Max Lucado Daily: BUT GOD IS GOOD
There’s a reason the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror. Your future matters more than your past! God’s grace is greater than your sin. You thought the problem was your calendar, your marriage, your job. In reality, it’s this unresolved guilt! Don’t indulge it. Don’t drown in the bilge of your own condemnation. What you did was not good. But your God is good. And He will forgive you.
He is ready to write a new chapter in your life. Say with Paul, “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us” (Philippians 3:13-14). Your salvation has nothing to do with your work and everything to do with the finished work of Christ on the cross. Rejoice in the Lord’s mercy!
Isaiah 15
A Message concerning Moab:
Village Ar of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Kir of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Dibon climbs to its chapel in the hills,
goes up to lament.
Moab weeps and wails
over Nebo and Medba.
Every head is shaved bald,
every beard shaved clean.
They pour into the streets wearing black,
go up on the roofs, take to the town square,
Everyone in tears,
everyone in grief.
Towns Heshbon and Elealeh cry long and loud.
The sound carries as far as Jahaz.
Moab sobs, shaking in grief.
The soul of Moab trembles.
5-9 Oh, how I grieve for Moab!
Refugees stream to Zoar
and then on to Eglath-shelishiyah.
Up the slopes of Luhith they weep;
on the road to Horonaim they cry their loss.
The springs of Nimrim are dried up—
grass brown, buds stunted, nothing grows.
They leave, carrying all their possessions
on their backs, everything they own,
Making their way as best they can
across Willow Creek to safety.
Poignant cries reverberate
all through Moab,
Gut-wrenching sobs as far as Eglaim,
heart-racking sobs all the way to Beer-elim.
The banks of the Dibon crest with blood,
but God has worse in store for Dibon:
A lion—a lion to finish off the fugitives,
to clean up whoever’s left in the land.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, April 09, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Mark 10:26–31
The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”
27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”d
28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”e
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as muchf in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to comeg eternal life.h 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Insight
A wealthy young man approached Jesus trusting that his good works had earned him a place in heaven (Mark 10:17–20). Correcting him, Jesus told him to give up his material wealth and to follow Him in order to receive “treasure in heaven” (v. 21). This got the disciples thinking. They’d left their families and professions to follow Christ (Matthew 4:18–22; 9:9). Peter said to Jesus, “We have left everything to follow you!” (Mark 10:28). Jesus affirmed that they’d certainly be rewarded for their sacrifices and they’ll have the very thing the rich young ruler desired—“eternal life” (vv. 17, 30). But He also warned them of the danger of pride (v. 31). They weren’t to think of themselves as “greatest” in the kingdom (9:33–34) because of their sacrifices and achievements and for following Him longer than anyone else.
Surrendering All
Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!” Mark 10:28
Two men remembered for serving others for Jesus left careers in the arts to commit themselves to where they believed God had called them. James O. Fraser (1886–1938) decided not to pursue being a concert pianist in England to serve the Lisu people in China, while the American Judson Van DeVenter (1855–1939) chose to become an evangelist instead of pursuing a career in art. He later wrote the hymn “I Surrender All.”
While having a vocation in the arts is the perfect calling for many, these men believed God called them to relinquish one career for another. Perhaps they found inspiration from Jesus counseling the rich, young ruler to give up his possessions to follow Him (Mark 10:17–25). Witnessing the exchange, Peter exclaimed, “We have left everything to follow you!” (v. 28). Jesus assured him that God would give those who follow Him “a hundred times as much in this present age” and eternal life (v. 30). But He would give according to His wisdom: “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (v. 31).
No matter where God has placed us, we’re called to daily surrender our lives to Christ, obeying His gentle call to follow Him and serve Him with our talents and resources—whether in the home, office, community, or far from home. Watch Annahita Parsan’s devotional video, “Jesus, the Revolutionary.” She surrendered to God’s call to share the gospel in Sweden. As we submit to His call, He’ll also inspire us to love others. By: Amy Boucher Pye
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, April 09, 2020
Have You Seen Jesus?
After that, He appeared in another form to two of them… —Mark 16:12
Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many people who have never seen Jesus have received and share in God’s grace. But once you have seen Him, you can never be the same. Other things will not have the appeal they did before.
You should always recognize the difference between what you see Jesus to be and what He has done for you. If you see only what He has done for you, your God is not big enough. But if you have had a vision, seeing Jesus as He really is, experiences can come and go, yet you will endure “as seeing Him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). The man who was blind from birth did not know who Jesus was until Christ appeared and revealed Himself to him (see John 9). Jesus appears to those for whom He has done something, but we cannot order or predict when He will come. He may appear suddenly, at any turn. Then you can exclaim, “Now I see Him!” (see John 9:25).
Jesus must appear to you and to your friend individually; no one can see Jesus with your eyes. And division takes place when one has seen Him and the other has not. You cannot bring your friend to the point of seeing; God must do it. Have you seen Jesus? If so, you will want others to see Him too. “And they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either” (Mark 16:13). When you see Him, you must tell, even if they don’t believe.
O could I tell, you surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can you receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We never enter into the Kingdom of God by having our head questions answered, but only by commitment.
The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 13-14; Luke 10:1-24
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, April 09, 2020
Battlefield Blindness - #8674
"Embedded reporters." It was a concept I had never heard of until Operation Iraqi Freedom years ago. But the U.S. Military decided to allow reporters to actually travel with and report from active combat units, fighting for the liberation of Iraq back then. The result was these amazing live transmissions from sandstorms, rapid troop movements, actual combat in progress, and even the takeover of some of Saddam Hussein's palaces. It was the ultimate in reality TV. Of course, it had one disadvantage; one that briefers and Pentagon officials kept reminding people of. The embedded reporter could only report on the small slice of the big picture that he was able to see from his unit's vantage point. A seasoned military observer expressed it this way on television: "The closer you are to the battle, the less you can see the whole war."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Battlefield Blindness."
That tendency to see only the battle right in front of you is not unique to military campaigns. It's a regular occurrence in our everyday lives. Maybe you're in the middle of some battles of your own right now, in your marriage, the life of your child, in your church, or maybe with your health or your finances or an important relationship. And just like those in the military situation who become totally focused on the fraction they can see, the closer you are to the battle, the less you can see the whole war. Which can lead to some hurtful mistakes: overconfidence, discouragement, overreaction, panic, even retreat or surrender.
Moses was facing one of those moments of battlefield blindness in our word for today from the Word of God. In Exodus 17, beginning with verse 3, we discover God's remedy for this nearsightedness that battles can cause. As Moses was leading God's people through the wilderness, they faced a crisis of having no water. And they were verbally and emotionally beating up on their leader pretty badly and even getting so ugly they were on the brink of stoning him.
The Bible says, "They grumbled against Moses. They said, 'Why did you bring us out of Egypt to makes us and our children...die of thirst?'" Talk about battlefield blindness. "Then Moses cried out to the Lord, 'What am I to do with these people?'" Ever felt that way yourself? Haven't we all? "What am I going to do with these people?" Well, listen to the Lord's wise advice to Moses and to you and me. "The Lord answered Moses, 'Walk on ahead of the people.'" As Moses did that, God revealed to him that by striking a certain rock, water would come out for the people. And that is exactly what happened.
Notice the principle here: as long as you're totally focused on the current battle, you probably won't be able to see God's big picture. You have to "walk on ahead of the people." Take some time away. Get some distance. Breathe! Be in a place where the only voice you're listening to is God's voice. You've been so focused on your child's problems, your mate's problems, the contentious issues, the difficult people, the physical struggles. You're not able to see the big picture of what God's trying to do and what part He wants you to play in it.
Battlefield nearsightedness can also blind us to how far we've come. We're obsessed with how far we still have to go, and it can blind us to how far someone else has come, too. We can only see how far they have to go. And battlefield blindness gives us spiritual amnesia. It makes us forget what an awesome God we have and the mighty things He's done for us in all those past battles. So many of yesterday's mountains are today's monuments to the power of God, to the faithfulness of God.
So take a step back. Walk on ahead of the battle for a little while and God will show you some answers that you would never see in the middle of the battle.
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Isaiah 14, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: HE TOOK MY SIN
Denalyn and I had enjoyed a nice dinner at a local restaurant. As we received our bill, a church member spotted us and came over. After we chatted a few moments, he took our bill. “I’ll take this,” he said. Guess what? I let him do what he wanted to do. I let him take it away.
Someday we will stand before God. All of us will be present. All of us will have to give an account for our lives. Every thought, every deed, every action. Were it not for the grace of Christ, I would find this to be a very terrifying thought. Yet, according to Scripture, Jesus came to “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). On that day, I will point to Christ. When my list of sins is produced, I will gesture toward him and say, “He took it.” Let him take yours!
Isaiah 14
But not so with Jacob. God will have compassion on Jacob. Once again he’ll choose Israel. He’ll establish them in their own country. Outsiders will be attracted and throw their lot in with Jacob. The nations among whom they lived will actually escort them back home, and then Israel will pay them back by making slaves of them, men and women alike, possessing them as slaves in God’s country, capturing those who had captured them, ruling over those who had abused them.
3-4 When God has given you time to recover from the abuse and trouble and harsh servitude that you had to endure, you can amuse yourselves by taking up this satire, a taunt against the king of Babylon:
4-6 Can you believe it? The tyrant is gone!
The tyranny is over!
God has broken the rule of the wicked,
the power of the bully-rulers
That crushed many people.
A relentless rain of cruel outrage
Established a violent rule of anger
rife with torture and persecution.
7-10 And now it’s over, the whole earth quietly at rest.
Burst into song! Make the rafters ring!
Ponderosa pine trees are happy,
giant Lebanon cedars are relieved, saying,
“Since you’ve been cut down,
there’s no one around to cut us down.”
And the underworld dead are all excited,
preparing to welcome you when you come.
Getting ready to greet you are the ghostly dead,
all the famous names of earth.
All the buried kings of the nations
will stand up on their thrones
With well-prepared speeches,
royal invitations to death:
“Now you are as nothing as we are!
Make yourselves at home with us dead folks!”
11 This is where your pomp and fine music led you, Babylon,
to your underworld private chambers,
A king-size mattress of maggots for repose
and a quilt of crawling worms for warmth.
12 What a comedown this, O Babylon!
Daystar! Son of Dawn!
Flat on your face in the underworld mud,
you, famous for flattening nations!
13-14 You said to yourself,
“I’ll climb to heaven.
I’ll set my throne
over the stars of God.
I’ll run the assembly of angels
that meets on sacred Mount Zaphon.
I’ll climb to the top of the clouds.
I’ll take over as King of the Universe!”
15-17 But you didn’t make it, did you?
Instead of climbing up, you came down—
Down with the underground dead,
down to the abyss of the Pit.
People will stare and muse:
“Can this be the one
Who terrorized earth and its kingdoms,
turned earth to a moonscape,
Wasted its cities,
shut up his prisoners to a living death?”
18-20 Other kings get a decent burial,
honored with eulogies and placed in a tomb.
But you’re dumped in a ditch unburied,
like a stray dog or cat,
Covered with rotting bodies,
murdered and indigent corpses.
Your dead body desecrated, mutilated—
no state funeral for you!
You’ve left your land in ruins,
left a legacy of massacre.
The progeny of your evil life
will never be named. Oblivion!
21 Get a place ready to slaughter the sons of the wicked
and wipe out their father’s line.
Unthinkable that they should own a square foot of land
or desecrate the face of the world with their cities!
22-23 “I will confront them”—Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies—“and strip Babylon of name and survivors, children and grandchildren.” God’s Decree. “I’ll make it a worthless swamp and give it as a prize to the hedgehog. And then I’ll bulldoze it out of existence.” Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
24-27 God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks:
“Exactly as I planned,
it will happen.
Following my blueprints,
it will take shape.
I will shatter the Assyrian who trespasses my land
and stomp him into the dirt on my mountains.
I will ban his taking and making of slaves
and lift the weight of oppression from all shoulders.”
This is the plan,
planned for the whole earth,
And this is the hand that will do it,
reaching into every nation.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies has planned it.
Who could ever cancel such plans?
His is the hand that’s reached out.
Who could brush it aside?
28-31 In the year King Ahaz died, this Message came:
Hold it, Philistines! It’s too soon to celebrate
the defeat of your cruel oppressor.
From the death throes of that snake a worse snake will come,
and from that, one even worse.
The poor won’t have to worry.
The needy will escape the terror.
But you Philistines will be plunged into famine,
and those who don’t starve, God will kill.
Wail and howl, proud city!
Fall prostrate in fear, Philistia!
On the northern horizon, smoke from burned cities,
the wake of a brutal, disciplined destroyer.
32 What does one say to
outsiders who ask questions?
Tell them, “God has established Zion.
Those in need and in trouble find refuge in her.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 Corinthians 5:14–21
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.i 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselvesj but for him who died for themk and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldlyl point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,m the new creationn has come:a The old has gone, the new is here!o 18 All this is from God,p who reconciled us to himself through Christq and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.r And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors,s as though God were making his appeal through us.t We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.u 21 God made him who had no sinv to be sinb for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Insight
The Bible Knowledge Commentary says of 2 Corinthians: “No letter of Paul’s is more personal and intimate in nature than 2 Corinthians. In it he bared his soul and professed his abiding love for the Corinthians despite the apparent fickleness of their affection for him.” As such, this letter is a fascinating example of the challenges Paul experienced in leading the fledgling first-century church. He had no real template to follow and no completed scriptural authority to refer to, meaning that much of what he did was up for debate and open to question. In this particular letter, Paul’s own motives and apostolic position are on the table—with Paul having to offer a vigorous defense of his heart and his work (1:12–2:11; 11:16–12:10). At the same time, it was necessary that he confront those whose false teaching was undermining the gospel (10:7–11:15). The resulting tension gives 2 Corinthians its own unique edge.
Innocence Found
See what great love the Father has lavished on us. 1 John 3:1
“I’m not who I once was. I’m a new person.”
Those simple words from my son, spoken to students at a school assembly, describe the change God made in his life. Once addicted to heroin, Geoffrey previously saw himself through his sins and mistakes. But now he sees himself as a child of God.
The Bible encourages us with this promise: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). No matter who we’ve been or what we’ve done in our past, when we trust Jesus for our salvation and receive the forgiveness offered through His cross, we become someone new. Since the garden of Eden, the guilt of our sins separated us from God, but He has now “reconciled us to himself through Christ,” “not counting” our sins against us (vv. 18–19). We are His dearly loved children (1 John 3:1–2), washed clean and made new in the likeness of His Son.
Jesus is innocence found. He liberates us from sin and its dominating power, and restores us to a new relationship with God—where we are free to no longer live for ourselves but “for him who died for [us] and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:15). Watch Fernando Sosa’s devotional video, “Jesus, the Liberator.” As with Geoffrey, Christ’s transforming love gave him a new identity and purpose to point others to the Savior. And He does the same for us! By: James Banks
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
His Resurrection Destiny
Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? —Luke 24:26
Our Lord’s Cross is the gateway into His life. His resurrection means that He has the power to convey His life to me. When I was born again, I received the very life of the risen Lord from Jesus Himself.
Christ’s resurrection destiny— His foreordained purpose— was to bring “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). The fulfilling of His destiny gives Him the right to make us sons and daughters of God. We never have exactly the same relationship to God that the Son of God has, but we are brought by the Son into the relation of sonship. When our Lord rose from the dead, He rose to an absolutely new life— a life He had never lived before He was God Incarnate. He rose to a life that had never been before. And what His resurrection means for us is that we are raised to His risen life, not to our old life. One day we will have a body like His glorious body, but we can know here and now the power and effectiveness of His resurrection and can “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Paul’s determined purpose was to “know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).
