Max Lucado Daily: Judgment is God's Job
There is power in revenge. Intoxicating power. Haven't we tasted it? Haven't we been tempted to get even? As we escort the offender into the courtroom, we announce, "He hurt me!" and jurors shake their heads in disgust. "He abandoned me!" we explain, and the chambers echo with our accusation. "Guilty!" the judge snarls as he slams the gavel. "Guilty!" the jury agrees. We delight in this moment of justice. We relish this pound of flesh.
I don't mean to be cocky, but why are you doing God's work for Him? "Vengeance" is Mine," God declared. "I will repay." Proverbs 20:22 says, "Don't say, 'I'll pay you back for the wrong you did.' Wait for the Lord, and He will make things right." Judgment is God's job. To assume otherwise is to assume God can't do it. God has not asked us to settle the score or get even. Ever!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 23 The Message
23 1-3 “Don’t pass on malicious gossip.
“Don’t link up with a wicked person and give corrupt testimony. Don’t go along with the crowd in doing evil and don’t mess up your testimony in a case just to please the crowd. And just because someone is poor, don’t show favoritism in a dispute.
4-5 “If you find your enemy’s ox or donkey loose, take it back to him. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying helpless under its load, don’t walk off and leave it. Help it up.
6 “When there is a dispute concerning your poor, don’t tamper with the justice due them.
7 “Stay clear of false accusations. Don’t contribute to the death of innocent and good people. I don’t let the wicked off the hook.
8 “Don’t take bribes. Bribes blind perfectly good eyes and twist the speech of good people.
9 “Don’t take advantage of a stranger. You know what it’s like to be a stranger; you were strangers in Egypt.
10-11 “Sow your land for six years and gather in its crops, but in the seventh year leave it alone and give it a rest so that your poor may eat from it. What they leave, let the wildlife have. Do the same with your vineyards and olive groves.
12 “Work for six days and rest the seventh so your ox and donkey may rest and your servant and migrant workers may have time to get their needed rest.
13 “Listen carefully to everything I tell you. Don’t pay attention to other gods—don’t so much as mention their names.
* * *
14 “Three times a year you are to hold a festival for me.
15 “Hold the spring Festival of Unraised Bread when you eat unraised bread for seven days at the time set for the month of Abib, as I commanded you. That was the month you came out of Egypt. No one should show up before me empty-handed.
16 “Hold the summer Festival of Harvest when you bring in the firstfruits of all your work in the fields.
“Hold the autumn Festival of Ingathering at the end of the season when you bring in the year’s crops.
17 “Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Master, God.
18 “Don’t offer the blood of a sacrifice to me with anything that has yeast in it.
“Don’t leave the fat from my festival offering out overnight.
19 “Bring the choice first produce of the year to the house of your God.
“Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
* * *
20-24 “Now get yourselves ready. I’m sending my Angel ahead of you to guard you in your travels, to lead you to the place that I’ve prepared. Pay close attention to him. Obey him. Don’t go against him. He won’t put up with your rebellions because he’s acting on my authority. But if you obey him and do everything I tell you, I’ll be an enemy to your enemies, I’ll fight those who fight you. When my Angel goes ahead of you and leads you to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, I’ll clear the country of them. So don’t worship or serve their gods; don’t do anything they do because I’m going to wipe them right off the face of the Earth and smash their sacred phallic pillars to bits.
25-26 “But you—you serve your God and he’ll bless your food and your water. I’ll get rid of the sickness among you; there won’t be any miscarriages nor barren women in your land. I’ll make sure you live full and complete lives.
27 “I’ll send my Terror on ahead of you and throw those peoples you’re approaching into a panic. All you’ll see of your enemies is the backs of their necks.
28-31 “And I’ll send Despair on ahead of you. It will push the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites out of your way. I won’t get rid of them all at once lest the land grow up in weeds and the wild animals take over. Little by little I’ll get them out of there while you have a chance to get your crops going and make the land your own. I will make your borders stretch from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Wilderness to the Euphrates River. I’m turning everyone living in that land over to you; go ahead and drive them out.
32-33 “Don’t make any deals with them or their gods. They are not to stay in the same country with you lest they get you to sin by worshiping their gods. Beware. That’s a huge danger.”
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Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 1 John 4:1-6,17-19
On Denying the Incarnation
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit[a] of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
Footnotes:
1 John 4:6 Or spirit
Insight
First John 4:2-3 is used often by Christians as a test to determine if one is demon-possessed. This ignores the context. John is warning against false prophets who deny the humanity of Christ and teach that Jesus only appeared to be human. A false teacher is one who denies that Jesus Christ is both fully man and fully God.
Paranoia In Reverse
By Philip Yancey
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. —1 John 4:18
I remember watching television news reports in 1991 as the nonviolent revolution took place in the streets of Moscow. Russians who had grown up in totalitarianism suddenly declared, “We will act as if we are free,” taking to the streets and staring down tanks. The contrast between the faces of the leaders inside and the masses outside showed who was really afraid, and who was really free.
Watching the newsreels from Red Square on Finnish television, I came up with a new definition of faith: paranoia in reverse. A truly paranoid person organizes his or her life around a common perspective of fear. Anything that happens feeds that fear.
