Max Lucado Daily: TRUE HUMILITY
True humility is not thinking lowly of yourself but thinking accurately of yourself. When Paul writes in Philippians 2:3 “Consider others better than yourselves,” he uses a verb that means to calculate. The word implies a conscious judgment resting on carefully weighed facts. To consider others better than yourself, then, is to say that you know your place. True humility is quick to applaud the success of others.
Paul says give each other more honor than you want for yourselves. Jesus is our example. Content to be known as a carpenter. Happy to be mistaken for the gardener. He served his followers by washing their feet. If Jesus is so willing to honor us, can we not do the same for others? Can we not regard others as more important than ourselves? Be quick to share the applause! That’s what love does!
From A Love Worth Giving
Jeremiah 13
People Who Do Only What They Want to Do
1-2 God told me, “Go and buy yourself some linen shorts. Put them on and keep them on. Don’t even take them off to wash them.” So I bought the shorts as God directed and put them on.
3-5 Then God told me, “Take the shorts that you bought and go straight to Perath and hide them there in a crack in the rock.” So I did what God told me and hid them at Perath.
6-7 Next, after quite a long time, God told me, “Go back to Perath and get the linen shorts I told you to hide there.” So I went back to Perath and dug them out of the place where I had hidden them. The shorts by then had rotted and were worthless.
8-11 God explained, “This is the way I am going to ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem—a wicked bunch of people who won’t obey me, who do only what they want to do, who chase after all kinds of no-gods and worship them. They’re going to turn out as rotten as these old shorts. Just as shorts clothe and protect, so I kept the whole family of Israel under my care”—God’s Decree—“so that everyone could see they were my people, a people I could show off to the world and be proud of. But they refused to do a thing I said.
12 “And then tell them this, ‘God’s Message, personal from the God of Israel: Every wine jug should be full of wine.’
“And they’ll say, ‘Of course. We know that. Every wine jug should be full of wine!’
13-14 “Then you’ll say, ‘This is what God says: Watch closely. I’m going to fill every person who lives in this country—the kings who rule from David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, the citizens of Jerusalem—with wine that will make them drunk. And then I’ll smash them, smash the wine-filled jugs—old and young alike. Nothing will stop me. Not an ounce of pity or mercy or compassion will slow me down. Every last drunken jug of them will be smashed!’”
The Light You Always Took for Granted
15-17 Then I said, Listen. Listen carefully: Don’t stay stuck in your ways!
It’s God’s Message we’re dealing with here.
Let your lives glow bright before God
before he turns out the lights,
Before you trip and fall
on the dark mountain paths.
The light you always took for granted will go out
and the world will turn black.
If you people won’t listen,
I’ll go off by myself and weep over you,
Weep because of your stubborn arrogance,
bitter, bitter tears,
Rivers of tears from my eyes,
because God’s sheep will end up in exile.
18-19 Tell the king and the queen-mother,
“Come down off your high horses.
Your dazzling crowns
will tumble off your heads.”
The villages in the Negev will be surrounded,
everyone trapped,
And Judah dragged off to exile,
the whole country dragged to oblivion.
20-22 Look, look, Jerusalem!
Look at the enemies coming out of the north!
What will become of your flocks of people,
the beautiful flocks in your care?
How are you going to feel when the people
you’ve played up to, looked up to all these years
Now look down on you? You didn’t expect this?
Surprise! The pain of a woman having a baby!
Do I hear you saying,
“What’s going on here? Why me?”
The answer’s simple: You’re guilty,
hugely guilty.
Your guilt has your life endangered,
your guilt has you writhing in pain.
23 Can an African change skin?
Can a leopard get rid of its spots?
So what are the odds on you doing good,
you who are so long-practiced in evil?
24-27 “I’ll blow these people away—
like wind-blown leaves.
You have it coming to you.
I’ve measured it out precisely.”
God’s Decree.
“It’s because you forgot me
and embraced the Big Lie,
that so-called god Baal.
I’m the one who will rip off your clothes,
expose and shame you before the watching world.
Your obsessions with gods, gods, and more gods,
your goddess affairs, your god-adulteries.
Gods on the hills, gods in the fields—
every time I look you’re off with another god.
O Jerusalem, what a sordid life!
Is there any hope for you!”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Read: Psalm 139:1–18
A David Psalm
1-6 God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!
7-12 Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.
13-16 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.
17-22 Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
all the men and women who belittle you, God,
infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Your enemies are my enemies!
INSIGHT:
God knows who we are (Ps. 139:1–6), who we are becoming (vv. 7–12), and how we got where we are (vv. 13–18). Consider praying Psalm 139:1 as both a confession and an invitation. Take comfort in the fact that God knows and loves you, and invite Him to take you to places of greater intimacy with Him.
I Know Everything
By Bill Crowder
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Psalm 139:3
Our son and daughter-in-law had an emergency. Our grandson Cameron was suffering from pneumonia and bronchitis and needed to go to the hospital. They asked if we could pick up their five-year-old son, Nathan, from school and take him home. Marlene and I were glad to do so.
When Nathan got in the car, Marlene asked, “Are you surprised that we came to get you today?” He responded, “No!” When we asked why not, he replied, “Because I know everything!”
Our knowledge will always be limited, but knowing God is what matters most. We can trust Him.
A five-year-old can claim to know everything, but those of us who are a bit older know better. We often have more questions than answers. We wonder about the whys, whens, and hows of life—often forgetting that though we do not know everything, we know the God who does.
Psalm 139:1 and 3 speak of our all-knowing God’s all-encompassing, intimate understanding of us. David says, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. . . . You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.” How comforting to know God loves us perfectly, is fully aware of what we will face today, and He knows how best to help us in every circumstance of life.
Our knowledge will always be limited, but knowing God is what matters most. We can trust Him.
Thank You, Lord, that You know everything about me and what I need.
Learn how to enjoy the presence of God. For help, go to discoveryseries.org/q0718.
Knowing God is what matters most.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Is Your Mind Stayed on God?
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. —Isaiah 26:3
Is your mind stayed on God or is it starved? Starvation of the mind, caused by neglect, is one of the chief sources of exhaustion and weakness in a servant’s life. If you have never used your mind to place yourself before God, begin to do it now. There is no reason to wait for God to come to you. You must turn your thoughts and your eyes away from the face of idols and look to Him and be saved (see Isaiah 45:22).
Your mind is the greatest gift God has given you and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. You should seek to be “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ…” (2 Corinthians 10:5). This will be one of the greatest assets of your faith when a time of trial comes, because then your faith and the Spirit of God will work together. When you have thoughts and ideas that are worthy of credit to God, learn to compare and associate them with all that happens in nature— the rising and the setting of the sun, the shining of the moon and the stars, and the changing of the seasons. You will begin to see that your thoughts are from God as well, and your mind will no longer be at the mercy of your impulsive thinking, but will always be used in service to God.
“We have sinned with our fathers…[and]…did not remember…” (Psalm 106:6-7). Then prod your memory and wake up immediately. Don’t say to yourself, “But God is not talking to me right now.” He ought to be. Remember whose you are and whom you serve. Encourage yourself to remember, and your affection for God will increase tenfold. Your mind will no longer be starved, but will be quick and enthusiastic, and your hope will be inexpressibly bright.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Our danger is to water down God’s word to suit ourselves. God never fits His word to suit me; He fits me to suit His word. Not Knowing Whither, 901 R
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Friday, February 10, 2017
Jeremiah 22, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: A DEPOSIT OF POWER
The word inheritance is to Joshua’s book what delis are to Manhattan: everywhere! The word appears nearly sixty times. The command to possess the land is seen five times. The great accomplishment of the Hebrew people came down to this– “So Joshua let the people depart, each to his own inheritance” (Joshua 24:28).
Is it time for you to receive yours? If you have given your heart to Christ, God has “blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). Note the tense– “he has blessed.” Not “he will bless, might bless, or someday could possibly bless.” You have access to every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. This may well be the best-kept secret in Christendom. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
From God is With You Every Day
Jeremiah 22
Walking Out on the Covenant of God
1-3 God’s orders: “Go to the royal palace and deliver this Message. Say, ‘Listen to what God says, O King of Judah, you who sit on David’s throne—you and your officials and all the people who go in and out of these palace gates. This is God’s Message: Attend to matters of justice. Set things right between people. Rescue victims from their exploiters. Don’t take advantage of the homeless, the orphans, the widows. Stop the murdering!
4-5 “‘If you obey these commands, then kings who follow in the line of David will continue to go in and out of these palace gates mounted on horses and riding in chariots—they and their officials and the citizens of Judah. But if you don’t obey these commands, then I swear—God’s Decree!—this palace will end up a heap of rubble.’”
6-7 This is God’s verdict on Judah’s royal palace:
“I number you among my favorite places—
like the lovely hills of Gilead,
like the soaring peaks of Lebanon.
Yet I swear I’ll turn you into a wasteland,
as empty as a ghost town.
I’ll hire a demolition crew,
well-equipped with sledgehammers and wrecking bars,
Pound the country to a pulp
and burn it all up.
8-9 “Travelers from all over will come through here and say to one another, ‘Why would God do such a thing to this wonderful city?’ They’ll be told, ‘Because they walked out on the covenant of their God, took up with other gods and worshiped them.’”
Building a Fine House but Destroying Lives
10 Don’t weep over dead King Josiah.
Don’t waste your tears.
Weep for his exiled son:
He’s gone for good.
He’ll never see home again.
11-12 For this is God’s Word on Shallum son of Josiah, who succeeded his father as king of Judah: “He’s gone from here, gone for good. He’ll die in the place they’ve taken him to. He’ll never see home again.”
13-17 “Doom to him who builds palaces but bullies people,
who makes a fine house but destroys lives,
Who cheats his workers
and won’t pay them for their work,
Who says, ‘I’ll build me an elaborate mansion
with spacious rooms and fancy windows.
I’ll bring in rare and expensive woods
and the latest in interior decor.’
So, that makes you a king—
living in a fancy palace?
Your father got along just fine, didn’t he?
He did what was right and treated people fairly,
And things went well with him.
He stuck up for the down-and-out,
And things went well for Judah.
Isn’t this what it means to know me?”
God’s Decree!
“But you’re blind and brainless.
All you think about is yourself,
Taking advantage of the weak,
bulldozing your way, bullying victims.”
18-19 This is God’s epitaph on Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah:
“Doom to this man!
Nobody will shed tears over him,
‘Poor, poor brother!’