Jesus prayed, “…as You have given Him authority over all flesh that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him” (John 17:2). The term Holy Spirit is actually another name for the experience of eternal life working in human beings here and now. The Holy Spirit is the deity of God who continues to apply the power of the atonement by the Cross of Christ to our lives. Thank God for the glorious and majestic truth that His Spirit can work the very nature of Jesus into us, if we will only obey Him.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried. He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 10-12; Luke 9:37-62
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
The Platform You Would Never Choose - #8673
A lot of us were broke most of the time we were in college. Sound familiar? So, it was always nice to find some free Saturday night entertainment. And in downtown Chicago, there was a place called Bug House Square. Yeah, it's not the real name I don't think, but that was how it was affectionately known in the neighborhood at the time. See, Bug House Square was a small city park just north of downtown Chicago. And it was a place where anybody could get up and make a speech about anything - thus, the name. So, people who couldn't find a platform anywhere else, well, they could find one at Bug House Square. Some frustrated people got to deliver the message that they never got to deliver anywhere else. You know, and actually it's frustrating to have a message and no platform to proclaim it from. And it's surprising sometimes where our platform turns out to be.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Platform You Would Never Choose."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 16. Now, Paul and Silas are in prison for preaching the Gospel in Philippi. They have been severely beaten, they're in the stocks, they're in the inner dungeon, and they are in great pain, and they aren't going anywhere. Listen, "About midnight Paul and Silas get to praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners are listening to them." Never heard anything like this in prison!
Oh wait! "Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors were open, he drew his sword, he was about to kill himself..." Well, that would mean he'd be executed by Rome anyway. "...he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, 'Don't harm yourself! We are all here!' The jailer called for lights, he rushed in and he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and he asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'"
Now, Paul and Silas have, up to this point, only been able to come to Philippi and find the places where people prayed together. I think their question might be, "How do we get a hearing for the Gospel here in Philippi?" Well, here you've got people with a message, and they're trying to find a point of entry to preach that message - a platform. Maybe that sounds like you. Oh, you're not in Philippi, but you know that you have in Christ what your family is looking for. You have what your friends need, your coworkers. But how do you get their attention? Well, you might be surprised.
God started the church at Philippi by putting Paul and Silas in a prison and in an earthquake. That's an interesting church planting method, huh? And it was how they handled their prison and their earthquake that opened a way for the Gospel.
That suggests a very eye-opening principle. The big problem that you've got might be the best platform you've got. Maybe you're in a prison right now. I mean, you've got physical limitations, you've got an injury, an illness. Maybe you're going through a really lonely time, and it's like a prison. Or you're on the edge of financial or business disaster. You're unemployed.
People are watching you now. Can you sing in your prison? Can you demonstrate the inner freedom and the peace that only Christ can give? Or maybe you're in an earthquake right now and everything in your life is shaking. Things that have never moved before are breaking loose.
See, if you can demonstrate that inner peace when the walls are caving in, you will preach Christ more eloquently than any sermon ever could. You're surrounded by people who are in depression because of their prison; who are in panic because of their earthquake. And they're watching to see the difference in how you handle yours.
So, let God sanctify that sick bed, that crisis, that unemployment line, that struggle. He will make it into a platform for the life-saving message of the Gospel of Christ. It's a platform you would never choose, but God has. And you can speak eloquently through your songs in the middle of your night.
Denalyn and I had enjoyed a nice dinner at a local restaurant. As we received our bill, a church member spotted us and came over. After we chatted a few moments, he took our bill. “I’ll take this,” he said. Guess what? I let him do what he wanted to do. I let him take it away.
Someday we will stand before God. All of us will be present. All of us will have to give an account for our lives. Every thought, every deed, every action. Were it not for the grace of Christ, I would find this to be a very terrifying thought. Yet, according to Scripture, Jesus came to “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). On that day, I will point to Christ. When my list of sins is produced, I will gesture toward him and say, “He took it.” Let him take yours!
Isaiah 14
But not so with Jacob. God will have compassion on Jacob. Once again he’ll choose Israel. He’ll establish them in their own country. Outsiders will be attracted and throw their lot in with Jacob. The nations among whom they lived will actually escort them back home, and then Israel will pay them back by making slaves of them, men and women alike, possessing them as slaves in God’s country, capturing those who had captured them, ruling over those who had abused them.
3-4 When God has given you time to recover from the abuse and trouble and harsh servitude that you had to endure, you can amuse yourselves by taking up this satire, a taunt against the king of Babylon:
4-6 Can you believe it? The tyrant is gone!
The tyranny is over!
God has broken the rule of the wicked,
the power of the bully-rulers
That crushed many people.
A relentless rain of cruel outrage
Established a violent rule of anger
rife with torture and persecution.
7-10 And now it’s over, the whole earth quietly at rest.
Burst into song! Make the rafters ring!
Ponderosa pine trees are happy,
giant Lebanon cedars are relieved, saying,
“Since you’ve been cut down,
there’s no one around to cut us down.”
And the underworld dead are all excited,
preparing to welcome you when you come.
Getting ready to greet you are the ghostly dead,
all the famous names of earth.
All the buried kings of the nations
will stand up on their thrones
With well-prepared speeches,
royal invitations to death:
“Now you are as nothing as we are!
Make yourselves at home with us dead folks!”
11 This is where your pomp and fine music led you, Babylon,
to your underworld private chambers,
A king-size mattress of maggots for repose
and a quilt of crawling worms for warmth.
12 What a comedown this, O Babylon!
Daystar! Son of Dawn!
Flat on your face in the underworld mud,
you, famous for flattening nations!
13-14 You said to yourself,
“I’ll climb to heaven.
I’ll set my throne
over the stars of God.
I’ll run the assembly of angels
that meets on sacred Mount Zaphon.
I’ll climb to the top of the clouds.
I’ll take over as King of the Universe!”
15-17 But you didn’t make it, did you?
Instead of climbing up, you came down—
Down with the underground dead,
down to the abyss of the Pit.
People will stare and muse:
“Can this be the one
Who terrorized earth and its kingdoms,
turned earth to a moonscape,
Wasted its cities,
shut up his prisoners to a living death?”
18-20 Other kings get a decent burial,
honored with eulogies and placed in a tomb.
But you’re dumped in a ditch unburied,
like a stray dog or cat,
Covered with rotting bodies,
murdered and indigent corpses.
Your dead body desecrated, mutilated—
no state funeral for you!
You’ve left your land in ruins,
left a legacy of massacre.
The progeny of your evil life
will never be named. Oblivion!
21 Get a place ready to slaughter the sons of the wicked
and wipe out their father’s line.
Unthinkable that they should own a square foot of land
or desecrate the face of the world with their cities!
22-23 “I will confront them”—Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies—“and strip Babylon of name and survivors, children and grandchildren.” God’s Decree. “I’ll make it a worthless swamp and give it as a prize to the hedgehog. And then I’ll bulldoze it out of existence.” Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
24-27 God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks:
“Exactly as I planned,
it will happen.
Following my blueprints,
it will take shape.
I will shatter the Assyrian who trespasses my land
and stomp him into the dirt on my mountains.
I will ban his taking and making of slaves
and lift the weight of oppression from all shoulders.”
This is the plan,
planned for the whole earth,
And this is the hand that will do it,
reaching into every nation.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies has planned it.
Who could ever cancel such plans?
His is the hand that’s reached out.
Who could brush it aside?
28-31 In the year King Ahaz died, this Message came:
Hold it, Philistines! It’s too soon to celebrate
the defeat of your cruel oppressor.
From the death throes of that snake a worse snake will come,
and from that, one even worse.
The poor won’t have to worry.
The needy will escape the terror.
But you Philistines will be plunged into famine,
and those who don’t starve, God will kill.
Wail and howl, proud city!
Fall prostrate in fear, Philistia!
On the northern horizon, smoke from burned cities,
the wake of a brutal, disciplined destroyer.
32 What does one say to
outsiders who ask questions?
Tell them, “God has established Zion.
Those in need and in trouble find refuge in her.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 Corinthians 5:14–21
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.i 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselvesj but for him who died for themk and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldlyl point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,m the new creationn has come:a The old has gone, the new is here!o 18 All this is from God,p who reconciled us to himself through Christq and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.r And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors,s as though God were making his appeal through us.t We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.u 21 God made him who had no sinv to be sinb for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Insight
The Bible Knowledge Commentary says of 2 Corinthians: “No letter of Paul’s is more personal and intimate in nature than 2 Corinthians. In it he bared his soul and professed his abiding love for the Corinthians despite the apparent fickleness of their affection for him.” As such, this letter is a fascinating example of the challenges Paul experienced in leading the fledgling first-century church. He had no real template to follow and no completed scriptural authority to refer to, meaning that much of what he did was up for debate and open to question. In this particular letter, Paul’s own motives and apostolic position are on the table—with Paul having to offer a vigorous defense of his heart and his work (1:12–2:11; 11:16–12:10). At the same time, it was necessary that he confront those whose false teaching was undermining the gospel (10:7–11:15). The resulting tension gives 2 Corinthians its own unique edge.
Innocence Found
See what great love the Father has lavished on us. 1 John 3:1
“I’m not who I once was. I’m a new person.”
Those simple words from my son, spoken to students at a school assembly, describe the change God made in his life. Once addicted to heroin, Geoffrey previously saw himself through his sins and mistakes. But now he sees himself as a child of God.
The Bible encourages us with this promise: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). No matter who we’ve been or what we’ve done in our past, when we trust Jesus for our salvation and receive the forgiveness offered through His cross, we become someone new. Since the garden of Eden, the guilt of our sins separated us from God, but He has now “reconciled us to himself through Christ,” “not counting” our sins against us (vv. 18–19). We are His dearly loved children (1 John 3:1–2), washed clean and made new in the likeness of His Son.
Jesus is innocence found. He liberates us from sin and its dominating power, and restores us to a new relationship with God—where we are free to no longer live for ourselves but “for him who died for [us] and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:15). Watch Fernando Sosa’s devotional video, “Jesus, the Liberator.” As with Geoffrey, Christ’s transforming love gave him a new identity and purpose to point others to the Savior. And He does the same for us! By: James Banks
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
His Resurrection Destiny
Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? —Luke 24:26
Our Lord’s Cross is the gateway into His life. His resurrection means that He has the power to convey His life to me. When I was born again, I received the very life of the risen Lord from Jesus Himself.
Christ’s resurrection destiny— His foreordained purpose— was to bring “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). The fulfilling of His destiny gives Him the right to make us sons and daughters of God. We never have exactly the same relationship to God that the Son of God has, but we are brought by the Son into the relation of sonship. When our Lord rose from the dead, He rose to an absolutely new life— a life He had never lived before He was God Incarnate. He rose to a life that had never been before. And what His resurrection means for us is that we are raised to His risen life, not to our old life. One day we will have a body like His glorious body, but we can know here and now the power and effectiveness of His resurrection and can “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Paul’s determined purpose was to “know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).
Jesus prayed, “…as You have given Him authority over all flesh that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him” (John 17:2). The term Holy Spirit is actually another name for the experience of eternal life working in human beings here and now. The Holy Spirit is the deity of God who continues to apply the power of the atonement by the Cross of Christ to our lives. Thank God for the glorious and majestic truth that His Spirit can work the very nature of Jesus into us, if we will only obey Him.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried. He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 10-12; Luke 9:37-62
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
The Platform You Would Never Choose - #8673
A lot of us were broke most of the time we were in college. Sound familiar? So, it was always nice to find some free Saturday night entertainment. And in downtown Chicago, there was a place called Bug House Square. Yeah, it's not the real name I don't think, but that was how it was affectionately known in the neighborhood at the time. See, Bug House Square was a small city park just north of downtown Chicago. And it was a place where anybody could get up and make a speech about anything - thus, the name. So, people who couldn't find a platform anywhere else, well, they could find one at Bug House Square. Some frustrated people got to deliver the message that they never got to deliver anywhere else. You know, and actually it's frustrating to have a message and no platform to proclaim it from. And it's surprising sometimes where our platform turns out to be.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Platform You Would Never Choose."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Acts 16. Now, Paul and Silas are in prison for preaching the Gospel in Philippi. They have been severely beaten, they're in the stocks, they're in the inner dungeon, and they are in great pain, and they aren't going anywhere. Listen, "About midnight Paul and Silas get to praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners are listening to them." Never heard anything like this in prison!
Oh wait! "Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors were open, he drew his sword, he was about to kill himself..." Well, that would mean he'd be executed by Rome anyway. "...he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, 'Don't harm yourself! We are all here!' The jailer called for lights, he rushed in and he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and he asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'"
Now, Paul and Silas have, up to this point, only been able to come to Philippi and find the places where people prayed together. I think their question might be, "How do we get a hearing for the Gospel here in Philippi?" Well, here you've got people with a message, and they're trying to find a point of entry to preach that message - a platform. Maybe that sounds like you. Oh, you're not in Philippi, but you know that you have in Christ what your family is looking for. You have what your friends need, your coworkers. But how do you get their attention? Well, you might be surprised.
God started the church at Philippi by putting Paul and Silas in a prison and in an earthquake. That's an interesting church planting method, huh? And it was how they handled their prison and their earthquake that opened a way for the Gospel.
That suggests a very eye-opening principle. The big problem that you've got might be the best platform you've got. Maybe you're in a prison right now. I mean, you've got physical limitations, you've got an injury, an illness. Maybe you're going through a really lonely time, and it's like a prison. Or you're on the edge of financial or business disaster. You're unemployed.
People are watching you now. Can you sing in your prison? Can you demonstrate the inner freedom and the peace that only Christ can give? Or maybe you're in an earthquake right now and everything in your life is shaking. Things that have never moved before are breaking loose.
See, if you can demonstrate that inner peace when the walls are caving in, you will preach Christ more eloquently than any sermon ever could. You're surrounded by people who are in depression because of their prison; who are in panic because of their earthquake. And they're watching to see the difference in how you handle yours.
So, let God sanctify that sick bed, that crisis, that unemployment line, that struggle. He will make it into a platform for the life-saving message of the Gospel of Christ. It's a platform you would never choose, but God has. And you can speak eloquently through your songs in the middle of your night.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Ephesians 2 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: GREAT GRACE
I can bear witness to the power of God’s grace! I could take you to the church, to the section of seats in the church auditorium. I might even be able to find the very seat in which I was sitting when this grace found me. I was a twenty-year-old college sophomore, living with a concrete block of guilt that had made a mess of my life.
But then I heard a preacher describe the divine grace that is greater than sin. At the end of the message he asked if anyone would like to come forward and receive this grace. Iron chains couldn’t have held me back. Truth be told, chains had held me back. But mercy snapped the guilt chains and set me free. I know this truth firsthand– Guilt frenzies the soul; grace calms it! The benefit of being a great sinner is dependence upon a great grace!
Ephesians 2
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
11-13 But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14-15 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16-18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 Timothy 1:6–14
Appeal for Loyalty to Paul and the Gospel
6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.n 7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid,o but gives us power,p love and self-discipline. 8 So do not be ashamedq of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner.r Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel,s by the power of God. 9 He has savedt us and calledu us to a holy life—not because of anything we have donev but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealedw through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus,x who has destroyed deathy and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11 And of this gospelz I was appointeda a herald and an apostle and a teacher.b 12 That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame,c because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guardd what I have entrusted to him until that day.e
13 What you heard from me,f keepg as the patternh of sound teaching,i with faith and love in Christ Jesus.j 14 Guardk the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.l
Insight
Along with Titus, Paul’s letters to Timothy form what are known as the Pastoral Letters. Timothy (who would serve the church in Ephesus) and Titus (who led the congregations on the island of Crete) were two of Paul’s numerous protégés that he’d mentored for spiritual service. As such, Paul’s letters to them are filled with instruction and encouragement on how to deal with situations in the local church. These situations range from qualifications for leaders to dealing with false teachers to personal example and conduct. Even while imprisoned and facing death, the apostle continued to train his students.
