Max Lucado Daily: THE MASTER MUSICIAN
In his later years Beethoven spent hours playing a broken harpsichord. The instrument was worthless. Keys were missing. Strings stretched. It was out of tune, harsh on the ears. Nonetheless the great pianist would play till tears came down his cheeks. You’d think he was hearing the sublime. He was. He was deaf. Beethoven was hearing the sound the instrument should make, not the one it did make.
Maybe you feel like Beethoven’s harpsichord? Out of tune…inadequate…your service ill-timed or insignificant? Ever wonder what God does when the instrument is broken? How does the Master respond when the keys don’t work? Does he demand a replacement? Or does he patiently tune until he hears the song he longs to hear? If you’ve asked those questions (and who hasn’t), I want you to know that the Master Musician fixes what we can’t and hears music when we don’t! And He loves to hear the music that comes from your life.
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Esther 6
That night the king couldn’t sleep. He ordered the record book, the day-by-day journal of events, to be brought and read to him. They came across the story there about the time that Mordecai had exposed the plot of Bigthana and Teresh—the two royal eunuchs who guarded the entrance and who had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.
3 The king asked, “What great honor was given to Mordecai for this?”
“Nothing,” replied the king’s servants who were in attendance. “Nothing has been done for him.”
4 The king said, “Is there anybody out in the court?”
Now Haman had just come into the outer court of the king’s palace to talk to the king about hanging Mordecai on the gallows he had built for him.
5 The king’s servants said, “Haman is out there, waiting in the court.”
“Bring him in,” said the king.
6-9 When Haman entered, the king said, “What would be appropriate for the man the king especially wants to honor?”
Haman thought to himself, “He must be talking about honoring me—who else?” So he answered the king, “For the man the king delights to honor, do this: Bring a royal robe that the king has worn and a horse the king has ridden, one with a royal crown on its head. Then give the robe and the horse to one of the king’s most noble princes. Have him robe the man whom the king especially wants to honor; have the prince lead him on horseback through the city square, proclaiming before him, ‘This is what is done for the man whom the king especially wants to honor!’”
10 “Go and do it,” the king said to Haman. “Don’t waste another minute. Take the robe and horse and do what you have proposed to Mordecai the Jew who sits at the King’s Gate. Don’t leave out a single detail of your plan.”
11 So Haman took the robe and horse; he robed Mordecai and led him through the city square, proclaiming before him, “This is what is done for the man whom the king especially wants to honor!”
12-13 Then Mordecai returned to the King’s Gate, but Haman fled to his house, thoroughly mortified, hiding his face. When Haman had finished telling his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had happened to him, his knowledgeable friends who were there and his wife Zeresh said, “If this Mordecai is in fact a Jew, your bad luck has only begun. You don’t stand a chance against him—you’re as good as ruined.”
14 While they were still talking, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman off to the dinner that Esther had prepared.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Read: Psalm 91
1-13 You who sit down in the High God’s presence,
spend the night in Shaddai’s shadow,
Say this: “God, you’re my refuge.
I trust in you and I’m safe!”
That’s right—he rescues you from hidden traps,
shields you from deadly hazards.
His huge outstretched arms protect you—
under them you’re perfectly safe;
his arms fend off all harm.
Fear nothing—not wild wolves in the night,
not flying arrows in the day,
Not disease that prowls through the darkness,
not disaster that erupts at high noon.
Even though others succumb all around,
drop like flies right and left,
no harm will even graze you.
You’ll stand untouched, watch it all from a distance,
watch the wicked turn into corpses.
Yes, because God’s your refuge,
the High God your very own home,
Evil can’t get close to you,
harm can’t get through the door.
He ordered his angels
to guard you wherever you go.
If you stumble, they’ll catch you;
their job is to keep you from falling.
You’ll walk unharmed among lions and snakes,
and kick young lions and serpents from the path.
14-16 “If you’ll hold on to me for dear life,” says God,
“I’ll get you out of any trouble.
I’ll give you the best of care
if you’ll only get to know and trust me.
Call me and I’ll answer, be at your side in bad times;
I’ll rescue you, then throw you a party.
I’ll give you a long life,
give you a long drink of salvation!”
INSIGHT:
Psalm 91 is a beautiful expression of confidence in the Lord’s presence and protection. The writer speaks of both physical protection (from arrows, disease, pestilence, plague) and emotional protection from the evils and disasters happening all around (vv. 5–6). But this psalm is also a conversation. The Lord responds to the faith of those who trust Him by saying, “I will rescue him” (v. 14). J.R. Hudberg
Under His Wings
By Linda Washington
He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge. Psalm 91:4
When I think of protection, I don’t automatically think of a bird’s feathers. Though a bird’s feathers might seem like a flimsy form of protection, there is more to them than meets the eye.
Bird feathers are an amazing example of God’s design. Feathers have a smooth part and a fluffy part. The smooth part of the feather has stiff barbs with tiny hooks that lock together like the prongs of a zipper. The fluffy part keeps a bird warm. Together both parts of the feather protect the bird from wind and rain. But many baby birds are covered in a fluffy down and their feathers haven’t fully developed. So a mother bird has to cover them in the nest with her own feathers to protect them from wind and rain.
He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge. Psalm 91:4
The image of God “[covering] us with his feathers” in Psalm 91:4 and in other Bible passages (see Ps. 17:8) is one of comfort and protection. The image that comes to mind is a mother bird covering her little ones with her feathers. Like a parent whose arms are a safe place to retreat from a scary storm or a hurt, God’s comforting presence provides safety and protection from life’s emotional storms.
Though we go through trouble and heartache, we can face them without fear as long as our faces are turned toward God. He is our “refuge” (91:2, 4, 9).
Father God, help me trust that You are bigger than any fear I have.
Our Daily Bread welcomes writer Linda Washington! Meet Linda and all our authors at odb.org/all-authors
When fear causes hope to fad
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
The Evidence of the New Birth
You must be born again. —John 3:7
The answer to Nicodemus’ question, “How can a man be born when he is old?” is: Only when he is willing to die to everything in his life, including his rights, his virtues, and his religion, and becomes willing to receive into himself a new life that he has never before experienced (John 3:4). This new life exhibits itself in our conscious repentance and through our unconscious holiness.
“But as many as received Him…” (John 1:12). Is my knowledge of Jesus the result of my own internal spiritual perception, or is it only what I have learned through listening to others? Is there something in my life that unites me with the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior? My spiritual history must have as its underlying foundation a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. To be born again means that I see Jesus.
“…unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God ” (John 3:3). Am I seeking only for the evidence of God’s kingdom, or am I actually recognizing His absolute sovereign control? The new birth gives me a new power of vision by which I begin to discern God’s control. His sovereignty was there all the time, but with God being true to His nature, I could not see it until I received His very nature myself.
“Whoever has been born of God does not sin…” (1 John 3:9). Am I seeking to stop sinning or have I actually stopped? To be born of God means that I have His supernatural power to stop sinning. The Bible never asks, “Should a Christian sin?” The Bible emphatically states that a Christian must not sin. The work of the new birth is being effective in us when we do not commit sin. It is not merely that we have the power not to sin, but that we have actually stopped sinning. Yet 1 John 3:9 does not mean that we cannot sin— it simply means that if we will obey the life of God in us, that we do not have to sin.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Why Are You Standing Out in the Cold - #7982
It was one of those winter nights that chills you to the bone – cold temperatures, a brisk north wind, a freezing rain, some snow. Our friends were inside their house, and their horses were inside their barn. Well, actually, three out of four of their horses were inside the barn. Cassie, their Shetland, was standing outside for some strange reason. So as our friends looked out their window, they saw this pitiful scene: one lone horse under a barn light, standing there with the freezing rain and snow pounding down on her, forming ice on her mane. Now, her horse friends were all smart enough to be in their nice warm stalls, but, oh no, not Cassie.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why Are You Standing Out in the Cold."
That horse chose to stand out in the cold – when all the time she could have been in the warm place that had been provided for her. You know in some ways, a lot of people are making that same mistake – maybe you.
In a way, maybe you feel as if you've been standing out in the cold for a long time. There's this loneliness that no relationship has satisfied, this confusion, this gnawing sense of uncertainty and insecurity, this emptiness that never seems to go away no matter what you've filled yourself up with. Emotionally, spiritually, it's as if you're out in the chilling wind and the freezing rain. But you don't have to be. There's a warm place that's been provided for you, but you have got to step inside. In fact, this very day, I believe Jesus Christ himself may be beckoning you to come in where it's warm.
Listen to His invitation. It's our word for today from the Word of God in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." If we're "weary and burdened" it may be because we haven't come to Him. It could be that Jesus has been asking you to come to Him for a long time but you've never responded. He's been waiting to answer your loneliness with His unloseable love, to turn your confusion into a sense of knowing why you're here and where you're going. He wants to replace that uncertainty with this unshakeable peace, to fill that emptiness in your heart with the relationship with Him that you were made for. But you're still in the cold because you've never really come inside where Jesus is.
There are actually five things you can do with the man who died to pay for your sins. You can just outright reject Jesus. You can ignore Jesus, pushing Him to the margins for other pursuits. You can postpone Jesus – you'll get around to Him someday. You can agree with Jesus – believing everything you've ever been told about Him. Or you can commit yourself completely to Jesus. Four of those five responses end the same place – out in the cold, now and forever. Only one leads to heaven: giving yourself to Jesus. Yes, it's possible to agree with everything about Jesus and yet never have given yourself to Him. It's about commitment, not agreement.
Today, though, He's close to you. He's where you are, and He's whispering, "Come to me...I will give you rest." His love for you, His forgiveness, His peace have gone unclaimed far too long. Today you can begin your relationship with Him by saying, "Jesus, you died for me and I'm giving myself to you for now and forever." That's when you receive what He's been waiting to give you all these years. If that's what you want, I would love to help you begin your own love relationship with Jesus. That's why we even set up our website and made sure that's what it's all about. That website is ANewStory.com. And I urge you at your first chance today to get there and use it as a road to make sure that you have begun your relationship with the One who's been trying to get you to come inside to the warmth for a long time.
You've been out in the cold long enough. There's no need for you to be out there any longer. You're so close to the warmth and the safety of belonging to Jesus Christ. Today, won't you come inside?
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Monday, August 14, 2017
Revelation 13, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: WHEN THE PRICE IS TOO HIGH
In the days when I was a missionary in Brazil, I went to visit one of our church leaders. We hadn’t seen him for several Sundays. Friends told me he had inherited three hundred dollars and was constructing, by hand, a one-room house. When he gave me a tour of the project, it took about twenty seconds.
I told him we had missed him and that the church needed him back. He grew quiet and turned and looked at his house. His eyes were moist. “You’re right, Max,” he confessed, “I guess I just got too greedy.” Greedy? I wanted to say, You’re building a hut in a swamp and you call it greed? But he was right. Greed is relative. Greed is not defined by what something costs; it is measured by what it costs you. If anything costs you your family or your faith, the price is too high!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Revelation 13
The Beast from the Sea
And the Dragon stood on the shore of the sea. I saw a Beast rising from the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads—on each horn a crown, and each head inscribed with a blasphemous name. The Beast I saw looked like a leopard with bear paws and a lion’s mouth. The Dragon turned over its power to it, its throne and great authority.
3-4 One of the Beast’s heads looked as if it had been struck a deathblow, and then healed. The whole earth was agog, gaping at the Beast. They worshiped the Dragon who gave the Beast authority, and they worshiped the Beast, exclaiming, “There’s never been anything like the Beast! No one would dare go to war with the Beast!”
5-8 The Beast had a loud mouth, boastful and blasphemous. It could do anything it wanted for forty-two months. It yelled blasphemies against God, blasphemed his Name, blasphemed his Church, especially those already dwelling with God in Heaven. It was permitted to make war on God’s holy people and conquer them. It held absolute sway over all tribes and peoples, tongues and races. Everyone on earth whose name was not written from the world’s foundation in the slaughtered Lamb’s Book of Life will worship the Beast.
9-10 Are you listening to this? They’ve made their bed; now they must lie in it. Anyone marked for prison goes straight to prison; anyone pulling a sword goes down by the sword. Meanwhile, God’s holy people passionately and faithfully stand their ground.
The Beast from Under the Ground
11-12 I saw another Beast rising out of the ground. It had two horns like a lamb but sounded like a dragon when it spoke. It was a puppet of the first Beast, made earth and everyone in it worship the first Beast, which had been healed of its deathblow.
13-17 This second Beast worked magical signs, dazzling people by making fire come down from Heaven. It used the magic it got from the Beast to dupe earth dwellers, getting them to make an image of the Beast that received the deathblow and lived. It was able to animate the image of the Beast so that it talked, and then arrange that anyone not worshiping the Beast would be killed. It forced all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to have a mark on the right hand or forehead. Without the mark of the name of the Beast or the number of its name, it was impossible to buy or sell anything.
18 Solve a riddle: Put your heads together and figure out the meaning of the number of the Beast. It’s a human number: 666.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, August 14, 2017
Read: Matthew 18:1–10
Whoever Becomes Simple Again
At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, “Who gets the highest rank in God’s kingdom?”
2-5 For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.
6-7 “But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck. Doom to the world for giving these God-believing children a hard time! Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it worse—and it’s doomsday to you if you do.
8-9 “If your hand or your foot gets in the way of God, chop it off and throw it away. You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owners of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You’re better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.
10 “Watch that you don’t treat a single one of these childlike believers arrogantly. You realize, don’t you, that their personal angels are constantly in touch with my Father in heaven?
INSIGHT:
Speaking into a context where social status was central, Jesus made the revolutionary claim that true greatness is found through being humble like children (Matt. 18:3–4), who had no status on their own. He further declared that harming a child is a grave sin (vv. 6, 10). His is a kingdom dedicated to uplifting and cherishing the vulnerable (v. 5). Monica Brands
Love for Children
By Bill Crowder
Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children. Matthew 19:14 nlt
Thomas Barnado entered the London Hospital medical school in 1865, dreaming of life as a medical missionary in China. Barnado soon discovered a desperate need in his own front yard—the many homeless children living and dying on the streets of London. Barnado determined to do something about this horrendous situation. Developing homes for destitute children in London’s east end, Barnado rescued some 60,000 boys and girls from poverty and possible early death. Theologian and pastor John Stott said, “Today we might call him the patron saint of street kids.”
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children” (Matt. 19:14 nlt). Imagine the surprise the crowds—and Jesus’s own disciples—must have felt at this declaration. In the ancient world, children had little value and were largely relegated to the margins of life. Yet Jesus welcomed, blessed, and valued children.
James, a New Testament writer, challenged Christ-followers saying, “Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans . . . in their troubles” (James 1:27 nlt). Today, like those first-century orphans, children of every social strata, ethnicity, and family environment are at risk due to neglect, human trafficking, abuse, drugs, and more. How can we honor the Father who loves us by showing His care for these little ones Jesus welcomes?
See the book A Cup of Cold Water in His Name: 60 Ways to Care for the Needy by Lorie Newman at dhp.org/jd007.html.
Be an expression of the love of Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, August 14, 2017
The Discipline of the Lord
My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him. —Hebrews 12:5
It is very easy to grieve the Spirit of God; we do it by despising the discipline of the Lord, or by becoming discouraged when He rebukes us. If our experience of being set apart from sin and being made holy through the process of sanctification is still very shallow, we tend to mistake the reality of God for something else. And when the Spirit of God gives us a sense of warning or restraint, we are apt to say mistakenly, “Oh, that must be from the devil.”
“Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and do not despise Him when He says to you, in effect, “Don’t be blind on this point anymore— you are not as far along spiritually as you thought you were. Until now I have not been able to reveal this to you, but I’m revealing it to you right now.” When the Lord disciplines you like that, let Him have His way with you. Allow Him to put you into a right-standing relationship before God.
“…nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him.” We begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, “Oh well, I can’t help it. I prayed and things didn’t turn out right anyway. So I’m simply going to give up on everything.” Just think what would happen if we acted like this in any other area of our lives!
Am I fully prepared to allow God to grip me by His power and do a work in me that is truly worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me— sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me. But He has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to sanctify me completely, whatever the cost (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God.
Not Knowing Whither
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, August 14, 2017
A Big Jolt to Your Heart - #7981
"They had to use the paddles on him." Now that sounds like something we might say about an exasperated parent's response to an out-of-control child. But the paddles we're talking about here were the ones they used on our neighbor when he was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. His wife said they saved his life by using the "paddles" on him. Actually, what they used was a device called a defibrillator. (You see why most people call them the paddles.) The defibrillator has two paddles that, after they are placed on the patient's chest, generate this strong electric jolt to restart the heart. More and more ambulances are carrying them, more and more emergency medical technicians are being trained to use them, and they are in more and more public places. When the heart stops, something has to be done to get it going again - even if it takes a big jolt.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Big Jolt To Your Heart."