Nobody will shed tears over him,
‘Poor, poor master!’
They’ll give him a donkey’s funeral,
drag him out of the city and dump him.
You’ve Made a Total Mess of Your Life
20-23 “People of Jerusalem, climb a Lebanon peak and weep,
climb a Bashan mountain and wail,
Climb the Abarim ridge and cry—
you’ve made a total mess of your life.
I spoke to you when everything was going your way.
You said, ‘I’m not interested.’
You’ve been that way as long as I’ve known you,
never listened to a thing I said.
All your leaders will be blown away,
all your friends end up in exile,
And you’ll find yourself in the gutter,
disgraced by your evil life.
You big-city people thought you were so important,
thought you were ‘king of the mountain’!
You’re soon going to be doubled up in pain,
pain worse than the pangs of childbirth.
24-26 “As sure as I am the living God”—God’s Decree—“even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, I’d pull you off and give you to those who are out to kill you, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Chaldeans, and then throw you, both you and your mother, into a foreign country, far from your place of birth. There you’ll both die.
27 “You’ll be homesick, desperately homesick, but you’ll never get home again.”
28-30 Is Jehoiachin a leaky bucket,
a rusted-out pail good for nothing?
Why else would he be thrown away, he and his children,
thrown away to a foreign place?
O land, land, land,
listen to God’s Message!
This is God’s verdict:
“Write this man off as if he were childless,
a man who will never amount to anything.
Nothing will ever come of his life.
He’s the end of the line, the last of the kings.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, February 10, 2017
Read: John 13:12–26
10-12 Jesus said, “If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene. So now you’re clean. But not every one of you.” (He knew who was betraying him. That’s why he said, “Not every one of you.”) After he had finished washing their feet, he took his robe, put it back on, and went back to his place at the table.
12-17 Then he said, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You address me as ‘Teacher’ and ‘Master,’ and rightly so. That is what I am. So if I, the Master and Teacher, washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet. I’ve laid down a pattern for you. What I’ve done, you do. I’m only pointing out the obvious. A servant is not ranked above his master; an employee doesn’t give orders to the employer. If you understand what I’m telling you, act like it—and live a blessed life.
The One Who Ate Bread at My Table
18-20 “I’m not including all of you in this. I know precisely whom I’ve selected, so as not to interfere with the fulfillment of this Scripture:
The one who ate bread at my table
Turned on his heel against me.
“I’m telling you all this ahead of time so that when it happens you will believe that I am who I say I am. Make sure you get this right: Receiving someone I send is the same as receiving me, just as receiving me is the same as receiving the One who sent me.”
21 After he said these things, Jesus became visibly upset, and then he told them why. “One of you is going to betray me.”
22-25 The disciples looked around at one another, wondering who on earth he was talking about. One of the disciples, the one Jesus loved dearly, was reclining against him, his head on his shoulder. Peter motioned to him to ask who Jesus might be talking about. So, being the closest, he said, “Master, who?”
26-27 Jesus said, “The one to whom I give this crust of bread after I’ve dipped it.” Then he dipped the crust and gave it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. As soon as the bread was in his hand, Satan entered him.
“What you must do,” said Jesus, “do. Do it and get it over with.”
Leaning on Jesus
By James Banks
One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. John 13:23
Sometimes when I put my head on my pillow at night and pray, I imagine I’m leaning on Jesus. Whenever I do this, I remember something the Word of God tells us about the apostle John. John himself writes about how he was sitting beside Jesus at the Last Supper: “One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him” (John 13:23).
John used the term “the disciple whom Jesus loved” as a way of referring to himself without mentioning his own name. He is also depicting a typical banquet setting in first-century Israel, where the table was much lower than those we use today, about knee height. Reclining without chairs on a mat or cushions was the natural position for those around the table. John was sitting so close to the Lord that when he turned to ask him a question, he was “leaning back against Jesus” (John 13:25), with his head on his chest.
God, I cast all my cares on You and praise You because You are faithful.
John’s closeness to Jesus in that moment provides a helpful illustration for our lives with Him today. We may not be able to touch Jesus physically, but we can entrust the weightiest circumstances of our lives to Him. He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). How blessed we are to have a Savior whom we can trust to be faithful through every circumstance of our lives! Are you “leaning” on Him today?
Dear Lord Jesus, help me to lean on You today and to trust You as my source of strength and hope. I cast all my cares on You and praise You because You are faithful.
Jesus alone gives the rest we need.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, February 10, 2017
Is Your Ability to See God Blinded?
Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things… —Isaiah 40:26
The people of God in Isaiah’s time had blinded their minds’ ability to see God by looking on the face of idols. But Isaiah made them look up at the heavens; that is, he made them begin to use their power to think and to visualize correctly. If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in nature and will realize that it is holy and sacred. We will see God reaching out to us in every wind that blows, every sunrise and sunset, every cloud in the sky, every flower that blooms, and every leaf that fades, if we will only begin to use our blinded thinking to visualize it.
The real test of spiritual focus is being able to bring your mind and thoughts under control. Is your mind focused on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Is it your work? Is it your idea of what a servant should be, or maybe your experience of salvation and sanctification? If so, then your ability to see God is blinded. You will be powerless when faced with difficulties and will be forced to endure in darkness. If your power to see has been blinded, don’t look back on your own experiences, but look to God. It is God you need. Go beyond yourself and away from the faces of your idols and away from everything else that has been blinding your thinking. Wake up and accept the ridicule that Isaiah gave to his people, and deliberately turn your thoughts and your eyes to God.
One of the reasons for our sense of futility in prayer is that we have lost our power to visualize. We can no longer even imagine putting ourselves deliberately before God. It is actually more important to be broken bread and poured-out wine in the area of intercession than in our personal contact with others. The power of visualization is what God gives a saint so that he can go beyond himself and be firmly placed into relationships he never before experienced.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The message of the prophets is that although they have forsaken God, it has not altered God. The Apostle Paul emphasizes the same truth, that God remains God even when we are unfaithful (see 2 Timothy 2:13). Never interpret God as changing with our changes. He never does; there is no variableness in Him. Notes on Ezekiel, 1477 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, February 10, 2017
The Illusion of Life - #7850
Our receptionist, Carol, always had nice flowers in her office-sort of flowers. Well, I mean, it looked like a beautiful bouquet. One day I walked into her office, and I sniffed and I said, "What's that smell, Carol? Is that flowers?" It was so nice to be greeted with this wonderful, spring-like aroma. She didn't answer me. She just reached into the top drawer in her desk and pulled out this air spray. "I sprayed it on the flowers," she told me. By now you know the truth about Carol's lovely flowers. They looked like they were alive. They smelled like they were alive. They were not alive!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Illusion of Life."
Our Word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 13. It's one of those parables of Jesus, and this one has one of the most sobering conclusions of any one He ever told. It's not about flowers, but it's about weeds and the illusion of life.
In verse 24, "Jesus told them another parable: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.'" Now, Jesus went on to say that the farmer's servants are concerned about this mixture of wheat and weeds so they ask, "'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' 'No', he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'"
Now what's this all about? Jesus explained it later. The wheat is the people who really have a relationship with Him. The weeds are people who look like they have a relationship with Him but really don't. Notice, the servants couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what wasn't. We can't tell. God can. According to Jesus, there are lots of folks who are sort of like our receptionist's artificial flowers, they look and smell and sound like they have eternal life, but the looks are deceiving, because somehow they have missed Jesus. And the difference will be very clear on Judgment Day, horribly clear. The weeds, Jesus said, will be burned. The wheat will be brought to Him.
It's an unsettling thought that sitting next to each other are two people who both look like they know Jesus, talk like they know Jesus, even act like they know Jesus, but one is headed to heaven, the other is headed to hell. The difference is whether or not there was a time when they, in their heart, went to the cross of Jesus and said, "Jesus, I am putting all my trust in You and what You did on that cross for me." It was there your sin-bill was paid. It is there that you trade in the death penalty you deserve for the eternal life you could never deserve.
Jesus told this story because He wants us to think about whether we really belong to Him. You may have a lot of Christianity but somehow you've missed Jesus. That's why God's Word says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith."
Do you know? Has there been a time when you gave yourself consciously to the One who died for you? Then you are wheat. If there hasn't been a time like that, you still don't have real life. That's the weeds. This might be Jesus giving you one more chance to move from the illusion of life to the real thing.
If you really don't belong to Jesus, would you tell Him that right now? If you're not sure you belong to Jesus, would you tell Him that right now? And if you'd like more information; if you'd like to nail down for sure to get this settled, go to our website. That's what it's there for. It's ANewStory.com.
Christian answers, Christian values, Christian beliefs, a Christian image, those can all be just the illusion of life. The real thing? It's within your reach right now knowing you belong to Jesus and knowing you will be with Him forever.
The word inheritance is to Joshua’s book what delis are to Manhattan: everywhere! The word appears nearly sixty times. The command to possess the land is seen five times. The great accomplishment of the Hebrew people came down to this– “So Joshua let the people depart, each to his own inheritance” (Joshua 24:28).
Is it time for you to receive yours? If you have given your heart to Christ, God has “blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). Note the tense– “he has blessed.” Not “he will bless, might bless, or someday could possibly bless.” You have access to every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. This may well be the best-kept secret in Christendom. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
From God is With You Every Day
Jeremiah 22
Walking Out on the Covenant of God
1-3 God’s orders: “Go to the royal palace and deliver this Message. Say, ‘Listen to what God says, O King of Judah, you who sit on David’s throne—you and your officials and all the people who go in and out of these palace gates. This is God’s Message: Attend to matters of justice. Set things right between people. Rescue victims from their exploiters. Don’t take advantage of the homeless, the orphans, the widows. Stop the murdering!
4-5 “‘If you obey these commands, then kings who follow in the line of David will continue to go in and out of these palace gates mounted on horses and riding in chariots—they and their officials and the citizens of Judah. But if you don’t obey these commands, then I swear—God’s Decree!—this palace will end up a heap of rubble.’”
6-7 This is God’s verdict on Judah’s royal palace:
“I number you among my favorite places—
like the lovely hills of Gilead,
like the soaring peaks of Lebanon.
Yet I swear I’ll turn you into a wasteland,
as empty as a ghost town.
I’ll hire a demolition crew,
well-equipped with sledgehammers and wrecking bars,
Pound the country to a pulp
and burn it all up.
