MaxLucado.com: Vanderlei de Lima (2004 Olympics Athens)
He should’ve won the gold. He was leading when a deranged protester hurled himself into the runner–forcing him off course. De Lima resumed the race. But in the process he lost his rhythm, precious seconds, and his position. But he entered the stadium punching the air with his fists, both arms extended, weaving for joy!
I’m taking notes on this guy! He reminds me of another runner. Paul, the imprisoned apostle. His chains never come off. The guards never leave. He may appear to be bumped off track, but he’s actually right on target. Christ is preached. The mission is being accomplished.
Run the race!
Paul said, “I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. I Corinthians 9:23-24”
From Great Day Every Day
Ezekiel 6
Turn Israel into Wasteland
1–7 6 Then the Word of God came to me: “Son of man, now turn and face the mountains of Israel and preach against them: ‘O Mountains of Israel, listen to the Message of God, the Master. God, the Master, speaks to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and the valleys: I’m about to destroy your sacred god and goddess shrines. I’ll level your altars, bust up your sun-god pillars, and kill your people as they bow down to your no-god idols. I’ll stack the dead bodies of Israelites in front of your idols and then scatter your bones around your shrines. Every place where you’ve lived, the towns will be torn down and the pagan shrines demolished—altars busted up, idols smashed, all your custom-made sun-god pillars in ruins. Corpses everywhere you look! Then you’ll know that I am God.
8–10 “ ‘But I’ll let a few escape the killing as you are scattered through other lands and nations. In the foreign countries where they’re taken as prisoners of war, they’ll remember me. They’ll realize how devastated I was by their betrayals, by their voracious lust for gratifying themselves in their idolatries. They’ll be disgusted with their evil ways, disgusting to God in the way they’ve lived. They’ll know that I am God. They’ll know that my judgment against them was no empty threat.
11–14 “ ‘This is what God, the Master, says: Clap your hands, stamp your feet, yell out, “No, no, no!” because of all the evil obscenities rife in Israel. They’re going to be killed, dying of hunger, dying of disease—death everywhere you look, people dropping like flies, people far away dying, people nearby dying, and whoever’s left in the city starving to death. Why? Because I’m angry, furiously angry. They’ll realize that I am God when they see their people’s corpses strewn over and around all their ruined sex-and-religion shrines on the bare hills and in the lush fertility groves, in all the places where they indulged their sensual rites. I’ll bring my hand down hard on them, demolish the country wherever they live, turn it into wasteland from one end to the other, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they’ll know that I am God!’ ”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Today's Scripture
1 John 4:7-12, 19-21
God Is Love
7–10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
11–12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
20–21 If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
Insight
John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20), wrote the fourth gospel to show us that God in His great love gave us His Son to die for our sins and to give us eternal life (3:15-18, 36). This new life is characterized by love (13:34-35). Some years later, this same John wrote his first epistle, reminding believers that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). In language reminiscent of John 3:16-17 he says: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. . . . [He is] an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). John urged believers to put this love into action: “Since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other” (v. 11 nlt). God’s love commands and compels us to love others (vv. 19-21). By: K. T. Sim
In Small Ways
We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19
When she was struck by cancer, Elsie was prepared to go home to heaven to be with Jesus. But she recovered, though the disease left her immobile. It also left her wondering why God had spared her life. “What good can I do?” she asked Him. “I don’t have much money or skills, and I can’t walk. How can I be useful to You?”
Then she found small, simple ways to serve others, especially her home cleaners who were migrants. She bought them food or gave them a few dollars whenever she saw them. These cash gifts were small, yet they went a long way toward helping the workers make ends meet. As she did so, she found God providing for her: friends and relatives gave her gifts and money, enabling her to bless others in return.
As she shared her story, I couldn’t help but think of how Elsie was truly putting into practice the call to love one another in 1 John 4:19: “We love because he first loved us” as well as the truth of Acts 20:35, which reminds us that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Elsie gave because she received and was in turn encouraged as she gave. Yet it took little more from her than a loving, grateful heart and a readiness to offer what she had—which God multiplied in a virtuous circle of giving and receiving. Let’s ask Him to give us a thankful and generous heart to give as He leads us! By: Leslie Koh
Reflect & Pray
What have you received from God? How can you encourage someone in a simple yet meaningful way today?
Dear Father, thank You for Your gifts in my life. Please give me a heart to love others just as You’ve loved me.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, July 27, 2024
The Way to Knowledge
Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out . . . —John 7:17
The key to spiritual understanding isn’t intellect; it’s obedience. If I want scientific knowledge, intellectual curiosity is my guide. But if I want insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, I can only get it by obedience. If what Jesus taught is dark to me, I can be sure that there is something I will not do. Intellectual darkness comes through ignorance. Spiritual darkness comes because there is something I don’t intend to obey.
No one ever receives a message from God without instantly being put to the test. We fail the test by disobeying, and then we wonder why we haven’t progressed spiritually. “If you are offering your gift at the altar,” Jesus said, “and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, . . . first go and be reconciled to them” (Matthew 5:23–24). Our Lord’s teaching hits us where we live. We can’t stand before Jesus for a single second without our hypocrisy being revealed. His Spirit lays bare the spirit of self-justification that resides within us. He educates us down to the scruple, making us sensitive to things we never thought of before.
When Jesus brings something home to you through his teaching, don’t shrug it off. If you do, you’ll become a religious hypocrite. Examine the things you’re shrugging off now, and you’ll know why you aren’t progressing spiritually. Obey what God tells you to do, even if others might call you fanatical, and you will gain the understanding you seek. When God says go, go.
Psalms 43-45; Acts 27:27-44
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us.
Disciples Indeed