Max Lucado Daily: THE NEXT DOOR SAVIOR - November 29, 2024
In the aftermath of 9/11 a group of religious leaders was invited to come to Washington and pray with President Bush. The group was well-frocked and well-known. You might wonder if I felt out of place. The only time I wear a robe is when I step out of the shower.
But when it came my turn to meet George W. Bush, I added, “And Mr. President, I was raised in Andrews, Texas—a half-hour drive from your hometown.” He smiled that lopsided smile and let his accent drawl ever so slightly. “Why, I know your town. I’ve walked those streets. I’ve even played your golf course.” It was nice to know that the president knew my home.
How much nicer to know the same about God. Yes, he rules the universe. Yes, he has walked your streets. He’s still the next door Savior. Jesus – above all powers? You bet he is!
Nextdoor Savior: Near Enough to Touch, Strong Enough to Trust
Revelation 11
The Two Witnesses
1–2 11 I was given a stick for a measuring rod and told, “Get up and measure God’s Temple and Altar and everyone worshiping in it. Exclude the outside court; don’t measure it. It’s been handed over to non-Jewish outsiders. They’ll desecrate the Holy City for forty-two months.
3–6 “Meanwhile, I’ll provide my two Witnesses. Dressed in sackcloth, they’ll prophesy for 1,260 days. These are the two Olive Trees, the two Lampstands, standing at attention before God on earth. If anyone tries to hurt them, a blast of fire from their mouths will incinerate them—burn them to a crisp just like that. They’ll have power to seal the sky so that it doesn’t rain for the time of their prophesying, power to turn rivers and springs to blood, power to hit earth with any and every disaster as often as they want.
7–10 “When they’ve completed their witness, the Beast from the Abyss will emerge and fight them, conquer and kill them, leaving their corpses exposed on the street of the Great City spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, the same City where their Master was crucified. For three and a half days they’ll be there—exposed, prevented from getting a decent burial, stared at by the curious from all over the world. Those people will cheer at the spectacle, shouting ‘Good riddance!’ and calling for a celebration, for these two prophets pricked the conscience of all the people on earth, made it impossible for them to enjoy their sins.
11 “Then, after three and a half days, the Living Spirit of God will enter them—they’re on their feet!—and all those gloating spectators will be scared to death.”
12–13 I heard a strong voice out of Heaven calling, “Come up here!” and up they went to Heaven, wrapped in a cloud, their enemies watching it all. At that moment there was a gigantic earthquake—a tenth of the city fell to ruin, seven thousand perished in the earthquake, the rest frightened to the core of their being, frightened into giving honor to the God-of-Heaven.
14 The second doom is past, the third doom coming right on its heels.
The Last Trumpet Sounds
15–18 The seventh Angel trumpeted. A crescendo of voices in Heaven sang out,
The kingdom of the world is now
the Kingdom of our God and his Messiah!
He will rule forever and ever!
The Twenty-four Elders seated before God on their thrones fell to their knees, worshiped, and sang,
We thank you, O God, Sovereign-Strong,
Who Is and Who Was.
You took your great power
and took over—reigned!
The angry nations now
get a taste of your anger.
The time has come to judge the dead,
to reward your servants, all prophets and saints,
Reward small and great who fear your Name,
and destroy the destroyers of earth.
19 The doors of God’s Temple in Heaven flew open, and the Ark of his Covenant was clearly seen surrounded by flashes of lightning, loud shouts, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a fierce hailstorm.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, November 29, 2024
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Job 13:1-12
I’m Taking My Case to God
1–5 13 “Yes, I’ve seen all this with my own eyes,
heard and understood it with my very own ears.
Everything you know, I know,
so I’m not taking a backseat to any of you.
I’m taking my case straight to God Almighty;
I’ve had it with you—I’m going directly to God.
You graffiti my life with lies.
You’re a bunch of pompous quacks!
I wish you’d shut your mouths—
silence is your only claim to wisdom.
6–12 “Listen now while I make my case,
consider my side of things for a change.
Or are you going to keep on lying ‘to do God a service’?
to make up stories ‘to get him off the hook’?
Why do you always take his side?
Do you think he needs a lawyer to defend himself?
How would you fare if you were in the dock?
Your lies might convince a jury—but would they convince God?
He’d reprimand you on the spot
if he detected a bias in your witness.
Doesn’t his splendor put you in awe?
Aren’t you afraid to speak cheap lies before him?
Your wise sayings are knickknack wisdom,
good for nothing but gathering dust.
Today's Insights
We rightly remember Job as an exceptionally good man. “They have the patience of Job,” we say when we notice someone who demonstrates remarkable restraint under pressure. Not to be missed, however, is Job’s obvious humanity. Having lost his children, his health, and his wealth, we see him lash out at his friends who offer him useless counsel. “You . . . smear me with lies,” he says, and calls them “worthless physicians” (Job 13:4). The problem with Job’s friends is that they imagined they were speaking wisely when they were merely spouting empty platitudes. Job says of their advice, “Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay” (v. 12). This raw picture of his response to his trouble and his alleged “comforters” (16:2) humanizes him, enriching our understanding of human pain and suffering. We also learn to guard our speech when we encounter another in deep pain.
Restraining Orde r-Kenneth Petersen
I want to argue my case with God himself. Job 13:3 nlt
Today's Devotional
A man in court filed a restraining order against God. He claimed God had been “particularly unkind” to him and had exhibited a “seriously negative attitude.” The presiding judge dismissed the suit, saying the man needed help not from the court but for his mental health. A true story: humorous, but also sad.