8-9 “Travelers from all over will come through here and say to one another, ‘Why would God do such a thing to this wonderful city?’ They’ll be told, ‘Because they walked out on the covenant of their God, took up with other gods and worshiped them.’”
Building a Fine House but Destroying Lives
10 Don’t weep over dead King Josiah.
Don’t waste your tears.
Weep for his exiled son:
He’s gone for good.
He’ll never see home again.
11-12 For this is God’s Word on Shallum son of Josiah, who succeeded his father as king of Judah: “He’s gone from here, gone for good. He’ll die in the place they’ve taken him to. He’ll never see home again.”
13-17 “Doom to him who builds palaces but bullies people,
who makes a fine house but destroys lives,
Who cheats his workers
and won’t pay them for their work,
Who says, ‘I’ll build me an elaborate mansion
with spacious rooms and fancy windows.
I’ll bring in rare and expensive woods
and the latest in interior decor.’
So, that makes you a king—
living in a fancy palace?
Your father got along just fine, didn’t he?
He did what was right and treated people fairly,
And things went well with him.
He stuck up for the down-and-out,
And things went well for Judah.
Isn’t this what it means to know me?”
God’s Decree!
“But you’re blind and brainless.
All you think about is yourself,
Taking advantage of the weak,
bulldozing your way, bullying victims.”
18-19 This is God’s epitaph on Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah:
“Doom to this man!
Nobody will shed tears over him,
‘Poor, poor brother!’
Nobody will shed tears over him,
‘Poor, poor master!’
They’ll give him a donkey’s funeral,
drag him out of the city and dump him.
You’ve Made a Total Mess of Your Life
20-23 “People of Jerusalem, climb a Lebanon peak and weep,
climb a Bashan mountain and wail,
Climb the Abarim ridge and cry—
you’ve made a total mess of your life.
I spoke to you when everything was going your way.
You said, ‘I’m not interested.’
You’ve been that way as long as I’ve known you,
never listened to a thing I said.
All your leaders will be blown away,
all your friends end up in exile,
And you’ll find yourself in the gutter,
disgraced by your evil life.
You big-city people thought you were so important,
thought you were ‘king of the mountain’!
You’re soon going to be doubled up in pain,
pain worse than the pangs of childbirth.
24-26 “As sure as I am the living God”—God’s Decree—“even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, I’d pull you off and give you to those who are out to kill you, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Chaldeans, and then throw you, both you and your mother, into a foreign country, far from your place of birth. There you’ll both die.
27 “You’ll be homesick, desperately homesick, but you’ll never get home again.”
28-30 Is Jehoiachin a leaky bucket,
a rusted-out pail good for nothing?
Why else would he be thrown away, he and his children,
thrown away to a foreign place?
O land, land, land,
listen to God’s Message!
This is God’s verdict:
“Write this man off as if he were childless,
a man who will never amount to anything.
Nothing will ever come of his life.
He’s the end of the line, the last of the kings.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, February 10, 2017
Read: John 13:12–26
10-12 Jesus said, “If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene. So now you’re clean. But not every one of you.” (He knew who was betraying him. That’s why he said, “Not every one of you.”) After he had finished washing their feet, he took his robe, put it back on, and went back to his place at the table.
12-17 Then he said, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You address me as ‘Teacher’ and ‘Master,’ and rightly so. That is what I am. So if I, the Master and Teacher, washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet. I’ve laid down a pattern for you. What I’ve done, you do. I’m only pointing out the obvious. A servant is not ranked above his master; an employee doesn’t give orders to the employer. If you understand what I’m telling you, act like it—and live a blessed life.
The One Who Ate Bread at My Table
18-20 “I’m not including all of you in this. I know precisely whom I’ve selected, so as not to interfere with the fulfillment of this Scripture:
The one who ate bread at my table
Turned on his heel against me.
“I’m telling you all this ahead of time so that when it happens you will believe that I am who I say I am. Make sure you get this right: Receiving someone I send is the same as receiving me, just as receiving me is the same as receiving the One who sent me.”
21 After he said these things, Jesus became visibly upset, and then he told them why. “One of you is going to betray me.”
22-25 The disciples looked around at one another, wondering who on earth he was talking about. One of the disciples, the one Jesus loved dearly, was reclining against him, his head on his shoulder. Peter motioned to him to ask who Jesus might be talking about. So, being the closest, he said, “Master, who?”
26-27 Jesus said, “The one to whom I give this crust of bread after I’ve dipped it.” Then he dipped the crust and gave it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. As soon as the bread was in his hand, Satan entered him.
“What you must do,” said Jesus, “do. Do it and get it over with.”
Leaning on Jesus
By James Banks
One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. John 13:23
Sometimes when I put my head on my pillow at night and pray, I imagine I’m leaning on Jesus. Whenever I do this, I remember something the Word of God tells us about the apostle John. John himself writes about how he was sitting beside Jesus at the Last Supper: “One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him” (John 13:23).
John used the term “the disciple whom Jesus loved” as a way of referring to himself without mentioning his own name. He is also depicting a typical banquet setting in first-century Israel, where the table was much lower than those we use today, about knee height. Reclining without chairs on a mat or cushions was the natural position for those around the table. John was sitting so close to the Lord that when he turned to ask him a question, he was “leaning back against Jesus” (John 13:25), with his head on his chest.
God, I cast all my cares on You and praise You because You are faithful.
John’s closeness to Jesus in that moment provides a helpful illustration for our lives with Him today. We may not be able to touch Jesus physically, but we can entrust the weightiest circumstances of our lives to Him. He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). How blessed we are to have a Savior whom we can trust to be faithful through every circumstance of our lives! Are you “leaning” on Him today?
Dear Lord Jesus, help me to lean on You today and to trust You as my source of strength and hope. I cast all my cares on You and praise You because You are faithful.
Jesus alone gives the rest we need.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, February 10, 2017
Is Your Ability to See God Blinded?
Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things… —Isaiah 40:26
The people of God in Isaiah’s time had blinded their minds’ ability to see God by looking on the face of idols. But Isaiah made them look up at the heavens; that is, he made them begin to use their power to think and to visualize correctly. If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in nature and will realize that it is holy and sacred. We will see God reaching out to us in every wind that blows, every sunrise and sunset, every cloud in the sky, every flower that blooms, and every leaf that fades, if we will only begin to use our blinded thinking to visualize it.
The real test of spiritual focus is being able to bring your mind and thoughts under control. Is your mind focused on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Is it your work? Is it your idea of what a servant should be, or maybe your experience of salvation and sanctification? If so, then your ability to see God is blinded. You will be powerless when faced with difficulties and will be forced to endure in darkness. If your power to see has been blinded, don’t look back on your own experiences, but look to God. It is God you need. Go beyond yourself and away from the faces of your idols and away from everything else that has been blinding your thinking. Wake up and accept the ridicule that Isaiah gave to his people, and deliberately turn your thoughts and your eyes to God.
One of the reasons for our sense of futility in prayer is that we have lost our power to visualize. We can no longer even imagine putting ourselves deliberately before God. It is actually more important to be broken bread and poured-out wine in the area of intercession than in our personal contact with others. The power of visualization is what God gives a saint so that he can go beyond himself and be firmly placed into relationships he never before experienced.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The message of the prophets is that although they have forsaken God, it has not altered God. The Apostle Paul emphasizes the same truth, that God remains God even when we are unfaithful (see 2 Timothy 2:13). Never interpret God as changing with our changes. He never does; there is no variableness in Him. Notes on Ezekiel, 1477 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, February 10, 2017
The Illusion of Life - #7850
Our receptionist, Carol, always had nice flowers in her office-sort of flowers. Well, I mean, it looked like a beautiful bouquet. One day I walked into her office, and I sniffed and I said, "What's that smell, Carol? Is that flowers?" It was so nice to be greeted with this wonderful, spring-like aroma. She didn't answer me. She just reached into the top drawer in her desk and pulled out this air spray. "I sprayed it on the flowers," she told me. By now you know the truth about Carol's lovely flowers. They looked like they were alive. They smelled like they were alive. They were not alive!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Illusion of Life."
Our Word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 13. It's one of those parables of Jesus, and this one has one of the most sobering conclusions of any one He ever told. It's not about flowers, but it's about weeds and the illusion of life.
In verse 24, "Jesus told them another parable: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.'" Now, Jesus went on to say that the farmer's servants are concerned about this mixture of wheat and weeds so they ask, "'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' 'No', he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'"
Now what's this all about? Jesus explained it later. The wheat is the people who really have a relationship with Him. The weeds are people who look like they have a relationship with Him but really don't. Notice, the servants couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what wasn't. We can't tell. God can. According to Jesus, there are lots of folks who are sort of like our receptionist's artificial flowers, they look and smell and sound like they have eternal life, but the looks are deceiving, because somehow they have missed Jesus. And the difference will be very clear on Judgment Day, horribly clear. The weeds, Jesus said, will be burned. The wheat will be brought to Him.
It's an unsettling thought that sitting next to each other are two people who both look like they know Jesus, talk like they know Jesus, even act like they know Jesus, but one is headed to heaven, the other is headed to hell. The difference is whether or not there was a time when they, in their heart, went to the cross of Jesus and said, "Jesus, I am putting all my trust in You and what You did on that cross for me." It was there your sin-bill was paid. It is there that you trade in the death penalty you deserve for the eternal life you could never deserve.
Jesus told this story because He wants us to think about whether we really belong to Him. You may have a lot of Christianity but somehow you've missed Jesus. That's why God's Word says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith."
Do you know? Has there been a time when you gave yourself consciously to the One who died for you? Then you are wheat. If there hasn't been a time like that, you still don't have real life. That's the weeds. This might be Jesus giving you one more chance to move from the illusion of life to the real thing.
If you really don't belong to Jesus, would you tell Him that right now? If you're not sure you belong to Jesus, would you tell Him that right now? And if you'd like more information; if you'd like to nail down for sure to get this settled, go to our website. That's what it's there for. It's ANewStory.com.
Christian answers, Christian values, Christian beliefs, a Christian image, those can all be just the illusion of life. The real thing? It's within your reach right now knowing you belong to Jesus and knowing you will be with Him forever.
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Hebrews 3, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: WAVE THE WHITE FLAG
How do you deal with your guilt? Many voices urge you to look deep within and find an invisible strength or hidden power. This is a dangerous exercise. Self-assessment without God’s guidance leads to either denial or shame. We need neither!