Actually, that might be God's prescription for your heart condition right now. Because a heart that was once beating strong spiritually can start slowing down, and even stop beating. Something radical has got to be done to restart a heart for God that is in trouble. That's where God brings out His "paddles" to administer a shock to bring someone back to life.
Now our word for today from the Word of God is in 2 Chronicles 7:13-14. Verse 14 is that classic verse on spiritual revival. Well known. It lays out the steps we need to take to receive the answers to our seemingly unanswered prayers...to make a new beginning...to fix what's broken in our lives. Here's what God says. "If My people, who are called by My Name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
Those are pretty aggressive steps to get back a spiritual life and health that you have lost. What would make us come to the point where we would surrender our self-reliance and our pride, get on our knees, and abandon the sin and compromise we have been tolerating? What makes us come back to life is a jolt from God.
In verse 13, the one right before this great formula for revival, God says this. "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among My people, if My people who are called by My Name will humble themselves..." and so on...in other words God says, "I have to wake you up somehow so you will realize what you've lost and you will pay the price to get it back." So He sends the drought, the locusts, the plague - not because He doesn't love you, but because He does! The doctor administers that electric jolt, not because he doesn't care about the patient, but because he does. He knows it's what it will take to bring the patient back to life.
So maybe this explains why you've been having some of the jolts that you've been getting hit with lately. You've been asking, "Why?" and God is answering, "To restart your failing heart." The jolts are God's shocks to get your attention so you will listen to what He's been trying to say to you. You haven't responded to His gentler therapies, so now He has sent these jolts to bring you back.
So you've got the pain...now please get the point. It may be all about you returning to your first love for Jesus...to establishing your daily Jesus-time as the center of your life...maybe He's calling you to a new purity where there's a zero tolerance for sin in your life. In order to reach us, God sends situations - like plagues and droughts - that are totally beyond our power to fix so we will surrender again to the only One who can. Sometimes He allows us to become emotionally isolated so we are shut up alone with Him, to find our identity and our fulfillment totally in Him.
So, if you've been feeling the jolts lately, consider the possibility that God sent them to bring you back to life. He knows your heart for Him has been slowing down, even stopping. And He's not going to let you slip away. Your Father who loves you is sending those jolts to restart your heart.
In the days when I was a missionary in Brazil, I went to visit one of our church leaders. We hadn’t seen him for several Sundays. Friends told me he had inherited three hundred dollars and was constructing, by hand, a one-room house. When he gave me a tour of the project, it took about twenty seconds.
I told him we had missed him and that the church needed him back. He grew quiet and turned and looked at his house. His eyes were moist. “You’re right, Max,” he confessed, “I guess I just got too greedy.” Greedy? I wanted to say, You’re building a hut in a swamp and you call it greed? But he was right. Greed is relative. Greed is not defined by what something costs; it is measured by what it costs you. If anything costs you your family or your faith, the price is too high!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Revelation 13
The Beast from the Sea
And the Dragon stood on the shore of the sea. I saw a Beast rising from the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads—on each horn a crown, and each head inscribed with a blasphemous name. The Beast I saw looked like a leopard with bear paws and a lion’s mouth. The Dragon turned over its power to it, its throne and great authority.
3-4 One of the Beast’s heads looked as if it had been struck a deathblow, and then healed. The whole earth was agog, gaping at the Beast. They worshiped the Dragon who gave the Beast authority, and they worshiped the Beast, exclaiming, “There’s never been anything like the Beast! No one would dare go to war with the Beast!”
5-8 The Beast had a loud mouth, boastful and blasphemous. It could do anything it wanted for forty-two months. It yelled blasphemies against God, blasphemed his Name, blasphemed his Church, especially those already dwelling with God in Heaven. It was permitted to make war on God’s holy people and conquer them. It held absolute sway over all tribes and peoples, tongues and races. Everyone on earth whose name was not written from the world’s foundation in the slaughtered Lamb’s Book of Life will worship the Beast.
9-10 Are you listening to this? They’ve made their bed; now they must lie in it. Anyone marked for prison goes straight to prison; anyone pulling a sword goes down by the sword. Meanwhile, God’s holy people passionately and faithfully stand their ground.
The Beast from Under the Ground
11-12 I saw another Beast rising out of the ground. It had two horns like a lamb but sounded like a dragon when it spoke. It was a puppet of the first Beast, made earth and everyone in it worship the first Beast, which had been healed of its deathblow.
13-17 This second Beast worked magical signs, dazzling people by making fire come down from Heaven. It used the magic it got from the Beast to dupe earth dwellers, getting them to make an image of the Beast that received the deathblow and lived. It was able to animate the image of the Beast so that it talked, and then arrange that anyone not worshiping the Beast would be killed. It forced all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to have a mark on the right hand or forehead. Without the mark of the name of the Beast or the number of its name, it was impossible to buy or sell anything.
18 Solve a riddle: Put your heads together and figure out the meaning of the number of the Beast. It’s a human number: 666.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, August 14, 2017
Read: Matthew 18:1–10
Whoever Becomes Simple Again
At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, “Who gets the highest rank in God’s kingdom?”
2-5 For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.
6-7 “But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck. Doom to the world for giving these God-believing children a hard time! Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it worse—and it’s doomsday to you if you do.
8-9 “If your hand or your foot gets in the way of God, chop it off and throw it away. You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owners of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You’re better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.
10 “Watch that you don’t treat a single one of these childlike believers arrogantly. You realize, don’t you, that their personal angels are constantly in touch with my Father in heaven?
INSIGHT:
Speaking into a context where social status was central, Jesus made the revolutionary claim that true greatness is found through being humble like children (Matt. 18:3–4), who had no status on their own. He further declared that harming a child is a grave sin (vv. 6, 10). His is a kingdom dedicated to uplifting and cherishing the vulnerable (v. 5). Monica Brands
Love for Children
By Bill Crowder
Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children. Matthew 19:14 nlt
Thomas Barnado entered the London Hospital medical school in 1865, dreaming of life as a medical missionary in China. Barnado soon discovered a desperate need in his own front yard—the many homeless children living and dying on the streets of London. Barnado determined to do something about this horrendous situation. Developing homes for destitute children in London’s east end, Barnado rescued some 60,000 boys and girls from poverty and possible early death. Theologian and pastor John Stott said, “Today we might call him the patron saint of street kids.”
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children” (Matt. 19:14 nlt). Imagine the surprise the crowds—and Jesus’s own disciples—must have felt at this declaration. In the ancient world, children had little value and were largely relegated to the margins of life. Yet Jesus welcomed, blessed, and valued children.
James, a New Testament writer, challenged Christ-followers saying, “Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans . . . in their troubles” (James 1:27 nlt). Today, like those first-century orphans, children of every social strata, ethnicity, and family environment are at risk due to neglect, human trafficking, abuse, drugs, and more. How can we honor the Father who loves us by showing His care for these little ones Jesus welcomes?
See the book A Cup of Cold Water in His Name: 60 Ways to Care for the Needy by Lorie Newman at dhp.org/jd007.html.
Be an expression of the love of Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, August 14, 2017
The Discipline of the Lord
My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him. —Hebrews 12:5
It is very easy to grieve the Spirit of God; we do it by despising the discipline of the Lord, or by becoming discouraged when He rebukes us. If our experience of being set apart from sin and being made holy through the process of sanctification is still very shallow, we tend to mistake the reality of God for something else. And when the Spirit of God gives us a sense of warning or restraint, we are apt to say mistakenly, “Oh, that must be from the devil.”
“Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and do not despise Him when He says to you, in effect, “Don’t be blind on this point anymore— you are not as far along spiritually as you thought you were. Until now I have not been able to reveal this to you, but I’m revealing it to you right now.” When the Lord disciplines you like that, let Him have His way with you. Allow Him to put you into a right-standing relationship before God.
“…nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him.” We begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, “Oh well, I can’t help it. I prayed and things didn’t turn out right anyway. So I’m simply going to give up on everything.” Just think what would happen if we acted like this in any other area of our lives!
Am I fully prepared to allow God to grip me by His power and do a work in me that is truly worthy of Himself? Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me— sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me. But He has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to sanctify me completely, whatever the cost (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God.
Not Knowing Whither
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, August 14, 2017
A Big Jolt to Your Heart - #7981
"They had to use the paddles on him." Now that sounds like something we might say about an exasperated parent's response to an out-of-control child. But the paddles we're talking about here were the ones they used on our neighbor when he was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. His wife said they saved his life by using the "paddles" on him. Actually, what they used was a device called a defibrillator. (You see why most people call them the paddles.) The defibrillator has two paddles that, after they are placed on the patient's chest, generate this strong electric jolt to restart the heart. More and more ambulances are carrying them, more and more emergency medical technicians are being trained to use them, and they are in more and more public places. When the heart stops, something has to be done to get it going again - even if it takes a big jolt.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Big Jolt To Your Heart."
Actually, that might be God's prescription for your heart condition right now. Because a heart that was once beating strong spiritually can start slowing down, and even stop beating. Something radical has got to be done to restart a heart for God that is in trouble. That's where God brings out His "paddles" to administer a shock to bring someone back to life.
Now our word for today from the Word of God is in 2 Chronicles 7:13-14. Verse 14 is that classic verse on spiritual revival. Well known. It lays out the steps we need to take to receive the answers to our seemingly unanswered prayers...to make a new beginning...to fix what's broken in our lives. Here's what God says. "If My people, who are called by My Name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
Those are pretty aggressive steps to get back a spiritual life and health that you have lost. What would make us come to the point where we would surrender our self-reliance and our pride, get on our knees, and abandon the sin and compromise we have been tolerating? What makes us come back to life is a jolt from God.
In verse 13, the one right before this great formula for revival, God says this. "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among My people, if My people who are called by My Name will humble themselves..." and so on...in other words God says, "I have to wake you up somehow so you will realize what you've lost and you will pay the price to get it back." So He sends the drought, the locusts, the plague - not because He doesn't love you, but because He does! The doctor administers that electric jolt, not because he doesn't care about the patient, but because he does. He knows it's what it will take to bring the patient back to life.
So maybe this explains why you've been having some of the jolts that you've been getting hit with lately. You've been asking, "Why?" and God is answering, "To restart your failing heart." The jolts are God's shocks to get your attention so you will listen to what He's been trying to say to you. You haven't responded to His gentler therapies, so now He has sent these jolts to bring you back.
So you've got the pain...now please get the point. It may be all about you returning to your first love for Jesus...to establishing your daily Jesus-time as the center of your life...maybe He's calling you to a new purity where there's a zero tolerance for sin in your life. In order to reach us, God sends situations - like plagues and droughts - that are totally beyond our power to fix so we will surrender again to the only One who can. Sometimes He allows us to become emotionally isolated so we are shut up alone with Him, to find our identity and our fulfillment totally in Him.
So, if you've been feeling the jolts lately, consider the possibility that God sent them to bring you back to life. He knows your heart for Him has been slowing down, even stopping. And He's not going to let you slip away. Your Father who loves you is sending those jolts to restart your heart.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Esther 5, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Who is in Charge?
A day transporting a family from one city to another is closely akin to God transporting us from our home to his. And some of life's stormiest hours occur when the passenger and the driver disagree on what takes place during the trip! Can you imagine the chaos if a parent indulged every child's wishes? Can you imagine the chaos if God indulged each of ours?
I Thessalonians 5:9 says "God has destined us to the full attainment of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." God's overarching desire is that you reach that destiny. His itinerary includes stops that encourage your journey. He frowns on stops that deter you. When his sovereign plan and your earthly plan collide, a decision must be made.
Who is in charge of this journey? If God must choose between your earthly satisfaction and your heavenly salvation, which do you hope he chooses? Me, too!
From In the Eye of the Storm
Esther 5
1-3 Three days later Esther dressed in her royal robes and took up a position in the inner court of the palace in front of the king’s throne room. The king was on his throne facing the entrance. When he noticed Queen Esther standing in the court, he was pleased to see her; the king extended the gold scepter in his hand. Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter. The king asked, “And what’s your desire, Queen Esther? What do you want? Ask and it’s yours—even if it’s half my kingdom!”
4 “If it please the king,” said Esther, “let the king come with Haman to a dinner I’ve prepared for him.”
5-6 “Get Haman at once,” said the king, “so we can go to dinner with Esther.”
So the king and Haman joined Esther at the dinner she had arranged. As they were drinking the wine, the king said, “Now, what is it you want? Half of my kingdom isn’t too much to ask! Just ask.”
7-8 Esther answered, “Here’s what I want. If the king favors me and is pleased to do what I desire and ask, let the king and Haman come again tomorrow to the dinner that I will fix for them. Then I’ll give a straight answer to the king’s question.”
9-13 Haman left the palace that day happy, beaming. And then he saw Mordecai sitting at the King’s Gate ignoring him, oblivious to him. Haman was furious with Mordecai. But he held himself in and went on home. He got his friends together with his wife Zeresh and started bragging about how much money he had, his many sons, all the times the king had honored him, and his promotion to the highest position in the government. “On top of all that,” Haman continued, “Queen Esther invited me to a private dinner she gave for the king, just the three of us. And she’s invited me to another one tomorrow. But I can’t enjoy any of it when I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the King’s Gate.”
14 His wife Zeresh and all his friends said, “Build a gallows seventy-five feet high. First thing in the morning speak with the king; get him to order Mordecai hanged on it. Then happily go with the king to dinner.”
Haman liked that. He had the gallows built.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Read: Habakkuk 3:16–19
God, is it River you’re mad at?
Angry at old River?
Were you raging at Sea when you rode
horse and chariot through to salvation?
You unfurled your bow
and let loose a volley of arrows.
You split Earth with rivers.
Mountains saw what was coming.
They twisted in pain.
Flood Waters poured in.
Ocean roared and reared huge waves.
Sun and Moon stopped in their tracks.
Your flashing arrows stopped them,
your lightning-strike spears impaled them.
Angry, you stomped through Earth.
Furious, you crushed the godless nations.
You were out to save your people,
to save your specially chosen people.
You beat the stuffing
out of King Wicked,
Stripped him naked
from head to toe,
Set his severed head on his own spear
and blew away his army.
Scattered they were to the four winds—
and ended up food for the sharks!
You galloped through the Sea on your horses,
racing on the crest of the waves.
When I heard it, my stomach did flips.
I stammered and stuttered.
My bones turned to water.
I staggered and stumbled.
I sit back and wait for Doomsday
to descend on our attackers.
17-19 Though the cherry trees don’t blossom
and the strawberries don’t ripen,
Though the apples are worm-eaten
and the wheat fields stunted,
Though the sheep pens are sheepless
and the cattle barns empty,
I’m singing joyful praise to God.
I’m turning cartwheels of joy to my Savior God.
Counting on God’s Rule to prevail,
I take heart and gain strength.
I run like a deer.
I feel like I’m king of the mountain!
(For congregational use, with a full orchestra.)
INSIGHT:
The prophet Habakkuk gives us an inspiring example of someone who argued with God yet came to the point of trusting Him regardless of what happened. He came to believe that God would eventually unmask the idols of the world (literally “nothings”). Habakkuk could not see that the Creator was going to bring judgment against the idolatrous violence in Israel and Babylon. He could not know how God’s Son would ultimately come in a human body to bear the consequence of the world’s rebellion and loss of understanding.
How does the story of Habakkuk encourage you as you face your own challenges of faith? Mart DeHaan
From Fear to Faith
By Karen Wolfe |
The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer. Habakkuk 3:19
The doctor’s words landed in her heart with a thud. It was cancer. Her world stopped as she thought of her husband and children. They had prayed diligently, hoping for a different outcome. What would they do? With tears streaming down her face, she said softly, “God, this is beyond our control. Please be our strength.”
What do we do when the prognosis is devastating, when our circumstances are beyond our control? Where do we turn when the outlook seems hopeless?
The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer. Habakkuk 3:19
The prophet Habakkuk’s situation was out of his control, and the fear that he felt terrified him. The coming judgment would be catastrophic (Hab. 3:16–17). Yet, in the midst of the impending chaos, Habakkuk made a choice to live by his faith (2:4) and rejoice in God (3:18). He did not place his confidence and faith in his circumstances, ability, or resources, but in the goodness and greatness of God. His trust in God compelled him to proclaim: “The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights” (v. 19).
When we are faced with difficult circumstances—sickness, family crisis, financial trouble—we, too, have only to place our faith and trust in God. He is with us in everything we face.
Dear God, I thank You that I can always turn to You. When I am faced with the difficulties of life, I can put my trust in You. Thank you that You are my “refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1
When faced with difficult circumstances we can trust God to be our strength.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, August 13, 2017
“Do Not Quench the Spirit”
Do not quench the Spirit. —1 Thessalonians 5:19
The voice of the Spirit of God is as gentle as a summer breeze— so gentle that unless you are living in complete fellowship and oneness with God, you will never hear it. The sense of warning and restraint that the Spirit gives comes to us in the most amazingly gentle ways. And if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice, you will quench it, and your spiritual life will be impaired. This sense of restraint will always come as a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12), so faint that no one except a saint of God will notice it.
