Max Lucado Daily: AGAPE LOVE - February 23, 2024
Paul reminded the church at Corinth the kind of love Christ offers to us: agape love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7 NKJV).
Don’t we need the same prescription today? Don’t groups still fight with each other? Don’t we flirt with those we shouldn’t? Aren’t we sometimes quiet when we should speak? Someday there will be a community where everyone behaves and no one complains, but it won’t be this side of heaven. So till then we reason, we confront, we teach. But most of all we love.
Such love isn’t easy—not even for Jesus. Listen to his frustration in Mark 9:19 (NCV): “You people have no faith. How long must I stay with you? How long must I put up with you?” How long? Until it kills me. Jesus bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, and endured all things. Even the cross.
Micah 2
God Has Had Enough
1–5 2 Doom to those who plot evil,
who go to bed dreaming up crimes!
As soon as it’s morning,
they’re off, full of energy, doing what they’ve planned.
They covet fields and grab them,
find homes and take them.
They bully the neighbor and his family,
see people only for what they can get out of them.
God has had enough. He says,
“I have some plans of my own:
Disaster because of this interbreeding evil!
Your necks are on the line.
You’re not walking away from this.
It’s doomsday for you.
Mocking ballads will be sung of you,
and you yourselves will sing the blues:
‘Our lives are ruined,
our homes and lands auctioned off.
They take everything, leave us nothing!
All is sold to the highest bidder.’ ”
And there’ll be no one to stand up for you,
no one to speak for you before God and his jury.
6–7 “Don’t preach,” say the preachers.
“Don’t preach such stuff.
Nothing bad will happen to us.
Talk like this to the family of Jacob?
Does God lose his temper?
Is this the way he acts?
Isn’t he on the side of good people?
Doesn’t he help those who help themselves?”
8–11 “What do you mean, ‘good people’!
You’re the enemy of my people!
You rob unsuspecting people
out for an evening stroll.
You take their coats off their backs
like soldiers who plunder the defenseless.
You drive the women of my people
out of their ample homes.
You make victims of the children
and leave them vulnerable to violence and vice.
Get out of here, the lot of you.
You can’t take it easy here!
You’ve polluted this place,
and now you’re polluted—ruined!
If someone showed up with a good smile and glib tongue
and told lies from morning to night—
‘I’ll preach sermons that will tell you
how you can get anything you want from God:
More money, the best wines … you name it’—
you’d hire him on the spot as your preacher!
12–13 “I’m calling a meeting, Jacob.
I want everyone back—all the survivors of Israel.
I’ll get them together in one place—
like sheep in a fold, like cattle in a corral—
a milling throng of homebound people!
Then I, God, will burst all confinements
and lead them out into the open.
They’ll follow their King.
I will be out in front leading them.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, February 23, 2024
Today's Scripture
Ephesians 2:11–22
But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14–15 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16–18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19–22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Insight
The separation between Jewish and non-Jewish people was critically important when Paul wrote Ephesians. And, indeed, as God’s chosen people, the Jews held a special place in His plan. Messiah Himself was thoroughly Jewish. But the distinction created much animosity between the two groups, particularly concerning the practice of circumcision. Paul dismissed such attitudes as contrary to God’s plan—the “mystery . . . that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel” (Ephesians 3:6). God “has made the two groups one” (2:14). Gentiles are “no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens” (v. 19) through Christ’s blood (v. 13). By: Tim Gustafson
Welcome the Stranger
You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household. Ephesians 2:19
In Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri describes his harrowing flight with his mother and sister from persecution through a refugee camp to safety in the United States. An elderly couple agreed to sponsor them, though they didn’t know them. Years later, Daniel still can’t get over it. He writes, “Can you believe that? Totally blind, they did that. They’d never even met us. And if we turned out to be villains, they’d have to pay for it. That’s almost as brave, kind, and reckless as I can think of anybody being.”
Yet God desires us to have that level of concern for others. He told Israel to be kind to foreigners. “Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). He reminds gentile believers in Jesus—that’s many of us—that once we “were separate from Christ . . . and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). So He commands all of us former foreigners, both Jew and gentile, “to show hospitality to strangers” (Hebrews 13:2).
Now grown up with a family of his own, Daniel praises Jim and Jean Dawson, “who were so Christian that they let a family of refugees come live with them until they could find a home.”