We need a prayer of grace-based confession, like David’s. After a year of denial, he finally prayed, “God, be merciful to me because you are loving. Because you are always ready to be merciful, wipe out all my wrongs. Wash away all my guilt and make me clean again. I know about my wrongs and I can’t forget my sin…You are right when you speak and fair when you judge” (Psalm 51:1-4 NCV).
David waved the white flag. He came clean with God. And you? Are you ready to wave the white flag and admit your arguments are futile? Are you ready to come clean with God?
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 3
The Centerpiece of All We Believe
1-6 So, my dear Christian friends, companions in following this call to the heights, take a good hard look at Jesus. He’s the centerpiece of everything we believe, faithful in everything God gave him to do. Moses was also faithful, but Jesus gets far more honor. A builder is more valuable than a building any day. Every house has a builder, but the Builder behind them all is God. Moses did a good job in God’s house, but it was all servant work, getting things ready for what was to come. Christ as Son is in charge of the house.
6-11 Now, if we can only keep a firm grip on this bold confidence, we’re the house! That’s why the Holy Spirit says,
Today, please listen;
don’t turn a deaf ear as in “the bitter uprising,”
that time of wilderness testing!
Even though they watched me at work for forty years,
your ancestors refused to let me do it my way;
over and over they tried my patience.
And I was provoked, oh, so provoked!
I said, “They’ll never keep their minds on God;
they refuse to walk down my road.”
Exasperated, I vowed,
“They’ll never get where they’re going,
never be able to sit down and rest.”
12-14 So watch your step, friends. Make sure there’s no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God. For as long as it’s still God’s Today, keep each other on your toes so sin doesn’t slow down your reflexes. If we can only keep our grip on the sure thing we started out with, we’re in this with Christ for the long haul.
These words keep ringing in our ears:
Today, please listen;
don’t turn a deaf ear as in the bitter uprising.
15-19 For who were the people who turned a deaf ear? Weren’t they the very ones Moses led out of Egypt? And who was God provoked with for forty years? Wasn’t it those who turned a deaf ear and ended up corpses in the wilderness? And when he swore that they’d never get where they were going, wasn’t he talking to the ones who turned a deaf ear? They never got there because they never listened, never believed.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, February 09, 2017
Read: 1 John 1:8–2:2
8-10 If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.
2 1-2 I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When he served as a sacrifice for our sins, he solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s.
The Only Way to Know We’re in Him
2-3 Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep his commandments.
INSIGHT:
John encourages us to be honest about ourselves. Actually, his words are more of a warning than they are encouragement. Writing to a struggling church, John reminds his readers that we all struggle with sin and the claim that we don’t struggle has several drastic consequences: We deceive ourselves, the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8), we make God out to be a liar, and His word is not in us (v. 10). But John’s point is not a downer. Those warnings surround a very familiar promise. Our sins do not keep us from God—because when we acknowledge (confess) them, we are forgiven for them (v. 9). What do you need to confess as sin and then trust that God has forgiven?
The Advocate
By Mart DeHaan
If anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 1 John 2:1
From a Florida prison cell in June 1962, Clarence Earl Gideon wrote a note asking the United States Supreme Court to review his conviction for a crime he said he didn’t commit. He added that he didn’t have the means to hire a lawyer.
One year later, in the historic case of Gideon v. Wainright, the Supreme Court ruled that people who cannot afford the cost of their own defense must be given a public defender—an advocate—provided by the state. With this decision, and with the help of a court-appointed lawyer, Clarence Gideon was retried and acquitted.
Help us to know what it means to have the freedom of Your love and presence.
But what if we are not innocent? According to the apostle Paul, we are all guilty. But the court of heaven provides an Advocate who, at God’s expense, offers to defend and care for our soul (1 John 2:2). On behalf of His Father, Jesus comes to us offering a freedom that even prison inmates have described as better than anything they’ve experienced on the outside. It is a freedom of heart and mind.
Whether suffering for wrongs done by us or to us, we all can be represented by Jesus. By the highest of authority He responds to every request for mercy, forgiveness, and comfort.
Jesus, our Advocate, can turn a prison of lost hope, fear, or regret into the place of His presence.
Father in heaven, please help us to know what it means to have the freedom of Your love and presence. May we experience this freedom even in places that we have only seen as our confinement!
The one who died as our substitute now lives as our advocate.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, February 09, 2017
Are You Exhausted Spiritually?
The everlasting God…neither faints nor is weary. —Isaiah 40:28
Exhaustion means that our vital energies are completely worn out and spent. Spiritual exhaustion is never the result of sin, but of service. Whether or not you experience exhaustion will depend on where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter, “Feed My sheep,” but He gave him nothing with which to feed them (John 21:17). The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people’s souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you completely— to the very last drop. But be careful to replenish your supply, or you will quickly be utterly exhausted. Until others learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus directly, they will have to draw on His life through you. You must literally be their source of supply, until they learn to take their nourishment from God. We owe it to God to be our best for His lambs and sheep, as well as for Him.
Have you delivered yourself over to exhaustion because of the way you have been serving God? If so, then renew and rekindle your desires and affections. Examine your reasons for service. Is your source based on your own understanding or is it grounded on the redemption of Jesus Christ? Continually look back to the foundation of your love and affection and remember where your Source of power lies. You have no right to complain, “O Lord, I am so exhausted.” He saved and sanctified you to exhaust you. Be exhausted for God, but remember that He is your supply. “All my springs are in you” (Psalm 87:7).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Beware of bartering the Word of God for a more suitable conception of your own. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, February 09, 2017
Calling Christians Out of Their Room - #7849
It's amazing how quickly you can get three hundred college men to change their plans on a moment's notice. It happened several times when I was in school. Oh, it's late at night; we're all up in our rooms studying, sleeping, or goofing off, and we're certainly not planning to go out. Yet, within a matter of minutes all three hundred men are out of their rooms and out of the dorm. It's amazing what one fire bell can do, huh? Oh, there was no fire, just an occasional fire drill. But the call summoned us from whatever we were buried in, brought us out of our rooms, and out into the night.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Calling Christians Out of Their Room."
Now, you can't read the book of Acts without marveling at the explosive impact of those first Christians. They rocked their city, they saw thousands come to Christ, and they saw people come to Christ daily. They made such an impact it spread across the world and twenty centuries, and guess what? They had the same Savior we have, and the same Holy Spirit living in them! So what happened? Well, let's look at one of those keys to life-changing, city-changing, world-changing Christianity.
Our word for today from the Word of God, Acts 4:31, it says, "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind No one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the Apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all" If you compare this chapter with chapter 2, it says in just three verses, they were together, together, together. Three times it says that. See, these people had a life or death message to deliver. They realized the urgency and the enormity of getting the Gospel out to an area that was unreached, and they knew they had to work on it together.
C. S. Lewis suggested that Christianity is like this big house. And I'm going to borrow from his example and add to it a little. Everybody enters the house through the same long hallway. In that corridor you've got the cross and the empty tomb. We all went there to get our sins forgiven, and that's how we came to Christ. Now, off the hall are a lot of little rooms. Not long after we come in the center corridor we find that we like one of those rooms and we go in it, and we stay there like college students on a busy night of studying.
In one of the rooms off the central corridor they're sprinkling people to baptize them, in another room they're dunking them, in another room they're speaking in tongues, in another room they're talking about people who speak in tongues. You know, in our rooms, we spend a lot of time on our group's distinctive; the things that make us, us; things that tend to divide us from the folks in the other rooms. Meanwhile, just outside the front door thousands are dying without Christ!
There is one call that has the power to do what the fire alarm did in our dorm that night and summoned us from our individual rooms to go out together. It is the call of Jesus to seek and save those who are lost. They need to be brought to the center corridor that we all claim, to get to the cross to have their sins forgiven, and the empty tomb to meet their living Savior. While we've been busy building our Christian sub-cultures we've lost our culture. One third of Americans say they've had no religious training, half of them say they're giving their children no religious training. Most of the people around know almost nothing about our Book or our Savior. Could it be it's because we've lost one of the powerful words of the early church-together?
This is a time for ordinary believers to look out the window and see the urgency and the enormity of reaching the lost out there and to begin to pull people out of their little rooms, out of their denominational and doctrinal turfs, to join in urgent prayer together for the lost, and aggressive plans to work together to reach them.
The Lord is sounding the alarm! If we hear His cry for harvest workers, we'll be out of our little room and pulling others out of theirs to rescue the people who are dying just outside.
How do you deal with your guilt? Many voices urge you to look deep within and find an invisible strength or hidden power. This is a dangerous exercise. Self-assessment without God’s guidance leads to either denial or shame. We need neither!
We need a prayer of grace-based confession, like David’s. After a year of denial, he finally prayed, “God, be merciful to me because you are loving. Because you are always ready to be merciful, wipe out all my wrongs. Wash away all my guilt and make me clean again. I know about my wrongs and I can’t forget my sin…You are right when you speak and fair when you judge” (Psalm 51:1-4 NCV).
David waved the white flag. He came clean with God. And you? Are you ready to wave the white flag and admit your arguments are futile? Are you ready to come clean with God?
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 3
The Centerpiece of All We Believe
1-6 So, my dear Christian friends, companions in following this call to the heights, take a good hard look at Jesus. He’s the centerpiece of everything we believe, faithful in everything God gave him to do. Moses was also faithful, but Jesus gets far more honor. A builder is more valuable than a building any day. Every house has a builder, but the Builder behind them all is God. Moses did a good job in God’s house, but it was all servant work, getting things ready for what was to come. Christ as Son is in charge of the house.
6-11 Now, if we can only keep a firm grip on this bold confidence, we’re the house! That’s why the Holy Spirit says,
Today, please listen;
don’t turn a deaf ear as in “the bitter uprising,”
that time of wilderness testing!
Even though they watched me at work for forty years,
your ancestors refused to let me do it my way;
over and over they tried my patience.
And I was provoked, oh, so provoked!
I said, “They’ll never keep their minds on God;
they refuse to walk down my road.”
Exasperated, I vowed,
“They’ll never get where they’re going,
never be able to sit down and rest.”
12-14 So watch your step, friends. Make sure there’s no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God. For as long as it’s still God’s Today, keep each other on your toes so sin doesn’t slow down your reflexes. If we can only keep our grip on the sure thing we started out with, we’re in this with Christ for the long haul.
These words keep ringing in our ears:
Today, please listen;
don’t turn a deaf ear as in the bitter uprising.