Beware if in sharing your personal testimony you continually have to look back, saying, “Once, a number of years ago, I was saved.” If you have put your “hand to the plow” and are walking in the light, there is no “looking back”— the past is instilled into the present wonder of fellowship and oneness with God (Luke 9:62 ; also see 1 John 1:6-7). If you get out of the light, you become a sentimental Christian, and live only on your memories, and your testimony will have a hard metallic ring to it. Beware of trying to cover up your present refusal to “walk in the light” by recalling your past experiences when you did “walk in the light” (1 John 1:7). When-ever the Spirit gives you that sense of restraint, call a halt and make things right, or else you will go on quenching and grieving Him without even knowing it.
Suppose God brings you to a crisis and you almost endure it, but not completely. He will engineer the crisis again, but this time some of the intensity will be lost. You will have less discernment and more humiliation at having disobeyed. If you continue to grieve His Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, because you have totally quenched Him. But if you will go on through the crisis, your life will become a hymn of praise to God. Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The root of faith is the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest snares is the idea that God is sure to lead us to success. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L
A day transporting a family from one city to another is closely akin to God transporting us from our home to his. And some of life's stormiest hours occur when the passenger and the driver disagree on what takes place during the trip! Can you imagine the chaos if a parent indulged every child's wishes? Can you imagine the chaos if God indulged each of ours?
I Thessalonians 5:9 says "God has destined us to the full attainment of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." God's overarching desire is that you reach that destiny. His itinerary includes stops that encourage your journey. He frowns on stops that deter you. When his sovereign plan and your earthly plan collide, a decision must be made.
Who is in charge of this journey? If God must choose between your earthly satisfaction and your heavenly salvation, which do you hope he chooses? Me, too!
From In the Eye of the Storm
Esther 5
1-3 Three days later Esther dressed in her royal robes and took up a position in the inner court of the palace in front of the king’s throne room. The king was on his throne facing the entrance. When he noticed Queen Esther standing in the court, he was pleased to see her; the king extended the gold scepter in his hand. Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter. The king asked, “And what’s your desire, Queen Esther? What do you want? Ask and it’s yours—even if it’s half my kingdom!”
4 “If it please the king,” said Esther, “let the king come with Haman to a dinner I’ve prepared for him.”
5-6 “Get Haman at once,” said the king, “so we can go to dinner with Esther.”
So the king and Haman joined Esther at the dinner she had arranged. As they were drinking the wine, the king said, “Now, what is it you want? Half of my kingdom isn’t too much to ask! Just ask.”
7-8 Esther answered, “Here’s what I want. If the king favors me and is pleased to do what I desire and ask, let the king and Haman come again tomorrow to the dinner that I will fix for them. Then I’ll give a straight answer to the king’s question.”
9-13 Haman left the palace that day happy, beaming. And then he saw Mordecai sitting at the King’s Gate ignoring him, oblivious to him. Haman was furious with Mordecai. But he held himself in and went on home. He got his friends together with his wife Zeresh and started bragging about how much money he had, his many sons, all the times the king had honored him, and his promotion to the highest position in the government. “On top of all that,” Haman continued, “Queen Esther invited me to a private dinner she gave for the king, just the three of us. And she’s invited me to another one tomorrow. But I can’t enjoy any of it when I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the King’s Gate.”
14 His wife Zeresh and all his friends said, “Build a gallows seventy-five feet high. First thing in the morning speak with the king; get him to order Mordecai hanged on it. Then happily go with the king to dinner.”
Haman liked that. He had the gallows built.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Read: Habakkuk 3:16–19
God, is it River you’re mad at?
Angry at old River?
Were you raging at Sea when you rode
horse and chariot through to salvation?
You unfurled your bow
and let loose a volley of arrows.
You split Earth with rivers.
Mountains saw what was coming.
They twisted in pain.
Flood Waters poured in.
Ocean roared and reared huge waves.
Sun and Moon stopped in their tracks.
Your flashing arrows stopped them,
your lightning-strike spears impaled them.
Angry, you stomped through Earth.
Furious, you crushed the godless nations.
You were out to save your people,
to save your specially chosen people.
You beat the stuffing
out of King Wicked,
Stripped him naked
from head to toe,
Set his severed head on his own spear
and blew away his army.
Scattered they were to the four winds—
and ended up food for the sharks!
You galloped through the Sea on your horses,
racing on the crest of the waves.
When I heard it, my stomach did flips.
I stammered and stuttered.
My bones turned to water.
I staggered and stumbled.
I sit back and wait for Doomsday
to descend on our attackers.
17-19 Though the cherry trees don’t blossom
and the strawberries don’t ripen,
Though the apples are worm-eaten
and the wheat fields stunted,
Though the sheep pens are sheepless
and the cattle barns empty,
I’m singing joyful praise to God.
I’m turning cartwheels of joy to my Savior God.
Counting on God’s Rule to prevail,
I take heart and gain strength.
I run like a deer.
I feel like I’m king of the mountain!
(For congregational use, with a full orchestra.)
INSIGHT:
The prophet Habakkuk gives us an inspiring example of someone who argued with God yet came to the point of trusting Him regardless of what happened. He came to believe that God would eventually unmask the idols of the world (literally “nothings”). Habakkuk could not see that the Creator was going to bring judgment against the idolatrous violence in Israel and Babylon. He could not know how God’s Son would ultimately come in a human body to bear the consequence of the world’s rebellion and loss of understanding.
How does the story of Habakkuk encourage you as you face your own challenges of faith? Mart DeHaan
From Fear to Faith
By Karen Wolfe |
The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer. Habakkuk 3:19
The doctor’s words landed in her heart with a thud. It was cancer. Her world stopped as she thought of her husband and children. They had prayed diligently, hoping for a different outcome. What would they do? With tears streaming down her face, she said softly, “God, this is beyond our control. Please be our strength.”
What do we do when the prognosis is devastating, when our circumstances are beyond our control? Where do we turn when the outlook seems hopeless?
The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer. Habakkuk 3:19
The prophet Habakkuk’s situation was out of his control, and the fear that he felt terrified him. The coming judgment would be catastrophic (Hab. 3:16–17). Yet, in the midst of the impending chaos, Habakkuk made a choice to live by his faith (2:4) and rejoice in God (3:18). He did not place his confidence and faith in his circumstances, ability, or resources, but in the goodness and greatness of God. His trust in God compelled him to proclaim: “The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights” (v. 19).
When we are faced with difficult circumstances—sickness, family crisis, financial trouble—we, too, have only to place our faith and trust in God. He is with us in everything we face.
Dear God, I thank You that I can always turn to You. When I am faced with the difficulties of life, I can put my trust in You. Thank you that You are my “refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1
When faced with difficult circumstances we can trust God to be our strength.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, August 13, 2017
“Do Not Quench the Spirit”
Do not quench the Spirit. —1 Thessalonians 5:19
The voice of the Spirit of God is as gentle as a summer breeze— so gentle that unless you are living in complete fellowship and oneness with God, you will never hear it. The sense of warning and restraint that the Spirit gives comes to us in the most amazingly gentle ways. And if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice, you will quench it, and your spiritual life will be impaired. This sense of restraint will always come as a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12), so faint that no one except a saint of God will notice it.
Beware if in sharing your personal testimony you continually have to look back, saying, “Once, a number of years ago, I was saved.” If you have put your “hand to the plow” and are walking in the light, there is no “looking back”— the past is instilled into the present wonder of fellowship and oneness with God (Luke 9:62 ; also see 1 John 1:6-7). If you get out of the light, you become a sentimental Christian, and live only on your memories, and your testimony will have a hard metallic ring to it. Beware of trying to cover up your present refusal to “walk in the light” by recalling your past experiences when you did “walk in the light” (1 John 1:7). When-ever the Spirit gives you that sense of restraint, call a halt and make things right, or else you will go on quenching and grieving Him without even knowing it.
Suppose God brings you to a crisis and you almost endure it, but not completely. He will engineer the crisis again, but this time some of the intensity will be lost. You will have less discernment and more humiliation at having disobeyed. If you continue to grieve His Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, because you have totally quenched Him. But if you will go on through the crisis, your life will become a hymn of praise to God. Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The root of faith is the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest snares is the idea that God is sure to lead us to success. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Esther 4, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: What's More Important?
I remember receiving an invitation to speak at a church in the Midwest. I turned it down. If I had gone, I would have had the attention of a great number of people for an hour. The opportunity to speak about Jesus to some people who didn't know Him.
Is a Tuesday evening at home with three children and a spouse more important than preaching to an audience? I decided to make a list of what I had to lose by saying no to my family one night. I would not have been there to hold Andrea when her finger got slammed in the door. I wouldn't have been there to answer Jenna's question, "Daddy what's a handicapped person?" I would have missed Jenna telling the story of Jesus on the cross during our family devotional.
There are a hundred speakers who could have addressed that crowd, but my girls just have one dad! I made the right choice.
From In the Eye of the Storm
Esther 4
1-3 When Mordecai learned what had been done, he ripped his clothes to shreds and put on sackcloth and ashes. Then he went out in the streets of the city crying out in loud and bitter cries. He came only as far as the King’s Gate, for no one dressed in sackcloth was allowed to enter the King’s Gate. As the king’s order was posted in every province, there was loud lament among the Jews—fasting, weeping, wailing. And most of them stretched out on sackcloth and ashes.
4-8 Esther’s maids and eunuchs came and told her. The queen was stunned. She sent fresh clothes to Mordecai so he could take off his sackcloth but he wouldn’t accept them. Esther called for Hathach, one of the royal eunuchs whom the king had assigned to wait on her, and told him to go to Mordecai and get the full story of what was happening. So Hathach went to Mordecai in the town square in front of the King’s Gate. Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him. He also told him the exact amount of money that Haman had promised to deposit in the royal bank to finance the massacre of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the bulletin that had been posted in Susa ordering the massacre so he could show it to Esther when he reported back with instructions to go to the king and intercede and plead with him for her people.
9-11 Hathach came back and told Esther everything Mordecai had said. Esther talked it over with Hathach and then sent him back to Mordecai with this message: “Everyone who works for the king here, and even the people out in the provinces, knows that there is a single fate for every man or woman who approaches the king without being invited: death. The one exception is if the king extends his gold scepter; then he or she may live. And it’s been thirty days now since I’ve been invited to come to the king.”
12-14 When Hathach told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai sent her this message: “Don’t think that just because you live in the king’s house you’re the one Jew who will get out of this alive. If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from someplace else; but you and your family will be wiped out. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this.”
15-16 Esther sent back her answer to Mordecai: “Go and get all the Jews living in Susa together. Fast for me. Don’t eat or drink for three days, either day or night. I and my maids will fast with you. If you will do this, I’ll go to the king, even though it’s forbidden. If I die, I die.”
17 Mordecai left and carried out Esther’s instructions.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Read: Deuteronomy 8:6–18
So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
10 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,
the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness,
those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
INSIGHT:
Why do we sometimes find it difficult to be grateful? How can a sense of entitlement hinder a thankful spirit?
Grateful for Everything
By Sheridan Voysey
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Deuteronomy 8:10
In Australia, it can take hours to drive between towns and fatigue can lead to accidents. So at busy holiday times rest stops are set up on major highways with volunteers offering free coffee. My wife, Merryn, and I grew to enjoy these stops during our long drives there.
On one trip, we pulled in and walked over to order our coffee. An attendant handed the two cups over, and then asked me for two dollars. I asked why. She pointed to the small print on the sign. At this stop, only the driver got free coffee; you had to pay for passengers. Annoyed, I told her this was false advertising, paid the two dollars, and walked off. Back at the car, Merryn pointed out my error: I had turned a gift into an entitlement and become ungrateful for what I received. She was right.
Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
When the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, Moses urged them to be a grateful people (Deut. 8:10). Thanks to the blessings of God, the land was abundant, but they could easily treat this prosperity as something they deserved (vv. 17–18). From this, the Jews developed a practice of giving thanks for every meal, no matter how small. For them, it was all a gift.
I went back to the woman and apologized. A free cup of coffee was a gift I didn’t deserve—and something for which to be thankful.
Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. A Jewish thanksgiving prayer for meals
Be grateful to God for even the smallest gift.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 12, 2017
The Theology of Resting in God
Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? —Matthew 8:26
When we are afraid, the least we can do is pray to God. But our Lord has a right to expect that those who name His name have an underlying confidence in Him. God expects His children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the ones who are reliable. Yet our trust is only in God up to a certain point, then we turn back to the elementary panic-stricken prayers of those people who do not even know God. We come to our wits’ end, showing that we don’t have even the slightest amount of confidence in Him or in His sovereign control of the world. To us He seems to be asleep, and we can see nothing but giant, breaking waves on the sea ahead of us.
“…O you of little faith!” What a stinging pain must have shot through the disciples as they surely thought to themselves, “We missed the mark again!” And what a sharp pain will go through us when we suddenly realize that we could have produced complete and utter joy in the heart of Jesus by remaining absolutely confident in Him, in spite of what we were facing.
There are times when there is no storm or crisis in our lives, and we do all that is humanly possible. But it is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon whom we rely. If we have been learning to worship God and to place our trust in Him, the crisis will reveal that we can go to the point of breaking, yet without breaking our confidence in Him.
We have been talking quite a lot about sanctification, but what will be the result in our lives? It will be expressed in our lives as a peaceful resting in God, which means a total oneness with Him. And this oneness will make us not only blameless in His sight, but also a profound joy to Him.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
An intellectual conception of God may be found in a bad vicious character. The knowledge and vision of God is dependent entirely on a pure heart. Character determines the revelation of God to the individual. The pure in heart see God. Biblical Ethics, 125 R
I remember receiving an invitation to speak at a church in the Midwest. I turned it down. If I had gone, I would have had the attention of a great number of people for an hour. The opportunity to speak about Jesus to some people who didn't know Him.
Is a Tuesday evening at home with three children and a spouse more important than preaching to an audience? I decided to make a list of what I had to lose by saying no to my family one night. I would not have been there to hold Andrea when her finger got slammed in the door. I wouldn't have been there to answer Jenna's question, "Daddy what's a handicapped person?" I would have missed Jenna telling the story of Jesus on the cross during our family devotional.
There are a hundred speakers who could have addressed that crowd, but my girls just have one dad! I made the right choice.
From In the Eye of the Storm
Esther 4
1-3 When Mordecai learned what had been done, he ripped his clothes to shreds and put on sackcloth and ashes. Then he went out in the streets of the city crying out in loud and bitter cries. He came only as far as the King’s Gate, for no one dressed in sackcloth was allowed to enter the King’s Gate. As the king’s order was posted in every province, there was loud lament among the Jews—fasting, weeping, wailing. And most of them stretched out on sackcloth and ashes.
4-8 Esther’s maids and eunuchs came and told her. The queen was stunned. She sent fresh clothes to Mordecai so he could take off his sackcloth but he wouldn’t accept them. Esther called for Hathach, one of the royal eunuchs whom the king had assigned to wait on her, and told him to go to Mordecai and get the full story of what was happening. So Hathach went to Mordecai in the town square in front of the King’s Gate. Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him. He also told him the exact amount of money that Haman had promised to deposit in the royal bank to finance the massacre of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the bulletin that had been posted in Susa ordering the massacre so he could show it to Esther when he reported back with instructions to go to the king and intercede and plead with him for her people.
9-11 Hathach came back and told Esther everything Mordecai had said. Esther talked it over with Hathach and then sent him back to Mordecai with this message: “Everyone who works for the king here, and even the people out in the provinces, knows that there is a single fate for every man or woman who approaches the king without being invited: death. The one exception is if the king extends his gold scepter; then he or she may live. And it’s been thirty days now since I’ve been invited to come to the king.”
12-14 When Hathach told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai sent her this message: “Don’t think that just because you live in the king’s house you’re the one Jew who will get out of this alive. If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from someplace else; but you and your family will be wiped out. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this.”
15-16 Esther sent back her answer to Mordecai: “Go and get all the Jews living in Susa together. Fast for me. Don’t eat or drink for three days, either day or night. I and my maids will fast with you. If you will do this, I’ll go to the king, even though it’s forbidden. If I die, I die.”
17 Mordecai left and carried out Esther’s instructions.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Read: Deuteronomy 8:6–18
So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
10 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,
the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness,
those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
INSIGHT:
Why do we sometimes find it difficult to be grateful? How can a sense of entitlement hinder a thankful spirit?
Grateful for Everything
By Sheridan Voysey
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Deuteronomy 8:10
In Australia, it can take hours to drive between towns and fatigue can lead to accidents. So at busy holiday times rest stops are set up on major highways with volunteers offering free coffee. My wife, Merryn, and I grew to enjoy these stops during our long drives there.
