Max Lucado Daily: COME CLEAN WITH GOD - February 6, 2025
In Psalm 32:5 (TLB), David says, “I confess my rebellion to the Lord. And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”
Confession is not complaining. If I merely recite my problems and tell you how tough my life is, I’m not confessing. Confession is not blaming. Pointing fingers at others may feel good for a while, but it does nothing to remove the conflict within me. Confession is coming clean with God.
David discovered this. As if his affair with Bathsheba wasn’t enough. As if the murder of her husband wasn’t enough. David danced around the truth. It took a prophet to bring the truth to the surface, but when he did, David did not like what he saw. He confessed. He came clean with God. And the result? He proclaimed, “And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”
Want to get rid of your guilt? Come clean with God.
Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions
Genesis 15
After all these things, this word of God came to Abram in a vision: “Don’t be afraid, Abram. I’m your shield. Your reward will be grand!”
2–3 Abram said, “God, Master, what use are your gifts as long as I’m childless and Eliezer of Damascus is going to inherit everything?” Abram continued, “See, you’ve given me no children, and now a mere house servant is going to get it all.”
4 Then God’s Message came: “Don’t worry, he won’t be your heir; a son from your body will be your heir.”
5 Then he took him outside and said, “Look at the sky. Count the stars. Can you do it? Count your descendants! You’re going to have a big family, Abram!”
6 And he believed! Believed God! God declared him “Set-Right-with-God.”
7 God continued, “I’m the same God who brought you from Ur of the Chaldees and gave you this land to own.”
8 Abram said, “Master God, how am I to know this, that it will all be mine?”
9 God said, “Bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, and a dove and a young pigeon.”
10–12 He brought all these animals to him, split them down the middle, and laid the halves opposite each other. But he didn’t split the birds. Vultures swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram scared them off. As the sun went down a deep sleep overcame Abram and then a sense of dread, dark and heavy.
13–16 God said to Abram, “Know this: your descendants will live as outsiders in a land not theirs; they’ll be enslaved and beaten down for 400 years. Then I’ll punish their slave masters; your offspring will march out of there loaded with plunder. But not you; you’ll have a long and full life and die a good and peaceful death. Not until the fourth generation will your descendants return here; sin is still a thriving business among the Amorites.”
17–21 When the sun was down and it was dark, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch moved between the split carcasses. That’s when God made a covenant with Abram: “I’m giving this land to your children, from the Nile River in Egypt to the River Euphrates in Assyria—the country of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, February 06, 2025
by Matt Lucas
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Genesis 2:4-9
This is the story of how it all started,
of Heaven and Earth when they were created.
Adam and Eve
5–7 At the time God made Earth and Heaven, before any grasses or shrubs had sprouted from the ground—God hadn’t yet sent rain on Earth, nor was there anyone around to work the ground (the whole Earth was watered by underground springs)—God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!
8–9 Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
Today's Insights
In Genesis 2, we’re given a description of the garden of Eden, where God placed the first humans so they could care for what He created (vv. 8, 15). The garden was delightful—God caused trees to provide fruit (v. 9) and rivers to water the ground (v. 10). He asked our first parents to care for it, but this request came with a commandment (vv. 15-17). This is a picture of how God continues to interact with humanity. He brings blessing but also gives us instructions in how to live. We’re given the choice to obey Him or not. We honor Him when we choose obedience as the Spirit helps us.
A Cultivated Life in Christ
There was no one to work the ground. Genesis 2:5
When we built our home, it stood on little more than a muddy, empty lot at the end of a gravel road. We needed grass, trees, and shrubs to match the surrounding Oregon foothills. As I got out my lawn tools and set to work, I thought of the first garden waiting for humans: “No shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, . . . and there was no one to work the ground” (Genesis 2:5).
The creation account in Genesis 1 repeats God’s assessment of creation: it “was good” or “very good” (vv. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). However, it wasn’t complete. Adam and Eve needed to cultivate the ground—to exercise stewardship of God’s creation (v. 28). They weren’t meant to live in an unchanging paradise but one that needed care and development.
Since the beginning, God has been inviting humans to partner with Him in His creation. He did it in the garden of Eden, and He does it with “the new creation” He makes of us when we put our faith in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Upon salvation, we’re not made perfect. As the apostle Paul says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world” (Romans 12:2). God works in us as we pursue a life pleasing to Him, “conformed to the image of his Son” (8:29).
Whether it’s caring for the earth or caring for our new life in Christ, God has given us a gift we need to cultivate.
Reflect & Pray
What work do you enjoy most? What might God be calling you to cultivate in your community?
Father, thank You for inviting me to participate in the work You’re doing in the world and in me.
