Max Lucado Daily: You Matter to God
What matters to you—matters to God! You probably think that’s true when it comes to the big stuff like death, disease, sin, and disaster. But what about the smaller things? What about grouchy bosses or flat tires? What about broken dishes, late flights, toothaches, or a crashed hard drive? Do these matter to God?
Let me tell you who you are! In fact, let me proclaim who you are. The Bible says you are an “heir of God and a co-heir with Christ” (Romans 8:17). You have “a crown that will last forever” (1 Cor. 9:25). You were “chosen before the creation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).
But more than anything else is the simple fact—you are God’s child. 1 John 3:1 says “we are called children of God. And we really are His children.” I love that: we really are His children!
If something is important to you—it’s important to God!
From Lucado Inspirational Reader
Ezekiel 43
The Meaning of the Temple
1–3 43 The man brought me to the east gate. Oh! The bright Glory of the God of Israel rivered out of the east sounding like the roar of floodwaters, and the earth itself glowed with the bright Glory. It looked just like what I had seen when he came to destroy the city, exactly like what I had seen earlier at the Kebar River. And again I fell, face to the ground.
4–5 The bright Glory of God poured into the Temple through the east gate. The Spirit put me on my feet and led me to the inside courtyard and—oh! the bright Glory of God filled the Temple!
6–9 I heard someone speaking to me from inside the Temple while the man stood beside me. He said, “Son of man, this is the place for my throne, the place I’ll plant my feet. This is the place where I’ll live with the Israelites forever. Neither the people of Israel nor their kings will ever again drag my holy name through the mud with their whoring and the no-god idols their kings set up at all the wayside shrines. When they set up their worship shrines right alongside mine with only a thin wall between them, they dragged my holy name through the mud with their obscene and vile worship. Is it any wonder that I destroyed them in anger? So let them get rid of their whoring ways and the stinking no-god idols introduced by their kings and I’ll move in and live with them forever.
10–11 “Son of man, tell the people of Israel all about the Temple so they’ll be dismayed by their wayward lives. Get them to go over the layout. That will bring them up short. Show them the whole plan of the Temple, its ins and outs, the proportions, the regulations, and the laws. Draw a picture so they can see the design and meaning and live by its design and intent.
12 “This is the law of the Temple: As it radiates from the top of the mountain, everything around it becomes holy ground. Yes, this is law, the meaning, of the Temple.
13–14 “These are the dimensions of the altar, using the long (twenty-one-inch) ruler. The gutter at its base is twenty-one inches deep and twenty-one inches wide, with a four-inch lip around its edge.
14–15 “The height of the altar is three and a half feet from the base to the first ledge and twenty inches wide. From the first ledge to the second ledge it is seven feet high and twenty-one inches wide. The altar hearth is another seven feet high. Four horns stick upward from the hearth twenty-one inches high.
16–17 “The top of the altar, the hearth, is square, twenty-one by twenty-one feet. The upper ledge is also square, twenty-four and a half feet on each side, with a ten-and-a-half-inch lip and a twenty-one-inch-wide gutter all the way around.
“The steps of the altar ascend from the east.”
18 Then the man said to me, “Son of man, God, the Master, says: ‘These are the ordinances for conduct at the altar when it is built, for sacrificing burnt offerings and sprinkling blood on it.
19–21 “ ‘For a sin offering, give a bull to the priests, the Levitical priests who are from the family of Zadok who come into my presence to serve me. Take some of its blood and smear it on the four horns of the altar that project from the four corners of the top ledge and all around the lip. That’s to purify the altar and make it fit for the sacrifice. Then take the bull for the sin offerings and burn it in the place set aside for this in the courtyard outside the Sanctuary.
22–24 “ ‘On the second day, offer a male goat without blemish for a sin offering. Purify the altar the same as you purified it for the bull. Then, when you have purified it, offer a bull without blemish and a ram without blemish from the flock. Present them before God. Sprinkle salt on them and offer them as a burnt offering to God.
25–26 “ ‘For seven days, prepare a goat for a sin offering daily, and also a bull and a ram from the flock, animals without blemish. For seven days the priests are to get the altar ready for its work, purifying it. This is how you dedicate it.
