Max Lucado Daily: Enter the Throne Room
“Now we can come fearlessly right into God’s presence.” Ephesians 3:12, TLV
Christ meets you outside the throne room, takes you by the hand, and walks you into the presence of God. Upon entrance we find grace, not condemnation; mercy, not punishment…
Because we are friends of God’s Son, we have entrance to the throne room. This gift is not an occasional visit before God but rather a permanent “access by faith into this grace by which we now stand.” (Romans 5:2, NIV)
Luke 20:27-47
New International Version (NIV)
The Resurrection and Marriage
27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’[a] 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
39 Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” 40 And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Whose Son Is the Messiah?
41 Then Jesus said to them, “Why is it said that the Messiah is the son of David? 42 David himself declares in the Book of Psalms:
“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
43 until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”’[b]
44 David calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?”
Warning Against the Teachers of the Law
45 While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, 46 “Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 47 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: James 4:1-10
Submit Yourselves to God
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people,[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us[b]? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”[c]
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
The Cost Of Fighting
October 9, 2011 — by Bill Crowder
Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? —James 4:1
During a documentary on World War I, the narrator said that if Britain’s casualties in “the war to end all wars” were marched four abreast past London’s war monument, the processional would take 7 days to complete. This staggering word picture set my mind spinning at the awful cost of war. While those costs include monetary expense, destruction of property, and economic interruption, none of these compare to the human cost. Both soldiers and civilians pay the ultimate price, multiplied exponentially by the grief of the survivors. War is costly.
When believers go to war with one another, the cost is also high. James wrote, “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?” (James 4:1). In our own selfish pursuits, we sometimes battle without considering the price exacted on our witness to the world or our relationships with one another. Perhaps that is why James preceded these words with the challenge, “Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (3:18).
If we are to represent the Prince of Peace in our world, believers need to stop fighting with one another and practice peace.
The wars and fights within the church
Disrupt our unity and peace;
How can we show the peace of Christ
Unless our conflicts cease? —Sper
When Christians are at peace with one another, the world can more clearly see the Prince of Peace.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 9th, 2011
Building on the Atonement
. . . present . . . your members as instruments of righteousness to God —Romans 6:13
I cannot save and sanctify myself; I cannot make atonement for sin; I cannot redeem the world; I cannot right what is wrong, purify what is impure, or make holy what is unholy. That is all the sovereign work of God. Do I have faith in what Jesus Christ has done? He has made the perfect atonement for sin. Am I in the habit of constantly realizing it? The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things. The redemption of Christ is not an experience, it is the great act of God which He has performed through Christ, and I have to build my faith on it. If I construct my faith on my own experience, I produce the most unscriptural kind of life— an isolated life, with my eyes focused solely on my own holiness. Beware of that human holiness that is not based on the atonement of the Lord. It has no value for anything except a life of isolation— it is useless to God and a nuisance to man. Measure every kind of experience you have by our Lord Himself. We cannot do anything pleasing to God unless we deliberately build on the foundation of the atonement by the Cross of Christ.
The atonement of Jesus must be exhibited in practical, unassuming ways in my life. Every time I obey, the absolute deity of God is on my side, so that the grace of God and my natural obedience are in perfect agreement. Obedience means that I have completely placed my trust in the atonement, and my obedience is immediately met by the delight of the supernatural grace of God.
Beware of the human holiness that denies the reality of the natural life— it is a fraud. Continually bring yourself to the trial or test of the atonement and ask, “Where is the discernment of the atonement in this, and in that?”
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
1 Samuel 18, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals (Click to listen)
Max Lucado Daily: Simplify Faith
“He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” Matthew 10:40, NKJV
How do you simplify faith? ... Simplify your faith by seeking God for yourself. No confusing ceremonies necessary. No mysterious rituals required. No elaborate channels of command or levels of access.
You have a Bible? You can study.
You have a heart? You can pray.
You have a mind? You can think.
1 Samuel 18
Saul’s Growing Fear of David
1 After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. 2 From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. 3 And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. 4 Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.
5 Whatever mission Saul sent him on, David was so successful that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the troops, and Saul’s officers as well.
6 When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with timbrels and lyres. 7 As they danced, they sang:
“Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands.”
8 Saul was very angry; this refrain displeased him greatly. “They have credited David with tens of thousands,” he thought, “but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?” 9 And from that time on Saul kept a close eye on David.
10 The next day an evil[g] spirit from God came forcefully on Saul. He was prophesying in his house, while David was playing the lyre, as he usually did. Saul had a spear in his hand 11 and he hurled it, saying to himself, “I’ll pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice.
12 Saul was afraid of David, because the LORD was with David but had departed from Saul. 13 So he sent David away from him and gave him command over a thousand men, and David led the troops in their campaigns. 14 In everything he did he had great success, because the LORD was with him. 15 When Saul saw how successful he was, he was afraid of him. 16 But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he led them in their campaigns.
17 Saul said to David, “Here is my older daughter Merab. I will give her to you in marriage; only serve me bravely and fight the battles of the LORD.” For Saul said to himself, “I will not raise a hand against him. Let the Philistines do that!”
18 But David said to Saul, “Who am I, and what is my family or my clan in Israel, that I should become the king’s son-in-law?” 19 So[h] when the time came for Merab, Saul’s daughter, to be given to David, she was given in marriage to Adriel of Meholah.
20 Now Saul’s daughter Michal was in love with David, and when they told Saul about it, he was pleased. 21 “I will give her to him,” he thought, “so that she may be a snare to him and so that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” So Saul said to David, “Now you have a second opportunity to become my son-in-law.”
22 Then Saul ordered his attendants: “Speak to David privately and say, ‘Look, the king likes you, and his attendants all love you; now become his son-in-law.’”
23 They repeated these words to David. But David said, “Do you think it is a small matter to become the king’s son-in-law? I’m only a poor man and little known.”
24 When Saul’s servants told him what David had said, 25 Saul replied, “Say to David, ‘The king wants no other price for the bride than a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take revenge on his enemies.’” Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines.
26 When the attendants told David these things, he was pleased to become the king’s son-in-law. So before the allotted time elapsed, 27 David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.
28 When Saul realized that the LORD was with David and that his daughter Michal loved David, 29 Saul became still more afraid of him, and he remained his enemy the rest of his days.
30 The Philistine commanders continued to go out to battle, and as often as they did, David met with more success than the rest of Saul’s officers, and his name became well known.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Daniel 6:1-10
Daniel in the Den of Lions
1 [a]It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, 2 with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. 3 Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. 4 At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. 5 Finally these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.”
6 So these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: “May King Darius live forever! 7 The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lions’ den. 8 Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.” 9 So King Darius put the decree in writing.
10 Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.
Free To Choose
October 8, 2011 — by David C. McCasland
He knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days. —Daniel 6:10
When it was learned that the biggest football game of the 2011 season was scheduled to be played on Yom Kippur, the student government at the University of Texas petitioned school officials to change the date. They said it was unfair to make Jewish students choose between the classic football rivalry with Oklahoma and observing their most important and sacred holy day of the year. But the date was not changed. Even in societies where people have religious freedom, difficult choices are still required of every person of faith.
Daniel demonstrated the courage to obey God no matter what the consequences. When his political rivals set a trap to eliminate him from their path to power (Dan. 6:1-9), he didn’t challenge the law or complain that he had been wronged. “When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days” (v.10).
Daniel didn’t know if God would save him from the lions’ den, but it didn’t matter. He chose to honor God in his life whatever the outcome. Like Daniel, we are free to choose to follow the Lord.
What freedom lies with all who choose
To live for God each day!
But chains of bondage shackle those
Who choose some other way. —D. De Haan
You can never go wrong when you choose to follow Christ.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 8th, 2011
Coming to Jesus
Come to Me . . . —Matthew 11:28
Isn’t it humiliating to be told that we must come to Jesus! Think of the things about which we will not come to Jesus Christ. If you want to know how real you are, test yourself by these words— “Come to Me . . . .” In every dimension in which you are not real, you will argue or evade the issue altogether rather than come; you will go through sorrow rather than come; and you will do anything rather than come the last lap of the race of seemingly unspeakable foolishness and say, “Just as I am, I come.” As long as you have even the least bit of spiritual disrespect, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do something very big, and yet all He is telling you to do is to “Come . . . .”
“Come to Me . . . .” When you hear those words, you will know that something must happen in you before you can come. The Holy Spirit will show you what you have to do, and it will involve anything that will uproot whatever is preventing you from getting through to Jesus. And you will never get any further until you are willing to do that very thing. The Holy Spirit will search out that one immovable stronghold within you, but He cannot budge it unless you are willing to let Him do so.
How often have you come to God with your requests and gone away thinking, “I’ve really received what I wanted this time!” And yet you go away with nothing, while all the time God has stood with His hands outstretched not only to take you but also for you to take Him. Just think of the invincible, unconquerable, and untiring patience of Jesus, who lovingly says, “Come to Me. . . .”
“He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” Matthew 10:40, NKJV
How do you simplify faith? ... Simplify your faith by seeking God for yourself. No confusing ceremonies necessary. No mysterious rituals required. No elaborate channels of command or levels of access.
You have a Bible? You can study.
You have a heart? You can pray.
You have a mind? You can think.
1 Samuel 18
Saul’s Growing Fear of David
1 After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. 2 From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. 3 And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. 4 Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.
5 Whatever mission Saul sent him on, David was so successful that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the troops, and Saul’s officers as well.
6 When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with timbrels and lyres. 7 As they danced, they sang:
“Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands.”
8 Saul was very angry; this refrain displeased him greatly. “They have credited David with tens of thousands,” he thought, “but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?” 9 And from that time on Saul kept a close eye on David.
10 The next day an evil[g] spirit from God came forcefully on Saul. He was prophesying in his house, while David was playing the lyre, as he usually did. Saul had a spear in his hand 11 and he hurled it, saying to himself, “I’ll pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice.
12 Saul was afraid of David, because the LORD was with David but had departed from Saul. 13 So he sent David away from him and gave him command over a thousand men, and David led the troops in their campaigns. 14 In everything he did he had great success, because the LORD was with him. 15 When Saul saw how successful he was, he was afraid of him. 16 But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he led them in their campaigns.
17 Saul said to David, “Here is my older daughter Merab. I will give her to you in marriage; only serve me bravely and fight the battles of the LORD.” For Saul said to himself, “I will not raise a hand against him. Let the Philistines do that!”
18 But David said to Saul, “Who am I, and what is my family or my clan in Israel, that I should become the king’s son-in-law?” 19 So[h] when the time came for Merab, Saul’s daughter, to be given to David, she was given in marriage to Adriel of Meholah.
20 Now Saul’s daughter Michal was in love with David, and when they told Saul about it, he was pleased. 21 “I will give her to him,” he thought, “so that she may be a snare to him and so that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” So Saul said to David, “Now you have a second opportunity to become my son-in-law.”
22 Then Saul ordered his attendants: “Speak to David privately and say, ‘Look, the king likes you, and his attendants all love you; now become his son-in-law.’”
23 They repeated these words to David. But David said, “Do you think it is a small matter to become the king’s son-in-law? I’m only a poor man and little known.”
24 When Saul’s servants told him what David had said, 25 Saul replied, “Say to David, ‘The king wants no other price for the bride than a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take revenge on his enemies.’” Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines.
26 When the attendants told David these things, he was pleased to become the king’s son-in-law. So before the allotted time elapsed, 27 David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.
28 When Saul realized that the LORD was with David and that his daughter Michal loved David, 29 Saul became still more afraid of him, and he remained his enemy the rest of his days.
30 The Philistine commanders continued to go out to battle, and as often as they did, David met with more success than the rest of Saul’s officers, and his name became well known.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Daniel 6:1-10
Daniel in the Den of Lions
1 [a]It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, 2 with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. 3 Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. 4 At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. 5 Finally these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.”
