Max Lucado Daily: Doesn’t Look Like a Hero
The apostle Paul shaped history. Yet Paul would die in the jail of a despot. No headlines announced his execution. No observer recorded the events. Doesn’t look like a hero. The fellow who changes the oil in your car could be a hero. Maybe as he works he prays, asking God to do with the heart of the driver what he does with the engine. I know, I know…. Doesn’t fit our image of a hero.
John Egglen, a deacon, stepped in and gave the sermon for a few folks who had arrived before a snowstorm that prevented the pastor from getting there. In a moment of courage, he looked straight at a young boy in the service and said, “Look to Jesus. Look!” The boy’s name? Charles Haddon Spurgeon, England’s “prince of preachers.” You never know… tomorrow’s Spurgeon may be in your church or be your neighbor. And the hero who inspires him might be in your mirror!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Psalm 14
The Message
14 Bilious and bloated, they gas,
“God is gone.”
Their words are poison gas,
fouling the air; they poison
Rivers and skies;
thistles are their cash crop.
2 God sticks his head out of heaven.
He looks around.
He’s looking for someone not stupid—
one man, even, God-expectant,
just one God-ready woman.
3 He comes up empty. A string
of zeros. Useless, unshepherded
Sheep, taking turns pretending
to be Shepherd.
The ninety and nine
follow their fellow.
4 Don’t they know anything,
all these predators?
Don’t they know
they can’t get away with this—
Treating people like a fast-food meal
over which they’re too busy to pray?
5-6 Night is coming for them, and nightmares,
for God takes the side of victims.
Do you think you can mess
with the dreams of the poor?
You can’t, for God
makes their dreams come true.
7 Is there anyone around to save Israel?
Yes. God is around; God turns life around.
Turned-around Jacob skips rope,
turned-around Israel sings laughter.
Our daily bread reading and devotion :
Today's Scripture:
Ezekiel 34:1-2, 11-16
When the Sheep Get Scattered
34 1-6 God’s Message came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherd-leaders of Israel. Yes, prophesy! Tell those shepherds, ‘God, the Master, says: Doom to you shepherds of Israel, feeding your own mouths! Aren’t shepherds supposed to feed sheep? You drink the milk, you make clothes from the wool, you roast the lambs, but you don’t feed the sheep. You don’t build up the weak ones, don’t heal the sick, don’t doctor the injured, don’t go after the strays, don’t look for the lost. You bully and badger them. And now they’re scattered every which way because there was no shepherd—scattered and easy pickings for wolves and coyotes. Scattered—my sheep!—exposed and vulnerable across mountains and hills. My sheep scattered all over the world, and no one out looking for them!
11-16 “‘God, the Master, says: From now on, I myself am the shepherd. I’m going looking for them. As shepherds go after their flocks when they get scattered, I’m going after my sheep. I’ll rescue them from all the places they’ve been scattered to in the storms. I’ll bring them back from foreign peoples, gather them from foreign countries, and bring them back to their home country. I’ll feed them on the mountains of Israel, along the streams, among their own people. I’ll lead them into lush pasture so they can roam the mountain pastures of Israel, graze at leisure, feed in the rich pastures on the mountains of Israel. And I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. I myself will make sure they get plenty of rest. I’ll go after the lost, I’ll collect the strays, I’ll doctor the injured, I’ll build up the weak ones and oversee the strong ones so they’re not exploited.
Insight
Like the prophet Ezekiel, Isaiah also depicts God as a shepherd: “He tends his flock like a shepherd” (Isaiah 40:11). In Jesus, God appeared in the flesh as both a shepherd and a lamb. John says, He’s “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) and “the good shepherd” (10:14) who laid down His life for us. Revelation 7:17 beautifully pictures Him as both a lamb and a shepherd: “The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’ ” Today, Jesus, as our Great Shepherd, offers us salvation and living water that will last.
Visit go.odb.org/070426 to learn more about the Good Shepherd.
By: Arthur Jackson
A Shepherd’s Heart
I myself will tend my sheep.Ezekiel 34:15
“A baby deer is caught in our fence!” Heather called to her husband, Tim. He gently set it free, but its mother was nowhere to be seen.
That afternoon Tim saw a herd of deer emerge from the woods and graze nearby. One doe seemed especially alert. Wondering if she was the fawn’s mother, Tim looked up a recording of a fawn’s distress cry on his mobile phone and played it loudly over the speaker. The doe began to follow him, and he led her to where the fawn was nestled away. The fawn immediately began to nurse; freedom had been obtained, mother and baby were reunited—all thanks to Tim’s gentle shepherding.
God is even more intentional in caring for His people and providing the freedom we need. The people of Israel had stumbled in their sin and were trapped in exile in Babylon. Yet God promised, “I myself will search for my sheep and look after them” (Ezekiel 34:11). Because Israel’s leaders had allowed them to be “scattered” (v. 12), God said, “I will search for the lost and bring back the strays” (v. 16).
Believers in Jesus see God’s ultimate care in His search and rescue mission for us. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” Jesus said (John 10:11). When we were lost in our sins and captive to them, He chose to rescue us at great cost. On this day and all days, freedom is precious. Let’s celebrate the Good Shepherd, who has set us free!
By: James Banks
Reflect & Pray
What does God’s shepherding heart mean to you? How might you thank Him for His care today?
Good Shepherd, thank You for loving me and setting me free.
One of God’s Great Don’ts
BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Do not fret—it leads only to evil. —Psalm 37:8
Fretting is wicked if you are a child of God. When you fret, you place concern for yourself at the center of your life. It’s one thing to tell yourself not to worry, and a very different thing to be unable to worry because your disposition won’t allow it. A disposition founded on Jesus Christ doesn’t worry because it rests in perfect confidence in the Father.
“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7 kjv). We think of resting in the Lord as easy. It is easy—that is, until the nest is upset, until we find ourselves living, as so many are today, in tumult and anguish. Can we hear God telling us “Don’t fret” then? If this “don’t” doesn’t work then, it will never work. This “don’t” must work in days of perplexity as well as in days of peace. It must work in your particular case, or it will work in no one’s case. Resting in the Lord doesn’t depend on external circumstances at all but on your relationship to him.
Fretting always ends in sin. We imagine that a little anxiety and worry are an indication of how wise we are; they are really an indication of how wicked we are. Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way. Our Lord never worried and he was never anxious, because he wasn’t out to realize his own ideas. He was out to realize his Father’s ideas: “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).
All our worry is caused by calculating without God. Have you been propping up that stupid soul of yours with the idea that your circumstances are too much for God? Put your anxiousness away, and dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. Deliberately tell God that you will not worry. Pray to him, “Lord, I take you into my calculations as the biggest factor now.”
Job 28-29; Acts 13:1-25
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
To live a life alone with God does not mean that we live it apart from everyone else. The connection between godly men and women and those associated with them is continually revealed in the Bible, e.g., 1 Timothy 4:10.
Not Knowing Whither, 867 L
No comments:
Post a Comment