15-19 For who were the people who turned a deaf ear? Weren’t they the very ones Moses led out of Egypt? And who was God provoked with for forty years? Wasn’t it those who turned a deaf ear and ended up corpses in the wilderness? And when he swore that they’d never get where they were going, wasn’t he talking to the ones who turned a deaf ear? They never got there because they never listened, never believed.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, February 09, 2017
Read: 1 John 1:8–2:2
8-10 If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.
2 1-2 I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When he served as a sacrifice for our sins, he solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s.
The Only Way to Know We’re in Him
2-3 Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep his commandments.
INSIGHT:
John encourages us to be honest about ourselves. Actually, his words are more of a warning than they are encouragement. Writing to a struggling church, John reminds his readers that we all struggle with sin and the claim that we don’t struggle has several drastic consequences: We deceive ourselves, the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8), we make God out to be a liar, and His word is not in us (v. 10). But John’s point is not a downer. Those warnings surround a very familiar promise. Our sins do not keep us from God—because when we acknowledge (confess) them, we are forgiven for them (v. 9). What do you need to confess as sin and then trust that God has forgiven?
The Advocate
By Mart DeHaan
If anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 1 John 2:1
From a Florida prison cell in June 1962, Clarence Earl Gideon wrote a note asking the United States Supreme Court to review his conviction for a crime he said he didn’t commit. He added that he didn’t have the means to hire a lawyer.
One year later, in the historic case of Gideon v. Wainright, the Supreme Court ruled that people who cannot afford the cost of their own defense must be given a public defender—an advocate—provided by the state. With this decision, and with the help of a court-appointed lawyer, Clarence Gideon was retried and acquitted.
Help us to know what it means to have the freedom of Your love and presence.
But what if we are not innocent? According to the apostle Paul, we are all guilty. But the court of heaven provides an Advocate who, at God’s expense, offers to defend and care for our soul (1 John 2:2). On behalf of His Father, Jesus comes to us offering a freedom that even prison inmates have described as better than anything they’ve experienced on the outside. It is a freedom of heart and mind.
Whether suffering for wrongs done by us or to us, we all can be represented by Jesus. By the highest of authority He responds to every request for mercy, forgiveness, and comfort.
Jesus, our Advocate, can turn a prison of lost hope, fear, or regret into the place of His presence.
Father in heaven, please help us to know what it means to have the freedom of Your love and presence. May we experience this freedom even in places that we have only seen as our confinement!
The one who died as our substitute now lives as our advocate.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, February 09, 2017
Are You Exhausted Spiritually?
The everlasting God…neither faints nor is weary. —Isaiah 40:28
Exhaustion means that our vital energies are completely worn out and spent. Spiritual exhaustion is never the result of sin, but of service. Whether or not you experience exhaustion will depend on where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter, “Feed My sheep,” but He gave him nothing with which to feed them (John 21:17). The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people’s souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you completely— to the very last drop. But be careful to replenish your supply, or you will quickly be utterly exhausted. Until others learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus directly, they will have to draw on His life through you. You must literally be their source of supply, until they learn to take their nourishment from God. We owe it to God to be our best for His lambs and sheep, as well as for Him.
Have you delivered yourself over to exhaustion because of the way you have been serving God? If so, then renew and rekindle your desires and affections. Examine your reasons for service. Is your source based on your own understanding or is it grounded on the redemption of Jesus Christ? Continually look back to the foundation of your love and affection and remember where your Source of power lies. You have no right to complain, “O Lord, I am so exhausted.” He saved and sanctified you to exhaust you. Be exhausted for God, but remember that He is your supply. “All my springs are in you” (Psalm 87:7).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Beware of bartering the Word of God for a more suitable conception of your own. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, February 09, 2017
Calling Christians Out of Their Room - #7849
It's amazing how quickly you can get three hundred college men to change their plans on a moment's notice. It happened several times when I was in school. Oh, it's late at night; we're all up in our rooms studying, sleeping, or goofing off, and we're certainly not planning to go out. Yet, within a matter of minutes all three hundred men are out of their rooms and out of the dorm. It's amazing what one fire bell can do, huh? Oh, there was no fire, just an occasional fire drill. But the call summoned us from whatever we were buried in, brought us out of our rooms, and out into the night.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Calling Christians Out of Their Room."
Now, you can't read the book of Acts without marveling at the explosive impact of those first Christians. They rocked their city, they saw thousands come to Christ, and they saw people come to Christ daily. They made such an impact it spread across the world and twenty centuries, and guess what? They had the same Savior we have, and the same Holy Spirit living in them! So what happened? Well, let's look at one of those keys to life-changing, city-changing, world-changing Christianity.
Our word for today from the Word of God, Acts 4:31, it says, "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind No one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the Apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all" If you compare this chapter with chapter 2, it says in just three verses, they were together, together, together. Three times it says that. See, these people had a life or death message to deliver. They realized the urgency and the enormity of getting the Gospel out to an area that was unreached, and they knew they had to work on it together.
C. S. Lewis suggested that Christianity is like this big house. And I'm going to borrow from his example and add to it a little. Everybody enters the house through the same long hallway. In that corridor you've got the cross and the empty tomb. We all went there to get our sins forgiven, and that's how we came to Christ. Now, off the hall are a lot of little rooms. Not long after we come in the center corridor we find that we like one of those rooms and we go in it, and we stay there like college students on a busy night of studying.
In one of the rooms off the central corridor they're sprinkling people to baptize them, in another room they're dunking them, in another room they're speaking in tongues, in another room they're talking about people who speak in tongues. You know, in our rooms, we spend a lot of time on our group's distinctive; the things that make us, us; things that tend to divide us from the folks in the other rooms. Meanwhile, just outside the front door thousands are dying without Christ!
There is one call that has the power to do what the fire alarm did in our dorm that night and summoned us from our individual rooms to go out together. It is the call of Jesus to seek and save those who are lost. They need to be brought to the center corridor that we all claim, to get to the cross to have their sins forgiven, and the empty tomb to meet their living Savior. While we've been busy building our Christian sub-cultures we've lost our culture. One third of Americans say they've had no religious training, half of them say they're giving their children no religious training. Most of the people around know almost nothing about our Book or our Savior. Could it be it's because we've lost one of the powerful words of the early church-together?
This is a time for ordinary believers to look out the window and see the urgency and the enormity of reaching the lost out there and to begin to pull people out of their little rooms, out of their denominational and doctrinal turfs, to join in urgent prayer together for the lost, and aggressive plans to work together to reach them.
The Lord is sounding the alarm! If we hear His cry for harvest workers, we'll be out of our little room and pulling others out of theirs to rescue the people who are dying just outside.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Hebrews 2, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: A SHORT-TERM CONDITION
Perhaps you need the reminder that I need— Don’t put your trust in stuff! Paul told Timothy, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17 NIV).
The “rich in this. . .world.” That’s you. That’s me. If you have enough education to listen to this program, enough resources to own a book, you likely qualify as a prosperous person. And that’s okay. Prosperity is a common consequence of faithfulness. Paul didn’t tell the rich to feel guilty about being rich; he just urged caution. Money is just a short-term condition. The abundance or lack of it will only be felt for one life. So, if you have a lot, don’t put your trust in it. Put your trust in God.
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 2
1-4 It’s crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift off. If the old message delivered by the angels was valid and nobody got away with anything, do you think we can risk neglecting this latest message, this magnificent salvation? First of all, it was delivered in person by the Master, then accurately passed on to us by those who heard it from him. All the while God was validating it with gifts through the Holy Spirit, all sorts of signs and miracles, as he saw fit.
The Salvation Pioneer
5-9 God didn’t put angels in charge of this business of salvation that we’re dealing with here. It says in Scripture,
What is man and woman that you bother with them;
why take a second look their way?
You made them not quite as high as angels,
bright with Eden’s dawn light;
Then you put them in charge
of your entire handcrafted world.
When God put them in charge of everything, nothing was excluded. But we don’t see it yet, don’t see everything under human jurisdiction. What we do see is Jesus, made “not quite as high as angels,” and then, through the experience of death, crowned so much higher than any angel, with a glory “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place.
10-13 It makes good sense that the God who got everything started and keeps everything going now completes the work by making the Salvation Pioneer perfect through suffering as he leads all these people to glory. Since the One who saves and those who are saved have a common origin, Jesus doesn’t hesitate to treat them as family, saying,
I’ll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you;
I’ll join them in worship and praise to you.
Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says,
Even I live by placing my trust in God.
And yet again,
I’m here with the children God gave me.
14-15 Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it’s logical that the Savior took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.
16-18 It’s obvious, of course, that he didn’t go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham. That’s why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people’s sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Read: 1 Samuel 20:35–42
In the morning, Jonathan went to the field for the appointment with David. He had his young servant with him. He told the servant, “Run and get the arrows I’m about to shoot.” The boy started running and Jonathan shot an arrow way beyond him. As the boy came to the area where the arrow had been shot, Jonathan yelled out, “Isn’t the arrow farther out?” He yelled again, “Hurry! Quickly! Don’t just stand there!” Jonathan’s servant then picked up the arrow and brought it to his master. The boy, of course, knew nothing of what was going on. Only Jonathan and David knew.
40-41 Jonathan gave his quiver and bow to the boy and sent him back to town. After the servant was gone, David got up from his hiding place beside the boulder, then fell on his face to the ground—three times prostrating himself! And then they kissed one another and wept, friend over friend, David weeping especially hard.
42 Jonathan said, “Go in peace! The two of us have vowed friendship in God’s name, saying, ‘God will be the bond between me and you, and between my children and your children forever!’”
INSIGHT:
Although Jonathan was the son of the king and in line for the throne, he was willing to sacrifice his own advancement and, instead, promote David. Throughout the years of their relationship, Jonathan showed the hallmarks of a true friend and brother, regarding David as more important than himself and seeking to put David’s interest ahead of his own. What are some characteristics of lasting, meaningful friendships (see Prov. 17:17)? What kinds of sacrifices are necessary in order to build a significant friendship (see Phil. 2:3–4)? How can our friendships represent the heart of Christ for us? (see John 15:15).
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
By Keila Ochoa
Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. Hebrews 13:5
A dear friend of mine sent me a text message that said, “I’m so glad we can tell each other the good, the bad, and the ugly!” We have been friends for many years, and we have learned to share our joys and our failures. We recognize we are far from perfect, so we share our struggles but we also rejoice in each other’s successes.
