Max Lucado Daily: How Quickly We Forget
Take this quiz. Name the ten wealthiest men in the world. Name the last ten Heisman trophy winners. Name eight people who've won the Nobel prize. How about the last ten Academy Award winners for best picture? Or the last decade's worth of World Series winners? How'd you do? I didn't do well either. Surprising how quickly we forget, isn't it? And what I've mentioned are no second-rate achievements. These are the best in their fields.
Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one. Think of three people you enjoy spending time with. Name ten people who've taught you something worthwhile. Name five friends who've helped you in a difficult time. List a few teachers who aided your journey through high school. Easier? It was for me, too.
The lesson? The people who make a difference are not the ones with the most credentials, but the ones with the most concern.
And the Angels Were Silent
Hosea 12
Ephraim, obsessed with god-fantasies,
chases ghosts and phantoms.
He tells lies nonstop,
soul-destroying lies.
Both Ephraim and Judah made deals with Assyria
and tried to get an inside track with Egypt.
God is bringing charges against Israel.
Jacob’s children are hauled into court to be punished.
In the womb, that heel, Jacob, got the best of his brother.
When he grew up, he tried to get the best of God.
But God would not be bested.
God bested him.
Brought to his knees,
Jacob wept and prayed.
God found him at Bethel.
That’s where he spoke with him.
God is God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
God-Revealed, God-Known.
6 What are you waiting for? Return to your God!
Commit yourself in love, in justice!
Wait for your God,
and don’t give up on him—ever!
7–8 The businessmen engage in wholesale fraud.
They love to rip people off!
Ephraim boasted, “Look, I’m rich!
I’ve made it big!
And look how well I’ve covered my tracks:
not a hint of fraud, not a sign of sin!”
9–11 “But not so fast! I’m God, your God!
Your God from the days in Egypt!
I’m going to put you back to living in tents,
as in the old days when you worshiped in the wilderness.
I speak through the prophets
to give clear pictures of the way things are.
Using prophets, I tell revealing stories.
I show Gilead rampant with religious scandal
and Gilgal teeming with empty-headed religion.
I expose their worship centers as
stinking piles of garbage in their gardens.”
12–14 Are you going to repeat the life of your ancestor Jacob?
He ran off guilty to Aram,
Then sold his soul to get ahead,
and made it big through treachery and deceit.
Your real identity is formed through God-sent prophets,
who led you out of Egypt and served as faithful pastors.
As it is, Ephraim has continually
and inexcusably insulted God.
Now he has to pay for his life-destroying ways.
His Master will do to him what he has done.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Today's Scripture
Psalm 90:1–6
God, it seems you’ve been our home forever;
long before the mountains were born,
Long before you brought earth itself to birth,
from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come”—you are God.
3–11 So don’t return us to mud, saying,
“Back to where you came from!”
Patience! You’ve got all the time in the world—whether
a thousand years or a day, it’s all the same to you.
Are we no more to you than a wispy dream,
no more than a blade of grass
That springs up gloriously with the rising sun
and is cut down without a second thought?
Insight
The book of Psalms is the hymnbook and prayer book of Jews and believers in Jesus. The Hebrew title is Tehillim, which means “praise songs.” The 150 songs were composed and compiled by numerous authors over a period of nearly one thousand years. Authors include Moses, David, Asaph, the sons of Korah, Heman, Solomon, and Ethan. But 48 psalms are by unnamed authors.
The superscription of Psalm 90 says it’s “A prayer of Moses the man of God.” This esteemed title is also used of Moses in Deuteronomy 33:1 and Joshua 14:6. Psalm 90 is the only psalm attributed to Moses, which makes it the oldest of the 150 psalms. Scholars believe that Moses had the forty years of wilderness wandering as the backdrop for this psalm. Contrasting the eternality of God (vv. 1-2) with the transience of human life (vv. 3-12), Moses reminds us of the mercy and compassion of God for sinful human beings (vv. 13-17). By: K. T. Sim
In God’s Loving Hands
Before the mountains were born . . . from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90:2
After another health setback, I feared the unknown and uncontrollable. One day, while reading a Forbes magazine article, I learned that scientists studied the rising of the “Earth’s rotation velocity” and declared that the Earth “wobbled” and is “spinning faster.” They said we “could require the first-ever ‘drop second’—the official removal of a second from global time.” Though a second doesn’t seem like much of a loss, knowing that the Earth’s rotation could change seemed like a big deal to me. Even slight instability can make my faith feel wobbly. However, knowing God is in control helps me to trust Him no matter how scary our unknowns or how shaky our circumstances may seem.
In Psalm 90, Moses said, “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (v. 2). Acknowledging God’s unlimited power, control, and authority over all creation, Moses declared that time cannot constrain God (vv. 3–6).
As we seek to know more about God and the wonderful world He made, we’ll discover how He continues perfectly managing time and all He created. God can be trusted with every unknown and newly discovered thing in our lives too. All creation remains secure in God’s loving hands. By: Xochitl Dixon
Reflect & Pray
How does knowing God is in control of time and all creation help you trust Him when facing the unknown? How can you honor God with the time He’s entrusted to you today?
Unchanging Creator, thank You for securing every second of my life in Your trustworthy hands.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Taking the Initiative Against Despair
Rise, let us be going. —Matthew 26:46
In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, “Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore.” If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, “Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing.” In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.
There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing— they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, “Get up, and do the next thing.” If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption.
Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them. Workmen of God, 1341 L
Bible in a Year: Leviticus 23-24; Mark 1:1-22