A New Calling
He has saved us and called us to a holy life. 2 Timothy 1:9
Teenage gang leader Casey and his followers broke into homes and cars, robbed convenience stores, and fought other gangs. Eventually, Casey was arrested and sentenced. In prison, he became a “shot caller,” someone who handed out homemade knives during riots.
Sometime later, he was placed in solitary confinement. While daydreaming in his cell, Casey experienced a “movie” of sorts replaying key events of his life—and of Jesus, being led to and nailed to the cross and telling him, “I’m doing this for you.” Casey fell to the floor weeping and confessed his sins. Later, he shared his experience with a chaplain, who explained more about Jesus and gave him a Bible. “That was the start of my journey of faith,” Casey said. Eventually, he was released into the mainline prison population, where he was mistreated for his faith. But he felt at peace, because “[he] had found a new calling: telling other inmates about Jesus.”
In his letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul talks about the power of Christ to change lives: God calls us from lives of wrongdoing to follow and serve Jesus (2 Timothy 1:9). Watch the story of Bernice Lee and Tan Soo-Inn in the devotional video, “Jesus, the Spiritual Leader.” Like Casey, they experienced God’s grace, and now the Holy Spirit empowers them to be living witnesses of Christ’s love. Through the Holy Spirit’s enabling, we too have a new calling to share the good news (v. 8). By: Alyson Kieda
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Why We Lack Understanding
He commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen, till the Son of Man had risen from the dead. —Mark 9:9
As the disciples were commanded, you should also say nothing until the Son of Man has risen in you— until the life of the risen Christ so dominates you that you truly understand what He taught while here on earth. When you grow and develop the right condition inwardly, the words Jesus spoke become so clear that you are amazed you did not grasp them before. In fact, you were not able to understand them before because you had not yet developed the proper spiritual condition to deal with them.
Our Lord doesn’t hide these things from us, but we are not prepared to receive them until we are in the right condition in our spiritual life. Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). We must have a oneness with His risen life before we are prepared to bear any particular truth from Him. Do we really know anything about the indwelling of the risen life of Jesus? The evidence that we do is that His Word is becoming understandable to us. God cannot reveal anything to us if we don’t have His Spirit. And our own unyielding and headstrong opinions will effectively prevent God from revealing anything to us. But our insensible thinking will end immediately once His resurrection life has its way with us.
“…tell no one….” But so many people do tell what they saw on the Mount of Transfiguration— their mountaintop experience. They have seen a vision and they testify to it, but there is no connection between what they say and how they live. Their lives don’t add up because the Son of Man has not yet risen in them. How long will it be before His resurrection life is formed and evident in you and in me?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 7-9; Luke 9:18-36
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Last-Second Victories - #8672
They're usually some of the most exciting moments in sports - that touchdown, that field goal that wins the game with no time left on the clock. That game-winning basket; the buzzer-beater as the final buzzer sounds. The game-winning home run with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Whatever the sport, there's nothing like a sudden victory when victory seems out of reach, and the fans go ballistic.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Last-Second Victories."
It can really be nerve-wracking when you're behind and time's running out, but it's really thrilling when a hero pulls it out at the last minute. The longer I walk with this God of ours, the more I've come to appreciate Him as the God of the last-second victory, the God of the eleventh hour.
The Bible reveals many names by which God wants us to know Him. One that has meant so much to so many for so long is the name Jehovah Jireh. It means, "The Lord will provide." You may be facing a need or situation right now where that is literally your only hope - that the Lord will provide; it's got to be God or it ain't going to be. Maybe it's a job, a friend, the funds you need, the person you need, the answer you need, maybe the house, the healing, the breakthrough you need.
We have this rock-solid promise in Philippians 4:19 that "my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." See, God's supply has nothing to do with what's happening in the economy, or in the news, or at work, in what your resources can do. It's all about His unlimited "Jesus-account" in heaven, which transcends every limitation earth has.
To be honest, God often waits a while to meet that need, though, doesn't He? And that's when we tend to panic, to come up with some desperate way to meet the need on our own, to abandon our trust in God because, well, He's taking too long. Which takes us right out of the will of God and aborts what God was going to do. It's in Genesis 22, where we find our word for today from the Word of God, that God is known as Jehovah Jireh for the very first time. We can learn a lot from how He worked that day for Abraham.
Okay, Abraham, by faith, had obeyed God's direction to take the son God had once promised to him, climb Mt. Moriah with him, and sacrifice his son there; as God Himself would do one day when Jesus died on the cross. Believing that God will somehow provide something he can't imagine, Abraham promises his servants that both he and his son, Isaac, will return from the mountain. Well, how is that going to be?
Genesis 22:10 says his faith and obedience went so far that he "reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son." At that very last moment, God stopped him and showed Abraham a ram, stuck in a thicket, who would be sacrificed instead of his son. And the Bible says, "So Abraham called that place, 'The Lord Will Provide.'" Jehovah Jireh - making His move when there was no time left.
Now, about your need. God loves to come through for us when there is absolutely no place else that answer could come from, and there is no time left on the clock. It's 11:59. The buzzer is about to sound. God shows up with His provision at a time and in a way that will blow you away, and that will give Him all the glory, that will show the people around you the greatness of your God and take you to a whole new level of faith and worship.
God's last-minute victories are some of the most awesome moments of your life. So don't lose faith now. The greater the need, the later the hour, the more amazing God's work on your behalf is going to be. Hang in there until the end of the game, because that's when God really does His stuff!
I can bear witness to the power of God’s grace! I could take you to the church, to the section of seats in the church auditorium. I might even be able to find the very seat in which I was sitting when this grace found me. I was a twenty-year-old college sophomore, living with a concrete block of guilt that had made a mess of my life.
But then I heard a preacher describe the divine grace that is greater than sin. At the end of the message he asked if anyone would like to come forward and receive this grace. Iron chains couldn’t have held me back. Truth be told, chains had held me back. But mercy snapped the guilt chains and set me free. I know this truth firsthand– Guilt frenzies the soul; grace calms it! The benefit of being a great sinner is dependence upon a great grace!
Ephesians 2
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
11-13 But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14-15 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16-18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 Timothy 1:6–14
Appeal for Loyalty to Paul and the Gospel
6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.n 7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid,o but gives us power,p love and self-discipline. 8 So do not be ashamedq of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner.r Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel,s by the power of God. 9 He has savedt us and calledu us to a holy life—not because of anything we have donev but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealedw through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus,x who has destroyed deathy and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11 And of this gospelz I was appointeda a herald and an apostle and a teacher.b 12 That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame,c because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guardd what I have entrusted to him until that day.e
13 What you heard from me,f keepg as the patternh of sound teaching,i with faith and love in Christ Jesus.j 14 Guardk the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.l
Insight
Along with Titus, Paul’s letters to Timothy form what are known as the Pastoral Letters. Timothy (who would serve the church in Ephesus) and Titus (who led the congregations on the island of Crete) were two of Paul’s numerous protégés that he’d mentored for spiritual service. As such, Paul’s letters to them are filled with instruction and encouragement on how to deal with situations in the local church. These situations range from qualifications for leaders to dealing with false teachers to personal example and conduct. Even while imprisoned and facing death, the apostle continued to train his students.
A New Calling
He has saved us and called us to a holy life. 2 Timothy 1:9
Teenage gang leader Casey and his followers broke into homes and cars, robbed convenience stores, and fought other gangs. Eventually, Casey was arrested and sentenced. In prison, he became a “shot caller,” someone who handed out homemade knives during riots.
Sometime later, he was placed in solitary confinement. While daydreaming in his cell, Casey experienced a “movie” of sorts replaying key events of his life—and of Jesus, being led to and nailed to the cross and telling him, “I’m doing this for you.” Casey fell to the floor weeping and confessed his sins. Later, he shared his experience with a chaplain, who explained more about Jesus and gave him a Bible. “That was the start of my journey of faith,” Casey said. Eventually, he was released into the mainline prison population, where he was mistreated for his faith. But he felt at peace, because “[he] had found a new calling: telling other inmates about Jesus.”
In his letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul talks about the power of Christ to change lives: God calls us from lives of wrongdoing to follow and serve Jesus (2 Timothy 1:9). Watch the story of Bernice Lee and Tan Soo-Inn in the devotional video, “Jesus, the Spiritual Leader.” Like Casey, they experienced God’s grace, and now the Holy Spirit empowers them to be living witnesses of Christ’s love. Through the Holy Spirit’s enabling, we too have a new calling to share the good news (v. 8). By: Alyson Kieda
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Why We Lack Understanding
He commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen, till the Son of Man had risen from the dead. —Mark 9:9
As the disciples were commanded, you should also say nothing until the Son of Man has risen in you— until the life of the risen Christ so dominates you that you truly understand what He taught while here on earth. When you grow and develop the right condition inwardly, the words Jesus spoke become so clear that you are amazed you did not grasp them before. In fact, you were not able to understand them before because you had not yet developed the proper spiritual condition to deal with them.
Our Lord doesn’t hide these things from us, but we are not prepared to receive them until we are in the right condition in our spiritual life. Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). We must have a oneness with His risen life before we are prepared to bear any particular truth from Him. Do we really know anything about the indwelling of the risen life of Jesus? The evidence that we do is that His Word is becoming understandable to us. God cannot reveal anything to us if we don’t have His Spirit. And our own unyielding and headstrong opinions will effectively prevent God from revealing anything to us. But our insensible thinking will end immediately once His resurrection life has its way with us.
“…tell no one….” But so many people do tell what they saw on the Mount of Transfiguration— their mountaintop experience. They have seen a vision and they testify to it, but there is no connection between what they say and how they live. Their lives don’t add up because the Son of Man has not yet risen in them. How long will it be before His resurrection life is formed and evident in you and in me?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 7-9; Luke 9:18-36
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Last-Second Victories - #8672
They're usually some of the most exciting moments in sports - that touchdown, that field goal that wins the game with no time left on the clock. That game-winning basket; the buzzer-beater as the final buzzer sounds. The game-winning home run with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Whatever the sport, there's nothing like a sudden victory when victory seems out of reach, and the fans go ballistic.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Last-Second Victories."
It can really be nerve-wracking when you're behind and time's running out, but it's really thrilling when a hero pulls it out at the last minute. The longer I walk with this God of ours, the more I've come to appreciate Him as the God of the last-second victory, the God of the eleventh hour.
The Bible reveals many names by which God wants us to know Him. One that has meant so much to so many for so long is the name Jehovah Jireh. It means, "The Lord will provide." You may be facing a need or situation right now where that is literally your only hope - that the Lord will provide; it's got to be God or it ain't going to be. Maybe it's a job, a friend, the funds you need, the person you need, the answer you need, maybe the house, the healing, the breakthrough you need.
We have this rock-solid promise in Philippians 4:19 that "my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." See, God's supply has nothing to do with what's happening in the economy, or in the news, or at work, in what your resources can do. It's all about His unlimited "Jesus-account" in heaven, which transcends every limitation earth has.
To be honest, God often waits a while to meet that need, though, doesn't He? And that's when we tend to panic, to come up with some desperate way to meet the need on our own, to abandon our trust in God because, well, He's taking too long. Which takes us right out of the will of God and aborts what God was going to do. It's in Genesis 22, where we find our word for today from the Word of God, that God is known as Jehovah Jireh for the very first time. We can learn a lot from how He worked that day for Abraham.
Okay, Abraham, by faith, had obeyed God's direction to take the son God had once promised to him, climb Mt. Moriah with him, and sacrifice his son there; as God Himself would do one day when Jesus died on the cross. Believing that God will somehow provide something he can't imagine, Abraham promises his servants that both he and his son, Isaac, will return from the mountain. Well, how is that going to be?
Genesis 22:10 says his faith and obedience went so far that he "reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son." At that very last moment, God stopped him and showed Abraham a ram, stuck in a thicket, who would be sacrificed instead of his son. And the Bible says, "So Abraham called that place, 'The Lord Will Provide.'" Jehovah Jireh - making His move when there was no time left.
Now, about your need. God loves to come through for us when there is absolutely no place else that answer could come from, and there is no time left on the clock. It's 11:59. The buzzer is about to sound. God shows up with His provision at a time and in a way that will blow you away, and that will give Him all the glory, that will show the people around you the greatness of your God and take you to a whole new level of faith and worship.
God's last-minute victories are some of the most awesome moments of your life. So don't lose faith now. The greater the need, the later the hour, the more amazing God's work on your behalf is going to be. Hang in there until the end of the game, because that's when God really does His stuff!
Monday, April 6, 2020
Isaiah 13, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: THE PROBLEM WITH UNRESOLVED GUILT
What kind of person does unresolved guilt create? An anxious one, forever hiding, running, denying, pretending. As one man admitted, “I was always living a lie for fear someone might see me for who I really was and think less of me. I hid behind my super spirituality but this lie was exhausting and anxiety producing.”
Unresolved guilt will turn you into a miserable, weary, angry, fretful mess. In a psalm David wrote after his affair with Bathsheba, the kind said, “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.” (Psalm 32:3-4)
As Paul told Titus, God’s grace is the fertile soil out of which courage sprouts! “God’s readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation’s available for everyone!” (Titus 2:11, 15 MSG).
Isaiah 13
The Message on Babylon. Isaiah son of Amoz saw it:
2-3 “Run up a flag on an open hill.
Yell loud. Get their attention.
Wave them into formation.
Direct them to the nerve center of power.
I’ve taken charge of my special forces,
called up my crack troops.
They’re bursting with pride and passion
to carry out my angry judgment.”
4-5 Thunder rolls off the mountains
like a mob huge and noisy—
Thunder of kingdoms in an uproar,
nations assembling for war.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies is calling
his army into battle formation.
They come from far-off countries,
they pour in across the horizon.
It’s God on the move with the weapons of his wrath,
ready to destroy the whole country.
6-8 Wail! God’s Day of Judgment is near—
an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God!
Everyone paralyzed in the panic,
hysterical and unstrung,
Doubled up in pain
like a woman giving birth to a baby.
Horrified—everyone they see
is like a face out of a nightmare.
9-16 “Watch now. God’s Judgment Day comes.
Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger,
A day to waste the earth
and clean out all the sinners.
The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations,
will be nothing but black holes.
The sun will come up as a black disk,
and the moon a blank nothing.
I’ll put a full stop to the evil on earth,
terminate the dark acts of the wicked.
I’ll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them—
and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces.
Proud humanity will disappear from the earth.
I’ll make mortals rarer than hens’ teeth.
And yes, I’ll even make the sky shake,
and the earth quake to its roots
Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
the Judgment Day of his raging anger.
Like a hunted white-tailed deer,
like lost sheep with no shepherd,
People will huddle with a few of their own kind,
run off to some makeshift shelter.
But tough luck to stragglers—they’ll be killed on the spot,
throats cut, bellies ripped open,
Babies smashed on the rocks
while mothers and fathers watch,
Houses looted,
wives raped.
17-22 “And now watch this:
Against Babylon, I’m inciting the Medes,
A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes,
the kind of brutality that no one can blunt.
They massacre the young,
wantonly kick and kill even babies.
And Babylon, most glorious of all kingdoms,
the pride and joy of Chaldeans,
Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom,
and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them.
No one will live there anymore,
generation after generation a ghost town.
Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there.
Shepherds will give it a wide berth.
But strange and wild animals will like it just fine,
filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds.
Skunks will make it their home,
and unspeakable night hags will haunt it.
Hyenas will curdle your blood with their laughing,
and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers.
“Babylon is doomed.
