Max Lucado Daily: MADE FOR THE PART - January 15, 2024
Listen to the way God described the builder Bezalel. “I have filled him with the Spirit of God, giving him great wisdom, intelligence and skill in all kinds of crafts” (Exodus 31:3 NLT). Can you hear the pleasure in God’s voice?
You know, when you do the most what you do the best, you pop the pride buttons on the vest of God. In the movie Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell defended his devotion to running by telling his sister, “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.” When do you feel God’s pleasure? When do you look up into the heavens and say, “I was made to do this”?
When it comes to being you, you were made for the part. So speak your lines with confidence.
Romans 9:16-33
Compassion doesn’t originate in our bleeding hearts or moral sweat, but in God’s mercy. The same point was made when God said to Pharaoh, “I picked you as a bit player in this drama of my salvation power.” All we’re saying is that God has the first word, initiating the action in which we play our part for good or ill.
19 Are you going to object, “So how can God blame us for anything since he’s in charge of everything? If the big decisions are already made, what say do we have in it?”
20–33 Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, “Why did you shape me like this?” Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? Either or both happens to Jews, but it also happens to the other people. Hosea put it well:
I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies;
I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved.
In the place where they yelled out, “You’re nobody!”
they’re calling you “God’s living children.”
Isaiah maintained this same emphasis:
If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered
and the sum labeled “chosen of God,”
They’d be numbers still, not names;
salvation comes by personal selection.
God doesn’t count us; he calls us by name.
Arithmetic is not his focus.
Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth:
If our powerful God
had not provided us a legacy of living children,
We would have ended up like ghost towns,
like Sodom and Gomorrah.
How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their “God projects” that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. Isaiah (again!) gives us the metaphor for pulling this together:
Careful! I’ve put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion,
a stone you can’t get around.
But the stone is me! If you’re looking for me,
you’ll find me on the way, not in the way.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, January 15, 2024
Today's Scripture
Mark 10:35–45
The Highest Places of Honor
35 James and John, Zebedee’s sons, came up to him. “Teacher, we have something we want you to do for us.”
36 “What is it? I’ll see what I can do.”
37 “Arrange it,” they said, “so that we will be awarded the highest places of honor in your glory—one of us at your right, the other at your left.”
38 Jesus said, “You have no idea what you’re asking. Are you capable of drinking the cup I drink, of being baptized in the baptism I’m about to be plunged into?”
39–40 “Sure,” they said. “Why not?”
Jesus said, “Come to think of it, you will drink the cup I drink, and be baptized in my baptism. But as to awarding places of honor, that’s not my business. There are other arrangements for that.”
41–45 When the other ten heard of this conversation, they lost their tempers with James and John. Jesus got them together to settle things down. “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” he said, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”
Insight
James and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right hand and left hand after He’s glorified (Mark 10:37) shows they didn’t yet understand that Christ’s path to glory would be through suffering. Jesus responded by referring to His coming “cup” and “baptism” (v. 38)—both metaphors referring to His future suffering for His people. He would drink the cup of suffering and identify fully with His people to save them—taking on the consequences of sin for their sake. In response to James and John’s request for honor, they’re instead promised that as Christ’s disciples, they’d suffer like Him (v. 39). And Jesus used this occasion to teach all His disciples about offering themselves in service (vv. 42-45). By: Monica La Rose
Serving Others for Jesus
Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. Mark 10:43
Actress Nichelle Nichols is best remembered for playing Lieutenant Uhura in the original Star Trek series. Landing the role was a personal win for Nichols, making her one of the first African American women on a major TV show. But a greater win was to come of it.
Nichols had actually resigned from Star Trek after its first season, to return to her theater work. But then she met Martin Luther King Jr., who urged her not to leave. For the first time, he said, African Americans were being seen on TV as intelligent people who could do anything, even go to space. By playing Lieutenant Uhura, Nichols was achieving a greater win—showing Black women and children what they could become.
It reminds me of the time James and John asked Jesus for the two best positions in His kingdom (Mark 10:37). What personal wins such positions would be! Jesus not only explained the painful realities of their request (vv. 38–40) but called them to higher goals, saying, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (v. 43). His followers weren’t to seek personal wins alone but, like Him, use their positions to serve others (v. 45).