For further study, read Worshipping God Means More than Singing.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Are You Ready to Be Offered?
For I am already being poured out like a drink offering. — 2 Timothy 4:6 (R. V. Marg.)
To be ready to be offered is a question of will, not feelings. If we always wait to act until we feel like it, we might never do anything at all. But if we take the initiative and decide to act, exerting our will, if we tell God that we are ready to be offered and that we will accept the consequences, whatever they may be, we will find that no matter what he asks, we are able to do it without complaint.
God puts each of us through crises we must face alone. These are trials intended just for us; no one else can help us with them. But if we prepare for these challenges internally first—if we say, “I will meet this challenge, no matter what”—then we’ll be able to rise to the challenge when it actually comes, taking no thought for the cost to ourselves. If we don’t make this kind of determined, private agreement with God in advance, we’ll end up falling into self-pity when difficulty arises.
“Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar” (Psalm 118:27 kjv). The altar represents the purifying fire, the fire that burns away every attachment God has not chosen for us, every connection that isn’t a connection to him. We don’t choose what gets burned away; God does. Our job is to bind the sacrifice, and to make sure we don’t give in to self-pity when the fire starts. After we’ve traveled this way of fire, there is nothing that can oppress us or make us afraid. When crises come, we realize that things cannot touch us as they once did.
Tell God you are ready to be offered, and God will prove himself all you ever dreamed he was.
Exodus 39-40; Matthew 23:23-39
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Christianity is not consistency to conscience or to convictions; Christianity is being true to Jesus Christ.
Biblical Ethics, 111 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, February 06, 2025
When Life Feels Meaningless - #9934
Well, several years ago it was our turn again for the cicadas to pay us a brief visit. You can't really complain; they only drop by every 17 years. What a life these critters have! They suck on a root in the ground for a while, they finally emerge, they climb a tree, they make a lot of noise for about three weeks, and they die. You talk about "get a life!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When Life Feels Meaningless."
Live a little while, make some noise, and then you're gone. Ecclesiastes 1, our word for today from the Word of God; the diary of one of the richest, most successful, most brilliant men who ever lived - the Jewish King Solomon. He opens his life's testimony with his bottom line on living. Here's what he says, "Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless." Man alive! He says, "I haven't found meaning in anything I've done!" Then he goes on to say, "The eye has never enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing." So he says there's never enough!
As he passed through his life cycle, here are some of the noises that Solomon made. He says in 1:17, "I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, but this too is chasing after the wind." Then he says, "I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good. But that also proved to be meaningless. I surveyed all that my hands had done and all that I have toiled to achieve," which, by the way, was pretty incredible. He said, "Everything was meaningless." And then finally, "Like the fool, the wise man too must die."
After a life full of pleasure, achievement, relationships and learning, Solomon sums it all up in one word: meaningless! Like those cicadas, a short stay, make a little noise, and then you're gone. Solomon's search and Solomon's conclusion have been repeated over and over again in millions of lives...maybe yours. Maybe there's been activity but not much meaning. You've lived long enough to feel the hollowness of so many things that were supposed to make your life fulfilling. Nothing has really done it for you.
You might be interested though, in the key that Solomon finally found in the meaning that had eluded him his whole colorful life - chapter 3, verse 11 of Ecclesiastes: "God has set eternity in the hearts of men." See, there's this eternity vacuum in us that can never be filled by anything or anyone that earth has to offer. We're not just 70-year cicadas going through a largely meaningless lifestyle for 70 years. We're built for eternity!
In his final chapter he says things like, "Remember your Creator." Now he's looking for meaning in the only direction it can possibly come from - the One who gave us our life in the first place. The Bible actually says, speaking of Jesus Christ, "You were created by Him and for Him." You can't find your purpose until you find the One you were made by and made for, and that's Jesus. That's why He can make this exciting promise in John 10:10, "I have come that they might have life and have it to the full." All the life you were made for is in Jesus Christ. But for you to have life, it cost Jesus His life.
The next verse says, "I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." It's no mistake Jesus refers to us as sheep. We've wandered away from God, like sheep, the Bible says. It's called sin. The penalty is death. But Jesus, God's own Son, paid that penalty on the cross for you and me. Your last meaningless day is the day you reach out to the author of your life; the day you tell Jesus you are putting all of your trust in Him. And this could be that day.
That's why I want to invite you to visit our website. Because right there I will lay out for you in simple and non-religious language how you can be sure you have begun the relationship that begins life the way it was meant to be. Our website - ANewStory.com. Will you go there?
One day it was very quiet in our yard again. That short, seemingly meaningless life of the cicadas was over. You were made for so much more than that. You were made for eternity, and that begins the moment that you begin with Jesus.
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