6 So these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: “May King Darius live forever! 7 The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lions’ den. 8 Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.” 9 So King Darius put the decree in writing.
10 Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.
Free To Choose
October 8, 2011 — by David C. McCasland
He knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days. —Daniel 6:10
When it was learned that the biggest football game of the 2011 season was scheduled to be played on Yom Kippur, the student government at the University of Texas petitioned school officials to change the date. They said it was unfair to make Jewish students choose between the classic football rivalry with Oklahoma and observing their most important and sacred holy day of the year. But the date was not changed. Even in societies where people have religious freedom, difficult choices are still required of every person of faith.
Daniel demonstrated the courage to obey God no matter what the consequences. When his political rivals set a trap to eliminate him from their path to power (Dan. 6:1-9), he didn’t challenge the law or complain that he had been wronged. “When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days” (v.10).
Daniel didn’t know if God would save him from the lions’ den, but it didn’t matter. He chose to honor God in his life whatever the outcome. Like Daniel, we are free to choose to follow the Lord.
What freedom lies with all who choose
To live for God each day!
But chains of bondage shackle those
Who choose some other way. —D. De Haan
You can never go wrong when you choose to follow Christ.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 8th, 2011
Coming to Jesus
Come to Me . . . —Matthew 11:28
Isn’t it humiliating to be told that we must come to Jesus! Think of the things about which we will not come to Jesus Christ. If you want to know how real you are, test yourself by these words— “Come to Me . . . .” In every dimension in which you are not real, you will argue or evade the issue altogether rather than come; you will go through sorrow rather than come; and you will do anything rather than come the last lap of the race of seemingly unspeakable foolishness and say, “Just as I am, I come.” As long as you have even the least bit of spiritual disrespect, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do something very big, and yet all He is telling you to do is to “Come . . . .”
“Come to Me . . . .” When you hear those words, you will know that something must happen in you before you can come. The Holy Spirit will show you what you have to do, and it will involve anything that will uproot whatever is preventing you from getting through to Jesus. And you will never get any further until you are willing to do that very thing. The Holy Spirit will search out that one immovable stronghold within you, but He cannot budge it unless you are willing to let Him do so.
How often have you come to God with your requests and gone away thinking, “I’ve really received what I wanted this time!” And yet you go away with nothing, while all the time God has stood with His hands outstretched not only to take you but also for you to take Him. Just think of the invincible, unconquerable, and untiring patience of Jesus, who lovingly says, “Come to Me. . . .”
1 Samuel 17, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals (Click to listen)
Max Lucado Daily: Remember Jesus
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us.” Isaiah 25:9, NKJV
When people don’t listen, remember Jesus. When tears come, remember Jesus. When disappointment is your bed partner, remember Jesus. When fear pitches his tent in your front yard. When death looms, when anger simmers, when shame weighs heavily. Remember Jesus.
Remember the dead called from the grave with a Galilean accent. Remember the eyes of God that wept human tears.
1 Samuel 17
David and Goliath
1 Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah. They pitched camp at Ephes Dammim, between Sokoh and Azekah. 2 Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines. 3 The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them.
4 A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span.[a] 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels[b]; 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels.[c] His shield bearer went ahead of him.
8 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” 11 On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.
12 Now David was the son of an Ephrathite named Jesse, who was from Bethlehem in Judah. Jesse had eight sons, and in Saul’s time he was very old. 13 Jesse’s three oldest sons had followed Saul to the war: The firstborn was Eliab; the second, Abinadab; and the third, Shammah. 14 David was the youngest. The three oldest followed Saul, 15 but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father’s sheep at Bethlehem.
16 For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.
17 Now Jesse said to his son David, “Take this ephah[d] of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp. 18 Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are and bring back some assurance[e] from them. 19 They are with Saul and all the men of Israel in the Valley of Elah, fighting against the Philistines.”
20 Early in the morning David left the flock in the care of a shepherd, loaded up and set out, as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. 21 Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. 22 David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and asked his brothers how they were. 23 As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. 24 Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.
25 Now the Israelites had been saying, “Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his family from taxes in Israel.”
26 David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
27 They repeated to him what they had been saying and told him, “This is what will be done for the man who kills him.”
28 When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”
29 “Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” 30 He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. 31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him.
32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”
33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.”
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”
45 David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the LORD will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
48 As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. 49 Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.
50 So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
51 David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword.
When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. 52 Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath[f] and to the gates of Ekron. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath and Ekron. 53 When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp.
54 David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem; he put the Philistine’s weapons in his own tent.
55 As Saul watched David going out to meet the Philistine, he said to Abner, commander of the army, “Abner, whose son is that young man?”
Abner replied, “As surely as you live, Your Majesty, I don’t know.”
56 The king said, “Find out whose son this young man is.”
57 As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine’s head.
58 “Whose son are you, young man?” Saul asked him.
David said, “I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: John 13:31-35
Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial
31 When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him,[a] God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
A No-Smiling Policy
October 7, 2011 — by Anne Cetas
By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. —John 13:35
Usually we’re told to smile before someone takes our picture. But in some parts of the US, a no-smiling policy is enforced when getting your photo taken for a driver’s license. Because of identity theft, these motor vehicle departments carefully check new photos that are taken to be sure they don’t match photos already in the system. If someone gets a picture taken under a false name, an alarm is sent to the operator. From 1999 to 2009, one state stopped 6,000 people from getting fraudulent licenses. But why no smiling? The technology recognizes a face more easily if the person has a neutral facial expression.
Jesus prescribed a good way to recognize a Christian. He told His disciples, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). The ways to show love to fellow believers are as endless as there are people with needs: a note of encouragement, a visit, a meal, a gentle rebuke, a prayer, a Bible verse, a listening ear, even just a friendly smile.
The apostle John wrote, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). Can others recognize, by our care for fellow Christians, that we know and love the Lord?
For Christians to be recognized
As people who follow the Lord,
Their love for one another is
A virtue that can’t be ignored. —Sper
One measure of our love for God
is how much we show love to His children.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 7th, 2011
The Nature of Reconciliation
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him —2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. . .” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.
A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Cleanup or Cover-Up - #6455
Friday, October 7, 2011
Nobody ever said college guys are going to win the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Right? I mean, entering many of their dorm rooms is only for the very brave, and those with a strong stomach. Where is Mom when you really need her?
When our son was in college, I encountered a new low in dorm housekeeping. The rooms in the men's dorm were suites, with men from two double rooms sharing this bathroom. When I complained that I thought intermediate life forms were growing in our son's bathroom, he said, "Oh, Dad, you should see the guys down the hall." And when he described their bathroom to me, I actually had no desire to visually confirm his report. It was early spring, and these men had managed to avoid cleaning the bathroom floor since the very first day of the school year.
Now, use your imagination; you know how guys are. Uh, don't; don't use your imagination, no! As the floor became more and more disgusting, it became obvious that there was only logical remedy. Oh, no, no, no, not cleaning it. They got 2x4 boards and covered it! Now, if you stop listening right here, I don't blame you.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Cleanup or Cover-up."
Okay, covering your mess instead of cleaning your mess. That's not a new idea actually. People have been doing that with their sin for a very long time. Rather than facing that we have sinned against God and against others, we'd rather just conceal it.
There are lots of ways to put off reckoning with your sin. We can rationalize it, finding some skillful but hollow way to excuse what we're doing. We can try to minimize our sin or blame it on someone else. We can fool ourselves into thinking that if we can successfully cover it up, we're in the clear. But as our word for today from the Word of God says in Proverbs 28:13, "He who conceals his sins does not prosper."
And then there's this reality check from Proverbs: "A man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths. The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly" (Proverbs 5:21-23). Man, that reads like a commentary on all those recent headlines about political, financial, and athletic stars who thought they could cover it up rather than clean it up.
When the confession is ultimately forced by public discovery, you tend to hear words like "my inappropriate behavior" or "indiscretions" or "mistakes." You don't hear "sin." But there's no real healing, no real resolution, no real freedom, until we're willing to own our actions for what they are--the trampling of the moral law of a holy God and the people we selfishly wound in the process.
King David was powerful enough to temporarily conceal his blatant adultery with the wife of a trusted friend. But he couldn't hide it from his own conscience or his God. He wrote: "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer." Sinful secrets just eat away at us like a metastasizing cancer.
But David found the cure. He said, "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.'" Then he declares the liberating result of finally coming clean: "And You forgave the guilt of my sin...blessed is he whose sins are forgiven...blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him" (Psalm 32:1-5). That's what's so transforming about bringing your sin to the cross where Jesus died to pay for it. That's where Jesus says, "I will remember your sins no more" (Hebrews 8:12). It's God's spiritual shower where you can finally experience that awesome feeling you haven't had for a long time if ever--clean!
If you've never been there to bring the sin of a lifetime to Jesus, knowing now that He died to pay for it; died to forgive it, would you tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm Yours. I accept what You did on the cross as my only hope." And go to our website. You'll find some real help there in making sure you belong to Him. Our website's YoursForLife.net.
See, coming clean with your sin is doing the hard thing. But covering it is so much harder. Oh, and so much more expensive.
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us.” Isaiah 25:9, NKJV
When people don’t listen, remember Jesus. When tears come, remember Jesus. When disappointment is your bed partner, remember Jesus. When fear pitches his tent in your front yard. When death looms, when anger simmers, when shame weighs heavily. Remember Jesus.
Remember the dead called from the grave with a Galilean accent. Remember the eyes of God that wept human tears.
1 Samuel 17
David and Goliath
1 Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah. They pitched camp at Ephes Dammim, between Sokoh and Azekah. 2 Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines. 3 The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them.
4 A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span.[a] 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels[b]; 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels.[c] His shield bearer went ahead of him.
8 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” 11 On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.
12 Now David was the son of an Ephrathite named Jesse, who was from Bethlehem in Judah. Jesse had eight sons, and in Saul’s time he was very old. 13 Jesse’s three oldest sons had followed Saul to the war: The firstborn was Eliab; the second, Abinadab; and the third, Shammah. 14 David was the youngest. The three oldest followed Saul, 15 but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father’s sheep at Bethlehem.
16 For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.
17 Now Jesse said to his son David, “Take this ephah[d] of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp. 18 Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are and bring back some assurance[e] from them. 19 They are with Saul and all the men of Israel in the Valley of Elah, fighting against the Philistines.”
20 Early in the morning David left the flock in the care of a shepherd, loaded up and set out, as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. 21 Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. 22 David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and asked his brothers how they were. 23 As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. 24 Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.
25 Now the Israelites had been saying, “Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his family from taxes in Israel.”
26 David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
27 They repeated to him what they had been saying and told him, “This is what will be done for the man who kills him.”
28 When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”
29 “Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” 30 He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. 31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him.
32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”
33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.”
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”
45 David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the LORD will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
48 As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. 49 Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.
50 So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
51 David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword.
When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. 52 Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath[f] and to the gates of Ekron. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath and Ekron. 53 When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp.
54 David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem; he put the Philistine’s weapons in his own tent.
55 As Saul watched David going out to meet the Philistine, he said to Abner, commander of the army, “Abner, whose son is that young man?”
Abner replied, “As surely as you live, Your Majesty, I don’t know.”
56 The king said, “Find out whose son this young man is.”
57 As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine’s head.
58 “Whose son are you, young man?” Saul asked him.
David said, “I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: John 13:31-35
Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial
31 When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him,[a] God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
A No-Smiling Policy
October 7, 2011 — by Anne Cetas
By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. —John 13:35
Usually we’re told to smile before someone takes our picture. But in some parts of the US, a no-smiling policy is enforced when getting your photo taken for a driver’s license. Because of identity theft, these motor vehicle departments carefully check new photos that are taken to be sure they don’t match photos already in the system. If someone gets a picture taken under a false name, an alarm is sent to the operator. From 1999 to 2009, one state stopped 6,000 people from getting fraudulent licenses. But why no smiling? The technology recognizes a face more easily if the person has a neutral facial expression.