It won’t be long now.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, April 06, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: Romans 3:10–18
As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”b p
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”c q
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”d r
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”e s
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”f t
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Insight
In Romans 1–3, Paul demonstrates that all human beings are sinners. Six times in chapter 3 he emphatically uses the phrases “no one” or “not even one” to show the total sinfulness of all mankind (vv. 10–12). Sin rules the entire person—our words (vv. 13–14), works (vv. 15–17), and heart (v. 18) condemn us. Paul concludes that “all have sinned and fall short” of God’s standards (v. 23). Without the regenerating work of the Spirit, humans are incapable of having a right relationship with God. We don’t seek Him (v. 11) but willfully turn against Him (v. 12), for we have “no fear of God” (v. 18). But God, in His grace and mercy, makes sinners right with Him when we believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood to save us from our sins (vv. 24–25).
A Good Man
By grace you have been saved, through faith—and that is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.
Ephesians 2:8
“Jerry was a good man,” the pastor said at Jerald Stevens’ memorial service. “He loved his family. He was faithful to his wife. He served his country in the armed services. He was an excellent dad and grandfather. He was a great friend.”
But then the pastor went on to tell the friends and family gathered that Jerry’s good life and good deeds were not enough to assure him a place in heaven. And that Jerry himself would have been the first to tell them that!
Jerry believed these words from the Bible: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and “the wages of sin is death” (6:23). Jerry’s final and eternal destination in life’s journey was not determined by whether he lived a really good life but entirely by Jesus—the perfect Son of God—dying in his place to pay sin’s penalty. He believed that each of us must personally accept the free gift of God, which is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 23).
Jerry was a good man, but he could never be “good enough.” Watch Rasool Berry’s “Jesus, the Good Man” devotional video. He, like us, had to learn that salvation and righteousness aren’t the results of human effort. They’re gifts by God’s grace (Ephesians 2:8).
“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15). By: Cindy Hess Kasper
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, April 06, 2020
The Collision of God and Sin
…who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree… —1 Peter 2:24
The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross— He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.
The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus— He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating “God was manifested in the flesh…” from “…He made Him…to be sin for us…” (1 Timothy 3:16 ; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.
The Cross is not the cross of a man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.
The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.
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, 903 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 4-6; Luke 9:1-17
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, April 06, 2020
Easter...On Both Sides of the Dirt - #8671
I had the last handful of dirt. Many of our dear Native American friends had led the way. They really loved my Karen. As I threw mine into that six-foot hole, I spoke three words engraved inside our wedding rings, "Til Jesus comes." And then just quietly I said, "See you soon, baby." And I know I will because of Easter. Easter didn't stop the tears. Easter didn't cushion her adoring grandchildren from the shock that they would not see again on this earth the one whose hugs and laugh and love had lit up their lives. Neither would I. Neither would her children who never stopped depending on her prayer and her wisdom. Easter doesn't shield us from the grim reality of the casket, that hole in the ground, the empty blue recliner. Or the gut-wrenching emotional ambushes when the "I'm missing her" feelings that usually whisper, suddenly scream. But the reality of that empty tomb near a skull-shaped hill in Jerusalem is a game-changer in so many ways. For the one by the grave, and the one in the grave on both sides of the dirt.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Easter...On Both Sides of the Dirt."
To be sure, most religions offer some form of hope beyond the grave. But no real evidence that they can deliver on that hope.
And then there's Jesus. Who is, in the Bible's words, and our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:3, "a living hope." And it's with proof, because it says, "Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Eyewitnesses - hundreds of them - followers who saw Jesus, dying because they wouldn't deny it, written contemporary history, and the power elite of government and religion, desperately wielding their power to prove Jesus wasn't alive - and they couldn't.
There is no need to speak of Jesus in the past tense. He's alive now. He's our future. And because He's proven He has eternal life, He's the One who can give eternal life. So it wasn't just some religious cop-out for me to look in that grave and know that my Karen wasn't there. Oh, her "earth suit" was - the body we need for this life, like an astronaut needs his space suit for the moon. But the real Karen - her soul - never stopped living.
When the thief on the cross next to Jesus expressed faith in Him, Jesus made this astonishing statement: "Today you will be with Me in paradise" (Matthew 23:43). I believe that's what He said to my Karen that May afternoon in our living room.
Standing by her grave, I remembered her actual new address: "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). That's why I call that May 16th her "Homegoing." That Easter reality didn't erase what I lost that day. Karen was with Jesus. I wasn't. But because our death-crushing Jesus promised that "because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19), grief doesn't own the death scale. There's something on the other side. Something more powerful. It's called hope. Separation now. Reunion coming!
Since Karen went Home, I kept finding journals of hers. They are essentially heart-dumps to Jesus. And they reflect a vibrant love for Him. She signs her prayers, "Your loving daughter, Karen." Many times I've stood in church with my arm around her waist as we joined in singing praises to Jesus. What blows me away is thinking she is now singing those songs face-to-face with Him!
Although she impacted - even rescued - many lives, she always had a hard time accepting my assurances of the difference that she was making for Christ. She knows now. He's told her Himself. I just love thinking that this incomparable woman I did life with is now experiencing what the Bible says, "no eye has seen, no ear has heard" (1 Corinthians 2:9).
But what about us on "the other side of the dirt"? Suddenly doing life without her. God says He is "close to the brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18). All I can tell you is this living Savior has been closer to me these past three years than in all my life before.
I want to invite you if you've never made sure you have a relationship with Him, that you belong to Jesus, that you get that taken care of today. The power of Jesus' resurrection has taken my greatest treasure from her last heartbeat to His heaven and resurrected the broken man she left here, giving me so much hope it's overflowing into many other grieving hearts.
Make sure you belong to Jesus. And if you're not, go to our website and get the information you need - ANewStory.com. He's walked with me every step through "the valley of the shadow." I know He'll walk with you all the way home.
What kind of person does unresolved guilt create? An anxious one, forever hiding, running, denying, pretending. As one man admitted, “I was always living a lie for fear someone might see me for who I really was and think less of me. I hid behind my super spirituality but this lie was exhausting and anxiety producing.”
Unresolved guilt will turn you into a miserable, weary, angry, fretful mess. In a psalm David wrote after his affair with Bathsheba, the kind said, “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.” (Psalm 32:3-4)
As Paul told Titus, God’s grace is the fertile soil out of which courage sprouts! “God’s readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation’s available for everyone!” (Titus 2:11, 15 MSG).
Isaiah 13
The Message on Babylon. Isaiah son of Amoz saw it:
2-3 “Run up a flag on an open hill.
Yell loud. Get their attention.
Wave them into formation.
Direct them to the nerve center of power.
I’ve taken charge of my special forces,
called up my crack troops.
They’re bursting with pride and passion
to carry out my angry judgment.”
4-5 Thunder rolls off the mountains
like a mob huge and noisy—
Thunder of kingdoms in an uproar,
nations assembling for war.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies is calling
his army into battle formation.
They come from far-off countries,
they pour in across the horizon.
It’s God on the move with the weapons of his wrath,
ready to destroy the whole country.
6-8 Wail! God’s Day of Judgment is near—
an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God!
Everyone paralyzed in the panic,
hysterical and unstrung,
Doubled up in pain
like a woman giving birth to a baby.
Horrified—everyone they see
is like a face out of a nightmare.
9-16 “Watch now. God’s Judgment Day comes.
Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger,
A day to waste the earth
and clean out all the sinners.
The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations,
will be nothing but black holes.
The sun will come up as a black disk,
and the moon a blank nothing.
I’ll put a full stop to the evil on earth,
terminate the dark acts of the wicked.
I’ll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them—
and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces.
Proud humanity will disappear from the earth.
I’ll make mortals rarer than hens’ teeth.
And yes, I’ll even make the sky shake,
and the earth quake to its roots
Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
the Judgment Day of his raging anger.
Like a hunted white-tailed deer,
like lost sheep with no shepherd,
People will huddle with a few of their own kind,
run off to some makeshift shelter.
But tough luck to stragglers—they’ll be killed on the spot,
throats cut, bellies ripped open,
Babies smashed on the rocks
while mothers and fathers watch,
Houses looted,
wives raped.
17-22 “And now watch this:
Against Babylon, I’m inciting the Medes,
A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes,
the kind of brutality that no one can blunt.
They massacre the young,
wantonly kick and kill even babies.
And Babylon, most glorious of all kingdoms,
the pride and joy of Chaldeans,
Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom,
and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them.
No one will live there anymore,
generation after generation a ghost town.
Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there.
Shepherds will give it a wide berth.
But strange and wild animals will like it just fine,
filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds.
Skunks will make it their home,
and unspeakable night hags will haunt it.
Hyenas will curdle your blood with their laughing,
and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers.
“Babylon is doomed.
It won’t be long now.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, April 06, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: Romans 3:10–18
As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”b p
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”c q
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”d r
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”e s
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”f t
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Insight
In Romans 1–3, Paul demonstrates that all human beings are sinners. Six times in chapter 3 he emphatically uses the phrases “no one” or “not even one” to show the total sinfulness of all mankind (vv. 10–12). Sin rules the entire person—our words (vv. 13–14), works (vv. 15–17), and heart (v. 18) condemn us. Paul concludes that “all have sinned and fall short” of God’s standards (v. 23). Without the regenerating work of the Spirit, humans are incapable of having a right relationship with God. We don’t seek Him (v. 11) but willfully turn against Him (v. 12), for we have “no fear of God” (v. 18). But God, in His grace and mercy, makes sinners right with Him when we believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood to save us from our sins (vv. 24–25).
A Good Man
By grace you have been saved, through faith—and that is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.
Ephesians 2:8
“Jerry was a good man,” the pastor said at Jerald Stevens’ memorial service. “He loved his family. He was faithful to his wife. He served his country in the armed services. He was an excellent dad and grandfather. He was a great friend.”
But then the pastor went on to tell the friends and family gathered that Jerry’s good life and good deeds were not enough to assure him a place in heaven. And that Jerry himself would have been the first to tell them that!
Jerry believed these words from the Bible: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and “the wages of sin is death” (6:23). Jerry’s final and eternal destination in life’s journey was not determined by whether he lived a really good life but entirely by Jesus—the perfect Son of God—dying in his place to pay sin’s penalty. He believed that each of us must personally accept the free gift of God, which is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 23).
Jerry was a good man, but he could never be “good enough.” Watch Rasool Berry’s “Jesus, the Good Man” devotional video. He, like us, had to learn that salvation and righteousness aren’t the results of human effort. They’re gifts by God’s grace (Ephesians 2:8).
“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15). By: Cindy Hess Kasper
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, April 06, 2020
The Collision of God and Sin
…who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree… —1 Peter 2:24
The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross— He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.
The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus— He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating “God was manifested in the flesh…” from “…He made Him…to be sin for us…” (1 Timothy 3:16 ; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.
The Cross is not the cross of a man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.
The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.
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, 903 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 4-6; Luke 9:1-17
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, April 06, 2020
Easter...On Both Sides of the Dirt - #8671
I had the last handful of dirt. Many of our dear Native American friends had led the way. They really loved my Karen. As I threw mine into that six-foot hole, I spoke three words engraved inside our wedding rings, "Til Jesus comes." And then just quietly I said, "See you soon, baby." And I know I will because of Easter. Easter didn't stop the tears. Easter didn't cushion her adoring grandchildren from the shock that they would not see again on this earth the one whose hugs and laugh and love had lit up their lives. Neither would I. Neither would her children who never stopped depending on her prayer and her wisdom. Easter doesn't shield us from the grim reality of the casket, that hole in the ground, the empty blue recliner. Or the gut-wrenching emotional ambushes when the "I'm missing her" feelings that usually whisper, suddenly scream. But the reality of that empty tomb near a skull-shaped hill in Jerusalem is a game-changer in so many ways. For the one by the grave, and the one in the grave on both sides of the dirt.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Easter...On Both Sides of the Dirt."
To be sure, most religions offer some form of hope beyond the grave. But no real evidence that they can deliver on that hope.
And then there's Jesus. Who is, in the Bible's words, and our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:3, "a living hope." And it's with proof, because it says, "Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Eyewitnesses - hundreds of them - followers who saw Jesus, dying because they wouldn't deny it, written contemporary history, and the power elite of government and religion, desperately wielding their power to prove Jesus wasn't alive - and they couldn't.
There is no need to speak of Jesus in the past tense. He's alive now. He's our future. And because He's proven He has eternal life, He's the One who can give eternal life. So it wasn't just some religious cop-out for me to look in that grave and know that my Karen wasn't there. Oh, her "earth suit" was - the body we need for this life, like an astronaut needs his space suit for the moon. But the real Karen - her soul - never stopped living.
When the thief on the cross next to Jesus expressed faith in Him, Jesus made this astonishing statement: "Today you will be with Me in paradise" (Matthew 23:43). I believe that's what He said to my Karen that May afternoon in our living room.
Standing by her grave, I remembered her actual new address: "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). That's why I call that May 16th her "Homegoing." That Easter reality didn't erase what I lost that day. Karen was with Jesus. I wasn't. But because our death-crushing Jesus promised that "because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19), grief doesn't own the death scale. There's something on the other side. Something more powerful. It's called hope. Separation now. Reunion coming!
Since Karen went Home, I kept finding journals of hers. They are essentially heart-dumps to Jesus. And they reflect a vibrant love for Him. She signs her prayers, "Your loving daughter, Karen." Many times I've stood in church with my arm around her waist as we joined in singing praises to Jesus. What blows me away is thinking she is now singing those songs face-to-face with Him!
Although she impacted - even rescued - many lives, she always had a hard time accepting my assurances of the difference that she was making for Christ. She knows now. He's told her Himself. I just love thinking that this incomparable woman I did life with is now experiencing what the Bible says, "no eye has seen, no ear has heard" (1 Corinthians 2:9).
But what about us on "the other side of the dirt"? Suddenly doing life without her. God says He is "close to the brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18). All I can tell you is this living Savior has been closer to me these past three years than in all my life before.
I want to invite you if you've never made sure you have a relationship with Him, that you belong to Jesus, that you get that taken care of today. The power of Jesus' resurrection has taken my greatest treasure from her last heartbeat to His heaven and resurrected the broken man she left here, giving me so much hope it's overflowing into many other grieving hearts.
Make sure you belong to Jesus. And if you're not, go to our website and get the information you need - ANewStory.com. He's walked with me every step through "the valley of the shadow." I know He'll walk with you all the way home.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Isaiah 12 , Bible reading and Daily Devotions
Max Lucado Daily: You Need A Savior
“If the Son makes you free, you will be truly free.” John 8:36
Trying to make it to heaven on our own goodness is like trying to get to the moon on a moon beam; nice idea, but try it and see what happens.
Listen. Quit trying to quench your own guilt. You can’t do it. There’s no way.
Not with a bottle of whiskey or perfect Sunday school attendance. Sorry. I don’t care how bad you are. You can’t be bad enough to forget it. And I don’t care how good you are. You can’t be good enough to overcome it.
You need a Savior.
Isaiah 12
And you will say in that day,
“I thank you, God.
You were angry
but your anger wasn’t forever.
You withdrew your anger
and moved in and comforted me.
2 “Yes, indeed—God is my salvation.
I trust, I won’t be afraid.
God—yes God!—is my strength and song,
best of all, my salvation!”
3-4 Joyfully you’ll pull up buckets of water
from the wells of salvation.
And as you do it, you’ll say,
“Give thanks to God.
Call out his name.
Ask him anything!
Shout to the nations, tell them what he’s done,
spread the news of his great reputation!
5-6 “Sing praise-songs to God. He’s done it all!
Let the whole earth know what he’s done!
Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out, O Zion!
The Greatest lives among you: The Holy of Israel.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, April 05, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: John 12:12–18
Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branchest and went out to meet him, shouting,
“Hosanna!d”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”e u
“Blessed is the king of Israel!”v
14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:
15 “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.”f w
16 At first his disciples did not understand all this.x Only after Jesus was glorifiedy did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.
