June 27th

 Max Lucado Daily: Parents’ Number One Assignment

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.”

Straight teeth, straight A’s, or straight posture cannot hold a candle compared to placing a child on the straight spiritual path. The highest privilege and purpose you have as a parent is to lead your child in the way of Christ. The towering questions for Christian parents are these:

Do my kids know Christ?

Have they tasted His grace and found comfort at His cross?

Do they know their death is defeated and their hearts are empowered?

Parents, assignment number one is discipleship. Help your child walk in the way of the Master. What a phenomenal privilege is yours! Imagine the joy you will feel when you stand before Christ, flanked by your wife and children—when your child says, “Thanks, Dad.  Thanks for telling me about Christ.”

From Dad Time

Psalm 8

The Message

8 God, brilliant Lord,

    yours is a household name.

2 Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;

    toddlers shout the songs

That drown out enemy talk,

    and silence atheist babble.

3-4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,

    your handmade sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

    Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you bother with us?

    Why take a second look our way?

5-8 Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,

    bright with Eden’s dawn light.

You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,

    repeated to us your Genesis-charge,

Made us stewards of sheep and cattle,

    even animals out in the wild,

Birds flying and fish swimming,

    whales singing in the ocean deeps.

9 God, brilliant Lord,

    your name echoes around the world.

Our daily bread:

One Sure Thing

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17

By Mike Wittmer

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TODAY'S SCRIPTURE

Colossians 1:15-23

The Message

Christ Holds It All Together

15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

18-20 He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.

21-23 You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message.

Today's Insights

In Colossians, Paul refutes false teaching about who Jesus is and affirms His identity, deity, and authority. He’s God (1:15), the creator who sustains all creation (vv. 16-17). He’s the head of His new creation, the church (v. 18). And He’s the Savior who redeemed and reconciled us to God by shedding His blood on the cross (vv. 19-23). The apostle praises the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus as Savior: “In Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority” (2:9-10 nlt). Paul says, “Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him” (v. 7 nlt). Our salvation is certain in Jesus, and we can trust Him no matter what we face.

Learn more about overcoming fear by reading When Fear Seems Overwhelming.

Today's Devotion

Trees in cold climates prepare for winter through a process called “hardening.” Water drains from cells so they won’t freeze, expand, and burst the tree. The water that remains between the cells is too pure for ice crystals to attach. Its temperature may now drop to forty degrees below zero without cracking the tree. Trees harden at the same time each year because they take their cues from the fixed calendar of shortening days. They don't stake their lives on the weather, which may be unseasonably mild. They trust the sun, their one sure thing.

The Son who made the sun is surer yet. He is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created,” and “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15-17). Who tells trees when to harden each year? The same Son who makes the sun rise each morning and puts it to bed each night, pulls tides with the moon, whirls electrons in every cell, pumps your heart and inflates your lungs, and holds you when your heart is broken.

What holds the world together isn’t a force within nature but a person outside it. A person who entered the world He’d made so he could “reconcile to himself all things,” including you (v. 20). In this unpredictable world, you’ve got one sure thing. Jesus will “present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (v. 22).

Reflect & Pray

What frightens you? How does Jesus’ power over the world encourage you to pray and rest in Him?

Dear Jesus, I trust You today with whatever comes my way.

Personal Deliverance

BY OSWALD CHAMBERS

“Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord. — Jeremiah 1:8

In the book of Jeremiah, God poses a question with a terrifying answer: “Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people.” But he also makes a promise: “Wherever you go I will let you escape with your life” (Jeremiah 45:5). This is all God promises his children—that wherever he sends us, he will guard our lives. Our personal possessions are a matter of indifference to him; we have to hold them loosely. If we don’t, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress.

God is equally indifferent to our sense of what we deserve. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus suggests that when we are on his errands, there is no time to stand up for ourselves or to worry about whether people are treating us justly: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” (Matthew 5:11). To look for justice for ourselves is to be distracted from devotion to our Lord. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it.

If we are devoted to Jesus Christ, we know that we have no control over what we encounter. Our Lord’s message for us is this: “Keep working steadily at what I’ve told you to do, and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you will remove yourself from my deliverance.” The most devout among us become atheistic in this regard. Rather than believing in God, we enthrone common sense and tack God’s name onto it. We lean on our own understanding, instead of trusting him with all our heart.

Job 8-10; Acts 8:26-40

WISDOM FROM OSWALD

Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed God, not a confused God, not a God who stands apart from the problems, but One who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man. 

Disciples Indeed, 388 L