Max Lucado Daily: God is!
Look around you! Rather than shocking the globe with an occasional demonstration of deity, God has opted to display his power daily. Proverbially. Pounding waves. Prism-cast colors. Birth, death, life. We’re surrounded by miracles. God is throwing testimonies at us like fireworks, each one exploding, “God is! God is!”
The Psalmist marveled at such holy handiwork. “Where can I go from your Spirit?” he questioned with delight. “Where can I go from your presence? (Psalm 139:7).
We wonder, with so many miraculous testimonies around us, how we could escape God. But somehow we do. We live in an art gallery of divine creativity, and yet are content to gaze only at the carpet.
The next time you hear a baby laugh, take note as His Majesty whispers ever so gently, “I’m here!”
From God Came Near/page 84/85
Ezekiel 47
Trees on Both Sides of the River
1–2 47 Now he brought me back to the entrance to the Temple. I saw water pouring out from under the Temple porch to the east (the Temple faced east). The water poured from the south side of the Temple, south of the altar. He then took me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the gate complex on the east. The water was gushing from under the south front of the Temple.
3–5 He walked to the east with a measuring tape and measured off fifteen hundred feet, leading me through water that was ankle-deep. He measured off another fifteen hundred feet, leading me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another fifteen hundred feet, leading me through water waist-deep. He measured off another fifteen hundred feet. By now it was a river over my head, water to swim in, water no one could possibly walk through.
6–7 He said, “Son of man, have you had a good look?”
Then he took me back to the riverbank. While sitting on the bank, I noticed a lot of trees on both sides of the river.
8–10 He told me, “This water flows east, descends to the Arabah and then into the sea, the sea of stagnant waters. When it empties into those waters, the sea will become fresh. Wherever the river flows, life will flourish—great schools of fish—because the river is turning the salt sea into fresh water. Where the river flows, life abounds. Fishermen will stand shoulder to shoulder along the shore from En-gedi all the way north to En-eglaim, casting their nets. The sea will teem with fish of all kinds, like the fish of the Great Mediterranean.
11 “The swamps and marshes won’t become fresh. They’ll stay salty.
12 “But the river itself, on both banks, will grow fruit trees of all kinds. Their leaves won’t wither, the fruit won’t fail. Every month they’ll bear fresh fruit because the river from the Sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.”
Divide Up This Land
13–14 A Message from God, the Master: “These are the boundaries by which you are to divide up the inheritance of the land for the twelve tribes of Israel, with Joseph getting two parcels. It is to be divided up equally. I swore in a solemn oath to give it to your ancestors, swore that this land would be your inheritance.
15–17 “These are the boundaries of the land:
“The northern boundary runs from the Great Mediterranean Sea along the Hethlon road to where you turn off to the entrance of Hamath, Zedad, Berothah, and Sibraim, which lies between the territory of Damascus and the territory of Hamath, and on to Hazor-hatticon on the border of Hauran. The boundary runs from the Sea to Hazor-enon, with the territories of Damascus and Hamath to the north. That is the northern boundary.
18 “The eastern boundary runs between Damascus and Hauran, down along the Jordan between Gilead and the land of Israel to the Eastern Sea as far as Tamar. This is the eastern boundary.
19 “The southern boundary runs west from Tamar to the waters of Meribah-kadesh, along the Brook of Egypt, and out to the Great Mediterranean Sea. This is the southern boundary.
20 “The western boundary is formed by the Great Mediterranean Sea north to where the road turns east toward the entrance to Hamath. This is the western boundary.
21–23 “Divide up this land among the twelve tribes of Israel. Divide it up as your inheritance, and include in it the resident aliens who have made themselves at home among you and now have children. Treat them as if they were born there, just like yourselves. They also get an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the resident alien lives, there he gets his inheritance. Decree of God, the Master.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, October 05, 2024
Today's Scripture
Psalm 107:1-9
Oh, thank God—he’s so good!
His love never runs out.
All of you set free by God, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression,
Then rounded you up from all over the place,
from the four winds, from the seven seas.
4–9 Some of you wandered for years in the desert,
looking but not finding a good place to live,
Half-starved and parched with thirst,
staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion.
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to God.
He got you out in the nick of time;
He put your feet on a wonderful road
that took you straight to a good place to live.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
He poured great draughts of water down parched throats;
the starved and hungry got plenty to eat.
Insight
The Psalms are divided into five “books,” or sections. Psalm 107 is the first song in the fifth of those books. Verse 3 provides a clue as to when it was written—likely after the Jewish people had been exiled from their homeland. It refers to them as “those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south,” an indication that they’d been scattered among the nations. The psalm recounts Israel’s checkered past as it praises God for His frequent deliverance. Repeatedly they forgot God, which led to dire circumstances. Four times we hear the refrain, “Then they cried (out) to the Lord in their trouble,” and four times we read that He delivered “them from (out of) their distress” (vv. 6, 13, 19, 28). The psalm concludes, “Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord” (v. 43).
Discover how to get the most out of the book of Psalms. By: Tim Gustafson
God Uses Our Stories
Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story. Psalm 107:2
I opened the memory box and pulled out a small, silver lapel pin, the exact size and shape of a ten-week unborn baby’s feet. Caressing the ten tiny toes, I remembered the loss of my first pregnancy and those who said I was “lucky” I wasn’t “that far along.” I grieved, knowing that my baby’s feet were as real as the heart that once beat inside my womb. I thanked God for freeing me from depression and using my story to comfort others who were grieving after losing a child. More than two decades after my miscarriage, my husband and I named the child we lost Kai, which in some languages means “rejoice.” Though I still ache from my loss, I thank God for healing my heart and using my story to help others.
The writer of Psalm 107 rejoiced in God’s established character and sang: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (v. 1). He urged “the redeemed of the Lord” to “tell their story” (v. 2), to “give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind” (v. 8). He offered hope with a promise that God alone “satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things” (v. 9).
No one can escape grief or affliction, even those who’ve been redeemed through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We can, however, experience God’s mercy as He uses our stories to point others to His redeeming love.
By: Xochitl Dixon
Reflect & Pray
How has God healed your heartbreaks? How has He used someone else’s story to comfort you?
Dear Jesus, thank You for healing me and using my story to point others to Your redeeming love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, October 05, 2024
The Disposition of Sin
Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. — Romans 5:12
The Bible doesn’t say that God punished humanity for one man’s sin, but that the disposition of sin entered into humanity by one man. Then another man, Jesus Christ, took the sin of humankind upon himself and put it away (Hebrews 9:26)—an infinitely profounder revelation.
The disposition of sin isn’t immorality and wrongdoing; it’s the disposition of self-realization, the natural-born inclination that says, “I am my own god.” This disposition may show itself in immoral acts or in acts that appear moral, but underneath them all is a single claim—the claim to my right to myself. Our Lord faced people with all the forces of evil inside them, and he faced people who were clean-living and moral and upright. But he never paid attention to moral achievements or to moral failings. He looked for something we do not see: the disposition beneath the act.
The disposition of sin is a thing I am born with and cannot touch. Only God can touch sin, and he touches it through redemption. In the cross of Jesus Christ, God redeemed the whole of humanity from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. Being born with this heredity doesn’t condemn me. But if, when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this disposition, I refuse to let him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “This is the verdict”—the moment of judgment—“Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light” (John 3:19).
Isaiah 23-25; Philippians 1
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The vital relationship which the Christian has to the Bible is not that he worships the letter, but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible spirit and life to him.
The Psychology of Redemption, 1066 L