17 Now the crowd that was with himz when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18 Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign,a went out to meet him.
Insight
The word hosanna (John 12:13) appears in the New Testament only in relation to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem during the Passover festival. According to the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, “This term was originally a Hebrew invocation addressed to God [meaning ‘Save now’]. . . . Later it apparently came to be used as a joyous acclamation, an ascription of praise to God.” It could also mean a shout of welcome, which seems to be how it’s used by the crowds welcoming Jesus. But it isn’t out of the question that all three meanings are found in this passage. John mentions that those who saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead were present at His triumphal entry and were spreading the word about Him. Those who came to see the One who could rescue from death may have been pleading for their own rescue from Rome. Others may have been simply shouting Hosanna! as a praise for the things Jesus had done.
The One Who Saves
They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!” John 12:13
He was called “one of the bravest persons alive,” but he wasn’t what others expected. Desmond was a soldier who declined to carry a gun. As a medic, he single-handedly rescued seventy-five injured soldiers in one battle, including some who once called him a coward and ridiculed him for his faith. Running into heavy gunfire, Desmond prayed continually, “Lord, please help me get one more.” He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism.
Scripture tells us that Jesus was greatly misunderstood. On a day foretold by the prophet Zechariah (9:9), Jesus entered Jerusalem and the crowd waved branches, shouting, “Hosanna!” (John 12:13). Quoting Psalm 118:26, they cried: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (John 12:13). But the very next verse in that psalm refers to bringing a sacrifice “with boughs in hand” (Psalm 118:27). While the crowd in John 12 anticipated an earthly king to save them from Rome, Jesus was much more. He was King of Kings and our sacrifice—God in the flesh, willingly embracing the cross to save us from our sins—a purpose prophesied centuries earlier.
“At first his disciples did not understand all this,” John writes. Only later “did they realize that these things had been written about him” (John 12:16). Illumined by His Word, God’s eternal purposes became clear. Watch Grant Stevenson’s devotional video, “Jesus, the Savior,” to learn more about the One who saves. By: James Banks
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, April 05, 2020
His Agony and Our Access
Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples…."Stay here and watch with Me." —Matthew 26:36, 38
We can never fully comprehend Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, but at least we don’t have to misunderstand it. It is the agony of God and man in one Person, coming face to face with sin. We cannot learn about Gethsemane through personal experience. Gethsemane and Calvary represent something totally unique— they are the gateway into life for us.
It was not death on the cross that Jesus agonized over in Gethsemane. In fact, He stated very emphatically that He came with the purpose of dying. His concern here was that He might not get through this struggle as the Son of Man. He was confident of getting through it as the Son of God— Satan could not touch Him there. But Satan’s assault was that our Lord would come through for us on His own solely as the Son of Man. If Jesus had done that, He could not have been our Savior (see Hebrews 9:11-15). Read the record of His agony in Gethsemane in light of His earlier wilderness temptation— “…the devil…departed from Him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). In Gethsemane, Satan came back and was overthrown again. Satan’s final assault against our Lord as the Son of Man was in Gethsemane.
The agony in Gethsemane was the agony of the Son of God in fulfilling His destiny as the Savior of the world. The veil is pulled back here to reveal all that it cost Him to make it possible for us to become sons of God. His agony was the basis for the simplicity of our salvation. The Cross of Christ was a triumph for the Son of Man. It was not only a sign that our Lord had triumphed, but that He had triumphed to save the human race. Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human being has been provided with a way of access into the very presence of God.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Crises reveal character. When we are put to the test the hidden resources of our character are revealed exactly. Disciples Indeed, 393 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 1-3; Luke 8:26-56
“If the Son makes you free, you will be truly free.” John 8:36
Trying to make it to heaven on our own goodness is like trying to get to the moon on a moon beam; nice idea, but try it and see what happens.
Listen. Quit trying to quench your own guilt. You can’t do it. There’s no way.
Not with a bottle of whiskey or perfect Sunday school attendance. Sorry. I don’t care how bad you are. You can’t be bad enough to forget it. And I don’t care how good you are. You can’t be good enough to overcome it.
You need a Savior.
Isaiah 12
And you will say in that day,
“I thank you, God.
You were angry
but your anger wasn’t forever.
You withdrew your anger
and moved in and comforted me.
2 “Yes, indeed—God is my salvation.
I trust, I won’t be afraid.
God—yes God!—is my strength and song,
best of all, my salvation!”
3-4 Joyfully you’ll pull up buckets of water
from the wells of salvation.
And as you do it, you’ll say,
“Give thanks to God.
Call out his name.
Ask him anything!
Shout to the nations, tell them what he’s done,
spread the news of his great reputation!
5-6 “Sing praise-songs to God. He’s done it all!
Let the whole earth know what he’s done!
Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out, O Zion!
The Greatest lives among you: The Holy of Israel.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, April 05, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: John 12:12–18
Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branchest and went out to meet him, shouting,
“Hosanna!d”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”e u
“Blessed is the king of Israel!”v
14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:
15 “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.”f w
16 At first his disciples did not understand all this.x Only after Jesus was glorifiedy did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.
17 Now the crowd that was with himz when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18 Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign,a went out to meet him.
Insight
The word hosanna (John 12:13) appears in the New Testament only in relation to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem during the Passover festival. According to the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, “This term was originally a Hebrew invocation addressed to God [meaning ‘Save now’]. . . . Later it apparently came to be used as a joyous acclamation, an ascription of praise to God.” It could also mean a shout of welcome, which seems to be how it’s used by the crowds welcoming Jesus. But it isn’t out of the question that all three meanings are found in this passage. John mentions that those who saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead were present at His triumphal entry and were spreading the word about Him. Those who came to see the One who could rescue from death may have been pleading for their own rescue from Rome. Others may have been simply shouting Hosanna! as a praise for the things Jesus had done.
The One Who Saves
They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!” John 12:13
He was called “one of the bravest persons alive,” but he wasn’t what others expected. Desmond was a soldier who declined to carry a gun. As a medic, he single-handedly rescued seventy-five injured soldiers in one battle, including some who once called him a coward and ridiculed him for his faith. Running into heavy gunfire, Desmond prayed continually, “Lord, please help me get one more.” He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism.
Scripture tells us that Jesus was greatly misunderstood. On a day foretold by the prophet Zechariah (9:9), Jesus entered Jerusalem and the crowd waved branches, shouting, “Hosanna!” (John 12:13). Quoting Psalm 118:26, they cried: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (John 12:13). But the very next verse in that psalm refers to bringing a sacrifice “with boughs in hand” (Psalm 118:27). While the crowd in John 12 anticipated an earthly king to save them from Rome, Jesus was much more. He was King of Kings and our sacrifice—God in the flesh, willingly embracing the cross to save us from our sins—a purpose prophesied centuries earlier.
“At first his disciples did not understand all this,” John writes. Only later “did they realize that these things had been written about him” (John 12:16). Illumined by His Word, God’s eternal purposes became clear. Watch Grant Stevenson’s devotional video, “Jesus, the Savior,” to learn more about the One who saves. By: James Banks
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, April 05, 2020
His Agony and Our Access
Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples…."Stay here and watch with Me." —Matthew 26:36, 38
We can never fully comprehend Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, but at least we don’t have to misunderstand it. It is the agony of God and man in one Person, coming face to face with sin. We cannot learn about Gethsemane through personal experience. Gethsemane and Calvary represent something totally unique— they are the gateway into life for us.
It was not death on the cross that Jesus agonized over in Gethsemane. In fact, He stated very emphatically that He came with the purpose of dying. His concern here was that He might not get through this struggle as the Son of Man. He was confident of getting through it as the Son of God— Satan could not touch Him there. But Satan’s assault was that our Lord would come through for us on His own solely as the Son of Man. If Jesus had done that, He could not have been our Savior (see Hebrews 9:11-15). Read the record of His agony in Gethsemane in light of His earlier wilderness temptation— “…the devil…departed from Him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). In Gethsemane, Satan came back and was overthrown again. Satan’s final assault against our Lord as the Son of Man was in Gethsemane.
The agony in Gethsemane was the agony of the Son of God in fulfilling His destiny as the Savior of the world. The veil is pulled back here to reveal all that it cost Him to make it possible for us to become sons of God. His agony was the basis for the simplicity of our salvation. The Cross of Christ was a triumph for the Son of Man. It was not only a sign that our Lord had triumphed, but that He had triumphed to save the human race. Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human being has been provided with a way of access into the very presence of God.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Crises reveal character. When we are put to the test the hidden resources of our character are revealed exactly. Disciples Indeed, 393 R
Bible in a Year: 1 Samuel 1-3; Luke 8:26-56
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Isaiah 11, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily:The Cry of a Sinner
What is the fruit of sin? Step into the briar patch of humanity and feel a few thistles. Shame. Fear. Disgrace. Discouragement. Anxiety! Haven't our hearts been caught in these brambles?
The heart of Jesus, however, had not. He had never been cut by the thorns of sin. Anxiety? He never worried. Guilt? He was never guilty. Fear? He never left the presence God, He never knew the fruits of sin until He became sin for us.
Can't you hear the emotion in His prayer? "My God, my God, why have you rejected me?" These are not the words of a saint. This is the cry of a sinner.
And these are words we should say, but these are words we don't have to say because Jesus said them for us.
From He Chose the Nails
Isaiah 11
A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump,
from his roots a budding Branch.
The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him,
the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength,
the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of-God.
Fear-of-God
will be all his joy and delight.
He won’t judge by appearances,
won’t decide on the basis of hearsay.
He’ll judge the needy by what is right,
render decisions on earth’s poor with justice.
His words will bring everyone to awed attention.
A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked.
Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots,
and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.
6-9 The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
10 On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples. The nations will all come to him. His headquarters will be glorious.
11 Also on that day, the Master for the second time will reach out to bring back what’s left of his scattered people. He’ll bring them back from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Ethiopia, Elam, Sinar, Hamath, and the ocean islands.
12-16 And he’ll raise that rallying banner high, visible to all nations,
gather in all the scattered exiles of Israel,
Pull in all the dispersed refugees of Judah
from the four winds and the seven seas.
The jealousy of Ephraim will dissolve,
the hostility of Judah will vanish—
Ephraim no longer the jealous rival of Judah,
Judah no longer the hostile rival of Ephraim!
Blood brothers united, they’ll pounce on the Philistines in the west,
join forces to plunder the people in the east.
They’ll attack Edom and Moab.
The Ammonites will fall into line.
God will once again dry up Egypt’s Red Sea,
making for an easy crossing.
He’ll send a blistering wind
down on the great River Euphrates,
Reduce it to seven mere trickles.
None even need get their feet wet!
In the end there’ll be a highway all the way from Assyria,
easy traveling for what’s left of God’s people—
A highway just like the one Israel had
when he marched up out of Egypt.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, April 04, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: Ecclesiastes 5:10–12
Whoever loves money never has enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless.
11 As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owners
except to feast their eyes on them?
12 The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether they eat little or much,
but as for the rich, their abundance
permits them no sleep.
Insight
The book of Ecclesiastes wrestles with whether human beings can experience anything of lasting meaning or value in their lives. “Qohelet,” the primary speaker (often translated “the Teacher” or “the Preacher,” 1:1), even implies God has played a cruel trick on humanity—setting “eternity” in their hearts (3:11) while making it impossible to ever grasp the eternal or hidden meaning behind life (6:12; 8:7; 9:9).
In chapter 5, Qohelet looks at people’s attempt to find satisfaction in wealth and discovers that their cravings are never satisfied, no matter how much they acquire (5:8–12). Others, through exploitation by the powerful or through poor choices, find themselves trapped in poverty (vv. 13–17). Qohelet seems to find a partial solution in verses 18–20. There he suggests that peace is experienced through letting go of the need to understand or control the realities of life and instead embracing the joys God has woven into our experiences on earth.
To learn more about the book of Ecclesiastes, visit bit.ly/2LTliP7.
Our Deepest Longings
Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied. Ecclesiastes 5:10
As a young man, Duncan had been afraid of not having enough money, so in his early twenties, he began ambitiously building his future. Climbing the ladder at a prestigious Silicon Valley company, Duncan achieved vast wealth. He had a bulging bank account, a luxury sports car, and a million-dollar California home. He had everything he desired; yet he was profoundly unhappy. “I felt anxious and dissatisfied,” Duncan said. “In fact, wealth can actually make life worse.” Piles of cash didn’t provide friendship, community, or joy—and often brought him only more heartache.
Some people will expend immense energy attempting to amass wealth in an effort to secure their lives. It’s a fool’s game. “Whoever loves money never has enough,” Scripture insists (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Some will work themselves to the bone. They’ll strive and push, comparing their possessions with others and straining to achieve some economic status. And yet even if they gain supposed financial freedom, they’ll still be unsatisfied. It’s not enough. As the writer of Ecclesiastes states, “This too is meaningless” (v. 10).
The truth is, striving to find fulfillment apart from God will prove futile. While Scripture calls us to work hard and use our gifts for the good of the world, we can never accumulate enough to satisfy our deepest longings. Jesus alone offers a real and satisfying life (John 10:10)—one based on a loving relationship that’s truly enough! By: Winn Collier
Reflect & Pray
What brings you true satisfaction and fulfillment? How can you more fully live out the fact that only God is enough?
Gracious God, allow me to find my true fulfillment and joy in You. Keep me from a wrong view of work and material things.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, April 04, 2020
The Way to Permanent Faith
Indeed the hour is coming…that you will be scattered… —John 16:32
Jesus was not rebuking the disciples in this passage. Their faith was real, but it was disordered and unfocused, and was not at work in the important realities of life. The disciples were scattered to their own concerns and they had interests apart from Jesus Christ. After we have the perfect relationship with God, through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, our faith must be exercised in the realities of everyday life. We will be scattered, not into service but into the emptiness of our lives where we will see ruin and barrenness, to know what internal death to God’s blessings means. Are we prepared for this? It is certainly not of our own choosing, but God engineers our circumstances to take us there. Until we have been through that experience, our faith is sustained only by feelings and by blessings. But once we get there, no matter where God may place us or what inner emptiness we experience, we can praise God that all is well. That is what is meant by faith being exercised in the realities of life.
“…you…will leave Me alone.” Have we been scattered and have we left Jesus alone by not seeing His providential care for us? Do we not see God at work in our circumstances? Dark times are allowed and come to us through the sovereignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do what He wants with us? Are we prepared to be separated from the outward, evident blessings of God? Until Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, we each have goals of our own which we serve. Our faith is real, but it is not yet permanent. And God is never in a hurry. If we are willing to wait, we will see God pointing out that we have been interested only in His blessings, instead of in God Himself. The sense of God’s blessings is fundamental.
“…be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Unyielding spiritual fortitude is what we need.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
Bible in a Year: Ruth 1-4; Luke 8:1-25
What is the fruit of sin? Step into the briar patch of humanity and feel a few thistles. Shame. Fear. Disgrace. Discouragement. Anxiety! Haven't our hearts been caught in these brambles?
The heart of Jesus, however, had not. He had never been cut by the thorns of sin. Anxiety? He never worried. Guilt? He was never guilty. Fear? He never left the presence God, He never knew the fruits of sin until He became sin for us.
Can't you hear the emotion in His prayer? "My God, my God, why have you rejected me?" These are not the words of a saint. This is the cry of a sinner.
And these are words we should say, but these are words we don't have to say because Jesus said them for us.
From He Chose the Nails
Isaiah 11
A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump,
from his roots a budding Branch.
The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him,
the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength,
the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of-God.
Fear-of-God
will be all his joy and delight.