Nichelle Nichols stayed with Star Trek for the greater win it provided for African Americans. May we too never be content with a personal win alone but use whatever position we gain to serve others in His name. By: Sheridan Voysey
Reflect & Pray
What are your current personal and career goals? What doors could you open for others right now?
Dear Jesus, show me how to use my position to serve others in Your name.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, January 15, 2024
Do You Walk In White?
We were buried with Him…that just as Christ was raised from the dead…even so we also should walk in newness of life. —Romans 6:4
No one experiences complete sanctification without going through a “white funeral” — the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crucial moment of change through death, sanctification will never be more than an elusive dream. There must be a “white funeral,” a death with only one resurrection— a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can defeat a life like this. It has oneness with God for only one purpose— to be a witness for Him.
Have you really come to your last days? You have often come to them in your mind, but have you really experienced them? You cannot die or go to your funeral in a mood of excitement. Death means you stop being. You must agree with God and stop being the intensely striving kind of Christian you have been. We avoid the cemetery and continually refuse our own death. It will not happen by striving, but by yielding to death. It is dying— being “baptized into His death” (Romans 6:3).
Have you had your “white funeral,” or are you piously deceiving your own soul? Has there been a point in your life which you now mark as your last day? Is there a place in your life to which you go back in memory with humility and overwhelming gratitude, so that you can honestly proclaim, “Yes, it was then, at my ‘white funeral,’ that I made an agreement with God.”
“This is the will of God, your sanctification…” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Once you truly realize this is God’s will, you will enter into the process of sanctification as a natural response. Are you willing to experience that “white funeral” now? Will you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth? The moment of agreement depends on you.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
If there is only one strand of faith amongst all the corruption within us, God will take hold of that one strand. Not Knowing Whither, 888 L
Bible in a Year: Genesis 36-38; Matthew 10:21-42
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, January 15, 2024
Why Your Service Has Been Interrupted - #9656
OK, so there are more bills to pay than you've got money to pay them. You have to make some choices. What you probably won't do is decide not to pay the electric bill and certain other bills like that. Those bills where, if you don't pay, they can cut off your service. You get this little notice: "If you don't pay your bill right away, your service will be cut off." It's amazing how a service cutoff can help you set your priorities!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why Your Service Has Been Interrupted."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from some of the most preached on words in the Bible...and maybe some of the least acted on. 2 Chronicles 7:14, with the introduction of verse 13, "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among My people, if My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
To be in a position to receive God's healing of what's hurting and broken, we have to humbly pray; we have to seek His face. But let's focus on that last and maybe most neglected step. A lot of people get that far. They humble themselves, they pray, and they seek His face. It's that last step where a lot of us fall short, "If My people... will turn from their wicked ways, then will I." God seems to be saying, "As long as you're hanging onto that sinful practice, that sinful attitude, or that sinful way you treat people, I can't open up heaven and bless you." In other words, your service will be interrupted until that outstanding spiritual bill is settled.
Maybe you've wondered why that repeated prayer hasn't been answered, or why things have come unglued, or why you're going through the pain you're facing, or why things don't change! Maybe it's because you haven't changed!
Now, there can be other reasons God hasn't seemed to answer, for sure. Maybe He's asking you to wait, or He's taking His time to enlarge your faith in Him, or He's preparing to do a larger miracle than the one you even asked for. But the first explanation we should consider is this: "Is there a sinful action, a sinful attitude, or a wrong relationship that I haven't let go of? Am I hanging onto a stubborn sin? Am I excusing what God wants me to be refusing?"
God accepts only one response to sin, not rationalizing it, not excusing it, not comparing yourself to other people. He says, "Turn from it!" Do you want God's best? Then deal with the "wicked ways" that are holding back the very answers you're seeking. The Lord has so much He wants to give you, so much He's ready to fix, and so many mountains He wants to move in your life. But His holy hand may be held back by some unrepented, unforsaken sin.
The difficulties you've been experiencing might be God's warning notice! If it seems like God's service in your life has been interrupted, check your account with Him and settle what's come between you.