13). To love Christ is to obey Him. As we’re “led by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:18), we’ll obey Him and “keep in step with the Spirit” (v. 25).
Obedience Is a Choice
Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. -John 14:23
Today's Devotional
Winters in the Netherlands seldom bring a lot of snow, but it can get cold enough to freeze over the canals. When my husband, Tom, was growing up there, his parents had a family rule: “Stay off the ice until it is thick enough to hold the weight of a horse.” Because horses would leave evidence of their presence behind, Tom and his buddies decided to get some manure off the road. They threw it on the thin ice and ventured out onto the surface. No harm came to them, nor were they discovered, but they knew in their hearts they’d been disobedient.
Obedience doesn’t always come naturally. The choice to obey or not to obey can spring from a sense of duty or fear of punishment. But we can also choose to obey out of love and respect for those in authority over us.
In John 14, Jesus challenged His disciples by saying, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. . . . Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching” (vv. 23-24). It’s not always an easy choice to obey, but the power of the Spirit living within us gives us the desire and ability to obey Him (vv. 15-17). With His enablement, we can continue to follow the commands of the one who loves us most—not out of fear of punishment, but out of love.
Reflect & Pray
In what ways have you been willfully disobedient? Why is it important for you to obey God even when it’s difficult or inconvenient?
Loving God, please soften my stubborn heart to listen to Your instructions. Help me to set aside my own agenda and to faithfully obey You.
For further study, read The (Impossible) Task of Following Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, November 18, 2024
Free Indeed
If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. —John 8:36
After we are born again, any selfish individuality remaining inside us will always say “I can’t” when God calls. We have to leave off our individuality and develop our personality instead. The full meaning of the word personality is a being, created by God, who has lived on this earth and formed a godly character. The majority of us are not personalities yet. We are beginning to be, but we haven’t yet rid ourselves of our individuality.
Personality never says, “I can’t.” When it comes into contact with God, it absorbs and absorbs and always wants more. This is the way we are built. We are designed with a great capacity for God, but sin and individuality keep us from him. God delivers us from sin, but we have to deliver ourselves from individuality. We do this by offering our natural life to him and by sacrificing that life, through obedience, until it’s transformed into a spiritual life.
God doesn’t pay attention to our natural individuality in the development of our spiritual lives, but he does expect us to pay attention to it. His order is present in every facet of our natural lives, and we have to make sure that we help that order along, not stand against it, saying, “I can’t.” God won’t discipline us; he won’t bring our thoughts into captivity. We have to do it.
Don’t go to God and say, “Oh, Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts.” Don’t suffer from wandering thoughts. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated into personality.
“If the Son sets you free . . .” Don’t substitute “Savior” for “Son.” The Savior sets us free from sin; the Son sets us free from individuality. It is what Paul means in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Paul’s individuality has been broken, and his personality is united with his Lord’s. He is “free indeed”—free from the inside out, free in the very essence of his being.
Ezekiel 8-10; Hebrews 13
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
It is in the middle that human choices are made; the beginning and the end remain with God. The decrees of God are birth and death, and in between those limits man makes his own distress or joy.
Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Made for More - #9876
Monday, November 18, 2024
It was when the Star Wars movie "The Force Awakens" came out. It was a great story, I'm sure, in that great record crushing movie. I wasn't expecting to find a mirror reflecting the lives of so many people I've known. In the story, it's Rey's story. She's a young woman on a desolate planet, surviving by scavenging parts from a space junkyard. When she's asked, "Who are you?" she just zero-sums her life this way: "I am no one" until she discovers the truth that changes her life forever.
She's made for more. She finds that she's here for something much greater than just scavenging. She's destined for greatness as a warrior for a better world. And that's the image in the mirror of so many of us who've settled for just surviving, for just doing life, one predictable, one purposeless day at a time. Not a bad life, just an insignificant, too-small life - scavenging.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Made for More."
You know, maybe that's why a light has gone on inside millions of people when they've met a man named Jesus. He said in John 10:10 in the Bible, "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." To the full, implying that we've been settling for less than full. Maybe we've been settling for empty, for less than we were created for.
I think we know that something or someone is missing. No matter how far, or not far, we may have climbed up Mount Happiness. No friendship, no scholarship, no championship, no relationship has filled the hole in our heart. They can't, because we're made for more. The "more" the Bible reveals in this statement about Jesus Christ: our word for today from the Word of God from Colossians 1:16 - "All things were created by Him and for Him."
So, I am created by Jesus, for a relationship with Jesus, just as the earth is created to revolve around the sun - its source of life. Anything less is, in reality, spiritual scavenging. It's not God's fault I've lived beneath my destiny. I, along with all my fellow humans, decided to live for me with God on the margins at best; maybe a compartment, but not my reason to live.
God had every right to let us have the life without Him that we seem to want. But He loves us too much for that. He proved it by sending His one and only Son not from "a galaxy far, far away," but from heaven to become one of us. And this takes my breath away - He sent Him to die for us; absorbing on a cross all the pain, all the penalty for all our hijacking of our life from Him.
I still can't get over it. From the day I trusted this Jesus to forgive my sin and pilot my life I've been discovering the "more." I was searching, and I finally found it. If you've never experienced the "more" of a relationship with Jesus...you know all the relationships, all the things you've been and done, have not filled that hole in your heart.
Well, with the love of Jesus and His grave-conquering power that He proved when He walked out of his grave, I've graduated from scavenging to being a warrior. He wants that for you - unleashing the force of His love in your family, and your work, and your personal world.
It doesn't have to be the way it's always been because of Jesus. But you take the initiative to begin that relationship with Him. He describes it as knocking on the door of your heart. I believe He may be in your heart, today. And if you feel that tug in your heart, would you take an action step and say, "Jesus, I am yours from this day on. I'm pinning all my hopes on You."
Check out our website and make sure you belong to Him. You'll find it at ANewStory.com.
Finding Jesus. Finding your destiny. Never "settling" again.
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