Max Lucado Daily: THE WORD WAS OUT - April 9, 2024
Reading from Acts chapter 2 (NIV): “Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind, came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” What a moment on the Day of Pentecost!
Whatever could this mean? Peter responded to that question with a trio of God-given endorsements of Christ. He talked about when Jesus healed bodies and called life out of Lazarus’s dead body. Then he deemed Christ worthy to serve as a sacrifice for humankind. Then the resurrection, to be the beginning of life and the end of the grave. The word was out that the Word was out.
Colossians 2
I want you to realize that I continue to work as hard as I know how for you, and also for the Christians over at Laodicea. Not many of you have met me face-to-face, but that doesn’t make any difference. Know that I’m on your side, right alongside you. You’re not in this alone.
2–4 I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”
5 I’m a long way off, true, and you may never lay eyes on me, but believe me, I’m on your side, right beside you. I am delighted to hear of the careful and orderly ways you conduct your affairs, and impressed with the solid substance of your faith in Christ.
From the Shadows to the Substance
6–7 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.
8–10 Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.
11–15 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.
16–17 So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.
18–19 Don’t tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are. They’re completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.
20–23 So, then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? “Don’t touch this! Don’t taste that! Don’t go near this!” Do you think things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they’re just another way of showing off, making yourselves look important.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, April 09, 2024
Today's Scripture
Romans 13:11-14
But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!
Insight
At the end of Romans 13, Paul contrasts darkness and light. The interplay between the two is symbolic for the life that people lived before believing in Christ and the life they now live in Him. This contrast is seen in several of the apostle’s letters. Before coming to Jesus, we “were once darkness” (Ephesians 5:8), performed “deeds of darkness” (v. 11), and belonged to “the dominion of darkness” (Colossians 1:13) and “to the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:5).
After coming to Christ, however, we’re not to have fellowship with darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14), should “live as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8), and have nothing to do with the “fruitless deeds of darkness” (v. 11). We’ve been rescued “from the dominion of darkness” (Colossians 1:13) and are “children of the light and children of the day” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). By: J.R. Hudberg
Clothed in Christ
Let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Romans 13:12
I was so excited to put on my new glasses for the first time, but after just a few hours I wanted to throw them away. My eyes ached and head throbbed from adjusting to the new prescription. My ears were sore from the unfamiliar frames. The next day I groaned when I remembered I had to wear them. I had to repeatedly choose to use my glasses each day in order for my body to adjust. It took several weeks, but after that, I hardly noticed I was wearing them.
Putting on something new requires an adjustment, but over time we grow into it, and it suits us better. We may even see things we didn’t see before. In Romans 13, the apostle Paul instructed Christ followers to “put on the armor of light” (v. 12) and practice right living. They had already believed in Jesus, but it seems they had fallen into “slumber” and become more complacent; they needed to “wake up” and take action, behave decently and let go of all sin (vv. 11-13). Paul encouraged them to be clothed with Jesus and become more like Him in their thoughts and deeds (v. 14).
We don’t begin to reflect the loving, gentle, kind, grace-filled, and faithful ways of Jesus overnight. It’s a long process of choosing to “put on the armor of light” every day, even when we don’t want to because it’s uncomfortable. Over time, He changes us for the better. By: Karen Pimpo
Reflect & Pray
What does it look like to “put on” Jesus today? How does practicing Christlikeness become more comfortable over time?
Dear Jesus, thank You that You’re transforming me day by day.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, April 09, 2024
Have You Seen Jesus?
After that, He appeared in another form to two of them… —Mark 16:12
Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many people who have never seen Jesus have received and share in God’s grace. But once you have seen Him, you can never be the same. Other things will not have the appeal they did before.
You should always recognize the difference between what you see Jesus to be and what He has done for you. If you see only what He has done for you, your God is not big enough. But if you have had a vision, seeing Jesus as He really is, experiences can come and go, yet you will endure “as seeing Him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). The man who was blind from birth did not know who Jesus was until Christ appeared and revealed Himself to him (see John 9). Jesus appears to those for whom He has done something, but we cannot order or predict when He will come. He may appear suddenly, at any turn. Then you can exclaim, “Now I see Him!” (see John 9:25).
Jesus must appear to you and to your friend individually; no one can see Jesus with your eyes. And division takes place when one has seen Him and the other has not. You cannot bring your friend to the point of seeing; God must do it. Have you seen Jesus? If so, you will want others to see Him too. “And they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either” (Mark 16:13). When you see Him, you must tell, even if they don’t believe.
O could I tell, you surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can you receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried. He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 13-14; Luke 10:1-24
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, April 09, 2024
The Bible - So Much More than Checking the Box - #9717
There's at least one important principle of advertising we need to consider today, and that is you have to demonstrate the need for your product in order to sell it. I'll tell you someone who was good at it some years ago in one of the classic commercials. It was Alka-Seltzer, one of those old commercials I still remember. They would show some irresponsible eater who consumed some nightmare menu, and then the camera just made him look all distorted, like one of those trick mirrors.
I still remember the one with that poor guy holding his stomach and he's going in and out of focus, and he says, "I ate too much. I ate too fast. I ate too much. I ate too fast." Actually a lot of us don't really eat our food, we inhale it, we gobble it, we basically gulp it. And sometimes we lose it because of the way we ate it. Just because you ate it doesn't mean it's going to do you any good.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Bible - So Much More than Checking the Box."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Joshua 1:8. Joshua is facing the great challenge of his life. He's preparing to enter the Promised Land - this great leadership challenge of taking God's people in. Here's God's word to him, "Do not let this Book of the Law" - the Bible, that is - "depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful."
Now, if you dig into this verse, you find that there's an implied eating image here. We started out talking about how we eat, and this verse is about that. In fact, the Hebrew word for meditate is literally the word that's used to describe a cow chewing its cud. Now, I don't know what all cows are good at, but I know that they are the world's best chewers. Man, you've got to hand that to them. They just keep on chewing it!
Well, God says, "I want you to keep chewing on what you get out of My Book." He wants us to do that with our daily intake from the Bible. Frankly, most of us don't. We just sort of stuff in some verses - "I ate too fast." And we never think about them again. That has two results. Even though we're reading the Bible, there's no real growth. We stay spiritually undernourished with a superficial faith. Secondly, if you keep stuffing in the Bible without chewing it properly, you get indigestion. The Bible starts to be dull and boring, and you say, "I'm not getting anything out of it."
Well, of course not! You're not chewing it. That's how you get the good out of spiritual food. How do you chew spiritual food? Let me quickly give you seven steps in chewing your spiritual food. Compare it with what you're doing now.
Number one, take in only a few verses - bite-size chunks.
Two, go over them a few times.
Three, look for a connection to something that you're going to face today. How does what God's saying connect with something in your life?
Fourthly, pray back to God that connection that you found. Ask for Him to help you make that verse literally a part of that situation that day.
And then fifth, write down what you digested. As you write it, it will deepen your understanding and it will deepen your commitment to Him.
And then six, consciously refer back to it throughout the day; keep going back to that sentence, that phrase out of the Bible.
And finally, go to sleep that night reviewing your word for today from the Word of God and how well you activated it.
This command is followed by a great promise. If you do it you'll be prosperous and successful. In-gesting the Bible, it isn't enough; you only get its value if you di-gest it. So, when it comes to your daily Bible breakfast, chew your food properly.