David and Jonathan had a solid friendship too, beginning with the good days of David’s victory over Goliath (1 Sam. 18:1–4). They shared their fears during the bad days of Jonathan’s father’s jealousy (18:6–11; 20:1–2). Finally, they suffered together during the ugly days of Saul’s plans to kill David (20:42).
Real friendships are a gift from God.
Good friends don’t abandon us when external circumstances change. They stay with us through the good and the bad days. Good friends also may point us to God in the ugly days, when we may feel tempted to walk away from our Lord.
Real friendships are a gift from God because they exemplify the perfect Friend, who remains loyal through the good, the bad, and the ugly days. As the Lord reminds us, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).
Dear Lord, I thank You for the good friends You have placed in my life, but above all, I thank You for Your friendship.
Read about living in the power of the Spirit and serving one another in love at discoveryseries.org/q0214.
A friend is the first person who comes in when the whole world has gone out.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
The Cost of Sanctification
May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely… —1 Thessalonians 5:23
When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared for God to perform in us everything for which He separated us? And after He has done His work, are we then prepared to separate ourselves to God just as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself…” (John 17:19). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God.
Are we prepared to be caught up into the full meaning of Paul’s prayer in this verse? Are we prepared to say, “Lord, make me, a sinner saved by grace, as holy as You can”? Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him, just as He is one with the Father (see John 17:21-23). The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1449 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Takes a Lickin', Keeps On Tickin' - #7848
It's pretty funny how far some advertisers will go to convince you that you should buy their product. Years ago, I remember there were some Samsonite luggage commercials. They had a suitcase in the gorilla cage, taking every form of abuse a gorilla could give it. And then there was the one where they threw it out of a plane and it survived. But the pioneers of this kind of "hammer it to prove it" advertising were the makers of Timex watches. Their motto was really hard to forget, "takes a lickin', keeps on tickin'." I don't remember all the ways they beat up on their watches, but it seems to me that they attached one to a ski boat and one to the underside of a truck that was bouncing along a bumpy road. They gave it all kinds of hammering that proved the quality of their product.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Takes a Lickin', Keeps On Tickin'."
It may be that you are going through a time when you've been hit pretty hard, when everything is being shaken. And you're asking the question we all want answered in times like these, "Why?" Now you're never going to know the whole answer until you're with Jesus in heaven. But God does pull the curtain back to show you a little of the reason for the hammering you're experiencing.
That's in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:6-7. The people God is addressing through Peter are people whose entire world has been turned upside-down. They have paid for their faithfulness to Jesus Christ by being persecuted. They've been driven from their homes, their city, they're scattered all over the map and some of these folks have probably lost everything. Here's what God says, "for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith may be proved genuine."
Notice the word used to describe the hurting time, "trials." A trial is a test that reveals the quality of the product. Like those watches; like you right now. No doubt, you have had assignments from God that you've enjoyed more than this, but God has trusted you with this painful assignment every bit as much as He gave you those other assignments. Why? To show the quality of Jesus Christ and your faith in Him.
Every approach, every lifestyle works when things are going well. Anybody can be positive and joyful and unselfish in good times. That's no test. The test of what's real is the hammering times. People saw what those Timex watches could handle, and they wanted one. People will see what you and Jesus can handle, and they may very well want Him for themselves.
If you're struggling to make some sense of this upheaval, remember that God has sent or allowed it so your faith could be "proved genuine." So how are you doing with that? Would people who are watching you right now, and watching your actions and attitude, would they say, "What he has, what she has is really real?" If all you believe about Jesus' love and power and hope is for real, then this could be the greatest opportunity you've ever had in your life to prove it. Preaching won't convince a lot of people, Christian beliefs or activities might not, but who can deny the reality of a hope that is still there after the heavy blows when there seems to be no reason for hope?
If you can hang onto Jesus, if you could be like Jesus in this pain, you will prove your faith is genuine first to yourself. You will have the deepest confidence in Jesus you have ever had because you've experienced what He can do when no one else can help. You'll also prove your faith is genuine to the people who are watching you, whose own relationship with Jesus might depend on how you weather this beating. And you'll prove the reality of your faith to God whose waiting to bless you in extraordinary ways. That's what He does for those who are faithful to Him when there seems to be no reason to be.
So hang on, even if you're getting banged around right now. This is the test to see whether or not when you're "takin' a lickin", you will "keep on tickin'."
Perhaps you need the reminder that I need— Don’t put your trust in stuff! Paul told Timothy, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17 NIV).
The “rich in this. . .world.” That’s you. That’s me. If you have enough education to listen to this program, enough resources to own a book, you likely qualify as a prosperous person. And that’s okay. Prosperity is a common consequence of faithfulness. Paul didn’t tell the rich to feel guilty about being rich; he just urged caution. Money is just a short-term condition. The abundance or lack of it will only be felt for one life. So, if you have a lot, don’t put your trust in it. Put your trust in God.
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 2
1-4 It’s crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift off. If the old message delivered by the angels was valid and nobody got away with anything, do you think we can risk neglecting this latest message, this magnificent salvation? First of all, it was delivered in person by the Master, then accurately passed on to us by those who heard it from him. All the while God was validating it with gifts through the Holy Spirit, all sorts of signs and miracles, as he saw fit.
The Salvation Pioneer
5-9 God didn’t put angels in charge of this business of salvation that we’re dealing with here. It says in Scripture,
What is man and woman that you bother with them;
why take a second look their way?
You made them not quite as high as angels,
bright with Eden’s dawn light;
Then you put them in charge
of your entire handcrafted world.
When God put them in charge of everything, nothing was excluded. But we don’t see it yet, don’t see everything under human jurisdiction. What we do see is Jesus, made “not quite as high as angels,” and then, through the experience of death, crowned so much higher than any angel, with a glory “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place.
10-13 It makes good sense that the God who got everything started and keeps everything going now completes the work by making the Salvation Pioneer perfect through suffering as he leads all these people to glory. Since the One who saves and those who are saved have a common origin, Jesus doesn’t hesitate to treat them as family, saying,
I’ll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you;
I’ll join them in worship and praise to you.
Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says,
Even I live by placing my trust in God.
And yet again,
I’m here with the children God gave me.
14-15 Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it’s logical that the Savior took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.
16-18 It’s obvious, of course, that he didn’t go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham. That’s why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people’s sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Read: 1 Samuel 20:35–42
In the morning, Jonathan went to the field for the appointment with David. He had his young servant with him. He told the servant, “Run and get the arrows I’m about to shoot.” The boy started running and Jonathan shot an arrow way beyond him. As the boy came to the area where the arrow had been shot, Jonathan yelled out, “Isn’t the arrow farther out?” He yelled again, “Hurry! Quickly! Don’t just stand there!” Jonathan’s servant then picked up the arrow and brought it to his master. The boy, of course, knew nothing of what was going on. Only Jonathan and David knew.
40-41 Jonathan gave his quiver and bow to the boy and sent him back to town. After the servant was gone, David got up from his hiding place beside the boulder, then fell on his face to the ground—three times prostrating himself! And then they kissed one another and wept, friend over friend, David weeping especially hard.
42 Jonathan said, “Go in peace! The two of us have vowed friendship in God’s name, saying, ‘God will be the bond between me and you, and between my children and your children forever!’”
INSIGHT:
Although Jonathan was the son of the king and in line for the throne, he was willing to sacrifice his own advancement and, instead, promote David. Throughout the years of their relationship, Jonathan showed the hallmarks of a true friend and brother, regarding David as more important than himself and seeking to put David’s interest ahead of his own. What are some characteristics of lasting, meaningful friendships (see Prov. 17:17)? What kinds of sacrifices are necessary in order to build a significant friendship (see Phil. 2:3–4)? How can our friendships represent the heart of Christ for us? (see John 15:15).
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
By Keila Ochoa
Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. Hebrews 13:5
A dear friend of mine sent me a text message that said, “I’m so glad we can tell each other the good, the bad, and the ugly!” We have been friends for many years, and we have learned to share our joys and our failures. We recognize we are far from perfect, so we share our struggles but we also rejoice in each other’s successes.
David and Jonathan had a solid friendship too, beginning with the good days of David’s victory over Goliath (1 Sam. 18:1–4). They shared their fears during the bad days of Jonathan’s father’s jealousy (18:6–11; 20:1–2). Finally, they suffered together during the ugly days of Saul’s plans to kill David (20:42).
Real friendships are a gift from God.
Good friends don’t abandon us when external circumstances change. They stay with us through the good and the bad days. Good friends also may point us to God in the ugly days, when we may feel tempted to walk away from our Lord.
Real friendships are a gift from God because they exemplify the perfect Friend, who remains loyal through the good, the bad, and the ugly days. As the Lord reminds us, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).
Dear Lord, I thank You for the good friends You have placed in my life, but above all, I thank You for Your friendship.
Read about living in the power of the Spirit and serving one another in love at discoveryseries.org/q0214.
A friend is the first person who comes in when the whole world has gone out.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
The Cost of Sanctification
May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely… —1 Thessalonians 5:23
When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared for God to perform in us everything for which He separated us? And after He has done His work, are we then prepared to separate ourselves to God just as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself…” (John 17:19). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God.
Are we prepared to be caught up into the full meaning of Paul’s prayer in this verse? Are we prepared to say, “Lord, make me, a sinner saved by grace, as holy as You can”? Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him, just as He is one with the Father (see John 17:21-23). The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1449 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Takes a Lickin', Keeps On Tickin' - #7848
It's pretty funny how far some advertisers will go to convince you that you should buy their product. Years ago, I remember there were some Samsonite luggage commercials. They had a suitcase in the gorilla cage, taking every form of abuse a gorilla could give it. And then there was the one where they threw it out of a plane and it survived. But the pioneers of this kind of "hammer it to prove it" advertising were the makers of Timex watches. Their motto was really hard to forget, "takes a lickin', keeps on tickin'." I don't remember all the ways they beat up on their watches, but it seems to me that they attached one to a ski boat and one to the underside of a truck that was bouncing along a bumpy road. They gave it all kinds of hammering that proved the quality of their product.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Takes a Lickin', Keeps On Tickin'."
It may be that you are going through a time when you've been hit pretty hard, when everything is being shaken. And you're asking the question we all want answered in times like these, "Why?" Now you're never going to know the whole answer until you're with Jesus in heaven. But God does pull the curtain back to show you a little of the reason for the hammering you're experiencing.
