Max Lucado Daily: GOOD AND FAITHFUL - January 22, 2024
God gives gifts, not miserly, but abundantly! And he doesn’t give gifts randomly, but carefully, “to each according to each one’s unique ability” (Matthew 25:15).
Remember, no one else has your talents. No one. God elevates you from common-hood by matching your unique abilities to custom-made assignments. “Well done good and faithful servant,” Jesus will say to some (Matthew 25:23). Maybe your dad never praised you or your teachers always criticized you, but God will applaud you. And to have him call you “good”? When he does, it counts. Only he can make bad sinners good, and only he can make the frail faithful. “Well done, good and faithful.”
The point? Use your uniqueness to take great risks for God. The only mistake is not to risk making one.
Isaiah 58
Your Prayers Won’t Get Off the Ground
1–3 58 “Shout! A full-throated shout!
Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’
3–5 “Well, here’s why:
“The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
a fast day that I, God, would like?
6–9 “This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’
A Full Life in the Emptiest of Places
9–12 “If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.
13–14 “If you watch your step on the Sabbath
and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
God’s holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’
making money, running here and there—
Then you’ll be free to enjoy God!
Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all.
I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.”
Yes! God says so!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, January 22, 2024
Today's Scripture
Luke 10:17–20
The seventy came back triumphant. “Master, even the demons danced to your tune!”
18–20 Jesus said, “I know. I saw Satan fall, a bolt of lightning out of the sky. See what I’ve given you? Safe passage as you walk on snakes and scorpions, and protection from every assault of the Enemy. No one can put a hand on you. All the same, the great triumph is not in your authority over evil, but in God’s authority over you and presence with you. Not what you do for God but what God does for you—that’s the agenda for rejoicing.”
Insight
In Luke 10:20, Jesus isn’t chastising His disciples for casting out demons, for it’s to God’s glory when they’re cast out. Instead, He says they should take joy that their “names are written in heaven.” Other passages referring to this record use the words “book of life” or “book.” Commentator William Hendriksen writes: “Casting out demons ceases when life on earth ends. But right standing with God, resulting in everlasting salvation to his glory, never ends.” Daniel says, in the end times “everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered” (Daniel 12:1). Those who are “victorious,” or who stand firm in their faith, will never be blotted out from “the book of life” (Revelation 3:5). But those whose names aren’t written in the “Lamb’s book of life,” the apostle John says, “will worship the beast” (13:8) in the last days. And when Christ returns, “anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life [will be] thrown into the lake of fire” (20:15). By: Alyson Kieda
The Right Focus
Rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Luke 10:20
We’d known Kha for more than a year. He was part of our small group from church that met weekly to discuss what we’d been learning about God. One evening during our regular meeting, he made a reference to having competed at the Olympics. The mention was so casual that it almost escaped my notice. Almost. Lo and behold, I learned I knew an Olympian who had competed in the bronze medal match! I couldn’t fathom that he’d not mentioned it before, but for Kha, while his athletic achievement was a special part of his story, more important things were central to his identity: his family, his community, and his faith.
The story in Luke 10:1–23 describes what should be central to our identity. When the seventy-two people Jesus sent out to tell others about the kingdom of God returned from their journeys, they reported to Him that “even the demons submit to us in your name” (v. 17). While Jesus acknowledged that He’d equipped them with tremendous power and protection, He said they were focused on the wrong thing. He insisted that their cause for rejoicing should be because their “names are written in heaven” (v. 20).
Whatever achievements or abilities God has granted us, our greatest cause for rejoicing is that if we’ve entrusted ourselves to Jesus, our names are written in heaven, and we enjoy His daily presence in our lives.
Reflect & Pray
What are you focused on? How can you shift your focus to more of an eternal perspective?
Heavenly Father, thank You for writing my name in heaven. I rejoice in knowing You.
Learn more about having a personal relationship with God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, January 22, 2024
Am I Looking To God?