Jesus prescribed a good way to recognize a Christian. He told His disciples, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). The ways to show love to fellow believers are as endless as there are people with needs: a note of encouragement, a visit, a meal, a gentle rebuke, a prayer, a Bible verse, a listening ear, even just a friendly smile.
The apostle John wrote, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). Can others recognize, by our care for fellow Christians, that we know and love the Lord?
For Christians to be recognized
As people who follow the Lord,
Their love for one another is
A virtue that can’t be ignored. —Sper
One measure of our love for God
is how much we show love to His children.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 7th, 2011
The Nature of Reconciliation
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him —2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. . .” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.
A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Cleanup or Cover-Up - #6455
Friday, October 7, 2011
Nobody ever said college guys are going to win the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Right? I mean, entering many of their dorm rooms is only for the very brave, and those with a strong stomach. Where is Mom when you really need her?
When our son was in college, I encountered a new low in dorm housekeeping. The rooms in the men's dorm were suites, with men from two double rooms sharing this bathroom. When I complained that I thought intermediate life forms were growing in our son's bathroom, he said, "Oh, Dad, you should see the guys down the hall." And when he described their bathroom to me, I actually had no desire to visually confirm his report. It was early spring, and these men had managed to avoid cleaning the bathroom floor since the very first day of the school year.
Now, use your imagination; you know how guys are. Uh, don't; don't use your imagination, no! As the floor became more and more disgusting, it became obvious that there was only logical remedy. Oh, no, no, no, not cleaning it. They got 2x4 boards and covered it! Now, if you stop listening right here, I don't blame you.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Cleanup or Cover-up."
Okay, covering your mess instead of cleaning your mess. That's not a new idea actually. People have been doing that with their sin for a very long time. Rather than facing that we have sinned against God and against others, we'd rather just conceal it.
There are lots of ways to put off reckoning with your sin. We can rationalize it, finding some skillful but hollow way to excuse what we're doing. We can try to minimize our sin or blame it on someone else. We can fool ourselves into thinking that if we can successfully cover it up, we're in the clear. But as our word for today from the Word of God says in Proverbs 28:13, "He who conceals his sins does not prosper."
And then there's this reality check from Proverbs: "A man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths. The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly" (Proverbs 5:21-23). Man, that reads like a commentary on all those recent headlines about political, financial, and athletic stars who thought they could cover it up rather than clean it up.
When the confession is ultimately forced by public discovery, you tend to hear words like "my inappropriate behavior" or "indiscretions" or "mistakes." You don't hear "sin." But there's no real healing, no real resolution, no real freedom, until we're willing to own our actions for what they are--the trampling of the moral law of a holy God and the people we selfishly wound in the process.
King David was powerful enough to temporarily conceal his blatant adultery with the wife of a trusted friend. But he couldn't hide it from his own conscience or his God. He wrote: "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer." Sinful secrets just eat away at us like a metastasizing cancer.
But David found the cure. He said, "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.'" Then he declares the liberating result of finally coming clean: "And You forgave the guilt of my sin...blessed is he whose sins are forgiven...blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him" (Psalm 32:1-5). That's what's so transforming about bringing your sin to the cross where Jesus died to pay for it. That's where Jesus says, "I will remember your sins no more" (Hebrews 8:12). It's God's spiritual shower where you can finally experience that awesome feeling you haven't had for a long time if ever--clean!
If you've never been there to bring the sin of a lifetime to Jesus, knowing now that He died to pay for it; died to forgive it, would you tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm Yours. I accept what You did on the cross as my only hope." And go to our website. You'll find some real help there in making sure you belong to Him. Our website's YoursForLife.net.
See, coming clean with your sin is doing the hard thing. But covering it is so much harder. Oh, and so much more expensive.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Luke 20, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Heaven Knows Your Heart
“Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.” Luke 12:15, The Message
Who you are has nothing to do with the clothes you wear or the car you drive . . . Heaven does not know you as the fellow with the nice suit or the woman with the big house or the kid with the new bike. Heaven knows your heart . . .
When God thinks of you, he may see your compassion, your devotion, your tenderness or quick mind, but he doesn’t think of your things . . . And when you think of you, you shouldn’t either.
Luke 20
The Authority of Jesus Questioned
1 One day as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple courts and proclaiming the good news, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders, came up to him. 2 “Tell us by what authority you are doing these things,” they said. “Who gave you this authority?”
3 He replied, “I will also ask you a question. Tell me: 4 John’s baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
5 They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Why didn’t you believe him?’ 6 But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ all the people will stone us, because they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”
7 So they answered, “We don’t know where it was from.”
8 Jesus said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
The Parable of the Tenants
9 He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
13 “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’
14 “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
“What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
When the people heard this, they said, “God forbid!”
17 Jesus looked directly at them and asked, “Then what is the meaning of that which is written:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone’[a]?
18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
19 The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.
Paying Taxes to Caesar
20 Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. 21 So the spies questioned him: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 22 Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
23 He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
25 He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
26 They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Matthew 5:14-16; 1 Peter 2:9-10
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
1 Peter 2:9-10
New International Version (NIV)
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Shine On!
October 6, 2011 — by Cindy Hess Kasper
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. —Matthew 5:16
I was frustrated that despite my repeated calls, the streetlight in front of my house was still out. Because we don’t have sidewalks and there is such a large distance between the streetlights, it’s important that each light is functional to illuminate the darkness. I worried that I might hit one of the school kids as I pulled out of my driveway in the early morning hours.
The idea of light is used frequently in the Bible. Jesus said that He is the Light of the world (John 9:5). We are told to “put on the armor of light” by clothing ourselves with the Lord (Rom. 13:12-14). And Matthew 5:16 instructs that we should “let [our] light so shine before men, that they may see [our] good works and glorify [our] Father in heaven.”
A light that doesn’t shine has lost its usefulness. Jesus said that no one hides a light under a basket but puts it on a lampstand to illuminate everything around it (Matt. 5:15). Our light (our actions) should point people to the One who is the Light. We don’t have any light in ourselves, but we shine with the reflection of Christ (Eph. 5:8).
God has placed each of us in a specific environment that will best allow us to shine with His light. Don’t be like a burned-out streetlight. Shine on!
Lord, help us always put You first
In everything we say and do
So that Your light will shine through us
And show the world their need of You. —Sper
Whether you’re a candle in a corner
or a beacon on a hill, let your light shine.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 6th, 2011
The Nature of Regeneration
When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me . . . —Galatians 1:15-16
If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “. . . until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you . . .” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Shark Syndrome - #6454
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Over the last years, there's been a series of movies that kind of made one four-letter word come to strike terror in the human heart. Just think how you feel when I say this word--Jaws.
Well, it's not the kind that involves an orthodontist; it's not that. If you've been around much in recent years, you know it's the jaws of that terrorist of the sea--the shark! Now, I hate to be critical, but these are pretty nasty fellows. And consider what attracts a shark--blood. Isn't that nice? When someone's wounded, they move in for the kill. Where there's bleeding, there are sharks. But they're not all in the ocean.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Shark Syndrome."
Today we're talking about wounds; about people who hurt you; about tense relationships and some healing wisdom from the Scriptures. Proverbs 17:9, our Word for today from the Word of God, has some really down-home wisdom. Listen to this: "He who covers an offense promotes love. But whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." You say, "Whoa, whoa! Where was that? I didn't know it was going to be that good." Yeah, it's Proverbs 17:9 and it talks about two approaches when there's a wound.
One is to repeat the matter. The other is to cover the offense. Now, in shark talk, you can pounce on the offense, or you can swim on by. Depending on which one you do, there are two outcomes. If you pounce on that hurt, you pounce on that wound, that problem, that hurt that's been inflicted on you, well then; it says there will be separated friends. If you choose to overlook it, it talks about love being promoted. And it all depends on whether you want to be an over-looker or a score keeper.
You see, if you love someone, you can swim by all kinds of hurts and problems. You say, "Well, yeah, but I love him. I can forget it." If you don't love someone, you don't forget anything they do wrong. You're a list keeper, you're a score keeper. You've got a black list, and it's in indelible ink. You remember and you replay every infraction. And you know what? That's how marriages get torn down, that's how parents and children come apart, that's how friendships are ruined, that's how working relationships end up being enemies.
Christ's love is not just some sticky, sweet emotional syrupy thing. It's really practical. Without it, we become selective recorders, recording the data that proves that a person is as bad as we said--recording the wounds. But real love? Well, it lets all kinds of hurts go. And if you let it go, it won't grow. If you don't let it go, it will grow, and it will grow into that root of bitterness the Bible says that "will defile many and cause trouble" (Hebrews 12:15).
Now, there might be a relationship of yours right now that is suffering from your, uh...shall we say overly-efficient memory. You've been remembering, storing it up, adding up offenses, keeping score, attacking where there's a wound. Here's a good prayer for today, "Dear Lord, help me. Teach me to be an over-looker." Don't add up the hurts and the wounds and pounce on them. Let it go! Who needs any more sharks anyway? Swim on by.
“Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.” Luke 12:15, The Message
Who you are has nothing to do with the clothes you wear or the car you drive . . . Heaven does not know you as the fellow with the nice suit or the woman with the big house or the kid with the new bike. Heaven knows your heart . . .
When God thinks of you, he may see your compassion, your devotion, your tenderness or quick mind, but he doesn’t think of your things . . . And when you think of you, you shouldn’t either.
Luke 20
The Authority of Jesus Questioned
1 One day as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple courts and proclaiming the good news, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders, came up to him. 2 “Tell us by what authority you are doing these things,” they said. “Who gave you this authority?”
3 He replied, “I will also ask you a question. Tell me: 4 John’s baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
5 They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Why didn’t you believe him?’ 6 But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ all the people will stone us, because they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”
7 So they answered, “We don’t know where it was from.”
8 Jesus said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
The Parable of the Tenants
9 He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
13 “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’
14 “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
“What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
When the people heard this, they said, “God forbid!”
17 Jesus looked directly at them and asked, “Then what is the meaning of that which is written:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone’[a]?
18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
19 The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.
Paying Taxes to Caesar
20 Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. 21 So the spies questioned him: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 22 Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
23 He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
25 He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
26 They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Matthew 5:14-16; 1 Peter 2:9-10
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
1 Peter 2:9-10
New International Version (NIV)
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Shine On!
October 6, 2011 — by Cindy Hess Kasper
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. —Matthew 5:16
I was frustrated that despite my repeated calls, the streetlight in front of my house was still out. Because we don’t have sidewalks and there is such a large distance between the streetlights, it’s important that each light is functional to illuminate the darkness. I worried that I might hit one of the school kids as I pulled out of my driveway in the early morning hours.
The idea of light is used frequently in the Bible. Jesus said that He is the Light of the world (John 9:5). We are told to “put on the armor of light” by clothing ourselves with the Lord (Rom. 13:12-14). And Matthew 5:16 instructs that we should “let [our] light so shine before men, that they may see [our] good works and glorify [our] Father in heaven.”
A light that doesn’t shine has lost its usefulness. Jesus said that no one hides a light under a basket but puts it on a lampstand to illuminate everything around it (Matt. 5:15). Our light (our actions) should point people to the One who is the Light. We don’t have any light in ourselves, but we shine with the reflection of Christ (Eph. 5:8).
God has placed each of us in a specific environment that will best allow us to shine with His light. Don’t be like a burned-out streetlight. Shine on!