He won’t judge by appearances,
won’t decide on the basis of hearsay.
He’ll judge the needy by what is right,
render decisions on earth’s poor with justice.
His words will bring everyone to awed attention.
A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked.
Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots,
and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.
6-9 The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
10 On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples. The nations will all come to him. His headquarters will be glorious.
11 Also on that day, the Master for the second time will reach out to bring back what’s left of his scattered people. He’ll bring them back from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Ethiopia, Elam, Sinar, Hamath, and the ocean islands.
12-16 And he’ll raise that rallying banner high, visible to all nations,
gather in all the scattered exiles of Israel,
Pull in all the dispersed refugees of Judah
from the four winds and the seven seas.
The jealousy of Ephraim will dissolve,
the hostility of Judah will vanish—
Ephraim no longer the jealous rival of Judah,
Judah no longer the hostile rival of Ephraim!
Blood brothers united, they’ll pounce on the Philistines in the west,
join forces to plunder the people in the east.
They’ll attack Edom and Moab.
The Ammonites will fall into line.
God will once again dry up Egypt’s Red Sea,
making for an easy crossing.
He’ll send a blistering wind
down on the great River Euphrates,
Reduce it to seven mere trickles.
None even need get their feet wet!
In the end there’ll be a highway all the way from Assyria,
easy traveling for what’s left of God’s people—
A highway just like the one Israel had
when he marched up out of Egypt.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, April 04, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: Ecclesiastes 5:10–12
Whoever loves money never has enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless.
11 As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owners
except to feast their eyes on them?
12 The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether they eat little or much,
but as for the rich, their abundance
permits them no sleep.
Insight
The book of Ecclesiastes wrestles with whether human beings can experience anything of lasting meaning or value in their lives. “Qohelet,” the primary speaker (often translated “the Teacher” or “the Preacher,” 1:1), even implies God has played a cruel trick on humanity—setting “eternity” in their hearts (3:11) while making it impossible to ever grasp the eternal or hidden meaning behind life (6:12; 8:7; 9:9).
In chapter 5, Qohelet looks at people’s attempt to find satisfaction in wealth and discovers that their cravings are never satisfied, no matter how much they acquire (5:8–12). Others, through exploitation by the powerful or through poor choices, find themselves trapped in poverty (vv. 13–17). Qohelet seems to find a partial solution in verses 18–20. There he suggests that peace is experienced through letting go of the need to understand or control the realities of life and instead embracing the joys God has woven into our experiences on earth.
To learn more about the book of Ecclesiastes, visit bit.ly/2LTliP7.
Our Deepest Longings
Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied. Ecclesiastes 5:10
As a young man, Duncan had been afraid of not having enough money, so in his early twenties, he began ambitiously building his future. Climbing the ladder at a prestigious Silicon Valley company, Duncan achieved vast wealth. He had a bulging bank account, a luxury sports car, and a million-dollar California home. He had everything he desired; yet he was profoundly unhappy. “I felt anxious and dissatisfied,” Duncan said. “In fact, wealth can actually make life worse.” Piles of cash didn’t provide friendship, community, or joy—and often brought him only more heartache.
Some people will expend immense energy attempting to amass wealth in an effort to secure their lives. It’s a fool’s game. “Whoever loves money never has enough,” Scripture insists (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Some will work themselves to the bone. They’ll strive and push, comparing their possessions with others and straining to achieve some economic status. And yet even if they gain supposed financial freedom, they’ll still be unsatisfied. It’s not enough. As the writer of Ecclesiastes states, “This too is meaningless” (v. 10).
The truth is, striving to find fulfillment apart from God will prove futile. While Scripture calls us to work hard and use our gifts for the good of the world, we can never accumulate enough to satisfy our deepest longings. Jesus alone offers a real and satisfying life (John 10:10)—one based on a loving relationship that’s truly enough! By: Winn Collier
Reflect & Pray
What brings you true satisfaction and fulfillment? How can you more fully live out the fact that only God is enough?
Gracious God, allow me to find my true fulfillment and joy in You. Keep me from a wrong view of work and material things.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, April 04, 2020
The Way to Permanent Faith
Indeed the hour is coming…that you will be scattered… —John 16:32
Jesus was not rebuking the disciples in this passage. Their faith was real, but it was disordered and unfocused, and was not at work in the important realities of life. The disciples were scattered to their own concerns and they had interests apart from Jesus Christ. After we have the perfect relationship with God, through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, our faith must be exercised in the realities of everyday life. We will be scattered, not into service but into the emptiness of our lives where we will see ruin and barrenness, to know what internal death to God’s blessings means. Are we prepared for this? It is certainly not of our own choosing, but God engineers our circumstances to take us there. Until we have been through that experience, our faith is sustained only by feelings and by blessings. But once we get there, no matter where God may place us or what inner emptiness we experience, we can praise God that all is well. That is what is meant by faith being exercised in the realities of life.
“…you…will leave Me alone.” Have we been scattered and have we left Jesus alone by not seeing His providential care for us? Do we not see God at work in our circumstances? Dark times are allowed and come to us through the sovereignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do what He wants with us? Are we prepared to be separated from the outward, evident blessings of God? Until Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, we each have goals of our own which we serve. Our faith is real, but it is not yet permanent. And God is never in a hurry. If we are willing to wait, we will see God pointing out that we have been interested only in His blessings, instead of in God Himself. The sense of God’s blessings is fundamental.
“…be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Unyielding spiritual fortitude is what we need.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
Bible in a Year: Ruth 1-4; Luke 8:1-25
Friday, April 3, 2020
Ephesians 1, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Cast Yourself Upon the Grace of Christ
Guilt sucks the life out of our souls. Grace restores it. No one had more reason to feel the burden of guilt than did the apostle Paul. He had orchestrated the deaths of Christians—he was an ancient version of a terrorist.
Paul gave his guilt to Jesus. Period. He surrendered it to Jesus. As a result he could write, “I am still not all I should be, but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us up to heaven because of what Christ Jesus did for us.” (Philippians 3:13-14).
What would the apostle say to the guilt-ridden? Simply this: Rejoice in the Lord’s mercy. Trust in his ability to forgive. Cast yourself upon the grace of Christ and Christ alone!
Read more Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World
Ephesians 1
I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.
3-6 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11-12 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
13-14 It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
15-19 That’s why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn’t stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
20-23 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, April 03, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
2 Timothy 4:1–8
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead,r and in view of his appearings and his kingdom, I give you this charge:t 2 Preachu the word;v be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebukew and encouragex—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.y Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.z 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.a 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship,b do the work of an evangelist,c discharge all the duties of your ministry.
6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering,d and the time for my departure is near.e 7 I have fought the good fight,f I have finished the race,g I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for meh the crown of righteousness,i which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that dayj—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
Insight
Second Timothy is Paul’s final letter, written from a Roman prison where he was awaiting execution (see 4:6). Taking the total sweep of this chapter, we find three distinct sections in what is regarded as Paul’s last words. In verses 1–5, the apostle challenges and urges his young protégé Timothy to be faithful in carrying out the calling he has received—particularly the ministry of preaching the Scriptures. In verses 6–8, Paul gives his own testimony of service to Jesus and his readiness to see the Savior. The bulk of the remaining verses (vv. 9–18) deals with people who disappointed Paul and how he responded to that disappointment.
What Comes Next?
There is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord . . . will award to me on that day.
2 Timothy 4:8
On the night of April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” In it, he hints that he believed he might not live long. He said, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. . . . [But] I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The next day, he was assassinated.
The apostle Paul, shortly before his death, wrote to his protégé Timothy: “I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. . . . Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day” (2 Timothy 4:6, 8). Paul knew his time on earth was drawing to a close, as did Dr. King. Both men realized lives of incredible significance, yet never lost sight of the true life ahead. Both men welcomed what came next.
Like them, may we “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). By: Remi Oyedele
Reflect & Pray
What is your understanding of this life’s temporary nature? How do you think it plays into the life that comes next?
Heavenly Father, help us to keep our eyes on You and not on the troubles and trials of this life.
Read Life to Come: The Hope of the Christian Faith at discoveryseries.org/q1205.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, April 03, 2020
“If You Had Known!”
If you had known…in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. —Luke 19:42
Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly and the city was stirred to its very foundations, but a strange god was there– the pride of the Pharisees. It was a god that seemed religious and upright, but Jesus compared it to “whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27).
What is it that blinds you to the peace of God “in this your day”? Do you have a strange god– not a disgusting monster but perhaps an unholy nature that controls your life? More than once God has brought me face to face with a strange god in my life, and I knew that I should have given it up, but I didn’t do it. I got through the crisis “by the skin of my teeth,” only to find myself still under the control of that strange god. I am blind to the very things that make for my own peace. It is a shocking thing that we can be in the exact place where the Spirit of God should be having His completely unhindered way with us, and yet we only make matters worse, increasing our blame in God’s eyes.
“If you had known….” God’s words here cut directly to the heart, with the tears of Jesus behind them. These words imply responsibility for our own faults. God holds us accountable for what we refuse to see or are unable to see because of our sin. And “now they are hidden from your eyes” because you have never completely yielded your nature to Him. Oh, the deep, unending sadness for what might have been! God never again opens the doors that have been closed. He opens other doors, but He reminds us that there are doors which we have shut– doors which had no need to be shut. Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you. God will turn what might have been into a wonderful lesson of growth for the future.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Beware of pronouncing any verdict on the life of faith if you are not living it. Not Knowing Whither, 900 R
Bible in a Year: Judges 19-21; Luke 7:31-50
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, April 03, 2020
The Unpredictable Weather, The Unmoving Lighthouse - #8670
I've always been fascinated with lighthouses. I actually saw this feature on the evening news about a photographer who decided he loves the seagull perspective on lighthouses. He's got this little customized aircraft, he flies over Maine's many picturesque lighthouses, shooting unusual aerial photos of them. They're beautiful; they're even inspiring. He's seen them and photographed them in all kinds of settings: sunshine, clouds, storms, high tide, and low tide. And here's how he summarized what he's seen: "The lighthouse is always there, but everything else is changing."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Unpredictable Weather, The Unmoving Lighthouse."
I used to ask groups of teenagers to take four 3x5 cards and write the four most important things in their lives on those four cards. When they finished, I said, "OK, a disaster has just come into your life and you're going to lose one of the most important things in your life; except you're going to choose which one. Drop one of those cards." That's not easy, but after some thought, they dropped one.
I repeated that request another time, and again - this time with a little more resistance - they dropped one of the most important things in their life. Then, when they had only two cards, I said, "You can keep one, but only one. You're going to lose everything but the most important thing in your life. Drop one more card." Well, let me tell you, that was pretty tough.
But when everyone was finally down to just one card, I said, "Okay, you're holding a card that represents that most important thing in your life. I've got one question I want you to answer about it, is it something you can lose?" If what, or who, matters most to us is something we can lose, we can never be secure; we can never be totally at peace.
We need, in essence, a lighthouse - something we can totally depend on when everything else is changing. Something, actually someone who is - as the photographer said about those lighthouses - "always there." If you've already lost some of the cards that mattered most to you in your life, and I sure have, then you know how much we need something that's unloseable, something unmoving that will stand the unpredictable weather because the weather in our world, even in our lives, has become more and more unpredictable.
The lighthouse that never moves is beautifully described in our word for today from the Word of God in Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." So as relationships come and go, as jobs and houses and possessions come and go, as our health changes, our feelings change, our family changes, Jesus Christ remains our personal lighthouse that never moves, never changes...if we know Him.
In the verses preceding this statement, God makes this promise, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." Then it says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." From the nursery to the nursing home to the funeral home, a Savior, a friend you can totally, totally trust and you'll never, never lose Him. Jesus secured the possibility of this relationship when He died on the cross to pay that death penalty we all owe for the sinning we've done. This unloseable relationship becomes yours when you grab Jesus in total trust to remove the sin-wall between you and God forever.
As the storm clouds darken and the surf becomes more turbulent, aren't you ready for this Savior-security? If you want to get started in this relationship with Jesus, this unloseable love, would you tell Him that right now, "Jesus, I'm Yours. You died for me. You rose from the dead to walk into my life. I'm yours, Jesus, from this day on."
Let me encourage you to get to our website. It's called ANewStory.com. Because your new story can begin there with the information that will help you be sure you belong to Him.
It's the season of uncertain weather, but Jesus is that lighthouse that will be "always there" for you. You grab His hand and He will never let go.
Guilt sucks the life out of our souls. Grace restores it. No one had more reason to feel the burden of guilt than did the apostle Paul. He had orchestrated the deaths of Christians—he was an ancient version of a terrorist.
Paul gave his guilt to Jesus. Period. He surrendered it to Jesus. As a result he could write, “I am still not all I should be, but I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God is calling us up to heaven because of what Christ Jesus did for us.” (Philippians 3:13-14).
What would the apostle say to the guilt-ridden? Simply this: Rejoice in the Lord’s mercy. Trust in his ability to forgive. Cast yourself upon the grace of Christ and Christ alone!
Read more Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World
Ephesians 1
I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.
3-6 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11-12 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
13-14 It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
15-19 That’s why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn’t stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
20-23 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, April 03, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:
2 Timothy 4:1–8
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead,r and in view of his appearings and his kingdom, I give you this charge:t 2 Preachu the word;v be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebukew and encouragex—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.y Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.z 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.a 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship,b do the work of an evangelist,c discharge all the duties of your ministry.
6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering,d and the time for my departure is near.e 7 I have fought the good fight,f I have finished the race,g I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for meh the crown of righteousness,i which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that dayj—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
Insight
Second Timothy is Paul’s final letter, written from a Roman prison where he was awaiting execution (see 4:6). Taking the total sweep of this chapter, we find three distinct sections in what is regarded as Paul’s last words. In verses 1–5, the apostle challenges and urges his young protégé Timothy to be faithful in carrying out the calling he has received—particularly the ministry of preaching the Scriptures. In verses 6–8, Paul gives his own testimony of service to Jesus and his readiness to see the Savior. The bulk of the remaining verses (vv. 9–18) deals with people who disappointed Paul and how he responded to that disappointment.
What Comes Next?
There is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord . . . will award to me on that day.
2 Timothy 4:8
On the night of April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” In it, he hints that he believed he might not live long. He said, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. . . . [But] I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The next day, he was assassinated.
The apostle Paul, shortly before his death, wrote to his protégé Timothy: “I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. . . . Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day” (2 Timothy 4:6, 8). Paul knew his time on earth was drawing to a close, as did Dr. King. Both men realized lives of incredible significance, yet never lost sight of the true life ahead. Both men welcomed what came next.
Like them, may we “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). By: Remi Oyedele
Reflect & Pray
What is your understanding of this life’s temporary nature? How do you think it plays into the life that comes next?
Heavenly Father, help us to keep our eyes on You and not on the troubles and trials of this life.
Read Life to Come: The Hope of the Christian Faith at discoveryseries.org/q1205.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, April 03, 2020
“If You Had Known!”
If you had known…in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. —Luke 19:42
Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly and the city was stirred to its very foundations, but a strange god was there– the pride of the Pharisees. It was a god that seemed religious and upright, but Jesus compared it to “whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27).
What is it that blinds you to the peace of God “in this your day”? Do you have a strange god– not a disgusting monster but perhaps an unholy nature that controls your life? More than once God has brought me face to face with a strange god in my life, and I knew that I should have given it up, but I didn’t do it. I got through the crisis “by the skin of my teeth,” only to find myself still under the control of that strange god. I am blind to the very things that make for my own peace. It is a shocking thing that we can be in the exact place where the Spirit of God should be having His completely unhindered way with us, and yet we only make matters worse, increasing our blame in God’s eyes.