Look to Me, and be saved… —Isaiah 45:22
Do we expect God to come to us with His blessings and save us? He says, “Look to Me, and be saved….” The greatest difficulty spiritually is to concentrate on God, and His blessings are what make it so difficult. Troubles almost always make us look to God, but His blessings tend to divert our attention elsewhere. The basic lesson of the Sermon on the Mount is to narrow all your interests until your mind, heart, and body are focused on Jesus Christ. “Look to Me….”
Many of us have a mental picture of what a Christian should be, and looking at this image in other Christians’ lives becomes a hindrance to our focusing on God. This is not salvation— it is not simple enough. He says, in effect, “Look to Me and you are saved,” not “You will be saved someday.” We will find what we are looking for if we will concentrate on Him. We get distracted from God and irritable with Him while He continues to say to us, “Look to Me, and be saved….” Our difficulties, our trials, and our worries about tomorrow all vanish when we look to God.
Wake yourself up and look to God. Build your hope on Him. No matter how many things seem to be pressing in on you, be determined to push them aside and look to Him. “Look to Me….” Salvation is yours the moment you look.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence. Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L
Bible in a Year: Exodus 4-6; Matthew 14:22-36
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, January 22, 2024
Letting Go Before You Crash - #9661
It was one of the dumbest things I'd done in a long time. It was years ago. I was involved in this intense ministry on a Native American reservation. That was not the dumb thing. What was dumb was, I was missing a lot of sleep but I decided to drive. That was dumb.
One day we had our longest drive; seven hours to an Apache Reservation. My wife, knowing how tired I was, said, "Would you like me to drive?" "No, of course not! Let me drive." (I'm a guy!) See, I hate to ride. I like to drive. She kept offering; I kept declining. (You probably know where this is going.)
I realized I was getting real warm in the car, and the next thing I remember was my wife yelling, "Ron!" I had dozed off at the wheel. I was running off the road on a gravel shoulder in a jeep that could have easily rolled over. Man, I told you it was dumb! Well, I thank God she woke me up in time. But I made an almost fatal mistake. I held onto the wheel too long.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Letting Go Before You Crash."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 1:8-9. You might find some of these phrases applicable to your life right now: hardship, under great pressure, beyond our ability, despairing of life. Sound familiar? Well, those were the words used by the great Apostle Paul during a difficult time in his life. He found out the why as he tells us in these verses. "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death."
It's like he's saying, "I thought we were going to die." Maybe you'd like to find out why the pressure, why the pain, why the problems right now. "What's going on here, God?" Well the answer Paul found might turn out to be yours as well. He says, "But this happened (here we go) that we might not rely on ourselves but on God."
In modern terms Paul might be saying, "God was trying to get my hands off the wheel." Could that be what He's trying to do with you? See, most of us want to drive our lives; we want to control everything. Oh, we believe in God. We love God. We maybe even serve God. We give to God, but we maintain the real control of certain cherished parts of our life and we won't relinquish the wheel until we're running off the road and about to crash...or maybe even after we've crashed.
See, we were created to live God-dependent. We keep trying to live independent. I mean, you think about it. We don't take our next breath without Him. The Bible says, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." But we want to make it happen. We don't want to watch God make it happen. We want our outcome. If we can depend on anything other than God we will. So our Lord lovingly turns up the heat.
Maybe you're there right now. You're stubbornly holding onto the wheel. You're insisting on driving your family, or your mate, or your child, or your ministry. God is politely asking to drive and that didn't work. You won't let go. And now things are crashing.
Listen to Paul, "This is happening that you might rely on God and not on yourself." When you finally let go and surrender control to Jesus, you'll receive power you could never have when you were driving; resurrection power available to those who have quit depending on their own power.
The ultimate disaster is when we think somehow we can do something to get ourselves to heaven, when the Bible clearly says, "It is not of works, so no man can boast. It is by grace (undeserved love of God) when Christ died on the cross to do for us what we could never do for ourselves; to pay sin's death penalty. And today He's ready to walk into your life and do what only He can do. But first, you must surrender control.
You say, "Ron, I don't know how to do this." Listen, if you're ready to turn your life over to Him, would you please go to our website and let's get it done there. It's ANewStory.com.
Listen to Jesus. He's saying, "Let Me drive. Unwrap those fingers that you have so tightly wrapped around the wheel."