On one trip, we pulled in and walked over to order our coffee. An attendant handed the two cups over, and then asked me for two dollars. I asked why. She pointed to the small print on the sign. At this stop, only the driver got free coffee; you had to pay for passengers. Annoyed, I told her this was false advertising, paid the two dollars, and walked off. Back at the car, Merryn pointed out my error: I had turned a gift into an entitlement and become ungrateful for what I received. She was right.
Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
When the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, Moses urged them to be a grateful people (Deut. 8:10). Thanks to the blessings of God, the land was abundant, but they could easily treat this prosperity as something they deserved (vv. 17–18). From this, the Jews developed a practice of giving thanks for every meal, no matter how small. For them, it was all a gift.
I went back to the woman and apologized. A free cup of coffee was a gift I didn’t deserve—and something for which to be thankful.
Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. A Jewish thanksgiving prayer for meals
Be grateful to God for even the smallest gift.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 12, 2017
The Theology of Resting in God
Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? —Matthew 8:26
When we are afraid, the least we can do is pray to God. But our Lord has a right to expect that those who name His name have an underlying confidence in Him. God expects His children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the ones who are reliable. Yet our trust is only in God up to a certain point, then we turn back to the elementary panic-stricken prayers of those people who do not even know God. We come to our wits’ end, showing that we don’t have even the slightest amount of confidence in Him or in His sovereign control of the world. To us He seems to be asleep, and we can see nothing but giant, breaking waves on the sea ahead of us.
“…O you of little faith!” What a stinging pain must have shot through the disciples as they surely thought to themselves, “We missed the mark again!” And what a sharp pain will go through us when we suddenly realize that we could have produced complete and utter joy in the heart of Jesus by remaining absolutely confident in Him, in spite of what we were facing.
There are times when there is no storm or crisis in our lives, and we do all that is humanly possible. But it is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon whom we rely. If we have been learning to worship God and to place our trust in Him, the crisis will reveal that we can go to the point of breaking, yet without breaking our confidence in Him.
We have been talking quite a lot about sanctification, but what will be the result in our lives? It will be expressed in our lives as a peaceful resting in God, which means a total oneness with Him. And this oneness will make us not only blameless in His sight, but also a profound joy to Him.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
An intellectual conception of God may be found in a bad vicious character. The knowledge and vision of God is dependent entirely on a pure heart. Character determines the revelation of God to the individual. The pure in heart see God. Biblical Ethics, 125 R
Friday, August 11, 2017
Esther 3, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: WHAT IS YOUR PRICE?
Some years ago, I read a study of what most Americans would do in exchange for ten million dollars. Among the options were. . .abandon their family, abandon their church, give up their citizenship, leave their spouse or their children. It’s not surprising to me what someone would do for ten million dollars. What’s surprising is that most would do something!
What would you do? Or better, what are you doing? “Get real, Max,” you’re saying, “I’ve never had a shot at ten million.” The amount may not have been the same, but the choices are. And some people are willing to give up their family, faith, or morals for far less than ten million dollars. Jesus had a word for that: greed. He called it the practice of measuring life by possessions (Luke 12:15).
Jesus cautioned against “all kinds of greed.” What is your price?
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Esther 3
1-2 Some time later, King Xerxes promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, making him the highest-ranking official in the government. All the king’s servants at the King’s Gate used to honor him by bowing down and kneeling before Haman—that’s what the king had commanded.
2-4 Except Mordecai. Mordecai wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t bow down and kneel. The king’s servants at the King’s Gate asked Mordecai about it: “Why do you cross the king’s command?” Day after day they spoke to him about this but he wouldn’t listen, so they went to Haman to see whether something shouldn’t be done about it. Mordecai had told them that he was a Jew.
5-6 When Haman saw for himself that Mordecai didn’t bow down and kneel before him, he was outraged. Meanwhile, having learned that Mordecai was a Jew, Haman hated to waste his fury on just one Jew; he looked for a way to eliminate not just Mordecai but all Jews throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.
7 In the first month, the month of Nisan, of the twelfth year of Xerxes, the pur—that is, the lot—was cast under Haman’s charge to determine the propitious day and month. The lot turned up the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar.
8-9 Haman then spoke with King Xerxes: “There is an odd set of people scattered through the provinces of your kingdom who don’t fit in. Their customs and ways are different from those of everybody else. Worse, they disregard the king’s laws. They’re an affront; the king shouldn’t put up with them. If it please the king, let orders be given that they be destroyed. I’ll pay for it myself. I’ll deposit 375 tons of silver in the royal bank to finance the operation.”
10 The king slipped his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, archenemy of the Jews.
11 “Go ahead,” the king said to Haman. “It’s your money—do whatever you want with those people.”
12 The king’s secretaries were brought in on the thirteenth day of the first month. The orders were written out word for word as Haman had addressed them to the king’s satraps, the governors of every province, and the officials of every people. They were written in the script of each province and the language of each people in the name of King Xerxes and sealed with the royal signet ring.
13-14 Bulletins were sent out by couriers to all the king’s provinces with orders to massacre, kill, and eliminate all the Jews—youngsters and old men, women and babies—on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month Adar, and to plunder their goods. Copies of the bulletin were to be posted in each province, publicly available to all peoples, to get them ready for that day.
15 At the king’s command, the couriers took off; the order was also posted in the palace complex of Susa. The king and Haman sat back and had a drink while the city of Susa reeled from the news.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, August 11, 2017
Read: John 11:21–35
Martha said, “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you.”
23 Jesus said, “Your brother will be raised up.”
24 Martha replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”
25-26 “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Master. All along I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who comes into the world.”
28 After saying this, she went to her sister Mary and whispered in her ear, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.”
29-32 The moment she heard that, she jumped up and ran out to him. Jesus had not yet entered the town but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When her sympathizing Jewish friends saw Mary run off, they followed her, thinking she was on her way to the tomb to weep there. Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33-34 When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. He said, “Where did you put him?”
34-35 “Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.
INSIGHT:
Jesus’s absence is what greatly troubled Mary and Martha. They cried, “Lord, . . . if you had been here” (John 11:21, 32). But God has promised, “Never will I leave you” (Heb. 13:5). We may not understand why hard things happen, but in confident trust we can say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid” (v. 6). Sim Kay Tee
If Only . . .
By Cindy Hess Kasper
Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. John 11:32
As we exited the parking lot, my husband slowed the car to wait for a young woman riding her bike. When Tom nodded to indicate she could go first, she smiled, waved, and rode on. Moments later, the driver from a parked SUV threw his door open, knocking the young bicyclist to the pavement. Her legs bleeding, she cried as she examined her bent-up bike.
Later, we reflected on the accident: If only we had made her wait . . . If only the driver had looked before opening his door. If only . . . Difficulties catch us up in a cycle of second-guessing ourselves. If only I had known my child was with teens who were drinking . . . If only we had found the cancer earlier . . .
When unexpected trouble comes, we sometimes question the goodness of God. We may even feel the despair that Martha and Mary experienced when their brother died. Oh, if Jesus had only come when He first found out that Lazarus was sick! (John 11:21, 32).
Like Martha and Mary, we don’t always understand why hard things happen to us. But we can rest in the knowledge that God is working out His purposes for a greater good. In every circumstance, we can trust the wisdom of our faithful and loving God.
Father, You have carried me through hard circumstances before. Thank You for teaching me to trust Your heart of love even when I don’t understand what You are doing in my life.
For encouragement read, Why? Seeing God in Our Pain at discoveryseries.org/cb151.
To trust God in the light is nothing, but to trust Him in the dark—that is faith. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, August 11, 2017
This Experience Must Come
Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha…saw him no more. —2 Kings 2:11-12
It is not wrong for you to depend on your “Elijah” for as long as God gives him to you. But remember that the time will come when he must leave and will no longer be your guide and your leader, because God does not intend for him to stay. Even the thought of that causes you to say, “I cannot continue without my ‘Elijah.’ ” Yet God says you must continue.
Alone at Your “Jordan” (2 Kings 2:14). The Jordan River represents the type of separation where you have no fellowship with anyone else, and where no one else can take your responsibility from you. You now have to put to the test what you learned when you were with your “Elijah.” You have been to the Jordan over and over again with Elijah, but now you are facing it alone. There is no use in saying that you cannot go— the experience is here, and you must go. If you truly want to know whether or not God is the God your faith believes Him to be, then go through your “Jordan” alone.
Alone at Your “Jericho” (2 Kings 2:15). Jericho represents the place where you have seen your “Elijah” do great things. Yet when you come alone to your “Jericho,” you have a strong reluctance to take the initiative and trust in God, wanting, instead, for someone else to take it for you. But if you remain true to what you learned while with your “Elijah,” you will receive a sign, as Elisha did, that God is with you.
Alone at Your “Bethel” (2 Kings 2:23). At your “Bethel” you will find yourself at your wits’ end but at the beginning of God’s wisdom. When you come to your wits’ end and feel inclined to panic— don’t! Stand true to God and He will bring out His truth in a way that will make your life an expression of worship. Put into practice what you learned while with your “Elijah”— use his mantle and pray (see 2 Kings 2:13-14). Make a determination to trust in God, and do not even look for Elijah anymore.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed. So Send I You, 1330 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, August 11, 2017
A Cause for All of Us - #7980
It started out as an unimpressive ripple in the weather off the coast of Africa. By the time it was over, it had become Hurricane Katrina, pummeling Florida as a category one storm, then surprising most observers by becoming a category five monster over the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina's last minute shift to the east nearly destroyed the city of New Orleans. Yes, we saw some of the darkest side of human nature as people looted things that they didn't really need, and some even tried to shoot some of the very people who were coming to help. But on a much greater scale, the aftermath to Hurricane Katrina was a massive outpouring of heroism in many flavors.
As Americans learned of the desperation of the victims of the storm, thousands of us mobilized to give them a chance to live. We won't soon forget the military helicopters, launching and re-launching every fifteen minutes to look for more people stranded in the toxic floodwaters that buried parts of the city. There were those memorable scenes of the rescuers coming down the rope from those choppers to save people trapped on their roofs. Doctors and nurses came from all over the country. So many came and did what they knew how to do-from cooking, to counseling, to contributing, to caring enough to take in whole families because lives were at stake.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Cause for All of Us."
Thousands of lives were saved, many of whom would have died otherwise because of this massive rescue operation where everyone did what they knew how to do; each one realizing that a rescue effort means all hands on deck.
It's a picture of the largest scale rescue operation on the planet. It is the rescue mission for which Jesus Christ gave His life, launched at a cross. In His personal mission statement in Luke 19:10 He said He came "to seek and to save what was lost." His final command: "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation" (Mark 16:15). Because it really is a life-or-death situation, where the eternal destiny of millions of people depends on the rescue efforts of God's people-all of God's people.
The orders are summarized in Proverbs 24:11-12, our word for today from the Word of God. "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter." Those stark words describe every person we know, every person on this planet who has not grabbed the only one God provided to rescue us from the eternal punishment that our sin deserves. That Rescuer is Jesus! The next verse says, "If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this, does not He who weighs the heart perceive it?'" God is not going to excuse us for being AWOL in His all out mobilization to rescue the dying, whatever it takes.
He's expecting you to do what His Son did-to do all you can to rescue the lost. If you cook, cook to rescue the dying. If you're musical, if you're mechanical, if you're a techie, if you're in the media, if you're a prayer warrior, if you contribute to God's work, do what you do to help people go to heaven instead of hell. And if you have influence in anyone's life (and we all do) don't just use that influence to be a nice person for them. Use the relationship you have to tell them about the Rescuer from heaven who rescued you and who is their only hope.
In the wake of a hurricane, we saw thousands of people on the verge of dying without hope and an army of us who said, "We can't just let them die." If you'll ask Jesus to help you see the world through His eyes, you're going to see millions on the verge of dying with no hope of heaven, headed for an unspeakable eternity. And some of them are right within your reach. Can you see them? Are you going to do something about it? Will you do more than you've ever done before? We're losing so many because no rescuer has come.
Some years ago, I read a study of what most Americans would do in exchange for ten million dollars. Among the options were. . .abandon their family, abandon their church, give up their citizenship, leave their spouse or their children. It’s not surprising to me what someone would do for ten million dollars. What’s surprising is that most would do something!
What would you do? Or better, what are you doing? “Get real, Max,” you’re saying, “I’ve never had a shot at ten million.” The amount may not have been the same, but the choices are. And some people are willing to give up their family, faith, or morals for far less than ten million dollars. Jesus had a word for that: greed. He called it the practice of measuring life by possessions (Luke 12:15).
Jesus cautioned against “all kinds of greed.” What is your price?
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Esther 3
1-2 Some time later, King Xerxes promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, making him the highest-ranking official in the government. All the king’s servants at the King’s Gate used to honor him by bowing down and kneeling before Haman—that’s what the king had commanded.
2-4 Except Mordecai. Mordecai wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t bow down and kneel. The king’s servants at the King’s Gate asked Mordecai about it: “Why do you cross the king’s command?” Day after day they spoke to him about this but he wouldn’t listen, so they went to Haman to see whether something shouldn’t be done about it. Mordecai had told them that he was a Jew.
5-6 When Haman saw for himself that Mordecai didn’t bow down and kneel before him, he was outraged. Meanwhile, having learned that Mordecai was a Jew, Haman hated to waste his fury on just one Jew; he looked for a way to eliminate not just Mordecai but all Jews throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.
7 In the first month, the month of Nisan, of the twelfth year of Xerxes, the pur—that is, the lot—was cast under Haman’s charge to determine the propitious day and month. The lot turned up the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar.
8-9 Haman then spoke with King Xerxes: “There is an odd set of people scattered through the provinces of your kingdom who don’t fit in. Their customs and ways are different from those of everybody else. Worse, they disregard the king’s laws. They’re an affront; the king shouldn’t put up with them. If it please the king, let orders be given that they be destroyed. I’ll pay for it myself. I’ll deposit 375 tons of silver in the royal bank to finance the operation.”
10 The king slipped his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, archenemy of the Jews.
11 “Go ahead,” the king said to Haman. “It’s your money—do whatever you want with those people.”
12 The king’s secretaries were brought in on the thirteenth day of the first month. The orders were written out word for word as Haman had addressed them to the king’s satraps, the governors of every province, and the officials of every people. They were written in the script of each province and the language of each people in the name of King Xerxes and sealed with the royal signet ring.
13-14 Bulletins were sent out by couriers to all the king’s provinces with orders to massacre, kill, and eliminate all the Jews—youngsters and old men, women and babies—on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month Adar, and to plunder their goods. Copies of the bulletin were to be posted in each province, publicly available to all peoples, to get them ready for that day.
15 At the king’s command, the couriers took off; the order was also posted in the palace complex of Susa. The king and Haman sat back and had a drink while the city of Susa reeled from the news.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, August 11, 2017
Read: John 11:21–35
Martha said, “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you.”
23 Jesus said, “Your brother will be raised up.”
24 Martha replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”
25-26 “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Master. All along I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who comes into the world.”
28 After saying this, she went to her sister Mary and whispered in her ear, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.”
29-32 The moment she heard that, she jumped up and ran out to him. Jesus had not yet entered the town but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When her sympathizing Jewish friends saw Mary run off, they followed her, thinking she was on her way to the tomb to weep there. Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33-34 When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. He said, “Where did you put him?”
34-35 “Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.
INSIGHT:
Jesus’s absence is what greatly troubled Mary and Martha. They cried, “Lord, . . . if you had been here” (John 11:21, 32). But God has promised, “Never will I leave you” (Heb. 13:5). We may not understand why hard things happen, but in confident trust we can say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid” (v. 6). Sim Kay Tee
If Only . . .
By Cindy Hess Kasper
Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. John 11:32
As we exited the parking lot, my husband slowed the car to wait for a young woman riding her bike. When Tom nodded to indicate she could go first, she smiled, waved, and rode on. Moments later, the driver from a parked SUV threw his door open, knocking the young bicyclist to the pavement. Her legs bleeding, she cried as she examined her bent-up bike.
Later, we reflected on the accident: If only we had made her wait . . . If only the driver had looked before opening his door. If only . . . Difficulties catch us up in a cycle of second-guessing ourselves. If only I had known my child was with teens who were drinking . . . If only we had found the cancer earlier . . .
When unexpected trouble comes, we sometimes question the goodness of God. We may even feel the despair that Martha and Mary experienced when their brother died. Oh, if Jesus had only come when He first found out that Lazarus was sick! (John 11:21, 32).
Like Martha and Mary, we don’t always understand why hard things happen to us. But we can rest in the knowledge that God is working out His purposes for a greater good. In every circumstance, we can trust the wisdom of our faithful and loving God.
Father, You have carried me through hard circumstances before. Thank You for teaching me to trust Your heart of love even when I don’t understand what You are doing in my life.
