Max Lucado Daily: GOD’S GOOD PLAN - December 30, 2024
Satan’s scheme to kill the Son of God was defeated on the cross he designed for Christ. Had Satan known that the death of the Messiah would mean death for him and life for us, he never would have crucified the King. He never saw it coming.
So that we would never forget this moment, Jesus gave us our own celebration. “He took bread, gave thanks and broke it… saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you;’ …He also took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you’” (Luke 22:19-20 NKJV).
A broken body? Spilled blood? Can good come from this? Communion says, “Yes.” You have a good God, who has a good plan, and that plan is revealed in his good book. Today’s confusion and crisis will be tomorrow’s conquest.
You Were Made for This Moment
Nehemiah 4
“I Stationed Armed Guards”
1–2 4 When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall he exploded in anger, vilifying the Jews. In the company of his Samaritan cronies and military he let loose: “What are these miserable Jews doing? Do they think they can get everything back to normal overnight? Make building stones out of make-believe?”
3 At his side, Tobiah the Ammonite jumped in and said, “That’s right! What do they think they’re building? Why, if a fox climbed that wall, it would fall to pieces under his weight.”
4–5 Nehemiah prayed, “Oh listen to us, dear God. We’re so despised: Boomerang their ridicule on their heads; have their enemies cart them off as war trophies to a land of no return; don’t forgive their iniquity, don’t wipe away their sin—they’ve insulted the builders!”
6 We kept at it, repairing and rebuilding the wall. The whole wall was soon joined together and halfway to its intended height because the people had a heart for the work.
7–9 When Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites heard that the repairs of the walls of Jerusalem were going so well—that the breaks in the wall were being fixed—they were absolutely furious. They put their heads together and decided to fight against Jerusalem and create as much trouble as they could. We countered with prayer to our God and set a round-the-clock guard against them.
10 But soon word was going around in Judah,
The builders are pooped,
the rubbish piles up;
We’re in over our heads,
we can’t build this wall.
11–12 And all this time our enemies were saying, “They won’t know what hit them. Before they know it we’ll be at their throats, killing them right and left. That will put a stop to the work!” The Jews who were their neighbors kept reporting, “They have us surrounded; they’re going to attack!” If we heard it once, we heard it ten times.
13–14 So I stationed armed guards at the most vulnerable places of the wall and assigned people by families with their swords, lances, and bows. After looking things over I stood up and spoke to the nobles, officials, and everyone else: “Don’t be afraid of them. Put your minds on the Master, great and awesome, and then fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”
15–18 Our enemies learned that we knew all about their plan and that God had frustrated it. And we went back to the wall and went to work. From then on half of my young men worked while the other half stood guard with lances, shields, bows, and mail armor. Military officers served as backup for everyone in Judah who was at work rebuilding the wall. The common laborers held a tool in one hand and a spear in the other. Each of the builders had a sword strapped to his side as he worked. I kept the trumpeter at my side to sound the alert.
19–20 Then I spoke to the nobles and officials and everyone else: “There’s a lot of work going on and we are spread out all along the wall, separated from each other. When you hear the trumpet call, join us there; our God will fight for us.”
21 And so we kept working, from first light until the stars came out, half of us holding lances.
22 I also instructed the people, “Each person and his helper is to stay inside Jerusalem—guards by night and workmen by day.”
23 We all slept in our clothes—I, my brothers, my workmen, and the guards backing me up. And each one kept his spear in his hand, even when getting water.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, December 30, 2024
by Poh Fang Chia
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Psalm 13
A David Psalm
Long enough, God—
you’ve ignored me long enough.
I’ve looked at the back of your head
long enough. Long enough
I’ve carried this ton of trouble,
lived with a stomach full of pain.
Long enough my arrogant enemies
have looked down their noses at me.
3–4 Take a good look at me, God, my God;
I want to look life in the eye,
So no enemy can get the best of me
or laugh when I fall on my face.
5–6 I’ve thrown myself headlong into your arms—
I’m celebrating your rescue.
I’m singing at the top of my lungs,
I’m so full of answered prayers.
Today's Insights
Psalm 13 is an urgent prayer for God’s aid (vv. 3-4) as well as a lament of the psalmist’s long period of suffering, which is experienced as if God is absent and hiding His face (v. 1). When the psalm asks, “How long?” (vv. 1-2), the point isn’t asking for a specific end date but lamenting how long something has been endured and urging God to end the long wait—to act and make things right. Yet despite Psalm 13’s intense desperation, it’s also a psalm of deep trust (vv. 5-6). Through our bond with a God who we know to be good and faithful, we have the confidence and trust to honestly voice our lament. The reformer Martin Luther called prayer like that expressed in Psalm 13 the “state in which hope despairs, and yet despair hopes at the same time.”
Why Me, God?
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? Psalm 13:1
Jim has been battling a motor neuron disease for more than a year. The neurons in his muscles are breaking down, and his muscles are wasting away. He’s lost his fine-motor skills and is losing his ability to control his limbs. He can no longer button his shirt or tie his shoelaces, and using a pair of chopsticks has become impossible. Jim struggles with his situation and asks, Why is God allowing this to happen? Why me?