Lord, help us always put You first
In everything we say and do
So that Your light will shine through us
And show the world their need of You. —Sper
Whether you’re a candle in a corner
or a beacon on a hill, let your light shine.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 6th, 2011
The Nature of Regeneration
When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me . . . —Galatians 1:15-16
If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “. . . until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you . . .” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
The Shark Syndrome - #6454
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Over the last years, there's been a series of movies that kind of made one four-letter word come to strike terror in the human heart. Just think how you feel when I say this word--Jaws.
Well, it's not the kind that involves an orthodontist; it's not that. If you've been around much in recent years, you know it's the jaws of that terrorist of the sea--the shark! Now, I hate to be critical, but these are pretty nasty fellows. And consider what attracts a shark--blood. Isn't that nice? When someone's wounded, they move in for the kill. Where there's bleeding, there are sharks. But they're not all in the ocean.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Shark Syndrome."
Today we're talking about wounds; about people who hurt you; about tense relationships and some healing wisdom from the Scriptures. Proverbs 17:9, our Word for today from the Word of God, has some really down-home wisdom. Listen to this: "He who covers an offense promotes love. But whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." You say, "Whoa, whoa! Where was that? I didn't know it was going to be that good." Yeah, it's Proverbs 17:9 and it talks about two approaches when there's a wound.
One is to repeat the matter. The other is to cover the offense. Now, in shark talk, you can pounce on the offense, or you can swim on by. Depending on which one you do, there are two outcomes. If you pounce on that hurt, you pounce on that wound, that problem, that hurt that's been inflicted on you, well then; it says there will be separated friends. If you choose to overlook it, it talks about love being promoted. And it all depends on whether you want to be an over-looker or a score keeper.
You see, if you love someone, you can swim by all kinds of hurts and problems. You say, "Well, yeah, but I love him. I can forget it." If you don't love someone, you don't forget anything they do wrong. You're a list keeper, you're a score keeper. You've got a black list, and it's in indelible ink. You remember and you replay every infraction. And you know what? That's how marriages get torn down, that's how parents and children come apart, that's how friendships are ruined, that's how working relationships end up being enemies.
Christ's love is not just some sticky, sweet emotional syrupy thing. It's really practical. Without it, we become selective recorders, recording the data that proves that a person is as bad as we said--recording the wounds. But real love? Well, it lets all kinds of hurts go. And if you let it go, it won't grow. If you don't let it go, it will grow, and it will grow into that root of bitterness the Bible says that "will defile many and cause trouble" (Hebrews 12:15).
Now, there might be a relationship of yours right now that is suffering from your, uh...shall we say overly-efficient memory. You've been remembering, storing it up, adding up offenses, keeping score, attacking where there's a wound. Here's a good prayer for today, "Dear Lord, help me. Teach me to be an over-looker." Don't add up the hurts and the wounds and pounce on them. Let it go! Who needs any more sharks anyway? Swim on by.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
1 Samuel 16, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals (Click to listen)
Max Lucado Daily: What is Grace?
“My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, my power is made perfect in you.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
What is grace? It’s what someone gives us out of the goodness of his heart, not out of the perfection of ours. The story of grace is the good news that says when we come, he gives. That’s what grace is . . .
Grace is something you did not expect. It is something you certainly could never earn. But grace is something you’d never turn down.
1 Samuel 16
Samuel Anoints David
1 The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.”
2 But Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears about it, he will kill me.”
The LORD said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’ 3 Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do. You are to anoint for me the one I indicate.”
4 Samuel did what the LORD said. When he arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town trembled when they met him. They asked, “Do you come in peace?”
5 Samuel replied, “Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me.” Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
6 When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here before the LORD.”
7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
8 Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “The LORD has not chosen this one either.” 9 Jesse then had Shammah pass by, but Samuel said, “Nor has the LORD chosen this one.” 10 Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The LORD has not chosen these.” 11 So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.”
12 So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.
Then the LORD said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”
13 So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon David. Samuel then went to Ramah.
David in Saul’s Service
14 Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil[d] spirit from the LORD tormented him.
15 Saul’s attendants said to him, “See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. 16 Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.”
17 So Saul said to his attendants, “Find someone who plays well and bring him to me.”
18 One of the servants answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him.”
19 Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.” 20 So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul.
21 David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers. 22 Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, “Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him.”
23 Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Colossians 1:3-14
Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel 6 that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant,[a] who is a faithful minister of Christ on our[b] behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,[c] 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you[d] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Location, Location, Location
October 5, 2011 — by Joe Stowell
He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son. —Colossians 1:13
Buying and selling real estate in the US is tricky business these days. Housing prices have dropped significantly, and if you’re trying to unload commercial property it’s even more difficult. So, in the game of real estate, it remains important to keep this old adage in mind: “The three most important things to know about buying and selling property are location, location, location!”
The same is true of living for Jesus. Knowing our location spiritually is critical if we are to succeed in navigating through the greatly devalued territory of our world. Paul reminds us that we have a new location in Christ, having been delivered “from the power of darkness and conveyed . . . into the kingdom of the Son” (Col. 1:13). Knowing that we have been relocated by His amazing grace into the kingdom of Jesus makes a difference. Jesus now reigns as King in our hearts and minds, and we are His grateful subjects. His will is our will and His ways become patterns for all of life and behavior. And when we are forced to make a choice, our allegiance is to Him.
So, when the temptations and the seductions of the darkness from which you have been removed threaten His reign in your heart, remember your new postal code: Colossians 1:13!
Where Jesus reigns there is no fear,
No restless doubt, no hopeless tear,
No raging sea nor tempest dread,
But quietness and calm instead. —Anon.
The subjects of the kingdom
should display the manners of the court.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 5th, 2011
The Nature of Degeneration
Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . . —Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own god.” This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light . . . ” (John 3:19).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Controlled Avalanches - #6453
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
If you live in snow country, there are few words more frightening than the word "avalanche." And there's no place where that is a greater concern than in Alaska. Oh, its got majestic mountains; it's got massive snow accumulations. And so, they've actually been creating avalanches there on purpose. You say, "Wait! Avalanches on purpose?" Yeah. Yeah, they actually fire avalanche cannons that bring down accumulations of snow that might otherwise trigger a larger avalanche or come down at a time when people would be jeopardized. Now, at first, it sounds kind of strange to cause an avalanche to control an avalanche. But it works with snow, oh, and it works with relationships.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Controlled Avalanches."
Now, you may or may not live in an area where physical avalanches take place. But I know you live in an area where emotional avalanches take place, because we all do. Blow ups, ruptured relationships, misunderstandings, a mountain of problems caving in on you. Sound familiar?
Well, there's one way to control avalanches in your marriage, or in your relationship with your parents, or your children, in your church, or in whatever important relationship you may be concerned about right now. And that way is described in our word for today from the Word of God, which is found in Ephesians 4:25-27. "Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold."
Well, in a sense, this is God's avalanche cannon. The way to take care of avalanches while they can still be controlled is summed up in these words, "Speak truthfully to your neighbor." Now, which neighbor in your life right now--somebody you're close to. Who might this apply to? Which neighbor is there a build-up with: your mate, your child, your parent, maybe a friend of yours, or somebody at church, maybe the pastor? Well, notice here that we are to speak truthfully and it gives us a timetable. It says, "Do not let the sun go down." In other words, daily we are to take care of avalanches while they're small. The result if you let it ride is to give the devil ammunition with which to poison you and to poison that relationship...and maybe to poison your whole family, a whole church, a whole office. You've seen it happen. Don't give the devil a foothold. It always starts small and ends tragically.
When you handle frustrations and conflicts on a 24-hour basis, you are dealing with problems that are controlled away. If you let it build up, it will all come down on you at once when it's just too big to handle. You see, problems and anger become sin when they're postponed. We all know that. We've been caught in the avalanche that results from postponing confrontation. But there's something in us that avoids confrontation. "I just don't want to do it today." But all the time you put it off, it's growing.
In the past, a staff member would come to me and say, "Well, I didn't want to bother you with it; you were so busy." My answer was, "Well, you know, you're going to bother me with it sometime. It's just going to get bigger. Let's deal with it while it's this size." We need to bother each other while it's still small, because it's going to come out in a major avalanche otherwise.
Hey, maybe there's an issue right now between you and someone close to you. And there've been too many sunsets and you haven't dealt with it. Would you go to them today? Speak truthfully to that neighbor. Deal with it while it's still able to be dealt with. Daily corrections are God's avalanche cannon. Get at the issue now. Don't wait until it comes crashing down on you.
“My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, my power is made perfect in you.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
What is grace? It’s what someone gives us out of the goodness of his heart, not out of the perfection of ours. The story of grace is the good news that says when we come, he gives. That’s what grace is . . .
Grace is something you did not expect. It is something you certainly could never earn. But grace is something you’d never turn down.
1 Samuel 16
Samuel Anoints David
1 The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.”
2 But Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears about it, he will kill me.”
The LORD said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’ 3 Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do. You are to anoint for me the one I indicate.”
4 Samuel did what the LORD said. When he arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town trembled when they met him. They asked, “Do you come in peace?”
5 Samuel replied, “Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me.” Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
6 When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here before the LORD.”
7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
8 Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “The LORD has not chosen this one either.” 9 Jesse then had Shammah pass by, but Samuel said, “Nor has the LORD chosen this one.” 10 Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The LORD has not chosen these.” 11 So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.”
12 So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.
Then the LORD said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”
13 So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon David. Samuel then went to Ramah.
David in Saul’s Service
14 Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil[d] spirit from the LORD tormented him.
15 Saul’s attendants said to him, “See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. 16 Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.”
17 So Saul said to his attendants, “Find someone who plays well and bring him to me.”
18 One of the servants answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him.”
19 Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.” 20 So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul.
21 David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers. 22 Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, “Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him.”
23 Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Colossians 1:3-14
Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel 6 that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant,[a] who is a faithful minister of Christ on our[b] behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,[c] 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you[d] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Location, Location, Location
October 5, 2011 — by Joe Stowell
He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son. —Colossians 1:13
Buying and selling real estate in the US is tricky business these days. Housing prices have dropped significantly, and if you’re trying to unload commercial property it’s even more difficult. So, in the game of real estate, it remains important to keep this old adage in mind: “The three most important things to know about buying and selling property are location, location, location!”
The same is true of living for Jesus. Knowing our location spiritually is critical if we are to succeed in navigating through the greatly devalued territory of our world. Paul reminds us that we have a new location in Christ, having been delivered “from the power of darkness and conveyed . . . into the kingdom of the Son” (Col. 1:13). Knowing that we have been relocated by His amazing grace into the kingdom of Jesus makes a difference. Jesus now reigns as King in our hearts and minds, and we are His grateful subjects. His will is our will and His ways become patterns for all of life and behavior. And when we are forced to make a choice, our allegiance is to Him.
So, when the temptations and the seductions of the darkness from which you have been removed threaten His reign in your heart, remember your new postal code: Colossians 1:13!
Where Jesus reigns there is no fear,
No restless doubt, no hopeless tear,
No raging sea nor tempest dread,
But quietness and calm instead. —Anon.
The subjects of the kingdom
should display the manners of the court.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 5th, 2011
The Nature of Degeneration
Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . . —Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own god.” This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light . . . ” (John 3:19).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Controlled Avalanches - #6453
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
If you live in snow country, there are few words more frightening than the word "avalanche." And there's no place where that is a greater concern than in Alaska. Oh, its got majestic mountains; it's got massive snow accumulations. And so, they've actually been creating avalanches there on purpose. You say, "Wait! Avalanches on purpose?" Yeah. Yeah, they actually fire avalanche cannons that bring down accumulations of snow that might otherwise trigger a larger avalanche or come down at a time when people would be jeopardized. Now, at first, it sounds kind of strange to cause an avalanche to control an avalanche. But it works with snow, oh, and it works with relationships.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Controlled Avalanches."