For encouragement read, Why? Seeing God in Our Pain at discoveryseries.org/cb151.
To trust God in the light is nothing, but to trust Him in the dark—that is faith. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, August 11, 2017
This Experience Must Come
Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha…saw him no more. —2 Kings 2:11-12
It is not wrong for you to depend on your “Elijah” for as long as God gives him to you. But remember that the time will come when he must leave and will no longer be your guide and your leader, because God does not intend for him to stay. Even the thought of that causes you to say, “I cannot continue without my ‘Elijah.’ ” Yet God says you must continue.
Alone at Your “Jordan” (2 Kings 2:14). The Jordan River represents the type of separation where you have no fellowship with anyone else, and where no one else can take your responsibility from you. You now have to put to the test what you learned when you were with your “Elijah.” You have been to the Jordan over and over again with Elijah, but now you are facing it alone. There is no use in saying that you cannot go— the experience is here, and you must go. If you truly want to know whether or not God is the God your faith believes Him to be, then go through your “Jordan” alone.
Alone at Your “Jericho” (2 Kings 2:15). Jericho represents the place where you have seen your “Elijah” do great things. Yet when you come alone to your “Jericho,” you have a strong reluctance to take the initiative and trust in God, wanting, instead, for someone else to take it for you. But if you remain true to what you learned while with your “Elijah,” you will receive a sign, as Elisha did, that God is with you.
Alone at Your “Bethel” (2 Kings 2:23). At your “Bethel” you will find yourself at your wits’ end but at the beginning of God’s wisdom. When you come to your wits’ end and feel inclined to panic— don’t! Stand true to God and He will bring out His truth in a way that will make your life an expression of worship. Put into practice what you learned while with your “Elijah”— use his mantle and pray (see 2 Kings 2:13-14). Make a determination to trust in God, and do not even look for Elijah anymore.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed. So Send I You, 1330 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, August 11, 2017
A Cause for All of Us - #7980
It started out as an unimpressive ripple in the weather off the coast of Africa. By the time it was over, it had become Hurricane Katrina, pummeling Florida as a category one storm, then surprising most observers by becoming a category five monster over the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina's last minute shift to the east nearly destroyed the city of New Orleans. Yes, we saw some of the darkest side of human nature as people looted things that they didn't really need, and some even tried to shoot some of the very people who were coming to help. But on a much greater scale, the aftermath to Hurricane Katrina was a massive outpouring of heroism in many flavors.
As Americans learned of the desperation of the victims of the storm, thousands of us mobilized to give them a chance to live. We won't soon forget the military helicopters, launching and re-launching every fifteen minutes to look for more people stranded in the toxic floodwaters that buried parts of the city. There were those memorable scenes of the rescuers coming down the rope from those choppers to save people trapped on their roofs. Doctors and nurses came from all over the country. So many came and did what they knew how to do-from cooking, to counseling, to contributing, to caring enough to take in whole families because lives were at stake.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Cause for All of Us."
Thousands of lives were saved, many of whom would have died otherwise because of this massive rescue operation where everyone did what they knew how to do; each one realizing that a rescue effort means all hands on deck.
It's a picture of the largest scale rescue operation on the planet. It is the rescue mission for which Jesus Christ gave His life, launched at a cross. In His personal mission statement in Luke 19:10 He said He came "to seek and to save what was lost." His final command: "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation" (Mark 16:15). Because it really is a life-or-death situation, where the eternal destiny of millions of people depends on the rescue efforts of God's people-all of God's people.
The orders are summarized in Proverbs 24:11-12, our word for today from the Word of God. "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter." Those stark words describe every person we know, every person on this planet who has not grabbed the only one God provided to rescue us from the eternal punishment that our sin deserves. That Rescuer is Jesus! The next verse says, "If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this, does not He who weighs the heart perceive it?'" God is not going to excuse us for being AWOL in His all out mobilization to rescue the dying, whatever it takes.
He's expecting you to do what His Son did-to do all you can to rescue the lost. If you cook, cook to rescue the dying. If you're musical, if you're mechanical, if you're a techie, if you're in the media, if you're a prayer warrior, if you contribute to God's work, do what you do to help people go to heaven instead of hell. And if you have influence in anyone's life (and we all do) don't just use that influence to be a nice person for them. Use the relationship you have to tell them about the Rescuer from heaven who rescued you and who is their only hope.
In the wake of a hurricane, we saw thousands of people on the verge of dying without hope and an army of us who said, "We can't just let them die." If you'll ask Jesus to help you see the world through His eyes, you're going to see millions on the verge of dying with no hope of heaven, headed for an unspeakable eternity. And some of them are right within your reach. Can you see them? Are you going to do something about it? Will you do more than you've ever done before? We're losing so many because no rescuer has come.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Esther 2, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: GOD’S FAR REACHING GRACE
Seems to me God gives a lot more grace than we’d ever imagine. We could do the same. I’m not for watering down the truth or compromising the Gospel. But if a fellow with a pure heart calls God Father, can’t I call that same man Brother? If God doesn’t make doctrinal perfection a requirement for family membership, should I?
If God can tolerate my mistakes, can’t I tolerate the mistakes of others? If God can overlook my errors, can’t I overlook the errors of others? If God allows me with my foibles and failures to call him Father, shouldn’t I extend that same grace to others?
One thing is for sure. When we get to heaven, we’ll be surprised at some of the folks we see. And some of them will be surprised when they see us!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Esther 2
1-4 Later, when King Xerxes’ anger had cooled and he was having second thoughts about what Vashti had done and what he had ordered against her, the king’s young attendants stepped in and got the ball rolling: “Let’s begin a search for beautiful young virgins for the king. Let the king appoint officials in every province of his kingdom to bring every beautiful young virgin to the palace complex of Susa and to the harem run by Hegai, the king’s eunuch who oversees the women; he will put them through their beauty treatments. Then let the girl who best pleases the king be made queen in place of Vashti.”
The king liked this advice and took it.
5-7 Now there was a Jew who lived in the palace complex in Susa. His name was Mordecai the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish—a Benjaminite. His ancestors had been taken from Jerusalem with the exiles and carried off with King Jehoiachin of Judah by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon into exile. Mordecai had reared his cousin Hadassah, otherwise known as Esther, since she had no father or mother. The girl had a good figure and a beautiful face. After her parents died, Mordecai had adopted her.
8 When the king’s order had been publicly posted, many young girls were brought to the palace complex of Susa and given over to Hegai who was overseer of the women. Esther was among them.
9-10 Hegai liked Esther and took a special interest in her. Right off he started her beauty treatments, ordered special food, assigned her seven personal maids from the palace, and put her and her maids in the best rooms in the harem. Esther didn’t say anything about her family and racial background because Mordecai had told her not to.
11 Every day Mordecai strolled beside the court of the harem to find out how Esther was and get news of what she was doing.
12-14 Each girl’s turn came to go in to King Xerxes after she had completed the twelve months of prescribed beauty treatments—six months’ treatment with oil of myrrh followed by six months with perfumes and various cosmetics. When it was time for the girl to go to the king, she was given whatever she wanted to take with her when she left the harem for the king’s quarters. She would go there in the evening; in the morning she would return to a second harem overseen by Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch in charge of the concubines. She never again went back to the king unless the king took a special liking to her and asked for her by name.
15 When it was Esther’s turn to go to the king (Esther the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had adopted her as his daughter), she asked for nothing other than what Hegai, the king’s eunuch in charge of the harem, had recommended. Esther, just as she was, won the admiration of everyone who saw her.
16 She was taken to King Xerxes in the royal palace in the tenth month, the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of the king’s reign.
17-18 The king fell in love with Esther far more than with any of his other women or any of the other virgins—he was totally smitten by her. He placed a royal crown on her head and made her queen in place of Vashti. Then the king gave a great banquet for all his nobles and officials—“Esther’s Banquet.” He proclaimed a holiday for all the provinces and handed out gifts with royal generosity.
19-20 On one of the occasions when the virgins were being gathered together, Mordecai was sitting at the King’s Gate. All this time, Esther had kept her family background and race a secret as Mordecai had ordered; Esther still did what Mordecai told her, just as when she was being raised by him.
21-23 On this day, with Mordecai sitting at the King’s Gate, Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs who guarded the entrance, had it in for the king and were making plans to kill King Xerxes. But Mordecai learned of the plot and told Queen Esther, who then told King Xerxes, giving credit to Mordecai. When the thing was investigated and confirmed as true, the two men were hanged on a gallows. This was all written down in a logbook kept for the king’s use.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Read: Psalm 80
An Asaph Psalm
1-2 Listen, Shepherd, Israel’s Shepherd—
get all your Joseph sheep together.
Throw beams of light
from your dazzling throne
So Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh
can see where they’re going.
Get out of bed—you’ve slept long enough!
Come on the run before it’s too late.
3 God, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
4-6 God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
how long will you smolder like a sleeping volcano
while your people call for fire and brimstone?
You put us on a diet of tears,
bucket after bucket of salty tears to drink.
You make us look ridiculous to our friends;
our enemies poke fun day after day.
7 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
8-18 Remember how you brought a young vine from Egypt,
cleared out the brambles and briers
and planted your very own vineyard?
You prepared the good earth,
you planted her roots deep;
the vineyard filled the land.
Your vine soared high and shaded the mountains,
even dwarfing the giant cedars.
Your vine ranged west to the Sea,
east to the River.
So why do you no longer protect your vine?
Trespassers pick its grapes at will;
Wild pigs crash through and crush it,
and the mice nibble away at what’s left.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies, turn our way!
Take a good look at what’s happened
and attend to this vine.
Care for what you once tenderly planted—
the vine you raised from a shoot.
And those who dared to set it on fire—
give them a look that will kill!
Then take the hand of your once-favorite child,
the child you raised to adulthood.
We will never turn our back on you;
breathe life into our lungs so we can shout your name!
19 God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
INSIGHT:
Today’s psalm asks God to restore Israel—to make His face shine on them so they may be saved. Where have you seen God’s hand saving and restoring you and your loved ones?
Our Father’s Face
By David H. Roper
Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved. Psalm 80:3
I remember my father’s face. It was hard to read. He was a kind man, but stoic and self-contained. As a child, I often searched his face, looking for a smile or other show of affection. Faces are us. A frown, a sullen look, a smile, and crinkly eyes reveal what we feel about others. Our faces are our “tell.”
Asaph, the author of Psalm 80, was distraught and wanted to see the Lord’s face. He looked north from his vantage point in Jerusalem and saw Judah's sister-state, Israel, collapse under the weight of the Assyrian Empire. With her buffer state gone, Judah was vulnerable to invasion from all sides—Assyria from the north, Egypt from the south, and the Arab nations from the east. She was outnumbered and outmatched.
Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved. Psalm 80:3
Asaph gathered up his fears in a prayer, three times repeated (80:3, 7, 19), “Make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.” (Or, in other words, let me see Your smile.)
It’s good to look away from our fears and search our heavenly Father’s face. The best way to see God’s face is to look at the cross. The cross is His “tell” (John 3:16).
So know this: When your Father looks at you, He has a great big smile on His face. You’re very safe!
Ask God to shine His face on you. For further help in prayer, try praying this Psalm or others.
Tell us what your favorite Psalm is and encourage others: Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
God’s love for us is as expansive as the open arms of Christ on the cross.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, August 10, 2017
The Holy Suffering of the Saint
Let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good… —1 Peter 4:19
Choosing to suffer means that there must be something wrong with you, but choosing God’s will— even if it means you will suffer— is something very different. No normal, healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he simply chooses God’s will, just as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not. And no saint should ever dare to interfere with the lesson of suffering being taught in another saint’s life.
The saint who satisfies the heart of Jesus will make other saints strong and mature for God. But the people used to strengthen us are never those who sympathize with us; in fact, we are hindered by those who give us their sympathy, because sympathy only serves to weaken us. No one better understands a saint than the saint who is as close and as intimate with Jesus as possible. If we accept the sympathy of another saint, our spontaneous feeling is, “God is dealing too harshly with me and making my life too difficult.” That is why Jesus said that self-pity was of the devil (see Matthew 16:21-23). We must be merciful to God’s reputation. It is easy for us to tarnish God’s character because He never argues back; He never tries to defend or vindicate Himself. Beware of thinking that Jesus needed sympathy during His life on earth. He refused the sympathy of people because in His great wisdom He knew that no one on earth understood His purpose (see Matthew 16:23). He accepted only the sympathy of His Father and the angels (see Luke 15:10).
Look at God’s incredible waste of His saints, according to the world’s judgment. God seems to plant His saints in the most useless places. And then we say, “God intends for me to be here because I am so useful to Him.” Yet Jesus never measured His life by how or where He was of the greatest use. God places His saints where they will bring the most glory to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them. Workmen of God, 1341 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, August 10, 2017
What the Carpenter Sees in You - #7979
Many years ago we were shopping for a place where God wanted us to build a radio studio that we desperately needed. I've got a beautiful one at our headquarters today but back then we needed just something that would get us through. We were looking at a possible location – this big barn of a room with a high ceiling and it was totally bare. Well, when I looked at it I saw a big bare room, but not Kasey. No, he's a carpenter and he started talking about this wall here and that partition there; the control room in that corner, where the doors would be, and how we could soundproof the floor. It was amazing! He was seeing all kinds of things in that room that I couldn't see! But, then, that's the great thing about carpenters!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What the Carpenter Sees in You."
I do think that's how Jesus looks at you. After all, He's a carpenter. His earthly father, Joseph, was one and Jesus grew up with a carpenter's skills – and a carpenter's eye to see what someone could become; not just what they are.
The blueprint is in our word for today from the Word of God in Ephesians 2:10. And it's an eye-opener, really, as to who you really are and why you're here. "We are God's workmanship." Let's stop on that...you are no random assembly of molecules. You are a handmade, one-of-a-kind masterpiece creation of Almighty God. You may not have been treated like you're that valuable, but that's who you really are. And your Creator is the One who says so. Here's what the whole statement says, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
When Jesus looks at you, it's like my friend, the carpenter, looking at that empty room. He sees what that room could be after his skilled hands are finished renewing it. Jesus knows the masterpiece you were created to become, the difference you were created to make, the value you are created to have. That's what He sees. Maybe other people have only seen the bare room, and maybe you've been made to feel pretty worthless, incompetent, unloved, unworthy. But they don't see what Jesus sees; what you were born to be.
And here's why you may have missed knowing how much you're really worth. You're missing the One who gave you your worth. You're missing Jesus. The Bible says we have marked up this masterpiece God made with our self-centered living. God calls it sin, and our sin has built a wall between us and the God we were made by and for. So, we're cut off from the One who loves and values us the most; so much that He thought you were worth sending His Son to die for!
And you will never really know how valuable you really are until you open your heart to the One who loved you enough to die for you. You and I did the sinning. Jesus did the dying, and you don't have to spend one more day away from the One who made you to be His masterpiece. The One who sees you through His Carpenter's eye – and sees one He created with His hands, paid for with His blood, and the one He wants to forgive, restore, and renew.
But it's your move now. He made His on the cross. Now you have two choices: put your trust in Him to be your own Savior from your own sin, or basically say, "No thanks, Jesus. I'll just settle for more of the same." If you're ready to belong to the One who can love you like no one else ever could, then why don't you tell Him that right now. "Jesus, I turn from running my own life. I was never meant to. I am putting my life in the hands of the One who gave me my life...in the hands of the One who gave His life for me. Jesus, beginning this very day, I am Yours." When you do that your soul is home and you belong to the One who gave you your worth in the first place and who gave everything He had to bring you home to Him.
Are you ready to come home? A great place to land is our website – AnewStory.com – because everything you need to know, out of God's word itself, to be sure you belong to Him is right there waiting for you.
Jesus, the carpenter, sees in you what everybody else has missed, and maybe even you have missed – the person you were born to be. And today, He simply waits for your invitation to start making you all you were meant to be.
Seems to me God gives a lot more grace than we’d ever imagine. We could do the same. I’m not for watering down the truth or compromising the Gospel. But if a fellow with a pure heart calls God Father, can’t I call that same man Brother? If God doesn’t make doctrinal perfection a requirement for family membership, should I?
If God can tolerate my mistakes, can’t I tolerate the mistakes of others? If God can overlook my errors, can’t I overlook the errors of others? If God allows me with my foibles and failures to call him Father, shouldn’t I extend that same grace to others?
One thing is for sure. When we get to heaven, we’ll be surprised at some of the folks we see. And some of them will be surprised when they see us!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Esther 2
1-4 Later, when King Xerxes’ anger had cooled and he was having second thoughts about what Vashti had done and what he had ordered against her, the king’s young attendants stepped in and got the ball rolling: “Let’s begin a search for beautiful young virgins for the king. Let the king appoint officials in every province of his kingdom to bring every beautiful young virgin to the palace complex of Susa and to the harem run by Hegai, the king’s eunuch who oversees the women; he will put them through their beauty treatments. Then let the girl who best pleases the king be made queen in place of Vashti.”
