Max Lucado Daily: HOPE-FILLED GRIEF - January 1, 2025
In heaven’s diagram death is but the beginning—the first letter of the first sentence in the first paragraph of the first chapter of the great story that God is writing with your life. Life is not the beginning and ending, but solely the ending of the beginning. Consider this assurance from the apostle Paul: “We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13 JB).
God transforms our hopeless grief into hope-filled grief. If a Christian perishes before the rapture, that person’s spirit immediately enters the presence of God, and that person enjoys conscious fellowship with the Father and with those who have gone before.
What Happens Next
Nehemiah 6
“I’m Doing a Great Work; I Can’t Come Down”
1–2 6 When Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall and that there were no more breaks in it—even though I hadn’t yet installed the gates—Sanballat and Geshem sent this message: “Come and meet with us at Kephirim in the valley of Ono.”
2–3 I knew they were scheming to hurt me so I sent messengers back with this: “I’m doing a great work; I can’t come down. Why should the work come to a standstill just so I can come down to see you?”
4 Four times they sent this message and four times I gave them my answer.
5–6 The fifth time—same messenger, same message—Sanballat sent an unsealed letter with this message:
6–7 “The word is out among the nations—and Geshem says it’s true—that you and the Jews are planning to rebel. That’s why you are rebuilding the wall. The word is that you want to be king and that you have appointed prophets to announce in Jerusalem, ‘There’s a king in Judah!’ The king is going to be told all this—don’t you think we should sit down and have a talk?”
8 I sent him back this: “There’s nothing to what you’re saying. You’ve made it all up.”
9 They were trying to intimidate us into quitting. They thought, “They’ll give up; they’ll never finish it.”
I prayed, “Give me strength.”
10 Then I met secretly with Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, at his house. He said:
Let’s meet at the house of God,
inside The Temple;
Let’s find safety behind locked doors
because they’re coming to kill you,
Yes, coming by night to kill you.
11 I said, “Why would a man like me run for cover? And why would a man like me use The Temple as a hideout? I won’t do it.”
12–13 I sensed that God hadn’t sent this man. The so-called prophecy he spoke to me was the work of Tobiah and Sanballat; they had hired him. He had been hired to scare me off—trick me—a layman, into desecrating The Temple and ruining my good reputation so they could accuse me.
14 “O my God, don’t let Tobiah and Sanballat get by with all the mischief they’ve done. And the same goes for the prophetess Noadiah and the other prophets who have been trying to undermine my confidence.”
15–16 The wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of Elul. It had taken fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard the news and all the surrounding nations saw it, our enemies totally lost their nerve. They knew that God was behind this work.
17–19 All during this time letters were going back and forth constantly between the nobles of Judah and Tobiah. Many of the nobles had ties to him because he was son-in-law to Shecaniah son of Arah and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of Meshullam son of Berekiah. They kept telling me all the good things he did and then would report back to him anything I would say. And then Tobiah would send letters to intimidate me.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, January 01, 2025
by Kenneth Petersen
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
1 John 1:1-5
From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.
3–4 We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
Walk in the Light
5 This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him.
Today's Insights
Many scholars believe that the apostle John, the author of the gospel of John, also wrote the three letters that bear his name. He wrote 1 John to refute false teachers who taught that Jesus is neither God nor human and points to His incarnation to show His humanity: “[Jesus] was with the Father and has appeared to us” (1:2). John had personally heard, seen, and touched the man Jesus (vv. 1-3), demonstrating that Christ is a real human person.
To prove that Jesus is the preexistent creator God, John begins his letter with the words “that which was from the beginning” (v. 1), echoing Genesis 1:1 (“in the beginning God”) and John 1:1 (“in the beginning was the Word”). Jesus is “the Word of life” (1 John 1:1), who “spoke” life into every living thing (Genesis 1; John 1:1-2). He’s “the eternal life, which was with the Father” and He’s “[God’s] Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:2-3), the promised Messiah.
The Jesus Story
The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it. 1 John 1:2
Most people have never heard of Kate Hankey, but she was a remarkable woman. A teacher, evangelist, school organizer, missionary, and poet, she faithfully served Jesus in 1800s England. In 1867, Kate contracted a serious illness. During her recovery, she penned a lengthy poem in two parts: “The Story Wanted” and “The Story Told.” The poem expresses in a very personal way her relationship with Jesus and the events of His life.
All Scripture points to Jesus and tells His story. John begins his epistle reminding readers how they had personally experienced Jesus: “That which . . . we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim” (1 John 1:1). Because of our experience of Him, the apostle writes, we’re telling the Jesus story: “The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it” (v. 2). Later, John makes the fascinating comment, “The word of God lives in you” (2:14). In other words, the Jesus story is our story too. We’re called to tell the story of Christ in light of our own experience with Him.