“If you had known….” God’s words here cut directly to the heart, with the tears of Jesus behind them. These words imply responsibility for our own faults. God holds us accountable for what we refuse to see or are unable to see because of our sin. And “now they are hidden from your eyes” because you have never completely yielded your nature to Him. Oh, the deep, unending sadness for what might have been! God never again opens the doors that have been closed. He opens other doors, but He reminds us that there are doors which we have shut– doors which had no need to be shut. Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you. God will turn what might have been into a wonderful lesson of growth for the future.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Beware of pronouncing any verdict on the life of faith if you are not living it. Not Knowing Whither, 900 R
Bible in a Year: Judges 19-21; Luke 7:31-50
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, April 03, 2020
The Unpredictable Weather, The Unmoving Lighthouse - #8670
I've always been fascinated with lighthouses. I actually saw this feature on the evening news about a photographer who decided he loves the seagull perspective on lighthouses. He's got this little customized aircraft, he flies over Maine's many picturesque lighthouses, shooting unusual aerial photos of them. They're beautiful; they're even inspiring. He's seen them and photographed them in all kinds of settings: sunshine, clouds, storms, high tide, and low tide. And here's how he summarized what he's seen: "The lighthouse is always there, but everything else is changing."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Unpredictable Weather, The Unmoving Lighthouse."
I used to ask groups of teenagers to take four 3x5 cards and write the four most important things in their lives on those four cards. When they finished, I said, "OK, a disaster has just come into your life and you're going to lose one of the most important things in your life; except you're going to choose which one. Drop one of those cards." That's not easy, but after some thought, they dropped one.
I repeated that request another time, and again - this time with a little more resistance - they dropped one of the most important things in their life. Then, when they had only two cards, I said, "You can keep one, but only one. You're going to lose everything but the most important thing in your life. Drop one more card." Well, let me tell you, that was pretty tough.
But when everyone was finally down to just one card, I said, "Okay, you're holding a card that represents that most important thing in your life. I've got one question I want you to answer about it, is it something you can lose?" If what, or who, matters most to us is something we can lose, we can never be secure; we can never be totally at peace.
We need, in essence, a lighthouse - something we can totally depend on when everything else is changing. Something, actually someone who is - as the photographer said about those lighthouses - "always there." If you've already lost some of the cards that mattered most to you in your life, and I sure have, then you know how much we need something that's unloseable, something unmoving that will stand the unpredictable weather because the weather in our world, even in our lives, has become more and more unpredictable.
The lighthouse that never moves is beautifully described in our word for today from the Word of God in Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." So as relationships come and go, as jobs and houses and possessions come and go, as our health changes, our feelings change, our family changes, Jesus Christ remains our personal lighthouse that never moves, never changes...if we know Him.
In the verses preceding this statement, God makes this promise, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." Then it says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." From the nursery to the nursing home to the funeral home, a Savior, a friend you can totally, totally trust and you'll never, never lose Him. Jesus secured the possibility of this relationship when He died on the cross to pay that death penalty we all owe for the sinning we've done. This unloseable relationship becomes yours when you grab Jesus in total trust to remove the sin-wall between you and God forever.
As the storm clouds darken and the surf becomes more turbulent, aren't you ready for this Savior-security? If you want to get started in this relationship with Jesus, this unloseable love, would you tell Him that right now, "Jesus, I'm Yours. You died for me. You rose from the dead to walk into my life. I'm yours, Jesus, from this day on."
Let me encourage you to get to our website. It's called ANewStory.com. Because your new story can begin there with the information that will help you be sure you belong to Him.
It's the season of uncertain weather, but Jesus is that lighthouse that will be "always there" for you. You grab His hand and He will never let go.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Isaiah 10, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: SURVIVING APRIL
This isn’t the April we wanted.
We wanted spring training. We wanted to go to church on Easter Sunday. We wanted a weekend trip to see the spring flowers. We wanted the Masters golf tournament. I love the Masters. I don’t just like it, I love it! I keep pictures of Amen Corner on my computer screen. I love April.
But this April? This isn’t the April we wanted.
But this is the April we’ve been handed: daily reports of disease and death. An economy that’s in freefall. Dwindling supplies. Another 30 days of distance and isolation. And, most of all, a month of fear. We fear for our family. We fear for the health of our health workers. We fear this microscopic, COVID-19 culprit that stalks our streets like a thief.
So we need to brace ourselves. Adjust our expectations. April as we wanted will not happen. God willing, it will reappear in 2021. But the 2020 version? It’s time for a deep breath, a steady resolve and a few decisions. I’m thinking of three essential, emotional tools.
Gratitude. Collect your blessings. Catalog God’s kindnesses. Assemble your reasons for gratitude and recite them. “Always be joyful,” the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Thessalonians. “Pray continually, and give thanks whatever happens. That is what God wants for you in Christ Jesus.”
Look at the totality of those terms. Always be joyful. Pray continually. Give thanks whatever happens.
Gratitude is always an option. Matthew Henry made it his. When the 18th-century British minister and scholar was accosted by thieves and robbed of his purse, he wrote in his diary, “Let me be thankful, first because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse they did not take my life, third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and, fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”
Quarry some gratitude. And, be kind to others. Be the family member who offers to wash the dishes. Be the colleague who reaches out to check on the team. Be the neighbor who mows the grass of the elderly couple.
You’ll be better because of it. Research bears this out. Studies have shown that giving to help others triggers dopamine. (New fundraising slogan, perhaps?) When volunteers wearing a functional MRI scanner were told they would be giving money to charity, the areas of their brains associated with pleasure — like food and sex — lit up like Christmas trees.
Seeking joy? Do good for someone else. It really is better to give than receive.
It’s time for gratitude. It’s time to serve others and it’s time for determination. Good, old-fashioned grit, a resolve that says, “I’m not giving in to fear. I’m not caving in to despair. With God as my helper, I’m going to weather this storm.”
Some years ago, I had the honor of meeting an American hero, Gen. Robbie Risner. For seven and a half years, North Vietnamese soldiers held him and dozens of other soldiers in the Zoo, a POW camp in Hanoi.
Misery came standard issue. Solitary confinement, starvation, tortures and beatings were routine. Interrogators twisted broken legs, sliced skin with bayonets, crammed sticks up nostrils, and paper in mouths. Screams echoed throughout the camp, chilling the blood of other prisoners.
Listen to Risner’s description: “Everything was sad and dismal. It was almost the essence of despair. If you could have squeezed the feeling out of the word despair it would have come out gray, dull and lead-colored, dingy and dirty … ”
How do you survive seven and a half years in such a hole? Cut off from family. No news from the U.S. What do you do?
Here is what Risner did. He stared at a blade of grass. Several days into his incarceration, he wrestled the grate off a floor vent, stretched out on his belly, lowered his head into the opening, and peered through a pencil-sized hole in the brick and mortar at a singular blade of grass. Aside from this stem, his world had no color. So, he began his days, head in vent, heart in prayer, staring at the green blade of grass. He called it a “blood transfusion for the soul.”
You don’t have to go Hanoi to face a “gray, dull and lead-colored, dingy and dirty” existence. A pandemic will do just fine. Do what Risner did. Go on a search. Crowbar the grate from your place of isolation, and stick your head out. Fix your eyes on hope.
Gratitude.
Others.
Determination.
G-O-D.
He is still in charge. He is still Emmanuel, God with us. Heaven still awaits. The tomb of Christ is still vacant. Children still laugh and grass still turns green in April. Find a blade and set your gaze on it.
It’s not the month we wanted, but it is the month we’ve been given. And we will get through it.
© Max Lucado, March 2020
Isaiah 10
Doom to you who legislate evil,
who make laws that make victims—
Laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
taking advantage of homeless children.
What will you have to say on Judgment Day,
when Doomsday arrives out of the blue?
Who will you get to help you?
What good will your money do you?
A sorry sight you’ll be then, huddled with the prisoners,
or just some corpses stacked in the street.
Even after all this, God is still angry,
his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.
5-11 “Doom to Assyria, weapon of my anger.
My wrath is a cudgel in his hands!
I send him against a godless nation,
against the people I’m angry with.
I command him to strip them clean, rob them blind,
and then push their faces in the mud and leave them.
But Assyria has another agenda;
he has something else in mind.
He’s out to destroy utterly,
to stamp out as many nations as he can.
Assyria says, ‘Aren’t my commanders all kings?
Can’t they do whatever they like?
Didn’t I destroy Calno as well as Carchemish?
Hamath as well as Arpad? Level Samaria as I did Damascus?
I’ve eliminated kingdoms full of gods
far more impressive than anything in Jerusalem and Samaria.
So what’s to keep me from destroying Jerusalem
in the same way I destroyed Samaria and all her god-idols?’”
12-13 When the Master has finished dealing with Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he’ll say, “Now it’s Assyria’s turn. I’ll punish the bragging arrogance of the king of Assyria, his high and mighty posturing, the way he goes around saying,
13-14 “‘I’ve done all this by myself.
I know more than anyone.
I’ve wiped out the boundaries of whole countries.
I’ve walked in and taken anything I wanted.
I charged in like a bull
and toppled their kings from their thrones.
I reached out my hand and took all that they treasured
as easily as a boy taking a bird’s eggs from a nest.
Like a farmer gathering eggs from the henhouse,
I gathered the world in my basket,
And no one so much as fluttered a wing
or squawked or even chirped.’”
15-19 Does an ax take over from the one who swings it?
Does a saw act more important than the sawyer?
As if a shovel did its shoveling by using a ditch digger!
As if a hammer used the carpenter to pound nails!
Therefore the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
will send a debilitating disease on his robust Assyrian fighters.
Under the canopy of God’s bright glory
a fierce fire will break out.
Israel’s Light will burst into a conflagration.
The Holy will explode into a firestorm,
And in one day burn to cinders
every last Assyrian thornbush.
God will destroy the splendid trees and lush gardens.
The Assyrian body and soul will waste away to nothing
like a disease-ridden invalid.
A child could count what’s left of the trees
on the fingers of his two hands.
20-23 And on that Day also, what’s left of Israel, the ragtag survivors of Jacob, will no longer be fascinated by abusive, battering Assyria. They’ll lean on God, The Holy—yes, truly. The ragtag remnant—what’s left of Jacob—will come back to the Strong God. Your people Israel were once like the sand on the seashore, but only a scattered few will return. Destruction is ordered, brimming over with righteousness. For the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, will finish here what he started all over the globe.
24-27 Therefore the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, says: “My dear, dear people who live in Zion, don’t be terrorized by the Assyrians when they beat you with clubs and threaten you with rods like the Egyptians once did. In just a short time my anger against you will be spent and I’ll turn my destroying anger on them. I, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, will go after them with a cat-o’-nine-tails and finish them off decisively—as Gideon downed Midian at the rock Oreb, as Moses turned the tables on Egypt. On that day, Assyria will be pulled off your back, and the yoke of slavery lifted from your neck.”
27-32 Assyria’s on the move: up from Rimmon,
on to Aiath,
through Migron,
with a bivouac at Micmash.
They’ve crossed the pass,
set camp at Geba for the night.
Ramah trembles with fright.
Gibeah of Saul has run off.
Cry for help, daughter of Gallim!
Listen to her, Laishah!
Do something, Anathoth!
Madmenah takes to the hills.
The people of Gebim flee in panic.
The enemy’s soon at Nob—nearly there!
In sight of the city he shakes his fist
At the mount of dear daughter Zion,
the hill of Jerusalem.
33-34 But now watch this: The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
swings his ax and lops the branches,
Chops down the giant trees,
lays flat the towering forest-on-the-march.
His ax will make toothpicks of that forest,
that Lebanon-like army reduced to kindling.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 Corinthians 9:6–9
Generosity Encouraged
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.e 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give,f not reluctantly or under compulsion,g for God loves a cheerful giver.h 8 And God is ablei to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need,j you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written:
“They have freely scattered their giftsk to the poor;
their righteousness endures forever.”
Insight
Paul’s first trip to Corinth took place near the end of his second missionary journey after leaving Athens (Acts 18:1). While in Corinth, Paul worked during the week as a tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla (v. 3), and on the Sabbath he “reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks” (v. 4) to receive the message of the gospel.
His second visit to Corinth occurred after Timothy visited there (1 Corinthians 4:17) and is described as Paul’s “painful visit” (2 Corinthians 2:1). In addition to 1 and 2 Corinthians, many scholars believe Paul wrote at least one other letter to the Corinthians, now lost (see 1 Corinthians 5:9; 2 Corinthians 7:8–10). It’s clear Paul loved and was deeply concerned for this church (2 Corinthians 2:4).
Cheerful Givers
God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7
Years ago, my wife received a small rebate from something she’d purchased. It wasn’t something she’d expected, it just showed up in the mail. About the same time, a good friend shared with her the immense needs of women in another country, entrepreneurial-minded women trying to better themselves by way of education and business. As is often the case, however, their first barrier was financial.
My wife took that rebate and made a micro-loan to a ministry devoted to helping these women. When the loan was repaid, she simply loaned again, and again, and so far has made twenty-seven such investments. My wife enjoys many things, but there’s rarely a smile as big on her face as when she receives an update on the flourishing taking place in the lives of women she’s never met.
We often hear emphasis on the last word in this phrase—“God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7)—and rightly so. But our giving has a specific quality about it—it shouldn’t be done “reluctantly or under compulsion,” and we’re called not to sow “sparingly” (vv. 6–7). In a word, our giving is to be “cheerful.” And while each of us will give a little differently, our faces are places for telling evidence of our cheer. By: John Blase
When did you last “cheerfully” give? Why do you believe God loves a cheerful giver?
Generous Father God, thank You for the joy that comes in giving from a cheer-filled heart. And thank You for the ways in which You provide abundantly for our needs.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, April 02, 2020
The Glory That’s Unsurpassed
…the Lord Jesus…has sent me that you may receive your sight… —Acts 9:17
When Paul received his sight, he also received spiritual insight into the Person of Jesus Christ. His entire life and preaching from that point on were totally consumed with nothing but Jesus Christ— “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul never again allowed anything to attract and hold the attention of his mind and soul except the face of Jesus Christ.
We must learn to maintain a strong degree of character in our lives, even to the level that has been revealed in our vision of Jesus Christ.
The lasting characteristic of a spiritual man is the ability to understand correctly the meaning of the Lord Jesus Christ in his life, and the ability to explain the purposes of God to others. The overruling passion of his life is Jesus Christ. Whenever you see this quality in a person, you get the feeling that he is truly a man after God’s own heart (see Acts 13:22).
Never allow anything to divert you from your insight into Jesus Christ. It is the true test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you.
Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus,
I’ve lost sight of all beside,
So enchained my spirit’s vision,
Gazing on the Crucified.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
“When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” We all have faith in good principles, in good management, in good common sense, but who amongst us has faith in Jesus Christ? Physical courage is grand, moral courage is grander, but the man who trusts Jesus Christ in the face of the terrific problems of life is worth a whole crowd of heroes. The Highest Good, 544 R
Bible in a Year: Judges 16-18; Luke 7:1-30
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Heaven's Balanced Books - #8669
We saw it a few years ago. Boy, in one weekend, it was like a string of corporate meltdowns. And when that happens, Wall Street gets a very bad case of the jitters. I mean, when you suddenly discover that a major company that we thought was doing well was actually in big trouble, it doesn't exactly inspire investor confidence. In some cases, some have some shall we say unusually "creative accounting." And it can, for a while, conceal how bad things are. Of course, the fundamentals of financial viability, they don't ever change. Your outgo and your income, your losses and your gains have to at least balance. That's why you look at your checkbook. And it's management's job to, of course, be sure that they do balance.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Heaven's Balanced Books."
When you open your heart to Jesus Christ, it would be appropriate to hang a sign that says "UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT." You step down and the One who should have been your Chief Executive Officer all along finally takes charge. And you can be sure He's committed to balancing the books in your life, keeping a loving balance between gains and losses.