The king liked this advice and took it.
5-7 Now there was a Jew who lived in the palace complex in Susa. His name was Mordecai the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish—a Benjaminite. His ancestors had been taken from Jerusalem with the exiles and carried off with King Jehoiachin of Judah by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon into exile. Mordecai had reared his cousin Hadassah, otherwise known as Esther, since she had no father or mother. The girl had a good figure and a beautiful face. After her parents died, Mordecai had adopted her.
8 When the king’s order had been publicly posted, many young girls were brought to the palace complex of Susa and given over to Hegai who was overseer of the women. Esther was among them.
9-10 Hegai liked Esther and took a special interest in her. Right off he started her beauty treatments, ordered special food, assigned her seven personal maids from the palace, and put her and her maids in the best rooms in the harem. Esther didn’t say anything about her family and racial background because Mordecai had told her not to.
11 Every day Mordecai strolled beside the court of the harem to find out how Esther was and get news of what she was doing.
12-14 Each girl’s turn came to go in to King Xerxes after she had completed the twelve months of prescribed beauty treatments—six months’ treatment with oil of myrrh followed by six months with perfumes and various cosmetics. When it was time for the girl to go to the king, she was given whatever she wanted to take with her when she left the harem for the king’s quarters. She would go there in the evening; in the morning she would return to a second harem overseen by Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch in charge of the concubines. She never again went back to the king unless the king took a special liking to her and asked for her by name.
15 When it was Esther’s turn to go to the king (Esther the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had adopted her as his daughter), she asked for nothing other than what Hegai, the king’s eunuch in charge of the harem, had recommended. Esther, just as she was, won the admiration of everyone who saw her.
16 She was taken to King Xerxes in the royal palace in the tenth month, the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of the king’s reign.
17-18 The king fell in love with Esther far more than with any of his other women or any of the other virgins—he was totally smitten by her. He placed a royal crown on her head and made her queen in place of Vashti. Then the king gave a great banquet for all his nobles and officials—“Esther’s Banquet.” He proclaimed a holiday for all the provinces and handed out gifts with royal generosity.
19-20 On one of the occasions when the virgins were being gathered together, Mordecai was sitting at the King’s Gate. All this time, Esther had kept her family background and race a secret as Mordecai had ordered; Esther still did what Mordecai told her, just as when she was being raised by him.
21-23 On this day, with Mordecai sitting at the King’s Gate, Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs who guarded the entrance, had it in for the king and were making plans to kill King Xerxes. But Mordecai learned of the plot and told Queen Esther, who then told King Xerxes, giving credit to Mordecai. When the thing was investigated and confirmed as true, the two men were hanged on a gallows. This was all written down in a logbook kept for the king’s use.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Read: Psalm 80
An Asaph Psalm
1-2 Listen, Shepherd, Israel’s Shepherd—
get all your Joseph sheep together.
Throw beams of light
from your dazzling throne
So Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh
can see where they’re going.
Get out of bed—you’ve slept long enough!
Come on the run before it’s too late.
3 God, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
4-6 God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
how long will you smolder like a sleeping volcano
while your people call for fire and brimstone?
You put us on a diet of tears,
bucket after bucket of salty tears to drink.
You make us look ridiculous to our friends;
our enemies poke fun day after day.
7 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
8-18 Remember how you brought a young vine from Egypt,
cleared out the brambles and briers
and planted your very own vineyard?
You prepared the good earth,
you planted her roots deep;
the vineyard filled the land.
Your vine soared high and shaded the mountains,
even dwarfing the giant cedars.
Your vine ranged west to the Sea,
east to the River.
So why do you no longer protect your vine?
Trespassers pick its grapes at will;
Wild pigs crash through and crush it,
and the mice nibble away at what’s left.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies, turn our way!
Take a good look at what’s happened
and attend to this vine.
Care for what you once tenderly planted—
the vine you raised from a shoot.
And those who dared to set it on fire—
give them a look that will kill!
Then take the hand of your once-favorite child,
the child you raised to adulthood.
We will never turn our back on you;
breathe life into our lungs so we can shout your name!
19 God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, come back!
Smile your blessing smile:
That will be our salvation.
INSIGHT:
Today’s psalm asks God to restore Israel—to make His face shine on them so they may be saved. Where have you seen God’s hand saving and restoring you and your loved ones?
Our Father’s Face
By David H. Roper
Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved. Psalm 80:3
I remember my father’s face. It was hard to read. He was a kind man, but stoic and self-contained. As a child, I often searched his face, looking for a smile or other show of affection. Faces are us. A frown, a sullen look, a smile, and crinkly eyes reveal what we feel about others. Our faces are our “tell.”
Asaph, the author of Psalm 80, was distraught and wanted to see the Lord’s face. He looked north from his vantage point in Jerusalem and saw Judah's sister-state, Israel, collapse under the weight of the Assyrian Empire. With her buffer state gone, Judah was vulnerable to invasion from all sides—Assyria from the north, Egypt from the south, and the Arab nations from the east. She was outnumbered and outmatched.
Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved. Psalm 80:3
Asaph gathered up his fears in a prayer, three times repeated (80:3, 7, 19), “Make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.” (Or, in other words, let me see Your smile.)
It’s good to look away from our fears and search our heavenly Father’s face. The best way to see God’s face is to look at the cross. The cross is His “tell” (John 3:16).
So know this: When your Father looks at you, He has a great big smile on His face. You’re very safe!
Ask God to shine His face on you. For further help in prayer, try praying this Psalm or others.
Tell us what your favorite Psalm is and encourage others: Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
God’s love for us is as expansive as the open arms of Christ on the cross.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, August 10, 2017
The Holy Suffering of the Saint
Let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good… —1 Peter 4:19
Choosing to suffer means that there must be something wrong with you, but choosing God’s will— even if it means you will suffer— is something very different. No normal, healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he simply chooses God’s will, just as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not. And no saint should ever dare to interfere with the lesson of suffering being taught in another saint’s life.
The saint who satisfies the heart of Jesus will make other saints strong and mature for God. But the people used to strengthen us are never those who sympathize with us; in fact, we are hindered by those who give us their sympathy, because sympathy only serves to weaken us. No one better understands a saint than the saint who is as close and as intimate with Jesus as possible. If we accept the sympathy of another saint, our spontaneous feeling is, “God is dealing too harshly with me and making my life too difficult.” That is why Jesus said that self-pity was of the devil (see Matthew 16:21-23). We must be merciful to God’s reputation. It is easy for us to tarnish God’s character because He never argues back; He never tries to defend or vindicate Himself. Beware of thinking that Jesus needed sympathy during His life on earth. He refused the sympathy of people because in His great wisdom He knew that no one on earth understood His purpose (see Matthew 16:23). He accepted only the sympathy of His Father and the angels (see Luke 15:10).
Look at God’s incredible waste of His saints, according to the world’s judgment. God seems to plant His saints in the most useless places. And then we say, “God intends for me to be here because I am so useful to Him.” Yet Jesus never measured His life by how or where He was of the greatest use. God places His saints where they will bring the most glory to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them. Workmen of God, 1341 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, August 10, 2017
What the Carpenter Sees in You - #7979
Many years ago we were shopping for a place where God wanted us to build a radio studio that we desperately needed. I've got a beautiful one at our headquarters today but back then we needed just something that would get us through. We were looking at a possible location – this big barn of a room with a high ceiling and it was totally bare. Well, when I looked at it I saw a big bare room, but not Kasey. No, he's a carpenter and he started talking about this wall here and that partition there; the control room in that corner, where the doors would be, and how we could soundproof the floor. It was amazing! He was seeing all kinds of things in that room that I couldn't see! But, then, that's the great thing about carpenters!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What the Carpenter Sees in You."
I do think that's how Jesus looks at you. After all, He's a carpenter. His earthly father, Joseph, was one and Jesus grew up with a carpenter's skills – and a carpenter's eye to see what someone could become; not just what they are.
The blueprint is in our word for today from the Word of God in Ephesians 2:10. And it's an eye-opener, really, as to who you really are and why you're here. "We are God's workmanship." Let's stop on that...you are no random assembly of molecules. You are a handmade, one-of-a-kind masterpiece creation of Almighty God. You may not have been treated like you're that valuable, but that's who you really are. And your Creator is the One who says so. Here's what the whole statement says, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
When Jesus looks at you, it's like my friend, the carpenter, looking at that empty room. He sees what that room could be after his skilled hands are finished renewing it. Jesus knows the masterpiece you were created to become, the difference you were created to make, the value you are created to have. That's what He sees. Maybe other people have only seen the bare room, and maybe you've been made to feel pretty worthless, incompetent, unloved, unworthy. But they don't see what Jesus sees; what you were born to be.
And here's why you may have missed knowing how much you're really worth. You're missing the One who gave you your worth. You're missing Jesus. The Bible says we have marked up this masterpiece God made with our self-centered living. God calls it sin, and our sin has built a wall between us and the God we were made by and for. So, we're cut off from the One who loves and values us the most; so much that He thought you were worth sending His Son to die for!
And you will never really know how valuable you really are until you open your heart to the One who loved you enough to die for you. You and I did the sinning. Jesus did the dying, and you don't have to spend one more day away from the One who made you to be His masterpiece. The One who sees you through His Carpenter's eye – and sees one He created with His hands, paid for with His blood, and the one He wants to forgive, restore, and renew.
But it's your move now. He made His on the cross. Now you have two choices: put your trust in Him to be your own Savior from your own sin, or basically say, "No thanks, Jesus. I'll just settle for more of the same." If you're ready to belong to the One who can love you like no one else ever could, then why don't you tell Him that right now. "Jesus, I turn from running my own life. I was never meant to. I am putting my life in the hands of the One who gave me my life...in the hands of the One who gave His life for me. Jesus, beginning this very day, I am Yours." When you do that your soul is home and you belong to the One who gave you your worth in the first place and who gave everything He had to bring you home to Him.
Are you ready to come home? A great place to land is our website – AnewStory.com – because everything you need to know, out of God's word itself, to be sure you belong to Him is right there waiting for you.
Jesus, the carpenter, sees in you what everybody else has missed, and maybe even you have missed – the person you were born to be. And today, He simply waits for your invitation to start making you all you were meant to be.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Esther 1, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: STUNNED BY HIS GRACE
I’ve never been surprised by God’s judgment—but I’m still stunned by his grace! David the psalmist becomes David the voyeur, but by God’s grace becomes David the psalmist again. Peter denied Christ before he preached Christ. Zaccaeus, the crook… the cleanest part of his life was the money he’d laundered, but Jesus still had time for him. The thief on the cross…hell bent and hung-out-to die one minute, but heaven-bound and smiling the next.
Story after story. Surprise after surprise. It seems that God is looking more for ways to get us home than for ways to keep us out. I challenge you to find one soul who came to God seeking grace and did not find it. Search the pages. Read the stories. Find one person who came seeking a second chance and left with a stern lecture. I dare you! You won’t find it!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Esther 1
1-3 This is the story of something that happened in the time of Xerxes, the Xerxes who ruled from India to Ethiopia—127 provinces in all. King Xerxes ruled from his royal throne in the palace complex of Susa. In the third year of his reign he gave a banquet for all his officials and ministers. The military brass of Persia and Media were also there, along with the princes and governors of the provinces.
4-7 For six months he put on exhibit the huge wealth of his empire and its stunningly beautiful royal splendors. At the conclusion of the exhibit, the king threw a weeklong party for everyone living in Susa, the capital—important and unimportant alike. The party was in the garden courtyard of the king’s summer house. The courtyard was elaborately decorated with white and blue cotton curtains tied with linen and purple cords to silver rings on marble columns. Silver and gold couches were arranged on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother-of-pearl, and colored stones. Drinks were served in gold chalices, each chalice one-of-a-kind. The royal wine flowed freely—a generous king!
8-9 The guests could drink as much as they liked—king’s orders!—with waiters at their elbows to refill the drinks. Meanwhile, Queen Vashti was throwing a separate party for women inside King Xerxes’ royal palace.
10-11 On the seventh day of the party, the king, high on the wine, ordered the seven eunuchs who were his personal servants (Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas) to bring him Queen Vashti resplendent in her royal crown. He wanted to show off her beauty to the guests and officials. She was extremely good-looking.
12-15 But Queen Vashti refused to come, refused the summons delivered by the eunuchs. The king lost his temper. Seething with anger over her insolence, the king called in his counselors, all experts in legal matters. It was the king’s practice to consult his expert advisors. Those closest to him were Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven highest-ranking princes of Persia and Media, the inner circle with access to the king’s ear. He asked them what legal recourse they had against Queen Vashti for not obeying King Xerxes’ summons delivered by the eunuchs.
16-18 Memucan spoke up in the council of the king and princes: “It’s not only the king Queen Vashti has insulted, it’s all of us, leaders and people alike in every last one of King Xerxes’ provinces. The word’s going to get out: ‘Did you hear the latest about Queen Vashti? King Xerxes ordered her to be brought before him and she wouldn’t do it!’ When the women hear it, they’ll start treating their husbands with contempt. The day the wives of the Persian and Mede officials get wind of the queen’s insolence, they’ll be out of control. Is that what we want, a country of angry women who don’t know their place?
19-20 “So, if the king agrees, let him pronounce a royal ruling and have it recorded in the laws of the Persians and Medes so that it cannot be revoked, that Vashti is permanently banned from King Xerxes’ presence. And then let the king give her royal position to a woman who knows her place. When the king’s ruling becomes public knowledge throughout the kingdom, extensive as it is, every woman, regardless of her social position, will show proper respect to her husband.”
21-22 The king and the princes liked this. The king did what Memucan proposed. He sent bulletins to every part of the kingdom, to each province in its own script, to each people in their own language: “Every man is master of his own house; whatever he says, goes.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Read: Exodus 32:21–32
Moses said to Aaron, “What on Earth did these people ever do to you that you involved them in this huge sin?”
22-23 Aaron said, “Master, don’t be angry. You know this people and how set on evil they are. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will lead us. This Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him.’
24 “So I said, ‘Who has gold?’ And they took off their jewelry and gave it to me. I threw it in the fire and out came this calf.”
25-26 Moses saw that the people were simply running wild—Aaron had let them run wild, disgracing themselves before their enemies. He took up a position at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is on God’s side, join me!” All the Levites stepped up.
27 He then told them, “God’s orders, the God of Israel: ‘Strap on your swords and go to work. Crisscross the camp from one end to the other: Kill brother, friend, neighbor.’”
28 The Levites carried out Moses’ orders. Three thousand of the people were killed that day.
29 Moses said, “You confirmed your ordination today—and at great cost, even killing your sons and brothers! And God has blessed you.”
30 The next day Moses addressed the people: “You have sinned an enormous sin! But I am going to go up to God; maybe I’ll be able to clear you of your sin.”
31-32 Moses went back to God and said, “This is terrible. This people has sinned—it’s an enormous sin! They made gods of gold for themselves. And now, if you will only forgive their sin. . . . But if not, erase me out of the book you’ve written.”
The Heart of Christ
By Mart DeHaan
Please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written. Exodus 32:32
An Australian journalist who spent 400 days in an Egyptian jail expressed mixed emotions when he was released. While admitting his relief, he said he accepted his freedom with incredible concern for the friends he was leaving behind. He said he found it extremely hard to say goodbye to fellow reporters who had been arrested and jailed with him—not knowing how much longer they were going to be held.
Moses also expressed great anxiety at the thought of leaving friends behind. When faced with the thought of losing the brother, sister, and nation that had worshiped a golden calf while he was meeting with God on Mount Sinai (Ex. 32:11–14), he interceded for them. Showing how deeply he cared, he pled, “But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written” (v. 32).
Father in heaven, thank You for being willing to live—and die—for us.
The apostle Paul later expressed a similar concern for family, friends, and nation. Grieving their unbelief in Jesus, Paul said he would be willing to give up his own relationship with Christ if by such love he could save his brothers and sisters (Rom. 9:3).
Looking back, we see that Moses and Paul both expressed the heart of Christ. Yet, the love they could only feel, and the sacrifice they could only offer, Jesus fulfilled—to be with us forever.
Father in heaven, thank You for reminding us how much it is like You to be willing to live—and die—for those who have not yet seen how much You love them.
Caring for others honors Jesus’s love for us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Prayer in the Father’s Hearing
Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me." —John 11:41
When the Son of God prays, He is mindful and consciously aware of only His Father. God always hears the prayers of His Son, and if the Son of God has been formed in me (see Galatians 4:19) the Father will always hear my prayers. But I must see to it that the Son of God is exhibited in my human flesh. “…your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit…” (1 Corinthians 6:19), that is, your body is the Bethlehem of God’s Son. Is the Son of God being given His opportunity to work in me? Is the direct simplicity of His life being worked out in me exactly as it was worked out in His life while here on earth? When I come into contact with the everyday occurrences of life as an ordinary human being, is the prayer of God’s eternal Son to His Father being prayed in me? Jesus says, “In that day you will ask in My name…” (John 16:26). What day does He mean? He is referring to the day when the Holy Spirit has come to me and made me one with my Lord.