This is what Kate Hankey did in her poem. Eventually, the two parts of her poem became these beloved hymns: “I Love to Tell the Story” and “Tell Me the Old, Old Story.” Perhaps we might, like Kate, find our own words and share our Jesus story with others—the unique way in which He loved us, came to us, and rescued us.
Reflect & Pray
What is your story with Jesus? How did He come to you and rescue you?
Dear Jesus, thank You for rescuing me and doing Your loving work in my life.
For further study, read Jesus Is in the Room.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, January 01, 2025
Let Us Keep To The Point
I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. —Philippians 1:20
My utmost for his highest. To be all for God; to act with boldness, expressing Christ in every word and deed. This, Paul says, is how to walk through life unashamed.
The journey isn’t a journey of reason or debate. We can’t think or argue our way through it. It is a journey of surrender, of abandoning ourselves to God, absolutely and forever.
There will always be good reasons not to. We debate with God, telling him that we are concerned for others, that if we start on the journey, our loved ones will suffer. Really, we are worried for ourselves, for our own comfort and safety. We tell God he doesn’t know what he’s asking.
Keep to the point: he does know. Shut out your worries and stand before God with one thing only in your heart: my utmost for his highest. Determine to be absolutely and entirely for him and him alone.
My best for his glory. At first, the call comes gently. Then it grows louder, until finally God produces a crisis in our lives that demands we make a choice. For or against; yes or no; stay or go.
Has the crisis come to you? If it has, go. Paul, like Christ, would let nothing deter him, whether it meant life or death. As a new year dawns, let us embrace this same spirit, surrendering all with boldness and with joy.
Genesis 1–3; Matthew 1
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Much of the misery in our Christian life comes not because the devil tackles us, but because we have never understood the simple laws of our make-up. We have to treat the body as the servant of Jesus Christ: when the body says “Sit,” and He says “Go,” go! When the body says “Eat,” and He says “Fast,” fast! When the body says “Yawn,” and He says “Pray,” pray!
Biblical Ethics, 107 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, January 01, 2025
Prescription For a Weary Worker - #9908
When Walt Disney animated the story of Snow White, he created seven memorable, even if short characters - the seven dwarfs. I'm not one of them! Now, I'm not going to ask you to name them; we'll save that for a game of Trivial Pursuit or something. But I always loved that little song they sang on the way to work.
And well, they didn't exactly work in an environmentally controlled office building. They worked in a mine all day. Not the greatest place to work! But each day they would merrily march off to work singing, (I won't sing it for you, but here we go.) "Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it's off to work we go." Well, what a great way to approach your responsibilities. I'll tell you, anyone who does that is a giant.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about a "Prescription For a Weary Worker."
Now, I attended a meeting of people who are very busy in Christian ministry, and one woman expressed a feeling that, as it turned out, everybody in the room agreed with. She said, "You know, people are working for the Lord around here, and they get very discouraged or they quit because of one word - weariness." And I watched a lot of heads nodding in that room.
Now, there are a lot of men and women who have spiritual responsibility and they struggle with a deep weariness, and it's far beyond physical. They're just tired of pushing, and of being sometimes the one of the few who care. They're tired of little results for a lot of work, and maybe not being appreciated. Some of you might say, "Well, how did you know?" Because there are a lot of us that serve the Lord that start to feel that way sometime or another.
Okay, our word for today from the Word of God, Hebrews 12:2-4 - "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning it's shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men..." And then notice this, "...so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."
And then the writer goes on to say, In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." Okay, there's this weariness that we talked about that some people who are listening can identify with; that deep, emotional kind that saps your physical strength too. And there's discouragement; the kind that results in a mechanical kind of service - just kind of crank it out. And honestly, more and more frequent thoughts of quitting.
Weariness, according to Hebrews 12, seems to result from taking your eyes off Jesus. Maybe you're weary because you've been doing God's work in your strength. You know better, but you've gone from God working through you to the crank-it-out weariness of you suddenly working for God. Oh, you're doing the same things, but it's not Him through you. It's you for Him. Or it could be that you've been looking at the results you're getting instead of the Savior you're serving. He gives the results, He gives the rewards - people don't.
Is it time to get your eyes back on the Jesus whose love compelled you to serve in the first place?
You know, when Jacob had to work seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel, I love what the Bible says, "They seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her." See, love makes the difference. Then you'll be able to join that saint who served the Lord for 70 years and who sang that song, "Since I started for the kingdom, since my life He controls, since I gave my life to Jesus, the longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows."
