Max Lucado Daily: No Price Too High
A father is the one person in your life who provides for and protects you. That is exactly what God has done! When our oldest daughter, Jenna, was two years old, I lost her in a department store. One minute she was at my side and the next she was gone. I panicked. All of a sudden only one thing mattered-I had to find my daughter. Shopping was forgotten. The list of things I came to get was unimportant. I yelled her name. What people thought did not matter. For a few minutes, every ounce of energy had one goal-to find my lost child. I did, by the way. She was hiding behind some jackets.
No price is too high for a parent to pay to redeem his child. No energy is too great. No effort is too demanding. A parent will go to any length to find his or her own. So will God!
From Dad Time
Hebrews 13
Jesus Doesn’t Change
1–4 13 Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it’s needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you. Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex.
5–6 Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have. Since God assured us, “I’ll never let you down, never walk off and leave you,” we can boldly quote,
God is there, ready to help;
I’m fearless no matter what.
Who or what can get to me?
7–8 Appreciate your pastoral leaders who gave you the Word of God. Take a good look at the way they live, and let their faithfulness instruct you, as well as their truthfulness. There should be a consistency that runs through us all. For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.
9 Don’t be lured away from him by the latest speculations about him. The grace of Christ is the only good ground for life. Products named after Christ don’t seem to do much for those who buy them.
10–12 The altar from which God gives us the gift of himself is not for exploitation by insiders who grab and loot. In the old system, the animals are killed and the bodies disposed of outside the camp. The blood is then brought inside to the altar as a sacrifice for sin. It’s the same with Jesus. He was crucified outside the city gates—that is where he poured out the sacrificial blood that was brought to God’s altar to cleanse his people.
13–15 So let’s go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This “insider world” is not our home. We have our eyes peeled for the City about to come. Let’s take our place outside with Jesus, no longer pouring out the sacrificial blood of animals but pouring out sacrificial praises from our lips to God in Jesus’ name.
16 Make sure you don’t take things for granted and go slack in working for the common good; share what you have with others. God takes particular pleasure in acts of worship—a different kind of “sacrifice”—that take place in kitchen and workplace and on the streets.
17 Be responsive to your pastoral leaders. Listen to their counsel. They are alert to the condition of your lives and work under the strict supervision of God. Contribute to the joy of their leadership, not its drudgery. Why would you want to make things harder for them?
18–21 Pray for us. We have no doubts about what we’re doing or why, but it’s hard going and we need your prayers. All we care about is living well before God. Pray that we may be together soon.
May God, who puts all things together,
makes all things whole,
Who made a lasting mark through the sacrifice of Jesus,
the sacrifice of blood that sealed the eternal covenant,
Who led Jesus, our Great Shepherd,
up and alive from the dead,
Now put you together, provide you
with everything you need to please him,
Make us into what gives him most pleasure,
by means of the sacrifice of Jesus, the Messiah.
All glory to Jesus forever and always!
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
22–23 Friends, please take what I’ve written most seriously. I’ve kept this as brief as possible; I haven’t piled on a lot of extras. You’ll be glad to know that Timothy has been let out of prison. If he leaves soon, I’ll come with him and get to see you myself.
24 Say hello to your pastoral leaders and all the congregations. Everyone here in Italy wants to be remembered to you.
25 Grace be with you, every one.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, June 09, 2024
Today's Scripture
2 Corinthians 9:6-11
Remember: A stingy planter gets a stingy crop; a lavish planter gets a lavish crop. I want each of you to take plenty of time to think it over, and make up your own mind what you will give. That will protect you against sob stories and arm-twisting. God loves it when the giver delights in the giving.
8–11 God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you’re ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done. As one psalmist puts it,
He throws caution to the winds,
giving to the needy in reckless abandon.
His right-living, right-giving ways
never run out, never wear out.
This most generous God who gives seed to the farmer that becomes bread for your meals is more than extravagant with you. He gives you something you can then give away, which grows into full-formed lives, robust in God, wealthy in every way, so that you can be generous in every way, producing with us great praise to God.