Now, you may or may not live in an area where physical avalanches take place. But I know you live in an area where emotional avalanches take place, because we all do. Blow ups, ruptured relationships, misunderstandings, a mountain of problems caving in on you. Sound familiar?
Well, there's one way to control avalanches in your marriage, or in your relationship with your parents, or your children, in your church, or in whatever important relationship you may be concerned about right now. And that way is described in our word for today from the Word of God, which is found in Ephesians 4:25-27. "Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold."
Well, in a sense, this is God's avalanche cannon. The way to take care of avalanches while they can still be controlled is summed up in these words, "Speak truthfully to your neighbor." Now, which neighbor in your life right now--somebody you're close to. Who might this apply to? Which neighbor is there a build-up with: your mate, your child, your parent, maybe a friend of yours, or somebody at church, maybe the pastor? Well, notice here that we are to speak truthfully and it gives us a timetable. It says, "Do not let the sun go down." In other words, daily we are to take care of avalanches while they're small. The result if you let it ride is to give the devil ammunition with which to poison you and to poison that relationship...and maybe to poison your whole family, a whole church, a whole office. You've seen it happen. Don't give the devil a foothold. It always starts small and ends tragically.
When you handle frustrations and conflicts on a 24-hour basis, you are dealing with problems that are controlled away. If you let it build up, it will all come down on you at once when it's just too big to handle. You see, problems and anger become sin when they're postponed. We all know that. We've been caught in the avalanche that results from postponing confrontation. But there's something in us that avoids confrontation. "I just don't want to do it today." But all the time you put it off, it's growing.
In the past, a staff member would come to me and say, "Well, I didn't want to bother you with it; you were so busy." My answer was, "Well, you know, you're going to bother me with it sometime. It's just going to get bigger. Let's deal with it while it's this size." We need to bother each other while it's still small, because it's going to come out in a major avalanche otherwise.
Hey, maybe there's an issue right now between you and someone close to you. And there've been too many sunsets and you haven't dealt with it. Would you go to them today? Speak truthfully to that neighbor. Deal with it while it's still able to be dealt with. Daily corrections are God's avalanche cannon. Get at the issue now. Don't wait until it comes crashing down on you.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
1 Samuel 15, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals (Click to listen)
Max Lucado Daily: It’s Not Too Late
“Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.” Luke 5:10, NASB
Christ . . . doesn’t abandon self-confessed schlemiels. Quite the contrary, he enlists them . . .
Contrary to what you may have been told, Jesus doesn’t limit his recruiting to the stout-hearted. The beat-up and worn-out are prime prospects in his book, and he’s been known to climb into boats, bars, and brothels to tell them, “It’s not too late to start over.”
1 Samuel 15
The LORD Rejects Saul as King
1 Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. 2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
4 So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah. 5 Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine. 6 Then he said to the Kenites, “Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites.
7 Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt. 8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[b] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
10 Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: 11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was angry, and he cried out to the LORD all that night.
12 Early in the morning Samuel got up and went to meet Saul, but he was told, “Saul has gone to Carmel. There he has set up a monument in his own honor and has turned and gone on down to Gilgal.”
13 When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD’s instructions.”
14 But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”
15 Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the LORD your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”
16 “Enough!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night.”
“Tell me,” Saul replied.
17 Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. 18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ 19 Why did you not obey the LORD? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD?”
20 “But I did obey the LORD,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the LORD assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. 21 The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal.”
22 But Samuel replied:
“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the LORD?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has rejected you as king.”
24 Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the LORD’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them. 25 Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD.”
26 But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!”
27 As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore. 28 Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors—to one better than you. 29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.”
30 Saul replied, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel; come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD your God.” 31 So Samuel went back with Saul, and Saul worshiped the LORD.
32 Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag king of the Amalekites.”
Agag came to him in chains.[c] And he thought, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.”
33 But Samuel said,
“As your sword has made women childless,
so will your mother be childless among women.”
And Samuel put Agag to death before the LORD at Gilgal.
34 Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul. 35 Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Proverbs 6:6-11
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest—
11 and poverty will come on you like a thief
and scarcity like an armed man.
No Authority?
October 4, 2011 — by Dave Branon
Consider [the ant’s] ways and be wise, which, having no . . . ruler, provides her supplies . . . and gathers her food. —Proverbs 6:6-8
When the deck behind our house began caving in, I knew its repair would exceed my abilities. So I made some calls, got some bids, and picked a builder to construct a new deck.
Once the contractor was done, I took a close look at his work and noticed some problems. Seeking a second opinion, I called the local building inspector and got a surprise. The deck guy had not obtained a building permit. Working without official oversight, he had violated many points of the building code.
This incident reminded me of an important truth (other than asking to see the building permit): We often do less than our best if we don’t have any accountability to the authority over us.
In Scripture, we see this principle explained in two of Jesus’ parables (Matt. 24:45-51; 25:14-30). In both cases, at least one unsupervised worker failed when the master was gone. But then we see a different approach in Proverbs 6. We see the example of the ant, which does good work without a visible supervisor. It intrinsically does its work without being monitored.
What about us? Do we do good work only when someone is watching? Or do we recognize that all our service is for God, and so do our best at all times—even when no human authority is watching?
God sees and knows the work we do:
Our faithfulness He will reward;
With His authority in view,
Let’s do our best for Christ the Lord. —Hess
No matter who your boss is, you are really working for God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 4th, 2011
The Vision and The Reality
. . . to those who are . . . called to be saints . . . —1 Corinthians 1:2
Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.
There are times when we do know what God’s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends on us, not on God. If we prefer to relax on the mountaintop and live in the memory of the vision, then we will be of no real use in the ordinary things of which human life is made. We have to learn to live in reliance upon what we saw in the vision, not simply live in ecstatic delight and conscious reflection upon God. This means living the realities of our lives in the light of the vision until the truth of the vision is actually realized in us. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making His demands known.
Our little “I am” always sulks and pouts when God says do. Let your little “I am” be shriveled up in God’s wrath and indignation–”I AM WHO I AM . . . has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). He must dominate. Isn’t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl! He will hunt us down as fast as a flash of lightning. No human being knows human beings as God does.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tired But Still Ticking - #6452
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Now, if you're a night person, there is nothing more aggravating than a bright-eyed morning person who's trying to get you to be a morning person along with them! And one of the great, interesting, fun things about God is He tends to kind of put those kind of people together in a marriage. Maybe so there's a night shift and a day shift. I don't know. Maybe you have the other kind of metabolism; maybe you're a morning person. Well, then there's nothing more aggravating than a raring-to-go night person who's trying to get you moving when you're ready to put it away.
In fact somehow, yeah, these people marry each other, and that makes for some very interesting chemistry. It does seem that most of us have a time of day when our metabolism isn't doing much. It varies for each of us, but we all have our kind of our slow-down, blah, down time. And that down time of the day when we're just tired and depleted...it often brings out our worst doesn't it? Just ask the people who have to live with us when we're exhausted--depleted. I know that most of what I wished I had not said or done happened when I was, as my kids would say, "blitzed"...really tired. But it doesn't have to be that way.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Tired But Still Ticking."
Well, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 5:3-5. Now, we have got a tired man on our hands here. Yeah, Simon Peter has returned from fishing all night. Okay, it's hard, physical work; he's done it all night long; he's ready to go to bed. Fishermen find the best pickings all night long, so now it's morning and he's back and he's cleaning his nets. And it says, "Jesus got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the shore."
Now look. I can't read into what the Bible says, but I've got to imagine that he's like, "I am so tired!" Well, then it says, "Jesus sat down and taught the people from the boat." Now, I can imagine Simon going, "Can I go home and get some sleep now?" "And when he had finished speaking, He said to Simon, 'Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.'" "Let's go fishing again." "Simon answered, 'Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because You say so, I will let down the nets.'"
Well, as I said, we're dealing with a man who had to be exhausted. He's just done an "all-nighter." I would guess he is in no mood to sailing on a floating pulpit. Jesus wants to have a pulpit out there in the water so He can deal with a larger crowd. And I would guess that Simon Peter wants to go to bed; not to go out again. And then Jesus says, "Let's go out and try to catch fish again." But Peter knew what it was to be tired and yet still be obedient. He could still listen to, he could still respond to the prompting of Jesus, even when he was exhausted.
Now during the good hours of the day, I find myself pretty consciously trying to be like Jesus, to be in touch with Him, to care for other people, to consecrate things to Him. But exhaustion often makes me, well, a self-centered, self-conscious, self-serving person. You probably notice the key word--self.
I don't know about you, but when we're tired we tend to become impatient, sarcastic, and negative, and touchy, which opens up a whole new beachhead for us to bring unto the Lordship of Christ. "Lord, here's the tired me. I want to hear Your voice through my weariness. I want to obey You and be like You, and do what You want me to do even when I'm too tired to feel like doing it." And He may say to you, "Well, then, help someone who needs it. Pitch in at home. Take time to listen, to hug, to confront a problem." You say, "Well, I'm so tired, I don't feel like it." But when you obey Christ in your tired moments, you break the cycle. That is the more tired I become, the more self-centered I become. Well, if you see your vulnerability and you consciously, daily consecrate your down time to Jesus, you can have a whole new spiritual breakthrough.
When a weary fisherman listened to Jesus in his weariest moments, he enjoyed a wonderful catch. He saw a miracle! Obey the Lord. Give, in those moments when you feel like giving out, and you will receive a surprise in return. Christ can enable you each day to be tired but still ticking.
“Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.” Luke 5:10, NASB
Christ . . . doesn’t abandon self-confessed schlemiels. Quite the contrary, he enlists them . . .
Contrary to what you may have been told, Jesus doesn’t limit his recruiting to the stout-hearted. The beat-up and worn-out are prime prospects in his book, and he’s been known to climb into boats, bars, and brothels to tell them, “It’s not too late to start over.”
1 Samuel 15
The LORD Rejects Saul as King
1 Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. 2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
4 So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah. 5 Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine. 6 Then he said to the Kenites, “Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites.
7 Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt. 8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[b] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
10 Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: 11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was angry, and he cried out to the LORD all that night.
12 Early in the morning Samuel got up and went to meet Saul, but he was told, “Saul has gone to Carmel. There he has set up a monument in his own honor and has turned and gone on down to Gilgal.”
13 When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD’s instructions.”
14 But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”
15 Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the LORD your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”
16 “Enough!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night.”
“Tell me,” Saul replied.
17 Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. 18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ 19 Why did you not obey the LORD? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD?”
20 “But I did obey the LORD,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the LORD assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. 21 The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal.”
22 But Samuel replied:
“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the LORD?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has rejected you as king.”
24 Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the LORD’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them. 25 Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD.”
26 But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!”
27 As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore. 28 Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors—to one better than you. 29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.”
30 Saul replied, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel; come back with me, so that I may worship the LORD your God.” 31 So Samuel went back with Saul, and Saul worshiped the LORD.
32 Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag king of the Amalekites.”
Agag came to him in chains.[c] And he thought, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.”
33 But Samuel said,
“As your sword has made women childless,
so will your mother be childless among women.”
And Samuel put Agag to death before the LORD at Gilgal.
34 Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul. 35 Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Proverbs 6:6-11
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest—
11 and poverty will come on you like a thief
and scarcity like an armed man.
No Authority?
October 4, 2011 — by Dave Branon
Consider [the ant’s] ways and be wise, which, having no . . . ruler, provides her supplies . . . and gathers her food. —Proverbs 6:6-8
When the deck behind our house began caving in, I knew its repair would exceed my abilities. So I made some calls, got some bids, and picked a builder to construct a new deck.
Once the contractor was done, I took a close look at his work and noticed some problems. Seeking a second opinion, I called the local building inspector and got a surprise. The deck guy had not obtained a building permit. Working without official oversight, he had violated many points of the building code.