Is the Lord Jesus Christ being abundantly satisfied by your life, or are you exhibiting a walk of spiritual pride before Him? Never let your common sense become so prominent and forceful that it pushes the Son of God to one side. Common sense is a gift that God gave to our human nature— but common sense is not the gift of His Son. Supernatural sense is the gift of His Son, and we should never put our common sense on the throne. The Son always recognizes and identifies with the Father, but common sense has never yet done so and never will. Our ordinary abilities will never worship God unless they are transformed by the indwelling Son of God. We must make sure that our human flesh is kept in perfect submission to Him, allowing Him to work through it moment by moment. Are we living at such a level of human dependence upon Jesus Christ that His life is being exhibited moment by moment in us?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Helping Kids Unpack - #7978
My wife would have said "creature of habit". I prefer to think of myself as "structured," you know. But I do exhibit some behaviors that are a bit compulsive. I don't think I'm dangerous. For example, it does not matter what time I get in from the airport or the interstate after a trip, there is one thing I will do before I get to bed. I will unpack. Sure, it's 2:00 AM, but I will get everything back to its proper place. An unpacked suitcase will pursue me all night long if I don't. Now sometimes my sweet wife would try to inject a little common sense by simply asking, "Why not unpack tomorrow?" Of course, she didn't understand why that's totally illogical. I'm not home until I'm unpacked. Neither are your children.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Helping Kids Unpack."
Now, I'll unpack that idea in just a moment. But first, our word for today from the Word of God. It's from Deuteronomy 11:18 and following. It might be entitled, "How to Raise Righteous Kids in a Pagan Culture." That was the challenge these Jewish parents faced as they raised the first generation born in the Land of Canaan, and it's the challenge every believing Mom and Dad faces in our world today.
Here's what God says, "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children." Now how do you do that? In a classroom setting? Do you do it in a religious meeting? Well, He says to do it this way. "Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land...as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth."
Wow! Now, notice the best places to communicate important values to your children - relaxed times, while you're traveling somewhere, at the end of the day, at the beginning of the day, when they're arriving home, or when they're leaving. And how often? God talks about "your days and the days of your children."
Now, in many ways, the key to raising whole children in a broken world is what I like to call the daily debriefing - emptying out the mental, spiritual, and emotional suitcase that your son or daughter has filled up that day. Each day your son or daughter comes home with new experiences, with happy conversations, with unsettling conversations, with new hurts, new episodes in the ongoing soap opera of their friends' lives, temptations, teachers' comments, confusing emotions, new responsibilities. Your son or daughter has, as I do when I return home from a trip, the need to unpack!
Now this doesn't usually happen through formal interrogation. It happens in relaxed settings in a hundred different ways. The key is the climate you set - providing an atmosphere where they feel safe; where honest feelings are shared; where people aren't condemned for bad feelings or experiences. Our kids need to disinfect themselves from the day's contamination - and you need to let them.
It's in these daily debriefings that we can, without preaching, help our kids integrate their beliefs with the daily barrage they encounter. Our kids live in days, - not years, not weeks, not months, they do days - so they need to talk about their day, while it's still fresh in their mind, before it gets buried inside. You can't miss too many of those days if you want a stable child in a stormy world.
Remember, when you see your son or daughter come home from their daily "trip," they have a suitcase full. So please, take time to help them unpack!
I’ve never been surprised by God’s judgment—but I’m still stunned by his grace! David the psalmist becomes David the voyeur, but by God’s grace becomes David the psalmist again. Peter denied Christ before he preached Christ. Zaccaeus, the crook… the cleanest part of his life was the money he’d laundered, but Jesus still had time for him. The thief on the cross…hell bent and hung-out-to die one minute, but heaven-bound and smiling the next.
Story after story. Surprise after surprise. It seems that God is looking more for ways to get us home than for ways to keep us out. I challenge you to find one soul who came to God seeking grace and did not find it. Search the pages. Read the stories. Find one person who came seeking a second chance and left with a stern lecture. I dare you! You won’t find it!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Esther 1
1-3 This is the story of something that happened in the time of Xerxes, the Xerxes who ruled from India to Ethiopia—127 provinces in all. King Xerxes ruled from his royal throne in the palace complex of Susa. In the third year of his reign he gave a banquet for all his officials and ministers. The military brass of Persia and Media were also there, along with the princes and governors of the provinces.
4-7 For six months he put on exhibit the huge wealth of his empire and its stunningly beautiful royal splendors. At the conclusion of the exhibit, the king threw a weeklong party for everyone living in Susa, the capital—important and unimportant alike. The party was in the garden courtyard of the king’s summer house. The courtyard was elaborately decorated with white and blue cotton curtains tied with linen and purple cords to silver rings on marble columns. Silver and gold couches were arranged on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother-of-pearl, and colored stones. Drinks were served in gold chalices, each chalice one-of-a-kind. The royal wine flowed freely—a generous king!
8-9 The guests could drink as much as they liked—king’s orders!—with waiters at their elbows to refill the drinks. Meanwhile, Queen Vashti was throwing a separate party for women inside King Xerxes’ royal palace.
10-11 On the seventh day of the party, the king, high on the wine, ordered the seven eunuchs who were his personal servants (Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas) to bring him Queen Vashti resplendent in her royal crown. He wanted to show off her beauty to the guests and officials. She was extremely good-looking.
12-15 But Queen Vashti refused to come, refused the summons delivered by the eunuchs. The king lost his temper. Seething with anger over her insolence, the king called in his counselors, all experts in legal matters. It was the king’s practice to consult his expert advisors. Those closest to him were Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven highest-ranking princes of Persia and Media, the inner circle with access to the king’s ear. He asked them what legal recourse they had against Queen Vashti for not obeying King Xerxes’ summons delivered by the eunuchs.
16-18 Memucan spoke up in the council of the king and princes: “It’s not only the king Queen Vashti has insulted, it’s all of us, leaders and people alike in every last one of King Xerxes’ provinces. The word’s going to get out: ‘Did you hear the latest about Queen Vashti? King Xerxes ordered her to be brought before him and she wouldn’t do it!’ When the women hear it, they’ll start treating their husbands with contempt. The day the wives of the Persian and Mede officials get wind of the queen’s insolence, they’ll be out of control. Is that what we want, a country of angry women who don’t know their place?
19-20 “So, if the king agrees, let him pronounce a royal ruling and have it recorded in the laws of the Persians and Medes so that it cannot be revoked, that Vashti is permanently banned from King Xerxes’ presence. And then let the king give her royal position to a woman who knows her place. When the king’s ruling becomes public knowledge throughout the kingdom, extensive as it is, every woman, regardless of her social position, will show proper respect to her husband.”
21-22 The king and the princes liked this. The king did what Memucan proposed. He sent bulletins to every part of the kingdom, to each province in its own script, to each people in their own language: “Every man is master of his own house; whatever he says, goes.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Read: Exodus 32:21–32
Moses said to Aaron, “What on Earth did these people ever do to you that you involved them in this huge sin?”
22-23 Aaron said, “Master, don’t be angry. You know this people and how set on evil they are. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will lead us. This Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him.’
24 “So I said, ‘Who has gold?’ And they took off their jewelry and gave it to me. I threw it in the fire and out came this calf.”
25-26 Moses saw that the people were simply running wild—Aaron had let them run wild, disgracing themselves before their enemies. He took up a position at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is on God’s side, join me!” All the Levites stepped up.
27 He then told them, “God’s orders, the God of Israel: ‘Strap on your swords and go to work. Crisscross the camp from one end to the other: Kill brother, friend, neighbor.’”
28 The Levites carried out Moses’ orders. Three thousand of the people were killed that day.
29 Moses said, “You confirmed your ordination today—and at great cost, even killing your sons and brothers! And God has blessed you.”
30 The next day Moses addressed the people: “You have sinned an enormous sin! But I am going to go up to God; maybe I’ll be able to clear you of your sin.”
31-32 Moses went back to God and said, “This is terrible. This people has sinned—it’s an enormous sin! They made gods of gold for themselves. And now, if you will only forgive their sin. . . . But if not, erase me out of the book you’ve written.”
The Heart of Christ
By Mart DeHaan
Please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written. Exodus 32:32
An Australian journalist who spent 400 days in an Egyptian jail expressed mixed emotions when he was released. While admitting his relief, he said he accepted his freedom with incredible concern for the friends he was leaving behind. He said he found it extremely hard to say goodbye to fellow reporters who had been arrested and jailed with him—not knowing how much longer they were going to be held.
Moses also expressed great anxiety at the thought of leaving friends behind. When faced with the thought of losing the brother, sister, and nation that had worshiped a golden calf while he was meeting with God on Mount Sinai (Ex. 32:11–14), he interceded for them. Showing how deeply he cared, he pled, “But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written” (v. 32).
Father in heaven, thank You for being willing to live—and die—for us.
The apostle Paul later expressed a similar concern for family, friends, and nation. Grieving their unbelief in Jesus, Paul said he would be willing to give up his own relationship with Christ if by such love he could save his brothers and sisters (Rom. 9:3).
Looking back, we see that Moses and Paul both expressed the heart of Christ. Yet, the love they could only feel, and the sacrifice they could only offer, Jesus fulfilled—to be with us forever.
Father in heaven, thank You for reminding us how much it is like You to be willing to live—and die—for those who have not yet seen how much You love them.
Caring for others honors Jesus’s love for us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Prayer in the Father’s Hearing
Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me." —John 11:41
When the Son of God prays, He is mindful and consciously aware of only His Father. God always hears the prayers of His Son, and if the Son of God has been formed in me (see Galatians 4:19) the Father will always hear my prayers. But I must see to it that the Son of God is exhibited in my human flesh. “…your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit…” (1 Corinthians 6:19), that is, your body is the Bethlehem of God’s Son. Is the Son of God being given His opportunity to work in me? Is the direct simplicity of His life being worked out in me exactly as it was worked out in His life while here on earth? When I come into contact with the everyday occurrences of life as an ordinary human being, is the prayer of God’s eternal Son to His Father being prayed in me? Jesus says, “In that day you will ask in My name…” (John 16:26). What day does He mean? He is referring to the day when the Holy Spirit has come to me and made me one with my Lord.
Is the Lord Jesus Christ being abundantly satisfied by your life, or are you exhibiting a walk of spiritual pride before Him? Never let your common sense become so prominent and forceful that it pushes the Son of God to one side. Common sense is a gift that God gave to our human nature— but common sense is not the gift of His Son. Supernatural sense is the gift of His Son, and we should never put our common sense on the throne. The Son always recognizes and identifies with the Father, but common sense has never yet done so and never will. Our ordinary abilities will never worship God unless they are transformed by the indwelling Son of God. We must make sure that our human flesh is kept in perfect submission to Him, allowing Him to work through it moment by moment. Are we living at such a level of human dependence upon Jesus Christ that His life is being exhibited moment by moment in us?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Helping Kids Unpack - #7978
My wife would have said "creature of habit". I prefer to think of myself as "structured," you know. But I do exhibit some behaviors that are a bit compulsive. I don't think I'm dangerous. For example, it does not matter what time I get in from the airport or the interstate after a trip, there is one thing I will do before I get to bed. I will unpack. Sure, it's 2:00 AM, but I will get everything back to its proper place. An unpacked suitcase will pursue me all night long if I don't. Now sometimes my sweet wife would try to inject a little common sense by simply asking, "Why not unpack tomorrow?" Of course, she didn't understand why that's totally illogical. I'm not home until I'm unpacked. Neither are your children.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Helping Kids Unpack."
Now, I'll unpack that idea in just a moment. But first, our word for today from the Word of God. It's from Deuteronomy 11:18 and following. It might be entitled, "How to Raise Righteous Kids in a Pagan Culture." That was the challenge these Jewish parents faced as they raised the first generation born in the Land of Canaan, and it's the challenge every believing Mom and Dad faces in our world today.
Here's what God says, "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children." Now how do you do that? In a classroom setting? Do you do it in a religious meeting? Well, He says to do it this way. "Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land...as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth."
Wow! Now, notice the best places to communicate important values to your children - relaxed times, while you're traveling somewhere, at the end of the day, at the beginning of the day, when they're arriving home, or when they're leaving. And how often? God talks about "your days and the days of your children."
Now, in many ways, the key to raising whole children in a broken world is what I like to call the daily debriefing - emptying out the mental, spiritual, and emotional suitcase that your son or daughter has filled up that day. Each day your son or daughter comes home with new experiences, with happy conversations, with unsettling conversations, with new hurts, new episodes in the ongoing soap opera of their friends' lives, temptations, teachers' comments, confusing emotions, new responsibilities. Your son or daughter has, as I do when I return home from a trip, the need to unpack!
Now this doesn't usually happen through formal interrogation. It happens in relaxed settings in a hundred different ways. The key is the climate you set - providing an atmosphere where they feel safe; where honest feelings are shared; where people aren't condemned for bad feelings or experiences. Our kids need to disinfect themselves from the day's contamination - and you need to let them.
It's in these daily debriefings that we can, without preaching, help our kids integrate their beliefs with the daily barrage they encounter. Our kids live in days, - not years, not weeks, not months, they do days - so they need to talk about their day, while it's still fresh in their mind, before it gets buried inside. You can't miss too many of those days if you want a stable child in a stormy world.
Remember, when you see your son or daughter come home from their daily "trip," they have a suitcase full. So please, take time to help them unpack!
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Revelation 12, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: THE HERO IN YOUR MIRROR
A hero could be next door and you wouldn’t know it. The fellow who changes the oil in your car could be a hero in overalls! Maybe as he works he prays, asking God to do with the heart of the driver what he does with the engine. The daycare worker where you drop off the kids? Perhaps her morning prayers include the name of each child and the dream that one of them will change the world.
I know—those folks don’t fit our image of a hero. They are too…well, normal. Give us four stars, titles, and headlines. We seldom see heroes in the making and we seldom recognize heroes, but we would do well to keep our eyes open. Tomorrow’s great preacher might be mowing your lawn. And the hero who inspires that person might be nearer than you think! Maybe in your mirror!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Revelation 12
The Woman, Her Son, and the Dragon
1-2 A great Sign appeared in Heaven: a Woman dressed all in sunlight, standing on the moon, and crowned with Twelve Stars. She was giving birth to a Child and cried out in the pain of childbirth.
3-4 And then another Sign alongside the first: a huge and fiery Dragon! It had seven heads and ten horns, a crown on each of the seven heads. With one flick of its tail it knocked a third of the Stars from the sky and dumped them on earth. The Dragon crouched before the Woman in childbirth, poised to eat up the Child when it came.
5-6 The Woman gave birth to a Son who will shepherd all nations with an iron rod. Her Son was seized and placed safely before God on his Throne. The Woman herself escaped to the desert to a place of safety prepared by God, all comforts provided her for 1,260 days.
7-12 War broke out in Heaven. Michael and his Angels fought the Dragon. The Dragon and his Angels fought back, but were no match for Michael. They were cleared out of Heaven, not a sign of them left. The great Dragon—ancient Serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, the one who led the whole earth astray—thrown out, and all his Angels thrown out with him, thrown down to earth. Then I heard a strong voice out of Heaven saying,
Salvation and power are established!
Kingdom of our God, authority of his Messiah!
The Accuser of our brothers and sisters thrown out,
who accused them day and night before God.
They defeated him through the blood of the Lamb
and the bold word of their witness.
They weren’t in love with themselves;
they were willing to die for Christ.
So rejoice, O Heavens, and all who live there,
but doom to earth and sea,
For the Devil’s come down on you with both feet;
he’s had a great fall;
He’s wild and raging with anger;
he hasn’t much time and he knows it.
13-17 When the Dragon saw he’d been thrown to earth, he went after the Woman who had given birth to the Man-Child. The Woman was given wings of a great eagle to fly to a place in the desert to be kept in safety and comfort for a time and times and half a time, safe and sound from the Serpent. The Serpent vomited a river of water to swamp and drown her, but earth came to her help, swallowing the water the Dragon spewed from its mouth. Helpless with rage, the Dragon raged at the Woman, then went off to make war with the rest of her children, the children who keep God’s commands and hold firm to the witness of Jesus.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
Read: Mark 10:42–52
41-45 When the other ten heard of this conversation, they lost their tempers with James and John. Jesus got them together to settle things down. “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” he said, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”
46-48 They spent some time in Jericho. As Jesus was leaving town, trailed by his disciples and a parade of people, a blind beggar by the name of Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, was sitting alongside the road. When he heard that Jesus the Nazarene was passing by, he began to cry out, “Son of David, Jesus! Mercy, have mercy on me!” Many tried to hush him up, but he yelled all the louder, “Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!”