But are we so different? Don’t we sometimes want to say, “Stop, God, please, I’ve had enough!” Job did. He put God on trial. After enduring unspeakable personal tragedies, Job says, “I want to argue my case with God himself” (Job 13:3 nlt) and imagines taking “God to court” (9:3 nlt). He even puts forth a restraining order: “Withdraw your hand far from me, and stop frightening me” (13:21). Job’s prosecution argument wasn’t his own innocence but what he viewed as God’s unreasonable harshness: “Does it please you to oppress me?” (10:3).
Sometimes we feel God is unfair. In truth, the story of Job is complex, not providing easy answers. God restores Job’s physical fortunes in the end, but that isn’t always His plan for us. Perhaps we find something of a verdict in Job’s final admission: “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (42:3). The point is, God has reasons we know nothing of, and there’s wonderful hope in that.
Reflect & Pray
What occasions have prompted you to “take God to court”? Why is it okay for you to ask Him tough questions?
Dear God, I sometimes feel angry about what I’ve had to endure. Please help me bring my complaints to You.
For further study, read Understanding the Bible: The Wisdom Books.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, November 29, 2024
The Absolute Authority of Jesus Christ
He shall glorify Me. — John 16:14
The sentimental religious movements of today have none of the rugged reality of the New Testament. Nothing in what they teach requires the death of Jesus Christ. All they require is prayer and devotion and a pious atmosphere. This type of religious experience isn’t supernatural or miraculous. It didn’t cost the passion of God. It isn’t dyed in the blood of the Lamb or stamped with the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t have the quality that makes people say with awe and wonder, “That is the work of God Almighty.”
The type of Christian experience the New Testament talks about is the experience of personal, passionate devotion to the person of Jesus Christ. Every other type of so-called Christian experience is detached from the person of Jesus. There’s no regeneration—no being born again into the kingdom where Christ lives—only the idea that he is a role model. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is Savior long before he is a role model. Today he is often dismissed as the mere figurehead of a religion or as an example we should follow. Jesus Christ is a figurehead and an example, but he is also infinitely more. He is Salvation itself. He is the Gospel of God.
Jesus said, “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, . . . he will glorify me” (John 16:13–14). When I commit myself to the revelation made in the New Testament, I receive from God the gift of the Holy Spirit, who begins to interpret to me what Jesus did, who does in me what Jesus Christ did for me. This is the supernatural, miraculous means by which I enter into a personal relationship with my Lord and become absolutely his.
Ezekiel 35-36; 2 Peter 1
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
God created man to be master of the life in the earth and sea and sky, and the reason he is not is because he took the law into his own hands, and became master of himself, but of nothing else.
The Shadow of an Agony, 1163 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, November 29, 2024
Personal Power Failures - #9885
You think you've had a bad day? Oh, I'll tell you about a bad day. It was the summer of 1997; you're a cosmonaut on Russia's space station Mir. So far, you've battled a fire on board. Then a supply ship runs into you in a docking procedure. You lose 40% of your power. You think you've already had your fill of bad days for one mission. But then, the central computer on the space station suddenly shuts down. You are tumbling through space in what reporters called "chaotic flight." Hard to believe! It happened!
The day the computer failed, those cosmonauts were thrown into a particularly dangerous situation. That space station was solar-powered and all of a sudden, as one reporter put it, it lost its orientation to the sun, which means you don't have the power to meet the demands of your flight, and worst case, your life is in jeopardy. Why? All because Mir turned its back on the sun.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Personal Power Failures."
The crisis that faced that space station? Not enough power to meet the demands. That's a feeling a lot of us have had in our lives. Trying to meet the demands of our family, our relationships, our work responsibilities, and frankly, our resources just aren't enough. Do you ever feel like you're running without the personal peace you need, the love, the power? Maybe the description of that space station's situation describes your own life - "Chaotic flight."
It could be that the confusion and the power failure is for a similar reason, too, that space station is designed to draw its life from the sun. Listen to these words from the Bible about how God designed us. Speaking of Jesus, it says we were "created by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16). That Him is the Son of God - S-O-N. Our lives? Well, they're essentially tumbling aimlessly when we lose our proper orientation to the Son. And according to God's Book, we all have.
Here we go from our Word for today from the Word of God in Isaiah 53:6. "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." Three words explain why we feel so spiritually disoriented, "his own way." The One who gave us our life was supposed to run our life and we simply took our life and we've run it "our own way."
If you wanted to draw that in picture form, you'd probably put you on the left side of the page, God on the right, and you'd be walking away from Him, with your back to Him; with your back to the source of the love and the peace and the power and the meaning you need. If you die with your back still to Him, erase God from your picture forever. And that's hell. Unless you can find a way to get rid of your sin and get back to Him, like the space station without the sun, the result is ultimately death.
I'm so glad that "gone astray" verse doesn't stop there. It also tells us the way to find the God we've lost. It says, "And the Lord has laid on Him the wrongdoing of us all" The Him is Jesus and all the sin that cuts us off from God was laid on Jesus, God's sinless Son, when He died on that cross. You can literally walk up to that cross and say, "For me. He's doing that for me."
The day you tell Jesus you're putting your total trust in Him to rescue you from your sin is the day you find your Creator, the Son you were created for. For you, it could be today. That's why God brought us together, so this could be your day.
If you want to know how to begin with Him and how to know you belong to Him, that's what our website's all about. I urge you to check it out as soon as you can today - ANewStory.com.
Hasn't your "chaotic flight" lasted long enough? It's the Son - the Son of God - you need right now. He has all the power you'll ever need to meet every demand of your life.