This incident reminded me of an important truth (other than asking to see the building permit): We often do less than our best if we don’t have any accountability to the authority over us.
In Scripture, we see this principle explained in two of Jesus’ parables (Matt. 24:45-51; 25:14-30). In both cases, at least one unsupervised worker failed when the master was gone. But then we see a different approach in Proverbs 6. We see the example of the ant, which does good work without a visible supervisor. It intrinsically does its work without being monitored.
What about us? Do we do good work only when someone is watching? Or do we recognize that all our service is for God, and so do our best at all times—even when no human authority is watching?
God sees and knows the work we do:
Our faithfulness He will reward;
With His authority in view,
Let’s do our best for Christ the Lord. —Hess
No matter who your boss is, you are really working for God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 4th, 2011
The Vision and The Reality
. . . to those who are . . . called to be saints . . . —1 Corinthians 1:2
Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.
There are times when we do know what God’s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends on us, not on God. If we prefer to relax on the mountaintop and live in the memory of the vision, then we will be of no real use in the ordinary things of which human life is made. We have to learn to live in reliance upon what we saw in the vision, not simply live in ecstatic delight and conscious reflection upon God. This means living the realities of our lives in the light of the vision until the truth of the vision is actually realized in us. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making His demands known.
Our little “I am” always sulks and pouts when God says do. Let your little “I am” be shriveled up in God’s wrath and indignation–”I AM WHO I AM . . . has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). He must dominate. Isn’t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl! He will hunt us down as fast as a flash of lightning. No human being knows human beings as God does.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tired But Still Ticking - #6452
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Now, if you're a night person, there is nothing more aggravating than a bright-eyed morning person who's trying to get you to be a morning person along with them! And one of the great, interesting, fun things about God is He tends to kind of put those kind of people together in a marriage. Maybe so there's a night shift and a day shift. I don't know. Maybe you have the other kind of metabolism; maybe you're a morning person. Well, then there's nothing more aggravating than a raring-to-go night person who's trying to get you moving when you're ready to put it away.
In fact somehow, yeah, these people marry each other, and that makes for some very interesting chemistry. It does seem that most of us have a time of day when our metabolism isn't doing much. It varies for each of us, but we all have our kind of our slow-down, blah, down time. And that down time of the day when we're just tired and depleted...it often brings out our worst doesn't it? Just ask the people who have to live with us when we're exhausted--depleted. I know that most of what I wished I had not said or done happened when I was, as my kids would say, "blitzed"...really tired. But it doesn't have to be that way.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Tired But Still Ticking."
Well, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 5:3-5. Now, we have got a tired man on our hands here. Yeah, Simon Peter has returned from fishing all night. Okay, it's hard, physical work; he's done it all night long; he's ready to go to bed. Fishermen find the best pickings all night long, so now it's morning and he's back and he's cleaning his nets. And it says, "Jesus got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the shore."
Now look. I can't read into what the Bible says, but I've got to imagine that he's like, "I am so tired!" Well, then it says, "Jesus sat down and taught the people from the boat." Now, I can imagine Simon going, "Can I go home and get some sleep now?" "And when he had finished speaking, He said to Simon, 'Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.'" "Let's go fishing again." "Simon answered, 'Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because You say so, I will let down the nets.'"
Well, as I said, we're dealing with a man who had to be exhausted. He's just done an "all-nighter." I would guess he is in no mood to sailing on a floating pulpit. Jesus wants to have a pulpit out there in the water so He can deal with a larger crowd. And I would guess that Simon Peter wants to go to bed; not to go out again. And then Jesus says, "Let's go out and try to catch fish again." But Peter knew what it was to be tired and yet still be obedient. He could still listen to, he could still respond to the prompting of Jesus, even when he was exhausted.
Now during the good hours of the day, I find myself pretty consciously trying to be like Jesus, to be in touch with Him, to care for other people, to consecrate things to Him. But exhaustion often makes me, well, a self-centered, self-conscious, self-serving person. You probably notice the key word--self.
I don't know about you, but when we're tired we tend to become impatient, sarcastic, and negative, and touchy, which opens up a whole new beachhead for us to bring unto the Lordship of Christ. "Lord, here's the tired me. I want to hear Your voice through my weariness. I want to obey You and be like You, and do what You want me to do even when I'm too tired to feel like doing it." And He may say to you, "Well, then, help someone who needs it. Pitch in at home. Take time to listen, to hug, to confront a problem." You say, "Well, I'm so tired, I don't feel like it." But when you obey Christ in your tired moments, you break the cycle. That is the more tired I become, the more self-centered I become. Well, if you see your vulnerability and you consciously, daily consecrate your down time to Jesus, you can have a whole new spiritual breakthrough.
When a weary fisherman listened to Jesus in his weariest moments, he enjoyed a wonderful catch. He saw a miracle! Obey the Lord. Give, in those moments when you feel like giving out, and you will receive a surprise in return. Christ can enable you each day to be tired but still ticking.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Luke 19, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals (Click to listen)
Max Lucado Daily: What Love Doesn’t
“Love . . . does not boast, it is not proud.” I Corinthians 13:4 NIV
Jesus blasts the top birds of the church, those who roost at the top of the spiritual ladder and spread their plumes of robes, titles, jewelry, and choice seats. Jesus won’t stand for it. It’s easy to see why. How can I love others if my eyes are only on me? How can I point to God if I’m pointing at me? And, worse still, how can someone see God if I keep fanning my own tail feathers?
Jesus has no room for pecking orders.
Luke 19:28-48
New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”
32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”[a]
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Jesus at the Temple
45 When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’[b]; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’[c]”
47 Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. 48 Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 2 Corinthians 1:1-10
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Praise to the God of All Comfort
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
Healing From Heaven
October 3, 2011 — by Dennis Fisher
Blessed be . . . the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. —2 Corinthians 1:3
Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was an Irish songwriter, singer, and poet. His talents brought joy to many who saw him perform or who sang his music. Yet, tragically, his personal life was troubled by repeated heartaches, including the death of all five of his children during his lifetime. Moore’s personal wounds make these words of his all the more meaningful: “Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” This moving statement reminds us that meeting with God in prayer can bring healing to the troubled soul.
The apostle Paul also saw how our heavenly Father can provide solace to the hurting heart. To the believers at Corinth he wrote: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). Sometimes, though, we can be so preoccupied with an inner sorrow that we isolate ourselves from the One who can offer consolation. We need to be reminded that God’s comfort and healing come through prayer.
As we confide in our Father, we can experience peace and the beginning of healing for our wounded hearts. For truly “earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”
Under His wings, what a refuge in sorrow!
How the heart yearningly turns to His rest!
Often when earth has no balm for my healing,
There I find comfort, and there I am blessed. —Cushing
Prayer is the soil in which hope and healing grow best.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 3rd, 2011
The Place of Ministry
He said to them, ’This kind [of unclean spirit] can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting’ —Mark 9:29
His disciples asked Him privately, ’Why could we not cast it out?’ ” (Mark 9:28). The answer lies in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “This kind can come out by nothing but” concentrating on Him, and then doubling and redoubling that concentration on Him. We can remain powerless forever, as the disciples were in this situation, by trying to do God’s work without concentrating on His power, and by following instead the ideas that we draw from our own nature. We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.
When you are brought face to face with a difficult situation and nothing happens externally, you can still know that freedom and release will be given because of your continued concentration on Jesus Christ. Your duty in service and ministry is to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself. Is there anything between you and Jesus even now? If there is, you must get through it, not by ignoring it as an irritation, or by going up and over it, but by facing it and getting through it into the presence of Jesus Christ. Then that very problem itself, and all that you have been through in connection with it, will glorify Jesus Christ in a way that you will never know until you see Him face to face.
We must be able to “mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31), but we must also know how to come down. The power of the saint lies in the coming down and in the living that is done in the valley. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) and what he was referring to were mostly humiliating things. And yet it is in our power to refuse to be humiliated and to say, “No, thank you, I much prefer to be on the mountaintop with God.” Can I face things as they actually are in the light of the reality of Jesus Christ, or do things as they really are destroy my faith in Him, and put me into a panic?
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
A Hole in the Dam, Trouble Downstream - #6451
Monday, October 3, 2011
Now, listen. When it's man versus lots of water, you know the water is often going to win. Oh, we've built dams and levees and water management systems. But sometimes, like this past spring, and then along the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, oh man, just too much water!
Of course, it's hard to see them having to dynamite holes in a dam, which they did. Now, they knew they were saving a town, but they also knew they had to inundate thousands of acres of farmland. So, there goes a crop. There goes a harvest. There goes some family's income. And then downriver, oh man, they had to open the gates on a dam, knowing that the resulting flood again might save a city but drown a town.
But there is some good news. In a lot of places, the dams and the levees managed to hold back the flood. If it weren't for those walls, well, the flood would wash away everything in its path.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Hole in the Dam, Trouble Downstream."
Now, I watched the news about all that high-water drama that took place during spring floods, and as it unfolded it actually gave new meaning to a personal testimony that I have shared with some people who are close to me. I've actually put it this way: I have told them that my time with Jesus is literally the dam that holds back the dark side of me; the sinful dark side that we all have.
In our word for today from the Word of God, Psalm 119:11, it says, "I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You." God's Word--that's what stands between me and the flood. I honestly cannot afford to miss a day where I spend time with Jesus in His Book. Not because it's my Christian duty to read my Bible, or because I'm afraid I'll get a flat tire or a sprained ankle, or some kind of curse will come on me if I don't, but because I really, really love Him. And I really, really need Him.
Hey, we all know about the war. It's talked about in the book of Galatians, "The sinful nature wants to do evil...the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires." You know that battle. "These two forces are constantly fighting each other" (Galatians 5:17 - NLB). Now, the difference is the sin-disarming power of the Word of God. Jesus put it this way: "Now you are clean through the Word I have spoken to you" (John 15:3).
I heard a story about a concert violinist once who said, "If I miss a day of practice, I notice. If I miss two days, my friends notice. If I miss three days, the whole world notices." Well, I tell you what, I can tell the days when I've been too "busy" to start my day in His Word, because the dam starts to leak. And the parts of me that God hates, and I hate, and the people who love me hate, those parts start to slowly take over again. I have found the power of daily being in God's Word to be, yes, that wonderful wall that holds back the worst of "old Ron."
So, I can't afford to miss many days, and I don't think you can either, because we've all got a dark side that will leak without the dam there. My time with Jesus in His Word? It can't be optional. No, it's got to be non-negotiable, because a hole in the dam can do so much damage downstream.
“Love . . . does not boast, it is not proud.” I Corinthians 13:4 NIV
Jesus blasts the top birds of the church, those who roost at the top of the spiritual ladder and spread their plumes of robes, titles, jewelry, and choice seats. Jesus won’t stand for it. It’s easy to see why. How can I love others if my eyes are only on me? How can I point to God if I’m pointing at me? And, worse still, how can someone see God if I keep fanning my own tail feathers?
Jesus has no room for pecking orders.
Luke 19:28-48
New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”
32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”[a]
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Jesus at the Temple
45 When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’[b]; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’[c]”
47 Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. 48 Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: 2 Corinthians 1:1-10
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Praise to the God of All Comfort
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
Healing From Heaven
October 3, 2011 — by Dennis Fisher
Blessed be . . . the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. —2 Corinthians 1:3
Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was an Irish songwriter, singer, and poet. His talents brought joy to many who saw him perform or who sang his music. Yet, tragically, his personal life was troubled by repeated heartaches, including the death of all five of his children during his lifetime. Moore’s personal wounds make these words of his all the more meaningful: “Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” This moving statement reminds us that meeting with God in prayer can bring healing to the troubled soul.