49-50 Jesus stopped in his tracks. “Call him over.”
They called him. “It’s your lucky day! Get up! He’s calling you to come!” Throwing off his coat, he was on his feet at once and came to Jesus.
51 Jesus said, “What can I do for you?”
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
52 “On your way,” said Jesus. “Your faith has saved and healed you.”
In that very instant he recovered his sight and followed Jesus down the road.
INSIGHT:
The fact that Jesus was so completely accessible was the cause behind some of the heaviest criticism He received. He surprised people by receiving children (Luke 18:16) and shocked the religionists of His day by being available to the marginalized, the outsiders, and the despised (Mark 2:13–17). This accessibility earned Jesus a title He did not reject—a friend of sinners (Matt. 11:19).
Who are the outsiders of our day? How can we exhibit His heart of welcome by accepting others into our communities? Bill Crowder
Available to All
By David C. McCasland
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:45
In today’s celebrity-obsessed culture, it isn’t surprising that entrepreneurs are marketing “celebrities as products . . . allowing them to sell their personal time and attention.” Vauhini Vara’s article in The New Yorker noted that for $15,000, you can have a personal meeting with singer Shakira, while $12,000 will give you and eleven guests lunch with celebrity chef Michael Chiarello at his estate.
Many people treated Jesus like a celebrity as they followed Him from place to place, listened to His teaching, observed His miracles, and sought healing from His touch. Yet Jesus was never self-important or aloof, but available to all. When His followers James and John were privately jockeying for position in His coming kingdom, Jesus reminded all His disciples, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43–44).
Jesus, help us to demonstrate Your love to others today.
Soon after Jesus said this, He stopped a procession of people following Him to ask a blind beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 51) “Rabbi, I want to see,” the man replied. He received his sight immediately and followed Jesus (v. 52).
Our Lord “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (v. 45). May we, like Him, be compassionate and available to others today.
Lord Jesus, we honor You as the Son of God and Lord of glory who died for all. Help us to demonstrate Your love to others today.
Follow Jesus’s example: Reach out to others in need.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
Prayer in the Father’s Honor
…that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. —Luke 1:35
If the Son of God has been born into my human flesh, then am I allowing His holy innocence, simplicity, and oneness with the Father the opportunity to exhibit itself in me? What was true of the Virgin Mary in the history of the Son of God’s birth on earth is true of every saint. God’s Son is born into me through the direct act of God; then I as His child must exercise the right of a child— the right of always being face to face with my Father through prayer. Do I find myself continually saying in amazement to the commonsense part of my life, “Why did you want me to turn here or to go over there? ‘Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?’ ” (Luke 2:49). Whatever our circumstances may be, that holy, innocent, and eternal Child must be in contact with His Father.
Am I simple enough to identify myself with my Lord in this way? Is He having His wonderful way with me? Is God’s will being fulfilled in that His Son has been formed in me (see Galatians 4:19), or have I carefully pushed Him to one side? Oh, the noisy outcry of today! Why does everyone seem to be crying out so loudly? People today are crying out for the Son of God to be put to death. There is no room here for God’s Son right now— no room for quiet, holy fellowship and oneness with the Father.
Is the Son of God praying in me, bringing honor to the Father, or am I dictating my demands to Him? Is He ministering in me as He did in the time of His manhood here on earth? Is God’s Son in me going through His passion, suffering so that His own purposes might be fulfilled? The more a person knows of the inner life of God’s most mature saints, the more he sees what God’s purpose really is: to “…fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ…” (Colossians 1:24). And when we think of what it takes to “fill up,” there is always something yet to be done.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is in the middle that human choices are made; the beginning and the end remain with God. The decrees of God are birth and death, and in between those limits man makes his own distress or joy. Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
God Has an Important Announcement - #7977
Our plane was racing down the runway, preparing to take off from Nashville. I was so exhausted, I was already drifting off into la-la land. Then came those jolts as the front wheels left the ground. The team member who was with me said, "Have you ever felt anything like that?" I said, "No." And I dozed off. I wouldn't sleep for long; the flight attendant suddenly was announcing that we had blown a rear tire on takeoff and we were heading back to Nashville. For the next 45 minutes or so, we were circling the area, burning up as much fuel as possible for what could well be a crash landing. I called my wife from the plane. I asked her to get people praying. My team member joined me in committing this whole situation to the Lord. The flight attendants went into emergency mode to begin to prepare us for the landing. They demonstrated how to brace for the landing. They had us pull out our emergency instruction card from the pocket in front of us; something they had asked us to do before we took off; something hardly anyone did. But as the attendant began her briefing she prefaced it with a simple exhortation, "This time I want you to really listen." We really did!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "God Has an Important Announcement."
I'm very thankful to God for the way He answered prayer and brought our crippled aircraft in safely for a welcome from an armada of emergency vehicles and personnel. I was impressed with how the crew had prepared us. I was impressed with the way we all listened. And why did they have our total attention the second time when they reviewed those exits and evacuations? It's obvious, because we were in a critical situation now; because the information could be life-or-death.
Our word for today from the Word of God, Hebrews 2:3. "How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?" God has been trying to communicate life-or-death information to some of us for a long time. That word "salvation", that's not just a religious word. That's serious stuff. Salvation is how to get out of a plane that might be on fire; how to get out of a burning building. But like those passengers on that flight, we don't pay much attention to salvation information until we're suddenly in a critical situation...until we finally realize that what we do with this could be the difference between life and death.
God is used to people, as it says here, "ignoring such a great salvation". Maybe He's been trying to get your attention with the most critical information you will ever hear - that we're under an eternal death penalty for running our lives our way instead of God's way. And that His one and only Son, Jesus, absorbed all your sin and all the hell of it when He died on the cross, and that your only hope with God is putting your total trust in Jesus, like a person in a burning building would pin all their hopes on the rescuer who came to save them.
You've heard that news before, and maybe you've even accepted it with your head. That's what I did with the rescue information from that flight attendant the first time around. I got it with my heart though when I realized my life could depend on knowing and acting on it.
For you, ignoring what God has done to save you puts you in the danger zone. Maybe it's been that God has even shaken things up recently. He's asking for your attention before it is eternally too late. He says, "This time I want you to really listen". This isn't just some religious belief you sign up for. This requires an action step of making Jesus your personal Savior. If you haven't done that – if you've been putting that off – consider this God's emergency call to make your peace with Him.
I believe there's someone listening right now who's saying, "I don't think I should risk one more day without the Savior." Are you ready to begin this life saving relationship, to open your heart to Him? Tell Him that right now. I want to help you, in every way possible, make sure you belong to Him before you hit the pillow tonight. So go to our website – ANewStory.com. That's what it's there for.
God simply says, "How will you escape if you ignore such a great salvation?" Especially after what it cost. It cost God's one and only Son His life! Please, don't ignore this any longer. Your life – your eternity depends on it.
A hero could be next door and you wouldn’t know it. The fellow who changes the oil in your car could be a hero in overalls! Maybe as he works he prays, asking God to do with the heart of the driver what he does with the engine. The daycare worker where you drop off the kids? Perhaps her morning prayers include the name of each child and the dream that one of them will change the world.
I know—those folks don’t fit our image of a hero. They are too…well, normal. Give us four stars, titles, and headlines. We seldom see heroes in the making and we seldom recognize heroes, but we would do well to keep our eyes open. Tomorrow’s great preacher might be mowing your lawn. And the hero who inspires that person might be nearer than you think! Maybe in your mirror!
Read more When God Whispers Your Name
Revelation 12
The Woman, Her Son, and the Dragon
1-2 A great Sign appeared in Heaven: a Woman dressed all in sunlight, standing on the moon, and crowned with Twelve Stars. She was giving birth to a Child and cried out in the pain of childbirth.
3-4 And then another Sign alongside the first: a huge and fiery Dragon! It had seven heads and ten horns, a crown on each of the seven heads. With one flick of its tail it knocked a third of the Stars from the sky and dumped them on earth. The Dragon crouched before the Woman in childbirth, poised to eat up the Child when it came.
5-6 The Woman gave birth to a Son who will shepherd all nations with an iron rod. Her Son was seized and placed safely before God on his Throne. The Woman herself escaped to the desert to a place of safety prepared by God, all comforts provided her for 1,260 days.
7-12 War broke out in Heaven. Michael and his Angels fought the Dragon. The Dragon and his Angels fought back, but were no match for Michael. They were cleared out of Heaven, not a sign of them left. The great Dragon—ancient Serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, the one who led the whole earth astray—thrown out, and all his Angels thrown out with him, thrown down to earth. Then I heard a strong voice out of Heaven saying,
Salvation and power are established!
Kingdom of our God, authority of his Messiah!
The Accuser of our brothers and sisters thrown out,
who accused them day and night before God.
They defeated him through the blood of the Lamb
and the bold word of their witness.
They weren’t in love with themselves;
they were willing to die for Christ.
So rejoice, O Heavens, and all who live there,
but doom to earth and sea,
For the Devil’s come down on you with both feet;
he’s had a great fall;
He’s wild and raging with anger;
he hasn’t much time and he knows it.
13-17 When the Dragon saw he’d been thrown to earth, he went after the Woman who had given birth to the Man-Child. The Woman was given wings of a great eagle to fly to a place in the desert to be kept in safety and comfort for a time and times and half a time, safe and sound from the Serpent. The Serpent vomited a river of water to swamp and drown her, but earth came to her help, swallowing the water the Dragon spewed from its mouth. Helpless with rage, the Dragon raged at the Woman, then went off to make war with the rest of her children, the children who keep God’s commands and hold firm to the witness of Jesus.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
Read: Mark 10:42–52
41-45 When the other ten heard of this conversation, they lost their tempers with James and John. Jesus got them together to settle things down. “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” he said, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”
46-48 They spent some time in Jericho. As Jesus was leaving town, trailed by his disciples and a parade of people, a blind beggar by the name of Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, was sitting alongside the road. When he heard that Jesus the Nazarene was passing by, he began to cry out, “Son of David, Jesus! Mercy, have mercy on me!” Many tried to hush him up, but he yelled all the louder, “Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!”
49-50 Jesus stopped in his tracks. “Call him over.”
They called him. “It’s your lucky day! Get up! He’s calling you to come!” Throwing off his coat, he was on his feet at once and came to Jesus.
51 Jesus said, “What can I do for you?”
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
52 “On your way,” said Jesus. “Your faith has saved and healed you.”
In that very instant he recovered his sight and followed Jesus down the road.
INSIGHT:
The fact that Jesus was so completely accessible was the cause behind some of the heaviest criticism He received. He surprised people by receiving children (Luke 18:16) and shocked the religionists of His day by being available to the marginalized, the outsiders, and the despised (Mark 2:13–17). This accessibility earned Jesus a title He did not reject—a friend of sinners (Matt. 11:19).
Who are the outsiders of our day? How can we exhibit His heart of welcome by accepting others into our communities? Bill Crowder
Available to All
By David C. McCasland
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:45
In today’s celebrity-obsessed culture, it isn’t surprising that entrepreneurs are marketing “celebrities as products . . . allowing them to sell their personal time and attention.” Vauhini Vara’s article in The New Yorker noted that for $15,000, you can have a personal meeting with singer Shakira, while $12,000 will give you and eleven guests lunch with celebrity chef Michael Chiarello at his estate.
Many people treated Jesus like a celebrity as they followed Him from place to place, listened to His teaching, observed His miracles, and sought healing from His touch. Yet Jesus was never self-important or aloof, but available to all. When His followers James and John were privately jockeying for position in His coming kingdom, Jesus reminded all His disciples, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43–44).
Jesus, help us to demonstrate Your love to others today.
Soon after Jesus said this, He stopped a procession of people following Him to ask a blind beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 51) “Rabbi, I want to see,” the man replied. He received his sight immediately and followed Jesus (v. 52).
Our Lord “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (v. 45). May we, like Him, be compassionate and available to others today.
Lord Jesus, we honor You as the Son of God and Lord of glory who died for all. Help us to demonstrate Your love to others today.
Follow Jesus’s example: Reach out to others in need.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
Prayer in the Father’s Honor
…that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. —Luke 1:35
If the Son of God has been born into my human flesh, then am I allowing His holy innocence, simplicity, and oneness with the Father the opportunity to exhibit itself in me? What was true of the Virgin Mary in the history of the Son of God’s birth on earth is true of every saint. God’s Son is born into me through the direct act of God; then I as His child must exercise the right of a child— the right of always being face to face with my Father through prayer. Do I find myself continually saying in amazement to the commonsense part of my life, “Why did you want me to turn here or to go over there? ‘Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?’ ” (Luke 2:49). Whatever our circumstances may be, that holy, innocent, and eternal Child must be in contact with His Father.
Am I simple enough to identify myself with my Lord in this way? Is He having His wonderful way with me? Is God’s will being fulfilled in that His Son has been formed in me (see Galatians 4:19), or have I carefully pushed Him to one side? Oh, the noisy outcry of today! Why does everyone seem to be crying out so loudly? People today are crying out for the Son of God to be put to death. There is no room here for God’s Son right now— no room for quiet, holy fellowship and oneness with the Father.
Is the Son of God praying in me, bringing honor to the Father, or am I dictating my demands to Him? Is He ministering in me as He did in the time of His manhood here on earth? Is God’s Son in me going through His passion, suffering so that His own purposes might be fulfilled? The more a person knows of the inner life of God’s most mature saints, the more he sees what God’s purpose really is: to “…fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ…” (Colossians 1:24). And when we think of what it takes to “fill up,” there is always something yet to be done.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is in the middle that human choices are made; the beginning and the end remain with God. The decrees of God are birth and death, and in between those limits man makes his own distress or joy. Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
God Has an Important Announcement - #7977
Our plane was racing down the runway, preparing to take off from Nashville. I was so exhausted, I was already drifting off into la-la land. Then came those jolts as the front wheels left the ground. The team member who was with me said, "Have you ever felt anything like that?" I said, "No." And I dozed off. I wouldn't sleep for long; the flight attendant suddenly was announcing that we had blown a rear tire on takeoff and we were heading back to Nashville. For the next 45 minutes or so, we were circling the area, burning up as much fuel as possible for what could well be a crash landing. I called my wife from the plane. I asked her to get people praying. My team member joined me in committing this whole situation to the Lord. The flight attendants went into emergency mode to begin to prepare us for the landing. They demonstrated how to brace for the landing. They had us pull out our emergency instruction card from the pocket in front of us; something they had asked us to do before we took off; something hardly anyone did. But as the attendant began her briefing she prefaced it with a simple exhortation, "This time I want you to really listen." We really did!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "God Has an Important Announcement."
I'm very thankful to God for the way He answered prayer and brought our crippled aircraft in safely for a welcome from an armada of emergency vehicles and personnel. I was impressed with how the crew had prepared us. I was impressed with the way we all listened. And why did they have our total attention the second time when they reviewed those exits and evacuations? It's obvious, because we were in a critical situation now; because the information could be life-or-death.
Our word for today from the Word of God, Hebrews 2:3. "How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?" God has been trying to communicate life-or-death information to some of us for a long time. That word "salvation", that's not just a religious word. That's serious stuff. Salvation is how to get out of a plane that might be on fire; how to get out of a burning building. But like those passengers on that flight, we don't pay much attention to salvation information until we're suddenly in a critical situation...until we finally realize that what we do with this could be the difference between life and death.
God is used to people, as it says here, "ignoring such a great salvation". Maybe He's been trying to get your attention with the most critical information you will ever hear - that we're under an eternal death penalty for running our lives our way instead of God's way. And that His one and only Son, Jesus, absorbed all your sin and all the hell of it when He died on the cross, and that your only hope with God is putting your total trust in Jesus, like a person in a burning building would pin all their hopes on the rescuer who came to save them.
You've heard that news before, and maybe you've even accepted it with your head. That's what I did with the rescue information from that flight attendant the first time around. I got it with my heart though when I realized my life could depend on knowing and acting on it.
For you, ignoring what God has done to save you puts you in the danger zone. Maybe it's been that God has even shaken things up recently. He's asking for your attention before it is eternally too late. He says, "This time I want you to really listen". This isn't just some religious belief you sign up for. This requires an action step of making Jesus your personal Savior. If you haven't done that – if you've been putting that off – consider this God's emergency call to make your peace with Him.
I believe there's someone listening right now who's saying, "I don't think I should risk one more day without the Savior." Are you ready to begin this life saving relationship, to open your heart to Him? Tell Him that right now. I want to help you, in every way possible, make sure you belong to Him before you hit the pillow tonight. So go to our website – ANewStory.com. That's what it's there for.
God simply says, "How will you escape if you ignore such a great salvation?" Especially after what it cost. It cost God's one and only Son His life! Please, don't ignore this any longer. Your life – your eternity depends on it.
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