Max Lucado: Make a Choice
Maybe your past isn’t much to brag about. Maybe you’ve seen raw evil—and now you have to make a choice. Do you rise above the past and make a difference? Or do you remain controlled by the past and make excuses?
Healthy bodies. Sharp minds. But retired dreams. Back and forth they rock in the chair of regret. Lean closely and you’ll hear them.
If only I’d been born somewhere else. . .
If only I’d been treated fairly. . .
If only I’d had more opportunities. . .if only. . .
Put down the scrapbook of your life and pick up the Bible. Read Jesus’ words in John 3:6: “Human life comes from human parents but spiritual life comes from the Spirit.”
God has not left you adrift on a sea of heredity. You have a choice in the path you take.
Choose well!
From Cast of Characters
Ezekiel 19
A Story of Two Lions
1–4 19 Sing the blues over the princes of Israel. Say:
What a lioness was your mother
among lions!
She crouched in a pride of young lions.
Her cubs grew large.
She reared one of her cubs to maturity,
a robust young lion.
He learned to hunt.
He ate men.
Nations sounded the alarm.
He was caught in a trap.
They took him with hooks
and dragged him to Egypt.
5–9 When the lioness saw she was luckless,
that her hope for that cub was gone,
She took her other cub
and made him a strong young lion.
He prowled with the lions,
a robust young lion.
He learned to hunt.
He ate men.
He rampaged through their defenses,
left their cities in ruins.
The country and everyone in it
was terrorized by the roars of the lion.
The nations got together to hunt him.
Everyone joined the hunt.
They set out their traps
and caught him.
They put a wooden collar on him
and took him to the king of Babylon.
No more would that voice be heard
disturbing the peace in the mountains of Israel!
10–14 Here’s another way to put it:
Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard,
transplanted alongside streams of water,
Luxurious in branches and grapes
because of the ample water.
It grew sturdy branches
fit to be carved into a royal scepter.
It grew high, reaching into the clouds.
Its branches filled the horizon,
and everyone could see it.
Then it was ripped up in a rage
and thrown to the ground.
The hot east wind shriveled it up
and stripped its fruit.
The sturdy branches dried out,
fit for nothing but kindling.
Now it’s a stick stuck out in the desert,
a bare stick in a desert of death,
Good for nothing but making fires,
campfires in the desert.
Not a hint now of those sturdy branches
fit for use as a royal scepter!
(This is a sad song, a text for singing the blues.)
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 24, 2024
Today's Scripture
1 Peter 2:9-12
But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
11–12 Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they’ll be won over to God’s side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives.
Insight
When Peter uses the language of “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9), he’s encouraging his readers by drawing from the story of Scripture in which God first chose Abraham and then the nation of Israel to reveal His ways to the world (Genesis 12:1-3; 18:19; Isaiah 41:8). The audience of 1 Peter was primarily gentile (non-Jewish), but Peter was assuring them that because of Jesus the story of God’s redemption had expanded to include gentiles: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” (1 Peter 2:10). Through Christ, they were now part of the continuing story of God’s redemption of the world. They were part of His family, chosen to reveal who He was to the world. This gave them a new identity that could transform how they lived (vv. 11-12) as they experienced suffering (vv. 21-25). By: Monica La Rose
Walking Anew
Now you are the people of God. 1 Peter 2:10
Applause rang out as a school’s top students received certificates of excellence for academic achievement. But the program wasn’t over. The next award celebrated students who weren’t the school’s “best,” but instead were most improved. They’d worked hard to raise a failing grade, correct disruptive behavior, or commit to better attendance. Their parents beamed and applauded, acknowledging their children’s turn to a higher path—seeing not their former shortcomings but their walk in a new way.
The heart-lifting scene offers a small picture of how our heavenly Father sees us—not in our old life but now, in Christ, as His children. “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” wrote John (John 1:12).
What a loving perspective! So Paul reminded new believers that once “you were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). But in fact, “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (v. 10).
In this way, Peter wrote, we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light,” and we are now “the people of God” (1 Peter 2:9-10). Through God’s eyes, our old path has no claim on us. Let’s see ourselves as God does—and walk anew. By: Patricia Raybon
Reflect & Pray
How does God see you? In Him, how should you walk?
On this new day, dear Father, please inspire me with Your view of me.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 24, 2024
The Spiritual Inventory
Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? — Matthew 7:9
The illustration of prayer Jesus uses here is of a good child asking for a good thing. We talk about prayer as if the state of our relationship to God makes no difference to whether he gives us what we want. Never say that it isn’t God’s will to give you what you ask; don’t throw your hands up in defeat. Take a spiritual inventory; find the reason. Ask yourself: Am I in the relationship of a good child asking for a good thing? Am I rightly related to my spouse, my children, my friends and colleagues? Or am I saying to God, “Oh, Lord, I know I’ve been irritable and angry, but I want a spiritual blessing”? If this is my mindset, I’ll have to do without the blessing until I adopt the attitude of the good child.
We mistake defiance for devotion, telling God that we want to be abandoned to him, when really we just want to abandon our responsibilities. We refuse to take a spiritual inventory. Have I been asking God to give me money for something I want when there’s something I haven’t paid for? Have I been asking God for liberty when I am withholding it from someone else? Is there someone I haven’t forgiven, someone to whom I haven’t been kind?
I’m a child of God only through spiritual rebirth. I’m good only as long as I walk in the light. Most of us turn prayer into a pious platitude, using it to get an emotional fix or viewing it as a hazy, mystical experience. Spiritually, we are all good at producing fogs. If we take an inventory, we will see very clearly what we must set right—a friendship, a debt, a temperament. There’s no point in praying unless we are living as children of God. Once we are, then, Jesus says, “Everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:8).
Psalms 116-118; 1 Corinthians 7:1-19
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Re-state to yourself what you believe, then do away with as much of it as possible, and get back to the bedrock of the Cross of Christ.
My Utmost for His Highest, November 25, 848 R