That's in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:6-7. The people God is addressing through Peter are people whose entire world has been turned upside-down. They have paid for their faithfulness to Jesus Christ by being persecuted. They've been driven from their homes, their city, they're scattered all over the map and some of these folks have probably lost everything. Here's what God says, "for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith may be proved genuine."
Notice the word used to describe the hurting time, "trials." A trial is a test that reveals the quality of the product. Like those watches; like you right now. No doubt, you have had assignments from God that you've enjoyed more than this, but God has trusted you with this painful assignment every bit as much as He gave you those other assignments. Why? To show the quality of Jesus Christ and your faith in Him.
Every approach, every lifestyle works when things are going well. Anybody can be positive and joyful and unselfish in good times. That's no test. The test of what's real is the hammering times. People saw what those Timex watches could handle, and they wanted one. People will see what you and Jesus can handle, and they may very well want Him for themselves.
If you're struggling to make some sense of this upheaval, remember that God has sent or allowed it so your faith could be "proved genuine." So how are you doing with that? Would people who are watching you right now, and watching your actions and attitude, would they say, "What he has, what she has is really real?" If all you believe about Jesus' love and power and hope is for real, then this could be the greatest opportunity you've ever had in your life to prove it. Preaching won't convince a lot of people, Christian beliefs or activities might not, but who can deny the reality of a hope that is still there after the heavy blows when there seems to be no reason for hope?
If you can hang onto Jesus, if you could be like Jesus in this pain, you will prove your faith is genuine first to yourself. You will have the deepest confidence in Jesus you have ever had because you've experienced what He can do when no one else can help. You'll also prove your faith is genuine to the people who are watching you, whose own relationship with Jesus might depend on how you weather this beating. And you'll prove the reality of your faith to God whose waiting to bless you in extraordinary ways. That's what He does for those who are faithful to Him when there seems to be no reason to be.
So hang on, even if you're getting banged around right now. This is the test to see whether or not when you're "takin' a lickin", you will "keep on tickin'."
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Jeremiah 47, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: WHO’S COMING TO DINNER?
The Greek word for hospitality compounds two terms: love and stranger. All of us can welcome a guest we know and love. But can we welcome a stranger?
In one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, he accompanied two disciples as they walked from Jerusalem to their village of Emmaus. It had been a long day. They had much on their minds. But their fellow traveler stirred a fire in their hearts. So they welcomed him in. They pulled out an extra chair, poured some water in the soup, and offered bread. Jesus blessed the bread, and when he did, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (Luke 24:31 NIV).
We still encounter people on the road. And sometimes we detect an urge to open our doors to them. In these moments let’s heed the inner voice. We never know whom we may be hosting for dinner.
From God Is With You Every Day
Jeremiah 47
It’s Doomsday for Philistines
1-5 God’s Message to the prophet Jeremiah regarding the Philistines just before Pharaoh attacked Gaza. This is what God says:
“Look out! Water will rise in the north country,
swelling like a river in flood.
The torrent will flood the land,
washing away city and citizen.
Men and women will scream in terror,
wails from every door and window,
As the thunder from the hooves of the horses will be heard,
the clatter of chariots, the banging of wheels.
Fathers, paralyzed by fear,
won’t even grab up their babies
Because it will be doomsday for Philistines, one and all,
no hope of help for Tyre and Sidon.
God will finish off the Philistines,
what’s left of those from the island of Crete.
Gaza will be shaved bald as an egg,
Ashkelon struck dumb as a post.
You’re on your last legs.
How long will you keep flailing?
6 “Oh, Sword of God,
how long will you keep this up?
Return to your scabbard.
Haven’t you had enough? Can’t you call it quits?
7 “But how can it quit
when I, God, command the action?
I’ve ordered it to cut down
Ashkelon and the seacoast.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Read: Philippians 4:4–9
4-5 Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!
6-7 Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
INSIGHT:
Paul’s encouragement to rejoice in difficult situations wasn’t from the perspective of someone who did not understand suffering. On Paul’s second missionary journey (ad 50–52), he was falsely accused of disturbing the social peace of the city. Severely flogged and unjustly imprisoned (Acts 16:20–25), Paul remained a picture of calmness and peace. Luke tells us that in the midst of such adversity, “Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God” (v. 25). Paul knew what it meant to “not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil. 4:6). He could write these words because he himself practiced them. Are you at peace like Paul when life is difficult?
Does It Spark Joy?
By David McCasland
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true . . . noble . . . right . . . pure . . . lovely . . . admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8
A young Japanese woman’s book on decluttering and organizing has sold two million copies worldwide. The heart of Marie Kondo’s message is helping people get rid of unneeded things in their homes and closets—things that weigh them down. “Hold up each item,” she says, “and ask, ‘Does it spark joy?’” If the answer is yes, keep it. If the answer is no, then give it away.
The apostle Paul urged the Christians in Philippi to pursue joy in their relationship with Christ. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4). Instead of a life cluttered with anxiety, he urged them to pray about everything and let God’s peace guard their hearts and minds in Christ (vv. 6–7).
Let God’s peace guard your heart and mind in Christ. Philippians 4:6-7
Looking at our everyday tasks and responsibilities, we see that not all of them are enjoyable. But we can ask, “How can this spark joy in God’s heart and in my own?” A change in why we do things can bring a transformation in the way we feel about them.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true . . . noble . . . right . . . pure . . . lovely . . . admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (v. 8).
Paul’s parting words are food for thought and a recipe for joy.
Lord, show me how You want to spark joy in the tasks I face today.
A focus on the Lord is the beginning of joy.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Spiritual Dejection
We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. —Luke 24:21
Every fact that the disciples stated was right, but the conclusions they drew from those facts were wrong. Anything that has even a hint of dejection spiritually is always wrong. If I am depressed or burdened, I am to blame, not God or anyone else. Dejection stems from one of two sources— I have either satisfied a lust or I have not had it satisfied. In either case, dejection is the result. Lust means “I must have it at once.” Spiritual lust causes me to demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God Himself who gives the answer. What have I been hoping or trusting God would do? Is today “the third day” and He has still not done what I expected? Am I therefore justified in being dejected and in blaming God? Whenever we insist that God should give us an answer to prayer we are off track. The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer. It is impossible to be well physically and to be dejected, because dejection is a sign of sickness. This is also true spiritually. Dejection spiritually is wrong, and we are always to blame for it.
We look for visions from heaven and for earth-shaking events to see God’s power. Even the fact that we are dejected is proof that we do this. Yet we never realize that all the time God is at work in our everyday events and in the people around us. If we will only obey, and do the task that He has placed closest to us, we will see Him. One of the most amazing revelations of God comes to us when we learn that it is in the everyday things of life that we realize the magnificent deity of Jesus Christ.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is nothing, naturally speaking, that makes us lose heart quicker than decay—the decay of bodily beauty, of natural life, of friendship, of associations, all these things make a man lose heart; but Paul says when we are trusting in Jesus Christ these things do not find us discouraged, light comes through them. The Place of Help, 1032 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Feeling Dirty, Getting Clean - #7847
Years ago, I was at a youth conference where we needed to raise some money for a camp scholarship fund. So we challenged the kids to buy their counselor into this Friday night food fight. Well, the kids found the money all right pretty quickly! So, Friday night all of us leaders showed up on the field of battle with the campers watching like sadistic spectators at the Roman Coliseum. Now, for starters, we got hosed down so everything would cling to us. I have to tell you, in retrospect, I'm embarrassed about the food we wasted. But I'm glad we at least got to pay for a few kids to get to camp.
Well, okay we did it, so I’ll tell you about it. Round One was flour. The campers got their money's worth as we redecorated each other with this blizzard of flour, followed by eggs, then fudge sauce. How’s your imagination doing here? Get the idea? The last round was the worst—lard. Yea, from our hair to our toes, we were totally gross by the end of this massacre. Our only satisfaction was at the end when we went after those kids and gave them a big, gooey hug. Yeah, it was great! I couldn't wait to get a shower, though, after that. And I was there for a long time. Ever try to get lard off? Probably not. Well, I have never felt dirtier; but clean has never felt better!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “Feeling Dirty, Getting Clean.”
If you've ever felt real dirty, you know how much you enjoyed that shower that made you clean again. If only there was a shower that could make us clean on the inside, where we carry the guilt, and the regrets, and the dirt of the things we wish we'd never done, or the things we should have done and we didn't. Unfortunately, there’s no medication, there’s no therapist, not even a religion that seems powerful enough to remove the dirt on our soul.
That's why our word for today from the Word of God is such good news. Acts 3:19, "Repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord." Now look at this! All the sins of your life can be wiped out, erased from God's records forever. God says you can be clean; that you can have a new beginning. He is actually offering a cleansing spiritual shower for those who repent and turn to Him, He said. That means you acknowledge the wrongness of what you've done and that you're ready to turn from your sin-choices and turn to Him for a new beginning.
Look, we all have things we're ashamed of, things we're not proud of, things that make us afraid of what God will do when we meet Him on Judgment Day. According to the Bible, the sins of our life will, in fact, make it impossible for us to ever enter God's Heaven because there is no sin there. Our only hope is if somehow God will forgive a lifetime of choices that have left Him out.
And there's only one place where a spiritual shower like that is available. It is at the cross of Jesus Christ, the place where every sin of yours was paid for. You carry all the garbage of your life up that hill, you give yourself in total trust to the One who paid for your sin on that cross with His life, and you leave your sin at that cross forever. You may have started this day guilty, but you could go to sleep forgiven tonight and finally clean. God's promise: "Everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through His Name" (Acts 10:43). There is nothing you've done that is so bad that Jesus did not pay for it on the cross.
Today could be the day you are finally clean. If you've never trusted Jesus to be your own Savior from your own sin, would you tell Him you're doing that right now? Your sins will be erased. He promised. And you’ll never carry them again or face them when you meet God. And the only thing that would keep you from heaven can be gone today.
That’s why we’ve put the information at our website—to help you know for sure how to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ and to know you are forgiven. And it is rightly named—that website, ANewStory.com. Would you go there and begin, for you, a new story?
That day I felt so gross, it was an awesome feeling to stand in that shower and have all that accumulated junk get washed away. That's what Jesus wants to do for your heart, right now. It is such an incredible feeling to be finally clean!
The Greek word for hospitality compounds two terms: love and stranger. All of us can welcome a guest we know and love. But can we welcome a stranger?