27 “ ‘After these seven days of dedication, from the eighth day on, the priests will present your burnt offerings and your peace offerings. And I’ll accept you with pleasure, with delight! Decree of God, the Master.’ ”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Today's Scripture
Proverbs 4:20-27
Learn It by Heart
20–22 Dear friend, listen well to my words;
tune your ears to my voice.
Keep my message in plain view at all times.
Concentrate! Learn it by heart!
Those who discover these words live, really live;
body and soul, they’re bursting with health.
23–27 Keep vigilant watch over your heart;
that’s where life starts.
Don’t talk out of both sides of your mouth;
avoid careless banter, white lies, and gossip.
Keep your eyes straight ahead;
ignore all sideshow distractions.
Watch your step,
and the road will stretch out smooth before you.
Look neither right nor left; leave evil in the dust.
Insight
Proverbs 4 paints a picture of a life guided and nourished by “the way of wisdom” (v. 11). To be a disciple of wisdom means to let “one’s whole body” (v. 22) be transformed by it—our ears (v. 20), eyes (vv. 21, 25), feet (vv. 26-27), and, most importantly, our heart (v. 23). We’re to cling with unswerving devotion to the way of wisdom, to “guard it well, for it is [our] life” (v. 13).
Along with the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a river of life (Ezekiel 47:1-12), Jesus may have had in mind the imagery of Proverbs 4:23, of all life flowing from our hearts, when He said: “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:38). Christ is God’s wisdom made human (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30). By: Monica La Rose
Heart Healthy
Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23
The human heart is an amazing organ. This fist-sized pumping station weighs between 7 and 15 ounces. Daily it beats around 100,000 times and pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in our bodies! With such a strategic assignment and heavy workload, it’s understandable why heart health is central to the well-being of the entire body. Medical science encourages us to pursue healthy habits because the condition of our heart and the quality of our health go together.
While medical science speaks authoritatively about our physical hearts, God speaks with even greater authority about a “heart” of another kind. He addresses the mental, emotional, spiritual, and moral “center” of our being. Because the heart is the central processing unit of life, it must be protected: “Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). Safeguarding our hearts will help us with our speech (v. 24), compel us to be discerning with our eyes (v. 25), and choose the best paths for our feet (v. 27). Regardless of age or stage of life, when our hearts are guarded, our lives are preserved, our relationships are protected, and God is honored. By: Arthur Jackson
Reflect & Pray
What do your lifestyle and habits reveal about the condition of your heart? If you haven’t prayed to God for a change of heart, what’s keeping you from doing that today?
Search me, dear God, and know my heart; create in me a clean heart. Let me hide Your truth in my heart that I might not sin against You.
For further study, read Grace: Accepting God’s Gift to You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, September 29, 2024
The Consciousness of the Call
I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! — 1 Corinthians 9:16
We are prone to forgetting the mystical, supernatural quality of the touch of God. If you can tell others where and when you received the call of God and all about what it was like, I question whether you’ve ever truly received it. The call to preach doesn’t come in a way that’s easy to describe; it’s much more supernatural. The call may come with a sudden thunderclap or with a gradual dawning, but however it comes, it comes with the undercurrent of the supernatural, something that cannot be put into words. It’s always accompanied by a glow.
“I chose you and appointed you” (John 15:16). At any moment, you may break into a sudden conscious awareness of this surprising, supernatural call that has taken hold of your life. The call of God has nothing to do with salvation and sanctification; it isn’t because you are saved and sanctified that you’ve been called to preach. The call to preach is entirely different. Paul describes it as a necessity, a compulsion, placed upon him: “I am compelled to preach.”
If you’ve been obliterating the great supernatural call of God in your life, review your circumstances and see where you’ve failed to put God first. Have you placed him after your idea of Christian service or your desire to use your natural abilities? God had no competition for first place in Paul’s life. Paul realized the call of God and devoted all his strength to answering it.
When someone is called by God, it doesn’t matter how difficult their circumstances are. Every circumstantial force that has been at work will serve God’s purposes in the end. Once you agree to answer the call, God will bring not only your conscious life but also the deeper regions of your life into harmony with his purposes.
Isaiah 7-8; Ephesians 2
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence.
Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L
