Max Lucado Daily:The Gladdest News of All
Grace is simply another word for God’s reservoir of strength and protection. Not occasionally or miserly but constantly and aggressively, wave upon wave. We barely regain our balance from one breaker, and then, bam, here comes another!
We dare to stake our hope on the gladdest news of all: if God permits the challenge, he will provide the grace to meet it. We never exhaust his supply. “Stop asking so much! My grace reservoir is running dry.” Heaven knows no such words. God has enough grace to solve every dilemma you face, wipe every tear that you cry, and answer every question you ask.
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32).
Having given the supreme and costliest gift, how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?
From GRACE
Esther 6
That night the king couldn’t sleep. He ordered the record book, the day-by-day journal of events, to be brought and read to him. They came across the story there about the time that Mordecai had exposed the plot of Bigthana and Teresh—the two royal eunuchs who guarded the entrance and who had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.
3 The king asked, “What great honor was given to Mordecai for this?”
“Nothing,” replied the king’s servants who were in attendance. “Nothing has been done for him.”
4 The king said, “Is there anybody out in the court?”
Now Haman had just come into the outer court of the king’s palace to talk to the king about hanging Mordecai on the gallows he had built for him.
5 The king’s servants said, “Haman is out there, waiting in the court.”
“Bring him in,” said the king.
6–9 When Haman entered, the king said, “What would be appropriate for the man the king especially wants to honor?”
Haman thought to himself, “He must be talking about honoring me—who else?” So he answered the king, “For the man the king delights to honor, do this: Bring a royal robe that the king has worn and a horse the king has ridden, one with a royal crown on its head. Then give the robe and the horse to one of the king’s most noble princes. Have him robe the man whom the king especially wants to honor; have the prince lead him on horseback through the city square, proclaiming before him, ‘This is what is done for the man whom the king especially wants to honor!’ ”
10 “Go and do it,” the king said to Haman. “Don’t waste another minute. Take the robe and horse and do what you have proposed to Mordecai the Jew who sits at the King’s Gate. Don’t leave out a single detail of your plan.”
11 So Haman took the robe and horse; he robed Mordecai and led him through the city square, proclaiming before him, “This is what is done for the man whom the king especially wants to honor!”
12–13 Then Mordecai returned to the King’s Gate, but Haman fled to his house, thoroughly mortified, hiding his face. When Haman had finished telling his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had happened to him, his knowledgeable friends who were there and his wife Zeresh said, “If this Mordecai is in fact a Jew, your bad luck has only begun. You don’t stand a chance against him—you’re as good as ruined.”
14 While they were still talking, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman off to the dinner that Esther had prepared.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, December 07, 2024
by Leslie Koh
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
1 Corinthians 10:11-13
These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence.
13 No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.
Today's Insights
Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth follows a decidedly different pattern than most of his other “church” letters. The apostle usually opens with a section of doctrine (teaching) and follows that with a section of practical application. The first part helps us with what to believe and the second with how to practically live out those beliefs.
In 1 Corinthians, however, the apostle spends the first fourteen chapters addressing problems within the church at Corinth. Some of the chapters are in response to questions asked by the church itself (see 7:1). Then in chapter 15, he provides the single most detailed theological study of the resurrection in the New Testament. The final chapter (ch. 16) contains a few brief statements of practical exhortation.
Hear more about the problems addressed in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.
Tempted and Tested
God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. 1 Corinthians 10:13
Stanley loves the freedom and flexibility that his job as a private-hire driver gives him. Among other things, he can start and stop work anytime, and he doesn’t have to account for his time and movements to anyone. Yet, he said, that’s ironically the hardest part.
“In this job, it’s so easy to start an extramarital affair,” he admitted frankly. “I pick up all sorts of passengers, yet no one, including my wife, knows where I am each day.” It’s not an easy temptation to resist, and many of his fellow drivers have given in to it, he explained. “What stops me is considering what God would think, and how my wife would feel,” he said.
Our God, who created each one of us, knows our weaknesses, desires, and how easily we’re tempted. But as 1 Corinthians 10:11-13 reminds us, we can ask Him for help. “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear,” Paul says. “When you are tempted, [God] will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (v. 13). That “way out” could be a healthy fear of the consequences, a guilty conscience, remembering Scripture, a timely distraction, or something else. As we ask God for strength, the Spirit will turn our eyes from what’s tempting us and help us look toward the way out that He’s given us.
Reflect & Pray
What temptations are you facing today? What way out might God be giving you to keep on His right and holy path?
Father, You know my weaknesses. Please give me the strength to resist temptation and to walk with You, in Your holy and life-giving ways.
For further study, read Walking Free: Overcoming What Keeps Us from Jesus
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, December 07, 2024
Repentance
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. — 2 Corinthians 7:10
Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things ever to strike us. It brings us to the threshold of a true understanding of God, showing us precisely whom we wrong when we sin: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4).
“When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin”(John 16:8). When the Holy Spirit rouses our conscience, bringing us into the presence of God and showing us that we are in the wrong about sin, what bothers us isn’t our relationship with other human beings but rather our relationship with our heavenly Father.
“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret.” Conviction of sin is so interwoven with the marvel of forgiveness and with holiness that it is only the forgiven person who is the holy person. The forgiven prove they are forgiven by becoming, by the grace of God, the opposite of what they were before. Repentance always brings us to this realization: “I have sinned.” The surest sign that God is at work in us is when we say this and mean it. Anything less is simply regret for having messed up, the reflex reaction of disgust at ourselves.
The entrance into the kingdom is through the pains of repentance. The Holy Spirit produces these pains and sends them crashing against our respectable “goodness.” Then the Spirit begins to form the Son of God in our old lives, transforming them into something new. This new life manifests itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness, never the other way around.
Repentance is the bedrock of Christianity. Strictly speaking, we can’t choose to repent; repentance is a gift from God, the result of “godly sorrow.” The Puritans used to pray for “the gift of tears.” If you ever stop knowing the virtue of repentance, you are in darkness. Examine yourself and see if you’ve forgotten how to be sorry.
Daniel 5-7; 2 John
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