He’s in good company with many other believers in Jesus who have brought their questions to God. In Psalm 13, David cries out, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?” (vv. 1-2).
We too can take our confusion and questions to God. He understands when we cry out “How long?” and “Why?” His ultimate answer is given to us in Jesus and His triumph over sin and death.
As we look at the cross and the empty tomb, we gain confidence to trust in God’s “unfailing love” (v. 5) and rejoice in His salvation. Even in the darkest nights, we can “sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to [us]” (v. 6). Through our faith in Christ, He’s forgiven our sins, adopted us as His children, and is accomplishing His eternal good purpose in our lives.
Reflect & Pray
What questions do you need to bring to God? How has He shown His goodness to you, even in your darkest night?
Loving Father, thank You that You care for me. Please help me to trust that You’re making something beautiful of my life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, December 30, 2024
Every Virtue We Possess
All my fountains are in you. — Psalm 87:7
When God remakes us in spiritual rebirth, he doesn’t simply patch up our natural virtues. He remakes the whole person on the inside: “Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). See that your natural human life puts on the clothing that is in keeping with the new life God has planted in you.
The life God plants in us develops its own virtues—not the virtues of Adam but the virtues of Jesus Christ. Watch how, after sanctification, God will wither up your confidence in your natural virtues, in any power you have, until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. If you are going through a drying–up experience just now, give thanks to God.
The sign that God is at work in us is that he corrupts our confidence in our natural virtues, showing us that they are merely remnants, leftovers of what he originally created humans to be. They aren’t promises of what we are going to be. Still, we cling to the natural virtues, even as God is trying all the time to get us into contact with a life that can never be described in terms of natural virtues—the life of Jesus Christ. It’s the saddest thing to see people who, though they are in the service of God, are still depending on that which his grace never gave them, on virtues they possess merely by the accident of heredity.
God doesn’t build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to his demands. But as we bring every part of our bodily life into harmony with the new life God has put into us, he will exhibit through us the virtues that are characteristic of Jesus.
“All my fountains are in you”: every virtue we possess is his alone.
Zechariah 13-14; Revelation 21
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The Christian Church should not be a secret society of specialists, but a public manifestation of believers in Jesus.
Facing Reality, 34 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, December 30, 2024
Why We Keep Hurting People We Love - #9906
I was sitting in the van we drove back then, idling at a red light, when suddenly this cloud of dark, acrid smoke starts belching out of my exhaust pipe. It was disgusting! Apparently, the motorists behind me felt the same way because they started honking at me! That helped a lot! I just wish honking would have solved the problem. It didn't. One mechanic told me, "I wouldn't leave town with that van if I were you." And he was right. Guess what? The smoke wasn't the problem. The problem was the engine, and it didn't need to be fixed. It was too far gone for that. It had to be replaced!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why We Keep Hurting People We Love."
The van I drove away from that garage looked like the same van I drove into that garage. But that was not true! It was new on the inside, and as a result it was no longer leaving an ugly trail. Actually, a lot of us have some emissions coming out of our lives that aren't too pleasant either. Maybe you know some of those feelings, and too often there's anger spewing out. There's self-pity because you feel like a victim, or just critical attitudes, negative attitudes. You later regret what you said. You do something that you regret later. Maybe you're hooked on what you wish you could stop and wish you'd never started. We leave a trail behind us of people who have choked on the smoke and the pollution we put out.
And it's not that we haven't tried to fix it - New Years resolutions, religion, self-improvement. We've tried to stop polluting our own lives and the lives of those around us, but there's a problem inside. And God diagnoses that problem in His Book in Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" The engine is shot and it can't be fixed. It has to be replaced.
Which leads us to God's tremendous offer, our word for today from the Word of God. This is great! Ezekiel 36:26 - "I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit in you. I will remove from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you." God says our heart is too darkened and hardened by sin to ever quit putting out pollution.
We can certainly never get into His totally unpolluted heaven with this polluted heart. We all have it. Our only hope for this life and for eternal life is a new heart. And we can't perform heart surgery on ourselves. Only the Divine Surgeon can do that, and He stands ready to take that heart of yours that's been hardened by all the hurt, the anger, the sin, and He will replace it with a heart that is clean, and sensitive and new. He'll put His Holy Spirit in you to make you the person you've wanted to be but never could be.
But the operation had to be paid for; just as the engine replacement on my van had to be paid for. And, you know, I didn't have the money to pay. But to my amazement, some of God's people quietly got together and actually paid the bill for that replacement. That's what Jesus was doing for you when He was agonizing on the cross. He was paying the bill for your sins that you could never pay so you could be forgiven.
Are you ready for a new heart? Well, then, it's time to open your heart to Jesus Christ. I would love to help you be sure that you have been forgiven, that you are free, and that you have begun this transforming, personal love relationship with Jesus. That's why our website is there. Would you check it out today? It's ANewStory.com .
All our lives we try to stop the ugly stuff that comes out of us, but it just doesn't come until we get a new engine - a new heart. Jesus is waiting for you right now to tell Him that you want it.