Insight
The context for Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 9 is fascinating. More than a year earlier, the apostle had begun the process of taking up a collection to support the struggling church in Jerusalem. The Corinthians at the time had been exceptionally eager (8:10), and Paul had leveraged that enthusiasm to encourage the Macedonian churches to also give eagerly and generously (9:1-2).
But despite their enthusiasm, the people had lagged in their preparation for the gift, and the apostle was increasingly concerned that they wouldn’t follow through on their commitment. As a result, he encouraged them with the promise of Psalm 112:9 that God is more than capable of increasing their resources and enabling generous giving (2 Corinthians 9:8-11). For Paul, it was important that believers in Jesus carry out their promises with the same enthusiasm they started with. And they could trust that God would equip them to do so. By: Jed Ostoich
Big-Hearted Giving
Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give. 2 Corinthians 9:7
At the after-school Bible club where my wife Sue serves once a week, the kids were asked to donate money to help children in the war-torn country of Ukraine. About a week after Sue told our eleven-year-old granddaughter Maggie about the project, we got an envelope in the mail from her. It contained $3.45, along with a note: “This is all I have for the kids in Ukraine. I’ll send more later.”
Sue hadn’t suggested to Maggie that she should help, but perhaps the Spirit prompted her. And Maggie, who loves Jesus and seeks to live for Him, responded.
We can learn a lot as we think of this small gift from a big heart. It mirrors some instructions about giving provided by Paul in 2 Corinthians 9. First, the apostle suggested that we should sow “generously” (v. 6). A gift of “all I have” is certainly a generous one. Paul also wrote that our gifts should be given cheerfully as God leads and as we’re able, not because we’re “under compulsion” (v. 7). And he mentioned the value of “gifts to the poor” (v. 9) by quoting Psalm 112:9.
When an opportunity to give presents itself, let’s ask how God wants us to respond. When we’re generous and cheerful in directing our gifts to those in need as He leads us, we give in a way that “will result in thanksgiving to God” (2 Corinthians 9:11). That’s big-hearted giving. By: Dave Branon
Reflect & Pray
What motivates you to generously give to others? How do you strive to meet their true needs?
Dear God, please guide me to be the kind of generous giver that You want me to be—reflecting Your generous heart.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, June 09, 2024
Ask If You Have Not Received
For everyone who asks receives. — Luke 11:10
There is nothing more difficult than to ask. We desire and crave and suffer, but only when we’ve reached our absolute limit do we ask. What finally makes us ask God for the Holy Spirit is a sense of unreality. We sense that we are not spiritually real and that we cannot become spiritually real on our own. When this happens, when we glimpse our powerlessness, we must ask God for the Spirit, basing our request on the words of Jesus: “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:13). The Holy Spirit is the one who makes real in us all that Jesus did on our behalf.
“For everyone who asks receives.” This doesn’t mean that if we don’t ask, we’ll get nothing; God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good” alike (Matthew 5:45). But until we ask, we won’t receive from God directly. To receive from God directly means that we have come into a specific relationship with him—we have become his children— and now we perceive, with moral appreciation and spiritual under- standing, that all things come from him.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God” (James 1:5). If you realize you lack wisdom, it is because you’ve come into contact with spiritual reality, and your eyes have been opened. Don’t put on the blinders of reasonableness again. Don’t listen when people say, “Be reasonable; preach the simple gospel. Don’t tell us we have to be holy, because that makes us feel abjectly poor.”
If we are abjectly poor, we are in the right condition for asking. “Ask” means “beg.” We must ask out of poverty. If instead we ask out of greed, we’ll never receive. We must ask because we know that, without God, we have nothing. A pauper isn’t ashamed to beg. Paupers beg because they are poor; there is no other reason. Blessed are the paupers in spirit (Matthew 5:3).
2 Chronicles 32-33; John 18:19-40
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The life of Abraham is an illustration of two things: of unreserved surrender to God, and of God’s complete possession of a child of His for His own highest end.
Not Knowing Whither, 901 R