The apostle Paul also saw how our heavenly Father can provide solace to the hurting heart. To the believers at Corinth he wrote: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). Sometimes, though, we can be so preoccupied with an inner sorrow that we isolate ourselves from the One who can offer consolation. We need to be reminded that God’s comfort and healing come through prayer.
As we confide in our Father, we can experience peace and the beginning of healing for our wounded hearts. For truly “earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”
Under His wings, what a refuge in sorrow!
How the heart yearningly turns to His rest!
Often when earth has no balm for my healing,
There I find comfort, and there I am blessed. —Cushing
Prayer is the soil in which hope and healing grow best.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 3rd, 2011
The Place of Ministry
He said to them, ’This kind [of unclean spirit] can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting’ —Mark 9:29
His disciples asked Him privately, ’Why could we not cast it out?’ ” (Mark 9:28). The answer lies in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “This kind can come out by nothing but” concentrating on Him, and then doubling and redoubling that concentration on Him. We can remain powerless forever, as the disciples were in this situation, by trying to do God’s work without concentrating on His power, and by following instead the ideas that we draw from our own nature. We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.
When you are brought face to face with a difficult situation and nothing happens externally, you can still know that freedom and release will be given because of your continued concentration on Jesus Christ. Your duty in service and ministry is to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself. Is there anything between you and Jesus even now? If there is, you must get through it, not by ignoring it as an irritation, or by going up and over it, but by facing it and getting through it into the presence of Jesus Christ. Then that very problem itself, and all that you have been through in connection with it, will glorify Jesus Christ in a way that you will never know until you see Him face to face.
We must be able to “mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31), but we must also know how to come down. The power of the saint lies in the coming down and in the living that is done in the valley. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) and what he was referring to were mostly humiliating things. And yet it is in our power to refuse to be humiliated and to say, “No, thank you, I much prefer to be on the mountaintop with God.” Can I face things as they actually are in the light of the reality of Jesus Christ, or do things as they really are destroy my faith in Him, and put me into a panic?
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
A Hole in the Dam, Trouble Downstream - #6451
Monday, October 3, 2011
Now, listen. When it's man versus lots of water, you know the water is often going to win. Oh, we've built dams and levees and water management systems. But sometimes, like this past spring, and then along the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, oh man, just too much water!
Of course, it's hard to see them having to dynamite holes in a dam, which they did. Now, they knew they were saving a town, but they also knew they had to inundate thousands of acres of farmland. So, there goes a crop. There goes a harvest. There goes some family's income. And then downriver, oh man, they had to open the gates on a dam, knowing that the resulting flood again might save a city but drown a town.
But there is some good news. In a lot of places, the dams and the levees managed to hold back the flood. If it weren't for those walls, well, the flood would wash away everything in its path.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Hole in the Dam, Trouble Downstream."
Now, I watched the news about all that high-water drama that took place during spring floods, and as it unfolded it actually gave new meaning to a personal testimony that I have shared with some people who are close to me. I've actually put it this way: I have told them that my time with Jesus is literally the dam that holds back the dark side of me; the sinful dark side that we all have.
In our word for today from the Word of God, Psalm 119:11, it says, "I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You." God's Word--that's what stands between me and the flood. I honestly cannot afford to miss a day where I spend time with Jesus in His Book. Not because it's my Christian duty to read my Bible, or because I'm afraid I'll get a flat tire or a sprained ankle, or some kind of curse will come on me if I don't, but because I really, really love Him. And I really, really need Him.
Hey, we all know about the war. It's talked about in the book of Galatians, "The sinful nature wants to do evil...the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires." You know that battle. "These two forces are constantly fighting each other" (Galatians 5:17 - NLB). Now, the difference is the sin-disarming power of the Word of God. Jesus put it this way: "Now you are clean through the Word I have spoken to you" (John 15:3).
I heard a story about a concert violinist once who said, "If I miss a day of practice, I notice. If I miss two days, my friends notice. If I miss three days, the whole world notices." Well, I tell you what, I can tell the days when I've been too "busy" to start my day in His Word, because the dam starts to leak. And the parts of me that God hates, and I hate, and the people who love me hate, those parts start to slowly take over again. I have found the power of daily being in God's Word to be, yes, that wonderful wall that holds back the worst of "old Ron."
So, I can't afford to miss many days, and I don't think you can either, because we've all got a dark side that will leak without the dam there. My time with Jesus in His Word? It can't be optional. No, it's got to be non-negotiable, because a hole in the dam can do so much damage downstream.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
1 Samuel 14, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals (Click to listen)\
Max Lucado Daily:
Drops
“Let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do.” Psalm 90:17, The Message
Anger. It’s a peculiar yet predictable emotion. It begins as a drop of water. An irritant. A frustration. Nothing big, just an aggravation. Someone gets your parking place. A waitress is slow and you are in a hurry. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Yet, get enough of these seemingly innocent drops of anger and before long you’ve got a bucket full of rage . . .
Now, is that any way to live?
Anger never did anyone any good.
1 Samuel 14
1 One day Jonathan son of Saul said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side.” But he did not tell his father.
2 Saul was staying on the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree in Migron. With him were about six hundred men, 3 among whom was Ahijah, who was wearing an ephod. He was a son of Ichabod’s brother Ahitub son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the LORD’s priest in Shiloh. No one was aware that Jonathan had left.
4 On each side of the pass that Jonathan intended to cross to reach the Philistine outpost was a cliff; one was called Bozez and the other Seneh. 5 One cliff stood to the north toward Mikmash, the other to the south toward Geba.
6 Jonathan said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised men. Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few.”
7 “Do all that you have in mind,” his armor-bearer said. “Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul.”
8 Jonathan said, “Come on, then; we will cross over toward them and let them see us. 9 If they say to us, ‘Wait there until we come to you,’ we will stay where we are and not go up to them. 10 But if they say, ‘Come up to us,’ we will climb up, because that will be our sign that the LORD has given them into our hands.”
11 So both of them showed themselves to the Philistine outpost. “Look!” said the Philistines. “The Hebrews are crawling out of the holes they were hiding in.” 12 The men of the outpost shouted to Jonathan and his armor-bearer, “Come up to us and we’ll teach you a lesson.”
So Jonathan said to his armor-bearer, “Climb up after me; the LORD has given them into the hand of Israel.”
13 Jonathan climbed up, using his hands and feet, with his armor-bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer followed and killed behind him. 14 In that first attack Jonathan and his armor-bearer killed some twenty men in an area of about half an acre.
Israel Routs the Philistines
15 Then panic struck the whole army—those in the camp and field, and those in the outposts and raiding parties—and the ground shook. It was a panic sent by God.[i]
16 Saul’s lookouts at Gibeah in Benjamin saw the army melting away in all directions. 17 Then Saul said to the men who were with him, “Muster the forces and see who has left us.” When they did, it was Jonathan and his armor-bearer who were not there.
18 Saul said to Ahijah, “Bring the ark of God.” (At that time it was with the Israelites.)[j] 19 While Saul was talking to the priest, the tumult in the Philistine camp increased more and more. So Saul said to the priest, “Withdraw your hand.”
20 Then Saul and all his men assembled and went to the battle. They found the Philistines in total confusion, striking each other with their swords. 21 Those Hebrews who had previously been with the Philistines and had gone up with them to their camp went over to the Israelites who were with Saul and Jonathan. 22 When all the Israelites who had hidden in the hill country of Ephraim heard that the Philistines were on the run, they joined the battle in hot pursuit. 23 So on that day the LORD saved Israel, and the battle moved on beyond Beth Aven.
Jonathan Eats Honey
24 Now the Israelites were in distress that day, because Saul had bound the people under an oath, saying, “Cursed be anyone who eats food before evening comes, before I have avenged myself on my enemies!” So none of the troops tasted food.
25 The entire army entered the woods, and there was honey on the ground. 26 When they went into the woods, they saw the honey oozing out; yet no one put his hand to his mouth, because they feared the oath. 27 But Jonathan had not heard that his father had bound the people with the oath, so he reached out the end of the staff that was in his hand and dipped it into the honeycomb. He raised his hand to his mouth, and his eyes brightened.[k] 28 Then one of the soldiers told him, “Your father bound the army under a strict oath, saying, ‘Cursed be anyone who eats food today!’ That is why the men are faint.”
29 Jonathan said, “My father has made trouble for the country. See how my eyes brightened when I tasted a little of this honey. 30 How much better it would have been if the men had eaten today some of the plunder they took from their enemies. Would not the slaughter of the Philistines have been even greater?”
31 That day, after the Israelites had struck down the Philistines from Mikmash to Aijalon, they were exhausted. 32 They pounced on the plunder and, taking sheep, cattle and calves, they butchered them on the ground and ate them, together with the blood. 33 Then someone said to Saul, “Look, the men are sinning against the LORD by eating meat that has blood in it.”
“You have broken faith,” he said. “Roll a large stone over here at once.” 34 Then he said, “Go out among the men and tell them, ‘Each of you bring me your cattle and sheep, and slaughter them here and eat them. Do not sin against the LORD by eating meat with blood still in it.’”
So everyone brought his ox that night and slaughtered it there. 35 Then Saul built an altar to the LORD; it was the first time he had done this.
36 Saul said, “Let us go down and pursue the Philistines by night and plunder them till dawn, and let us not leave one of them alive.”
“Do whatever seems best to you,” they replied.
But the priest said, “Let us inquire of God here.”
37 So Saul asked God, “Shall I go down and pursue the Philistines? Will you give them into Israel’s hand?” But God did not answer him that day.
38 Saul therefore said, “Come here, all you who are leaders of the army, and let us find out what sin has been committed today. 39 As surely as the LORD who rescues Israel lives, even if the guilt lies with my son Jonathan, he must die.” But not one of them said a word.
40 Saul then said to all the Israelites, “You stand over there; I and Jonathan my son will stand over here.”
“Do what seems best to you,” they replied.
41 Then Saul prayed to the LORD, the God of Israel, “Why have you not answered your servant today? If the fault is in me or my son Jonathan, respond with Urim, but if the men of Israel are at fault,[l] respond with Thummim.” Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot, and the men were cleared. 42 Saul said, “Cast the lot between me and Jonathan my son.” And Jonathan was taken.
43 Then Saul said to Jonathan, “Tell me what you have done.”
So Jonathan told him, “I tasted a little honey with the end of my staff. And now I must die!”
44 Saul said, “May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if you do not die, Jonathan.”
45 But the men said to Saul, “Should Jonathan die—he who has brought about this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the LORD lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God’s help.” So the men rescued Jonathan, and he was not put to death.
46 Then Saul stopped pursuing the Philistines, and they withdrew to their own land.
47 After Saul had assumed rule over Israel, he fought against their enemies on every side: Moab, the Ammonites, Edom, the kings[m] of Zobah, and the Philistines. Wherever he turned, he inflicted punishment on them.[n] 48 He fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering Israel from the hands of those who had plundered them.
Saul’s Family
49 Saul’s sons were Jonathan, Ishvi and Malki-Shua. The name of his older daughter was Merab, and that of the younger was Michal. 50 His wife’s name was Ahinoam daughter of Ahimaaz. The name of the commander of Saul’s army was Abner son of Ner, and Ner was Saul’s uncle. 51 Saul’s father Kish and Abner’s father Ner were sons of Abiel.
52 All the days of Saul there was bitter war with the Philistines, and whenever Saul saw a mighty or brave man, he took him into his service.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Mark 1:35-45
Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”
38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
Jesus Heals a Man With Leprosy
40 A man with leprosy[a] came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Jesus was indignant.[b] He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
In Search Of Silence
October 2, 2011 — by Julie Ackerman Link
I have calmed and quieted my soul. —Psalm 131:2
My next record should be 45 minutes of silence,” said singer Meg Hutchinson, “because that’s what we’re missing most in society.”