In the midst of horrendous personal losses, Job was still able to see this balancing work of God in his life. It's in Job 1:21, where he expresses it. It's our word for today from the Word of God. He says, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Later, Job would have this balancing work of God more than proved when, as the Bible says, "the Lord...gave him twice as much as he had before...the Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first" (Job 42:10-12).
In God's deep love and infinite wisdom, He knows we just can't stand to have all blessings or all burdens. We can't have all happiness or all heartaches. That may be why the writer of Proverbs 30 says, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you...or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God" (Proverbs 30:8-9).
Solomon assures us that, in God's great management of our life, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...a time to tear down and a time to build...a time to weep and a time to laugh" (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3-4). See the balance?
Maybe right now you're particularly focused on a lot of bad news, some losses you've been experiencing. This might be a good time to step back and look at the big picture of what heaven's CEO is doing in your whole life. It's time to review the blessings that are still there side-by-side with your burdens. God has this incredible way of knowing just how much loss you can handle and how to balance that with some good news, just in time. And how much victory you can handle and how to balance that with some struggle.
This loving God, who knows exactly what you need and when you need it, is working this very day on His gracious, life-building balance. At any given moment, you're going to have something discouraging, but always something encouraging to offset it and make it bearable. At any given moment, you'll have some wonderful answered prayers and some yet-to-be-answered prayers. You can be sure that until the day you see Jesus, you will always - I mean, always - have plenty to thank Him for and plenty to trust Him for. That's how spiritual babies become spiritual adults. That's how spiritual wimps become spiritual warriors. Always something to thank Him for, always to something to trust Him for.
Don't miss the good things God's doing because you're nearsightedly focusing on the hard things. You have a Savior who's always balancing the gains and the losses to make your life more profitable than you could ever imagine.
This isn’t the April we wanted.
We wanted spring training. We wanted to go to church on Easter Sunday. We wanted a weekend trip to see the spring flowers. We wanted the Masters golf tournament. I love the Masters. I don’t just like it, I love it! I keep pictures of Amen Corner on my computer screen. I love April.
But this April? This isn’t the April we wanted.
But this is the April we’ve been handed: daily reports of disease and death. An economy that’s in freefall. Dwindling supplies. Another 30 days of distance and isolation. And, most of all, a month of fear. We fear for our family. We fear for the health of our health workers. We fear this microscopic, COVID-19 culprit that stalks our streets like a thief.
So we need to brace ourselves. Adjust our expectations. April as we wanted will not happen. God willing, it will reappear in 2021. But the 2020 version? It’s time for a deep breath, a steady resolve and a few decisions. I’m thinking of three essential, emotional tools.
Gratitude. Collect your blessings. Catalog God’s kindnesses. Assemble your reasons for gratitude and recite them. “Always be joyful,” the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Thessalonians. “Pray continually, and give thanks whatever happens. That is what God wants for you in Christ Jesus.”
Look at the totality of those terms. Always be joyful. Pray continually. Give thanks whatever happens.
Gratitude is always an option. Matthew Henry made it his. When the 18th-century British minister and scholar was accosted by thieves and robbed of his purse, he wrote in his diary, “Let me be thankful, first because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse they did not take my life, third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and, fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”
Quarry some gratitude. And, be kind to others. Be the family member who offers to wash the dishes. Be the colleague who reaches out to check on the team. Be the neighbor who mows the grass of the elderly couple.
You’ll be better because of it. Research bears this out. Studies have shown that giving to help others triggers dopamine. (New fundraising slogan, perhaps?) When volunteers wearing a functional MRI scanner were told they would be giving money to charity, the areas of their brains associated with pleasure — like food and sex — lit up like Christmas trees.
Seeking joy? Do good for someone else. It really is better to give than receive.
It’s time for gratitude. It’s time to serve others and it’s time for determination. Good, old-fashioned grit, a resolve that says, “I’m not giving in to fear. I’m not caving in to despair. With God as my helper, I’m going to weather this storm.”
Some years ago, I had the honor of meeting an American hero, Gen. Robbie Risner. For seven and a half years, North Vietnamese soldiers held him and dozens of other soldiers in the Zoo, a POW camp in Hanoi.
Misery came standard issue. Solitary confinement, starvation, tortures and beatings were routine. Interrogators twisted broken legs, sliced skin with bayonets, crammed sticks up nostrils, and paper in mouths. Screams echoed throughout the camp, chilling the blood of other prisoners.
Listen to Risner’s description: “Everything was sad and dismal. It was almost the essence of despair. If you could have squeezed the feeling out of the word despair it would have come out gray, dull and lead-colored, dingy and dirty … ”
How do you survive seven and a half years in such a hole? Cut off from family. No news from the U.S. What do you do?
Here is what Risner did. He stared at a blade of grass. Several days into his incarceration, he wrestled the grate off a floor vent, stretched out on his belly, lowered his head into the opening, and peered through a pencil-sized hole in the brick and mortar at a singular blade of grass. Aside from this stem, his world had no color. So, he began his days, head in vent, heart in prayer, staring at the green blade of grass. He called it a “blood transfusion for the soul.”
You don’t have to go Hanoi to face a “gray, dull and lead-colored, dingy and dirty” existence. A pandemic will do just fine. Do what Risner did. Go on a search. Crowbar the grate from your place of isolation, and stick your head out. Fix your eyes on hope.
Gratitude.
Others.
Determination.
G-O-D.
He is still in charge. He is still Emmanuel, God with us. Heaven still awaits. The tomb of Christ is still vacant. Children still laugh and grass still turns green in April. Find a blade and set your gaze on it.
It’s not the month we wanted, but it is the month we’ve been given. And we will get through it.
© Max Lucado, March 2020
Isaiah 10
Doom to you who legislate evil,
who make laws that make victims—
Laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
taking advantage of homeless children.
What will you have to say on Judgment Day,
when Doomsday arrives out of the blue?
Who will you get to help you?
What good will your money do you?
A sorry sight you’ll be then, huddled with the prisoners,
or just some corpses stacked in the street.
Even after all this, God is still angry,
his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.
5-11 “Doom to Assyria, weapon of my anger.
My wrath is a cudgel in his hands!
I send him against a godless nation,
against the people I’m angry with.
I command him to strip them clean, rob them blind,
and then push their faces in the mud and leave them.
But Assyria has another agenda;
he has something else in mind.
He’s out to destroy utterly,
to stamp out as many nations as he can.
Assyria says, ‘Aren’t my commanders all kings?
Can’t they do whatever they like?
Didn’t I destroy Calno as well as Carchemish?
Hamath as well as Arpad? Level Samaria as I did Damascus?
I’ve eliminated kingdoms full of gods
far more impressive than anything in Jerusalem and Samaria.
So what’s to keep me from destroying Jerusalem
in the same way I destroyed Samaria and all her god-idols?’”
12-13 When the Master has finished dealing with Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he’ll say, “Now it’s Assyria’s turn. I’ll punish the bragging arrogance of the king of Assyria, his high and mighty posturing, the way he goes around saying,
13-14 “‘I’ve done all this by myself.
I know more than anyone.
I’ve wiped out the boundaries of whole countries.
I’ve walked in and taken anything I wanted.
I charged in like a bull
and toppled their kings from their thrones.
I reached out my hand and took all that they treasured
as easily as a boy taking a bird’s eggs from a nest.
Like a farmer gathering eggs from the henhouse,
I gathered the world in my basket,
And no one so much as fluttered a wing
or squawked or even chirped.’”
15-19 Does an ax take over from the one who swings it?
Does a saw act more important than the sawyer?
As if a shovel did its shoveling by using a ditch digger!
As if a hammer used the carpenter to pound nails!
Therefore the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
will send a debilitating disease on his robust Assyrian fighters.
Under the canopy of God’s bright glory
a fierce fire will break out.
Israel’s Light will burst into a conflagration.
The Holy will explode into a firestorm,
And in one day burn to cinders
every last Assyrian thornbush.
God will destroy the splendid trees and lush gardens.
The Assyrian body and soul will waste away to nothing
like a disease-ridden invalid.
A child could count what’s left of the trees
on the fingers of his two hands.
20-23 And on that Day also, what’s left of Israel, the ragtag survivors of Jacob, will no longer be fascinated by abusive, battering Assyria. They’ll lean on God, The Holy—yes, truly. The ragtag remnant—what’s left of Jacob—will come back to the Strong God. Your people Israel were once like the sand on the seashore, but only a scattered few will return. Destruction is ordered, brimming over with righteousness. For the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, will finish here what he started all over the globe.
24-27 Therefore the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, says: “My dear, dear people who live in Zion, don’t be terrorized by the Assyrians when they beat you with clubs and threaten you with rods like the Egyptians once did. In just a short time my anger against you will be spent and I’ll turn my destroying anger on them. I, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, will go after them with a cat-o’-nine-tails and finish them off decisively—as Gideon downed Midian at the rock Oreb, as Moses turned the tables on Egypt. On that day, Assyria will be pulled off your back, and the yoke of slavery lifted from your neck.”
27-32 Assyria’s on the move: up from Rimmon,
on to Aiath,
through Migron,
with a bivouac at Micmash.
They’ve crossed the pass,
set camp at Geba for the night.
Ramah trembles with fright.
Gibeah of Saul has run off.
Cry for help, daughter of Gallim!
Listen to her, Laishah!
Do something, Anathoth!
Madmenah takes to the hills.
The people of Gebim flee in panic.
The enemy’s soon at Nob—nearly there!
In sight of the city he shakes his fist
At the mount of dear daughter Zion,
the hill of Jerusalem.
33-34 But now watch this: The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
swings his ax and lops the branches,
Chops down the giant trees,
lays flat the towering forest-on-the-march.
His ax will make toothpicks of that forest,
that Lebanon-like army reduced to kindling.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight: 2 Corinthians 9:6–9
Generosity Encouraged
6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.e 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give,f not reluctantly or under compulsion,g for God loves a cheerful giver.h 8 And God is ablei to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need,j you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written:
“They have freely scattered their giftsk to the poor;
their righteousness endures forever.”
Insight
Paul’s first trip to Corinth took place near the end of his second missionary journey after leaving Athens (Acts 18:1). While in Corinth, Paul worked during the week as a tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla (v. 3), and on the Sabbath he “reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks” (v. 4) to receive the message of the gospel.
His second visit to Corinth occurred after Timothy visited there (1 Corinthians 4:17) and is described as Paul’s “painful visit” (2 Corinthians 2:1). In addition to 1 and 2 Corinthians, many scholars believe Paul wrote at least one other letter to the Corinthians, now lost (see 1 Corinthians 5:9; 2 Corinthians 7:8–10). It’s clear Paul loved and was deeply concerned for this church (2 Corinthians 2:4).
Cheerful Givers
God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7
Years ago, my wife received a small rebate from something she’d purchased. It wasn’t something she’d expected, it just showed up in the mail. About the same time, a good friend shared with her the immense needs of women in another country, entrepreneurial-minded women trying to better themselves by way of education and business. As is often the case, however, their first barrier was financial.
My wife took that rebate and made a micro-loan to a ministry devoted to helping these women. When the loan was repaid, she simply loaned again, and again, and so far has made twenty-seven such investments. My wife enjoys many things, but there’s rarely a smile as big on her face as when she receives an update on the flourishing taking place in the lives of women she’s never met.
We often hear emphasis on the last word in this phrase—“God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7)—and rightly so. But our giving has a specific quality about it—it shouldn’t be done “reluctantly or under compulsion,” and we’re called not to sow “sparingly” (vv. 6–7). In a word, our giving is to be “cheerful.” And while each of us will give a little differently, our faces are places for telling evidence of our cheer. By: John Blase
When did you last “cheerfully” give? Why do you believe God loves a cheerful giver?
Generous Father God, thank You for the joy that comes in giving from a cheer-filled heart. And thank You for the ways in which You provide abundantly for our needs.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, April 02, 2020
The Glory That’s Unsurpassed
…the Lord Jesus…has sent me that you may receive your sight… —Acts 9:17
When Paul received his sight, he also received spiritual insight into the Person of Jesus Christ. His entire life and preaching from that point on were totally consumed with nothing but Jesus Christ— “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul never again allowed anything to attract and hold the attention of his mind and soul except the face of Jesus Christ.
We must learn to maintain a strong degree of character in our lives, even to the level that has been revealed in our vision of Jesus Christ.
The lasting characteristic of a spiritual man is the ability to understand correctly the meaning of the Lord Jesus Christ in his life, and the ability to explain the purposes of God to others. The overruling passion of his life is Jesus Christ. Whenever you see this quality in a person, you get the feeling that he is truly a man after God’s own heart (see Acts 13:22).
Never allow anything to divert you from your insight into Jesus Christ. It is the true test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you.
Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus,
I’ve lost sight of all beside,
So enchained my spirit’s vision,
Gazing on the Crucified.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
“When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” We all have faith in good principles, in good management, in good common sense, but who amongst us has faith in Jesus Christ? Physical courage is grand, moral courage is grander, but the man who trusts Jesus Christ in the face of the terrific problems of life is worth a whole crowd of heroes. The Highest Good, 544 R
Bible in a Year: Judges 16-18; Luke 7:1-30
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Heaven's Balanced Books - #8669
We saw it a few years ago. Boy, in one weekend, it was like a string of corporate meltdowns. And when that happens, Wall Street gets a very bad case of the jitters. I mean, when you suddenly discover that a major company that we thought was doing well was actually in big trouble, it doesn't exactly inspire investor confidence. In some cases, some have some shall we say unusually "creative accounting." And it can, for a while, conceal how bad things are. Of course, the fundamentals of financial viability, they don't ever change. Your outgo and your income, your losses and your gains have to at least balance. That's why you look at your checkbook. And it's management's job to, of course, be sure that they do balance.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Heaven's Balanced Books."
When you open your heart to Jesus Christ, it would be appropriate to hang a sign that says "UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT." You step down and the One who should have been your Chief Executive Officer all along finally takes charge. And you can be sure He's committed to balancing the books in your life, keeping a loving balance between gains and losses.
In the midst of horrendous personal losses, Job was still able to see this balancing work of God in his life. It's in Job 1:21, where he expresses it. It's our word for today from the Word of God. He says, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Later, Job would have this balancing work of God more than proved when, as the Bible says, "the Lord...gave him twice as much as he had before...the Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first" (Job 42:10-12).
In God's deep love and infinite wisdom, He knows we just can't stand to have all blessings or all burdens. We can't have all happiness or all heartaches. That may be why the writer of Proverbs 30 says, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you...or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God" (Proverbs 30:8-9).
Solomon assures us that, in God's great management of our life, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...a time to tear down and a time to build...a time to weep and a time to laugh" (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3-4). See the balance?
Maybe right now you're particularly focused on a lot of bad news, some losses you've been experiencing. This might be a good time to step back and look at the big picture of what heaven's CEO is doing in your whole life. It's time to review the blessings that are still there side-by-side with your burdens. God has this incredible way of knowing just how much loss you can handle and how to balance that with some good news, just in time. And how much victory you can handle and how to balance that with some struggle.
This loving God, who knows exactly what you need and when you need it, is working this very day on His gracious, life-building balance. At any given moment, you're going to have something discouraging, but always something encouraging to offset it and make it bearable. At any given moment, you'll have some wonderful answered prayers and some yet-to-be-answered prayers. You can be sure that until the day you see Jesus, you will always - I mean, always - have plenty to thank Him for and plenty to trust Him for. That's how spiritual babies become spiritual adults. That's how spiritual wimps become spiritual warriors. Always something to thank Him for, always to something to trust Him for.
Don't miss the good things God's doing because you're nearsightedly focusing on the hard things. You have a Savior who's always balancing the gains and the losses to make your life more profitable than you could ever imagine.
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