Faith works in reverse. A faithful person organizes his or her life around a common perspective of trust, not fear. Despite the apparent chaos of the present moment, God does reign. Regardless of how I may feel, I truly matter to a God of love.
What could happen if we in God’s kingdom truly acted as if the words of the apostle John were literally true: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). What if we really started living as if the most-repeated prayer in Christendom has actually been answered—that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven?
Far, far above thy thought
His counsel shall appear,
When fully He the work hath wrought
That caused thy needless fear. —Gerhardt
Feeding your faith helps starve your fears.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 11, 2014
The Spiritually Vigorous Saint
. . . that I may know Him . . . —Philippians 3:10
A saint is not to take the initiative toward self-realization, but toward knowing Jesus Christ. A spiritually vigorous saint never believes that his circumstances simply happen at random, nor does he ever think of his life as being divided into the secular and the sacred. He sees every situation in which he finds himself as the means of obtaining a greater knowledge of Jesus Christ, and he has an attitude of unrestrained abandon and total surrender about him. The Holy Spirit is determined that we will have the realization of Jesus Christ in every area of our lives, and He will bring us back to the same point over and over again until we do. Self-realization only leads to the glorification of good works, whereas a saint of God glorifies Jesus Christ through his good works. Whatever we may be doing— even eating, drinking, or washing disciples’ feet— we have to take the initiative of realizing and recognizing Jesus Christ in it. Every phase of our life has its counterpart in the life of Jesus. Our Lord realized His relationship to the Father even in the most menial task. “Jesus, knowing . . . that He had come from God and was going to God, . . . took a towel . . . and began to wash the disciples’ feet . . .” (John 13:3-5).
The aim of a spiritually vigorous saint is “that I may know Him . . .” Do I know Him where I am today? If not, I am failing Him. I am not here for self-realization, but to know Jesus Christ. In Christian work our initiative and motivation are too often simply the result of realizing that there is work to be done and that we must do it. Yet that is never the attitude of a spiritually vigorous saint. His aim is to achieve the realization of Jesus Christ in every set of circumstances.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, July 11, 2014
Mother's Voice is Still There - #7175
The florists have been looking forward to their recliners. They finally get to recover from their busiest day of the year. Well, you know what that is. It was Mother's Day. Hallmark is counting all their Mother's Day card money. Phone companies get pretty happy then, too. It's the busiest calling day of the year. Did you know that? Mother's Day, of course, that's over. It only lasts a day. It's over until next year. Oh, but not their marks on our life.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mother's Voice Is Still There."
I wrote some short stories when I was a kid, and there was only one person who would listen to me read them - Mom. And as lame as those stories may have been, she watered this wannabe writer with her encouragement. And she was my #1 fan at every activity. She even laughed at my jokes, even if she didn't always get them.
I was thinking today about how our mother's voice and our mother's influence is with us for life. It reminded me of the story of a man named John Newton. That's not a really well-known name. But what he wrote is known around the world.
It's the song they play at virtually every police and fire funeral. At times, it was the song heard almost every day at Ground Zero after September 11, 2001. If people only know one hymn, it's the one John Newton wrote - Amazing Grace.
But no one would have ever - ever - picked John Newton as the writer of an immortal hymn. When his mother died when he was a boy, his seafaring dad took him to sea. That's where John learned the partying and harsh ways of a sailor. As for God, well you could forget about that. Newton's cargo was human beings. Ripped from their families and chained in the belly of some death-trap slave ship.
Until the day a violent storm threatened to sink his ship. In that moment when he knew where his only hope was, John Newton yelled into the storm, "My mother's God - God of mercy - save me!" And his mother's God did. More importantly, his mother's God became John Newton's God that day. His life was saved that day. But so was his soul. Because of that "amazing grace" that enabled him to say, "I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but
now I see."
Over the years many a son or daughter has been the subject of many a mother's prayers. But it could be they've never chosen her God to be their God until the storm. It's when we are suddenly at the mercy of something we can't control, we can't fix, that we finally say, "I'm not enough." And a mother's prayers are finally answered. She may not have lived to see it, but her prayers have followed us wherever we've gone.
John Newton picked a pretty good word to describe a life that we're running instead of the God who gave it to us - lost. I'd still be lost, wondering why I'm here, wondering where I'm going, and what would fill the hole in my heart. If it weren't for the Man who said why He came here in our word today from the Word of God recorded in the Bible in Luke 19:10, "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost." That's what Jesus was doing when He was nailed to a cross. He said those three words that change a person's life; that change a person's eternity, "Father, forgive them."
I wonder if you have ever embraced what He did on that cross for you and made the Savior your Savior; knowing that it was your sin He was intending to forgive. But He waits to come in to become your rescuer from your sin. He's come to seek you today through our being together so He could save you for now and forever.
Do you want to know how to begin a relationship with Him? Would you go to our website and just spend a few minutes with me there? It's ANewStory.com. If you've been so blessed to have a mother who's prayed for you, that's a powerful reason to say "Thank you" and to ask her God to save you, as He has so many.
Believe me, there's no need to wait 'til the ship is coming apart.