Silence is indeed hard to find. Cities are notoriously noisy due to the high concentration of traffic and people. There seems to be no escape from loud music, loud machines, and loud voices. But the kind of noise that endangers our spiritual well-being is not the noise we can’t escape but the noise we invite into our lives. Some of us use noise as a way of shutting out loneliness: voices of TV and radio personalities give us the illusion of companionship. Some of us use it as a way of shutting out our own thoughts: other voices and opinions keep us from having to think for ourselves. Some of us use noise as a way of shutting out the voice of God: constant chatter, even when we’re talking about God, keeps us from hearing what God has to say.
But Jesus, even during His busiest times, made a point of seeking out places of solitude where He could carry on a conversation with God (Mark 1:35). Even if we can’t find a place that is perfectly quiet, we need to find a place to quiet our souls (Ps. 131:2), a place where God has our full attention.
For Further Study
For more on this topic, read the online booklet
Mary & Martha: Balancing Life’s Priorities
at www.discoveryseries.org/hp021
Don’t let the noise of the world
keep you from hearing the voice of the Lord.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 2nd, 2011
The Place of Humiliation
If You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us —Mark 9:22
After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they really are, where it is neither beautiful, poetic, nor thrilling. The height of the mountaintop is measured by the dismal drudgery of the valley, but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We see His glory on the mountain, but we never live for His glory there. It is in the place of humiliation that we find our true worth to God— that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we are always at some heroic level of intensity, simply because of the natural selfishness of our own hearts. But God wants us to be at the drab everyday level, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship with Him. Peter thought it would be a wonderful thing for them to remain on the mountain, but Jesus Christ took the disciples down from the mountain and into the valley, where the true meaning of the vision was explained (see Mark 9:5-6 , Mark 14-23).
“If you can do anything . . . .” It takes the valley of humiliation to remove the skepticism from us. Look back at your own experience and you will find that until you learned who Jesus really was, you were a skillful skeptic about His power. When you were on the mountaintop you could believe anything, but what about when you were faced with the facts of the valley? You may be able to give a testimony regarding your sanctification, but what about the thing that is a humiliation to you right now? The last time you were on the mountain with God, you saw that all the power in heaven and on earth belonged to Jesus— will you be skeptical now, simply because you are in the valley of humiliation?
Drops
“Let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do.” Psalm 90:17, The Message
Anger. It’s a peculiar yet predictable emotion. It begins as a drop of water. An irritant. A frustration. Nothing big, just an aggravation. Someone gets your parking place. A waitress is slow and you are in a hurry. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Yet, get enough of these seemingly innocent drops of anger and before long you’ve got a bucket full of rage . . .
Now, is that any way to live?
Anger never did anyone any good.
1 Samuel 14
1 One day Jonathan son of Saul said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side.” But he did not tell his father.
2 Saul was staying on the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree in Migron. With him were about six hundred men, 3 among whom was Ahijah, who was wearing an ephod. He was a son of Ichabod’s brother Ahitub son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the LORD’s priest in Shiloh. No one was aware that Jonathan had left.
4 On each side of the pass that Jonathan intended to cross to reach the Philistine outpost was a cliff; one was called Bozez and the other Seneh. 5 One cliff stood to the north toward Mikmash, the other to the south toward Geba.
6 Jonathan said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised men. Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few.”
7 “Do all that you have in mind,” his armor-bearer said. “Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul.”
8 Jonathan said, “Come on, then; we will cross over toward them and let them see us. 9 If they say to us, ‘Wait there until we come to you,’ we will stay where we are and not go up to them. 10 But if they say, ‘Come up to us,’ we will climb up, because that will be our sign that the LORD has given them into our hands.”
11 So both of them showed themselves to the Philistine outpost. “Look!” said the Philistines. “The Hebrews are crawling out of the holes they were hiding in.” 12 The men of the outpost shouted to Jonathan and his armor-bearer, “Come up to us and we’ll teach you a lesson.”
So Jonathan said to his armor-bearer, “Climb up after me; the LORD has given them into the hand of Israel.”
13 Jonathan climbed up, using his hands and feet, with his armor-bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer followed and killed behind him. 14 In that first attack Jonathan and his armor-bearer killed some twenty men in an area of about half an acre.
Israel Routs the Philistines
15 Then panic struck the whole army—those in the camp and field, and those in the outposts and raiding parties—and the ground shook. It was a panic sent by God.[i]
16 Saul’s lookouts at Gibeah in Benjamin saw the army melting away in all directions. 17 Then Saul said to the men who were with him, “Muster the forces and see who has left us.” When they did, it was Jonathan and his armor-bearer who were not there.
18 Saul said to Ahijah, “Bring the ark of God.” (At that time it was with the Israelites.)[j] 19 While Saul was talking to the priest, the tumult in the Philistine camp increased more and more. So Saul said to the priest, “Withdraw your hand.”
20 Then Saul and all his men assembled and went to the battle. They found the Philistines in total confusion, striking each other with their swords. 21 Those Hebrews who had previously been with the Philistines and had gone up with them to their camp went over to the Israelites who were with Saul and Jonathan. 22 When all the Israelites who had hidden in the hill country of Ephraim heard that the Philistines were on the run, they joined the battle in hot pursuit. 23 So on that day the LORD saved Israel, and the battle moved on beyond Beth Aven.
Jonathan Eats Honey
24 Now the Israelites were in distress that day, because Saul had bound the people under an oath, saying, “Cursed be anyone who eats food before evening comes, before I have avenged myself on my enemies!” So none of the troops tasted food.
25 The entire army entered the woods, and there was honey on the ground. 26 When they went into the woods, they saw the honey oozing out; yet no one put his hand to his mouth, because they feared the oath. 27 But Jonathan had not heard that his father had bound the people with the oath, so he reached out the end of the staff that was in his hand and dipped it into the honeycomb. He raised his hand to his mouth, and his eyes brightened.[k] 28 Then one of the soldiers told him, “Your father bound the army under a strict oath, saying, ‘Cursed be anyone who eats food today!’ That is why the men are faint.”
29 Jonathan said, “My father has made trouble for the country. See how my eyes brightened when I tasted a little of this honey. 30 How much better it would have been if the men had eaten today some of the plunder they took from their enemies. Would not the slaughter of the Philistines have been even greater?”
31 That day, after the Israelites had struck down the Philistines from Mikmash to Aijalon, they were exhausted. 32 They pounced on the plunder and, taking sheep, cattle and calves, they butchered them on the ground and ate them, together with the blood. 33 Then someone said to Saul, “Look, the men are sinning against the LORD by eating meat that has blood in it.”
“You have broken faith,” he said. “Roll a large stone over here at once.” 34 Then he said, “Go out among the men and tell them, ‘Each of you bring me your cattle and sheep, and slaughter them here and eat them. Do not sin against the LORD by eating meat with blood still in it.’”
So everyone brought his ox that night and slaughtered it there. 35 Then Saul built an altar to the LORD; it was the first time he had done this.
36 Saul said, “Let us go down and pursue the Philistines by night and plunder them till dawn, and let us not leave one of them alive.”
“Do whatever seems best to you,” they replied.
But the priest said, “Let us inquire of God here.”
37 So Saul asked God, “Shall I go down and pursue the Philistines? Will you give them into Israel’s hand?” But God did not answer him that day.
38 Saul therefore said, “Come here, all you who are leaders of the army, and let us find out what sin has been committed today. 39 As surely as the LORD who rescues Israel lives, even if the guilt lies with my son Jonathan, he must die.” But not one of them said a word.
40 Saul then said to all the Israelites, “You stand over there; I and Jonathan my son will stand over here.”
“Do what seems best to you,” they replied.
41 Then Saul prayed to the LORD, the God of Israel, “Why have you not answered your servant today? If the fault is in me or my son Jonathan, respond with Urim, but if the men of Israel are at fault,[l] respond with Thummim.” Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot, and the men were cleared. 42 Saul said, “Cast the lot between me and Jonathan my son.” And Jonathan was taken.
43 Then Saul said to Jonathan, “Tell me what you have done.”
So Jonathan told him, “I tasted a little honey with the end of my staff. And now I must die!”
44 Saul said, “May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if you do not die, Jonathan.”
45 But the men said to Saul, “Should Jonathan die—he who has brought about this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the LORD lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God’s help.” So the men rescued Jonathan, and he was not put to death.
46 Then Saul stopped pursuing the Philistines, and they withdrew to their own land.
47 After Saul had assumed rule over Israel, he fought against their enemies on every side: Moab, the Ammonites, Edom, the kings[m] of Zobah, and the Philistines. Wherever he turned, he inflicted punishment on them.[n] 48 He fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering Israel from the hands of those who had plundered them.
Saul’s Family
49 Saul’s sons were Jonathan, Ishvi and Malki-Shua. The name of his older daughter was Merab, and that of the younger was Michal. 50 His wife’s name was Ahinoam daughter of Ahimaaz. The name of the commander of Saul’s army was Abner son of Ner, and Ner was Saul’s uncle. 51 Saul’s father Kish and Abner’s father Ner were sons of Abiel.
52 All the days of Saul there was bitter war with the Philistines, and whenever Saul saw a mighty or brave man, he took him into his service.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Mark 1:35-45
Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”
38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
Jesus Heals a Man With Leprosy
40 A man with leprosy[a] came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Jesus was indignant.[b] He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
In Search Of Silence
October 2, 2011 — by Julie Ackerman Link
I have calmed and quieted my soul. —Psalm 131:2
My next record should be 45 minutes of silence,” said singer Meg Hutchinson, “because that’s what we’re missing most in society.”
Silence is indeed hard to find. Cities are notoriously noisy due to the high concentration of traffic and people. There seems to be no escape from loud music, loud machines, and loud voices. But the kind of noise that endangers our spiritual well-being is not the noise we can’t escape but the noise we invite into our lives. Some of us use noise as a way of shutting out loneliness: voices of TV and radio personalities give us the illusion of companionship. Some of us use it as a way of shutting out our own thoughts: other voices and opinions keep us from having to think for ourselves. Some of us use noise as a way of shutting out the voice of God: constant chatter, even when we’re talking about God, keeps us from hearing what God has to say.
But Jesus, even during His busiest times, made a point of seeking out places of solitude where He could carry on a conversation with God (Mark 1:35). Even if we can’t find a place that is perfectly quiet, we need to find a place to quiet our souls (Ps. 131:2), a place where God has our full attention.
For Further Study
For more on this topic, read the online booklet
Mary & Martha: Balancing Life’s Priorities
at www.discoveryseries.org/hp021
Don’t let the noise of the world
keep you from hearing the voice of the Lord.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 2nd, 2011
The Place of Humiliation
If You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us —Mark 9:22
After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they really are, where it is neither beautiful, poetic, nor thrilling. The height of the mountaintop is measured by the dismal drudgery of the valley, but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We see His glory on the mountain, but we never live for His glory there. It is in the place of humiliation that we find our true worth to God— that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we are always at some heroic level of intensity, simply because of the natural selfishness of our own hearts. But God wants us to be at the drab everyday level, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship with Him. Peter thought it would be a wonderful thing for them to remain on the mountain, but Jesus Christ took the disciples down from the mountain and into the valley, where the true meaning of the vision was explained (see Mark 9:5-6 , Mark 14-23).
“If you can do anything . . . .” It takes the valley of humiliation to remove the skepticism from us. Look back at your own experience and you will find that until you learned who Jesus really was, you were a skillful skeptic about His power. When you were on the mountaintop you could believe anything, but what about when you were faced with the facts of the valley? You may be able to give a testimony regarding your sanctification, but what about the thing that is a humiliation to you right now? The last time you were on the mountain with God, you saw that all the power in heaven and on earth belonged to Jesus— will you be skeptical now, simply because you are in the valley of humiliation?
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