God welcomes the stranger and urges us to welcome them too. By: Mike Wittmer
Reflect & Pray
Who is an outsider in your world? How might you reach out and welcome them into your space?
Dear Jesus, show me the stranger You want me to love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, February 23, 2024
The Determination to Serve
The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve… —Matthew 20:28
Jesus also said, “Yet I am among you as the One who serves” (Luke 22:27). Paul’s idea of service was the same as our Lord’s— “…ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). We somehow have the idea that a person called to the ministry is called to be different and above other people. But according to Jesus Christ, he is called to be a “doormat” for others— called to be their spiritual leader, but never their superior. Paul said, “I know how to be abased…” (Philippians 4:12). Paul’s idea of service was to pour his life out to the last drop for others. And whether he received praise or blame made no difference. As long as there was one human being who did not know Jesus, Paul felt a debt of service to that person until he did come to know Him. But the chief motivation behind Paul’s service was not love for others but love for his Lord. If our devotion is to the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and broken-hearted, since we will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people. But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be able to hinder us from serving one another.
Paul’s understanding of how Christ had dealt with him is the secret behind his determination to serve others. “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man…” (1 Timothy 1:13). In other words, no matter how badly others may have treated Paul, they could never have treated him with the same degree of spite and hatred with which he had treated Jesus Christ. Once we realize that Jesus has served us even to the depths of our meagerness, our selfishness, and our sin, nothing we encounter from others will be able to exhaust our determination to serve others for His sake.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation. What God looks at is what we are in the dark—the imaginations of our minds; the thoughts of our heart; the habits of our bodies; these are the things that mark us in God’s sight. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 669 L
Bible in a Year: Numbers 7-8; Mark 4:21-41
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, February 23, 2024
Thinking We Got Away With It - #9685
I don't know who invented the credit card, but I'd like to have a very serious talk with him, because I'm not sure he helped any of us by thinking that this plastic "postponer" was going to help us. With a credit card you go to the store with $100 in cash, you get what you wanted, and you come out with $100 in your wallet. And it feels like, "Hey, that didn't cost anything." Wrong! Fantasy land! The bill will come...it always does. You postponed the payment, but you didn't cancel it. Oh, and by postponing it, that purchase is actually going to cost you more. I think that's what they call interest and I'm not interested. The time lag between what you buy and what you pay can get you into big trouble.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Thinking We Got Away With It."
Our word for today from the Word of God; it's in Galatians 6:7-8. Familiar words, but words that may be right where you're living right now. Listen, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life."
Now, why does this statement begin with "don't be deceived"? Well, maybe it's because it's easy to think you're getting away with your sin, because the consequences, the reaping don't come immediately. It's like a credit card. You get what you want to get, do what you want to do, and then there's a time lag. Because it doesn't happen immediately - those consequences - you say, "Hey, I got away with it." Well that's credit card follies. The passing of time until the consequences come will not lessen the price tag you pay for that sin; in fact, it will accrue interest. It will make it cost you more.
The farmer doesn't see immediate results from sowing seed, whether he sows corn or poison ivy. But it will come up. Doing what's right and what's wrong have this in common. When you're doing it, you can't see where that choice is going to lead. When you have a sexual relationship before marriage, you can't see the pain and the loss that it will cause in your marriage, but it will.
When you build a pattern of lying, you might get away with the lie; you can't see what that's going to do to your reputation, but it will. When you extend a loving hand to someone who's been your enemy, you can't see the healing and the blessing that might come from that, but you will.
Since we can't see where choices lead until it's too late, do we live by the throw of the dice? Well, that's where the Bible comes in. It tells us where our decisions lead. When you sow to your sinful nature, it will destroy things. It's gonna happen! When you sow to things that please the Holy Spirit, you're going to reap things that will last forever. It's gonna happen!
God's Word has never been wrong. Oh, some have thought that they've cheated the consequences because they didn't happen immediately. Well, neither do the credit card charges or a farmer's crops, but they always come. Save yourself a lot of heartache. Believe what God says is going to happen...good or bad. Don't deceive yourself by thinking you'll get away with your sin, or that right choices won't come back to you with interest.
If you're sowing sin, God's bill is in the mail. If you're sowing right living, God's check is in the mail.
