Max Lucado Daily: An Itchy, Scratchy Burlap Sack
You have a sack. An itchy, scratchy burlap sack! You probably aren’t even aware of it, you may not have been told about it, but it was given to you. You needed the sack to carry the rocks, boulders, pebbles. All are unwanted. Some were rocks of rejection. You thought you were good enough for the team, but the coach didn’t. The instructor didn’t. They and how many others? It doesn’t take long before you get a collection of stones. Make a bad choice…get called a few names…get abused. And so the sack gets heavy with stones we don’t deserve, along with a few we do.
How can you have dreams for the future when all your energy is required to shoulder the past? Jesus says He is the solution for weariness of the soul. Go to Him. “Come to me, all who are weak and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He already knows what your stones are. He’s just waiting for you to give Him your sack!
From When God Whispers Your Name
1 Timothy 2
Simple Faith and Plain Truth
1–3 2 The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Savior God wants us to live.
4–7 He wants not only us but everyone saved, you know, everyone to get to know the truth we’ve learned: that there’s one God and only one, and one Priest-Mediator between God and us—Jesus, who offered himself in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free. Eventually the news is going to get out. This and this only has been my appointed work: getting this news to those who have never heard of God, and explaining how it works by simple faith and plain truth.
8–10 Since prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want mostly is for men to pray—not shaking angry fists at enemies but raising holy hands to God. And I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.
11–15 I don’t let women take over and tell the men what to do. They should study to be quiet and obedient along with everyone else. Adam was made first, then Eve; woman was deceived first—our pioneer in sin!—with Adam right on her heels. On the other hand, her childbearing brought about salvation, reversing Eve. But this salvation only comes to those who continue in faith, love, and holiness, gathering it all into maturity. You can depend on this.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Acts 11:19-30
Those who had been scattered by the persecution triggered by Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, but they were still only speaking and dealing with their fellow Jews. Then some of the men from Cyprus and Cyrene who had come to Antioch started talking to Greeks, giving them the Message of the Master Jesus. God was pleased with what they were doing and put his stamp of approval on it—quite a number of the Greeks believed and turned to the Master.
22–24 When the church in Jerusalem got wind of this, they sent Barnabas to Antioch to check on things. As soon as he arrived, he saw that God was behind and in it all. He threw himself in with them, got behind them, urging them to stay with it the rest of their lives. He was a good man that way, enthusiastic and confident in the Holy Spirit’s ways. The community grew large and strong in the Master.
25–26 Then Barnabas went on to Tarsus to look for Saul. He found him and brought him back to Antioch. They were there a whole year, meeting with the church and teaching a lot of people. It was in Antioch that the disciples were for the first time called Christians.
27–30 It was about this same time that some prophets came to Antioch from Jerusalem. One of them named Agabus stood up one day and, prompted by the Spirit, warned that a severe famine was about to devastate the country. (The famine eventually came during the rule of Claudius.) So the disciples decided that each of them would send whatever they could to their fellow Christians in Judea to help out. They sent Barnabas and Saul to deliver the collection to the leaders in Jerusalem.
Insight
One advantage of the persecution the early believers in Jesus faced in Jerusalem and Judea was that they dispersed to other regions “spreading the word” as they went (Acts 11:19). The Jewish believers witnessed only to other Jews (v. 19), but some believers in Christ from Cyrene and Cypress “began to speak to Greeks also” (v. 20). Luke, who wrote the Acts account, tells us that “the Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord” (v. 21). The attempt at stamping out Christianity served only to spread it. By: Tim Gustafson
The Winning Goal
A great number of people were brought to the Lord. Acts 11:24
On February 5, 2023, Christian Atsu kicked the winning goal for his football (soccer) team in a match in Turkey. A star international player, he learned to play the sport as a kid running barefoot in his home country of Ghana. Christian was a believer in Christ: “Jesus is the best thing that ever happened in my life,” he said. Atsu posted Bible verses on social media, was outspoken about his faith, and put it into action by helping finance a school for orphans.
The day after his winning goal, a devastating earthquake shook the city of Antakya, once the biblical city of Antioch. Christian Atsu’s apartment building collapsed, and he went to be with his Savior.
Two thousand years ago, Antioch was the fountainhead of the early church: “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). One apostle, Barnabas, said to be “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit” (v. 24), was instrumental in bringing people to Christ: “a great number of people were brought to the Lord” (v. 24).
We look to the life of Christian Atsu not to idolize him but to see in his example an opportunity. Whatever our circumstance in life, we don’t know when God will take us to be with Him. We do well to ask ourselves how we can be a Barnabas or a Christian Atsu in showing others the love of Christ. That, above all, is the winning goal. By: Kenneth Petersen
Reflect & Pray
What does it mean to be a Barnabas to others? What opportunities do you have to talk about Jesus?
Dear God, I pray that You’ll give me opportunities to share my faith.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, July 21, 2024
The Gateway to the Kingdom
Blessed are the poor in spirit. —Matthew 5:3
Beware of thinking of our Lord as a teacher first. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, all he can do is tantalize me by holding up a standard I can’t meet. What’s the point of presenting me with an ideal I can’t come near? I’d be happier not knowing about it. What’s the good of telling me to be pure in heart, perfectly devoted to God, and willing to do more than my duty?
If the teachings of Jesus are going to be something more to me than ideals that lead to despair, I must know him as a savior first. When I am born again of the Spirit of God, I discover that Jesus Christ did not come only to teach; he came to make me what he teaches. The redemption means that Jesus Christ is able to put the disposition that ruled his own life into any life. All the standards God sets for us are based on this disposition.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) produces despair in those who haven’t been born again of the Spirit. This is the exact thing Jesus means for it to do. As long as we have a self-righteous, conceited idea that we can follow our Lord’s teaching without knowing him as our savior, we will despair. God will allow us to wander in ignorance until we meet some insurmountable obstacle and come to him in poverty, ready to receive.
The bedrock of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty—not possessions or making a decision to follow Jesus Christ, but a sense of total futility, a knowledge that we can’t even begin to follow God’s teaching on our own. That is the entrance; that is when Jesus says, “Blessed are you.” It does take us a long time to accept the fact that we are poor! The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.
Psalms 29-30; Acts 23:1-15
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony, 1166 R