In one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, he accompanied two disciples as they walked from Jerusalem to their village of Emmaus. It had been a long day. They had much on their minds. But their fellow traveler stirred a fire in their hearts. So they welcomed him in. They pulled out an extra chair, poured some water in the soup, and offered bread. Jesus blessed the bread, and when he did, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (Luke 24:31 NIV).
We still encounter people on the road. And sometimes we detect an urge to open our doors to them. In these moments let’s heed the inner voice. We never know whom we may be hosting for dinner.
From God Is With You Every Day
Jeremiah 47
It’s Doomsday for Philistines
1-5 God’s Message to the prophet Jeremiah regarding the Philistines just before Pharaoh attacked Gaza. This is what God says:
“Look out! Water will rise in the north country,
swelling like a river in flood.
The torrent will flood the land,
washing away city and citizen.
Men and women will scream in terror,
wails from every door and window,
As the thunder from the hooves of the horses will be heard,
the clatter of chariots, the banging of wheels.
Fathers, paralyzed by fear,
won’t even grab up their babies
Because it will be doomsday for Philistines, one and all,
no hope of help for Tyre and Sidon.
God will finish off the Philistines,
what’s left of those from the island of Crete.
Gaza will be shaved bald as an egg,
Ashkelon struck dumb as a post.
You’re on your last legs.
How long will you keep flailing?
6 “Oh, Sword of God,
how long will you keep this up?
Return to your scabbard.
Haven’t you had enough? Can’t you call it quits?
7 “But how can it quit
when I, God, command the action?
I’ve ordered it to cut down
Ashkelon and the seacoast.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Read: Philippians 4:4–9
4-5 Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!
6-7 Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
INSIGHT:
Paul’s encouragement to rejoice in difficult situations wasn’t from the perspective of someone who did not understand suffering. On Paul’s second missionary journey (ad 50–52), he was falsely accused of disturbing the social peace of the city. Severely flogged and unjustly imprisoned (Acts 16:20–25), Paul remained a picture of calmness and peace. Luke tells us that in the midst of such adversity, “Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God” (v. 25). Paul knew what it meant to “not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil. 4:6). He could write these words because he himself practiced them. Are you at peace like Paul when life is difficult?
Does It Spark Joy?
By David McCasland
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true . . . noble . . . right . . . pure . . . lovely . . . admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8
A young Japanese woman’s book on decluttering and organizing has sold two million copies worldwide. The heart of Marie Kondo’s message is helping people get rid of unneeded things in their homes and closets—things that weigh them down. “Hold up each item,” she says, “and ask, ‘Does it spark joy?’” If the answer is yes, keep it. If the answer is no, then give it away.
The apostle Paul urged the Christians in Philippi to pursue joy in their relationship with Christ. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4). Instead of a life cluttered with anxiety, he urged them to pray about everything and let God’s peace guard their hearts and minds in Christ (vv. 6–7).
Let God’s peace guard your heart and mind in Christ. Philippians 4:6-7
Looking at our everyday tasks and responsibilities, we see that not all of them are enjoyable. But we can ask, “How can this spark joy in God’s heart and in my own?” A change in why we do things can bring a transformation in the way we feel about them.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true . . . noble . . . right . . . pure . . . lovely . . . admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (v. 8).
Paul’s parting words are food for thought and a recipe for joy.
Lord, show me how You want to spark joy in the tasks I face today.
A focus on the Lord is the beginning of joy.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Spiritual Dejection
We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. —Luke 24:21
Every fact that the disciples stated was right, but the conclusions they drew from those facts were wrong. Anything that has even a hint of dejection spiritually is always wrong. If I am depressed or burdened, I am to blame, not God or anyone else. Dejection stems from one of two sources— I have either satisfied a lust or I have not had it satisfied. In either case, dejection is the result. Lust means “I must have it at once.” Spiritual lust causes me to demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God Himself who gives the answer. What have I been hoping or trusting God would do? Is today “the third day” and He has still not done what I expected? Am I therefore justified in being dejected and in blaming God? Whenever we insist that God should give us an answer to prayer we are off track. The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer. It is impossible to be well physically and to be dejected, because dejection is a sign of sickness. This is also true spiritually. Dejection spiritually is wrong, and we are always to blame for it.
We look for visions from heaven and for earth-shaking events to see God’s power. Even the fact that we are dejected is proof that we do this. Yet we never realize that all the time God is at work in our everyday events and in the people around us. If we will only obey, and do the task that He has placed closest to us, we will see Him. One of the most amazing revelations of God comes to us when we learn that it is in the everyday things of life that we realize the magnificent deity of Jesus Christ.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is nothing, naturally speaking, that makes us lose heart quicker than decay—the decay of bodily beauty, of natural life, of friendship, of associations, all these things make a man lose heart; but Paul says when we are trusting in Jesus Christ these things do not find us discouraged, light comes through them. The Place of Help, 1032 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Feeling Dirty, Getting Clean - #7847
Years ago, I was at a youth conference where we needed to raise some money for a camp scholarship fund. So we challenged the kids to buy their counselor into this Friday night food fight. Well, the kids found the money all right pretty quickly! So, Friday night all of us leaders showed up on the field of battle with the campers watching like sadistic spectators at the Roman Coliseum. Now, for starters, we got hosed down so everything would cling to us. I have to tell you, in retrospect, I'm embarrassed about the food we wasted. But I'm glad we at least got to pay for a few kids to get to camp.
Well, okay we did it, so I’ll tell you about it. Round One was flour. The campers got their money's worth as we redecorated each other with this blizzard of flour, followed by eggs, then fudge sauce. How’s your imagination doing here? Get the idea? The last round was the worst—lard. Yea, from our hair to our toes, we were totally gross by the end of this massacre. Our only satisfaction was at the end when we went after those kids and gave them a big, gooey hug. Yeah, it was great! I couldn't wait to get a shower, though, after that. And I was there for a long time. Ever try to get lard off? Probably not. Well, I have never felt dirtier; but clean has never felt better!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “Feeling Dirty, Getting Clean.”
If you've ever felt real dirty, you know how much you enjoyed that shower that made you clean again. If only there was a shower that could make us clean on the inside, where we carry the guilt, and the regrets, and the dirt of the things we wish we'd never done, or the things we should have done and we didn't. Unfortunately, there’s no medication, there’s no therapist, not even a religion that seems powerful enough to remove the dirt on our soul.
That's why our word for today from the Word of God is such good news. Acts 3:19, "Repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord." Now look at this! All the sins of your life can be wiped out, erased from God's records forever. God says you can be clean; that you can have a new beginning. He is actually offering a cleansing spiritual shower for those who repent and turn to Him, He said. That means you acknowledge the wrongness of what you've done and that you're ready to turn from your sin-choices and turn to Him for a new beginning.
Look, we all have things we're ashamed of, things we're not proud of, things that make us afraid of what God will do when we meet Him on Judgment Day. According to the Bible, the sins of our life will, in fact, make it impossible for us to ever enter God's Heaven because there is no sin there. Our only hope is if somehow God will forgive a lifetime of choices that have left Him out.
And there's only one place where a spiritual shower like that is available. It is at the cross of Jesus Christ, the place where every sin of yours was paid for. You carry all the garbage of your life up that hill, you give yourself in total trust to the One who paid for your sin on that cross with His life, and you leave your sin at that cross forever. You may have started this day guilty, but you could go to sleep forgiven tonight and finally clean. God's promise: "Everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through His Name" (Acts 10:43). There is nothing you've done that is so bad that Jesus did not pay for it on the cross.
Today could be the day you are finally clean. If you've never trusted Jesus to be your own Savior from your own sin, would you tell Him you're doing that right now? Your sins will be erased. He promised. And you’ll never carry them again or face them when you meet God. And the only thing that would keep you from heaven can be gone today.
That’s why we’ve put the information at our website—to help you know for sure how to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ and to know you are forgiven. And it is rightly named—that website, ANewStory.com. Would you go there and begin, for you, a new story?
That day I felt so gross, it was an awesome feeling to stand in that shower and have all that accumulated junk get washed away. That's what Jesus wants to do for your heart, right now. It is such an incredible feeling to be finally clean!
Monday, February 6, 2017
Hebrews 1, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: SET YOUR MIND ON A HOLY CAUSE
If your problems are great, then your cause is too small. When your cause is great, your problems begin to shrink. Do you have a holy cause? A faith worth preserving? A mission worth living for? Ask God to give you a cause to claim to his glory: an orphanage to serve…a neighbor to encourage…a class to teach. It really is better to give than to receive.
Want to see your troubles evaporate? Help others with theirs. You’ll always face troubles, but you don’t have to face them in the same way. Instead, immerse your mind in God thoughts. Turn a deaf ear to doubters and set your mind on a holy cause. Once you find your mountain, no giant will stop you; no age will disqualify you; and no problems will defeat you.
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 1
1-3 Going through a long line of prophets, God has been addressing our ancestors in different ways for centuries. Recently he spoke to us directly through his Son. By his Son, God created the world in the beginning, and it will all belong to the Son at the end. This Son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature. He holds everything together by what he says—powerful words!
The Son Is Higher than Angels
3-6 After he finished the sacrifice for sins, the Son took his honored place high in the heavens right alongside God, far higher than any angel in rank and rule. Did God ever say to an angel, “You’re my Son; today I celebrate you” or “I’m his Father, he’s my Son”? When he presents his honored Son to the world, he says, “All angels must worship him.”
7 Regarding angels he says,
The messengers are winds,
the servants are tongues of fire.
8-9 But he says to the Son,
You’re God, and on the throne for good;
your rule makes everything right.
You love it when things are right;
you hate it when things are wrong.
That is why God, your God,
poured fragrant oil on your head,
Marking you out as king,
far above your dear companions.
10-12 And again to the Son,
You, Master, started it all, laid earth’s foundations,
then crafted the stars in the sky.
Earth and sky will wear out, but not you;
they become threadbare like an old coat;
You’ll fold them up like a worn-out cloak,
and lay them away on the shelf.
But you’ll stay the same, year after year;
you’ll never fade, you’ll never wear out.
13 And did he ever say anything like this to an angel?
Sit alongside me here on my throne
Until I make your enemies a stool for your feet.
14 Isn’t it obvious that all angels are sent to help out with those lined up to receive salvation?
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, February 06, 2017
Read: Job 23:1–12 |
I’m Completely in the Dark
1-7 Job replied:
“I’m not letting up—I’m standing my ground.
My complaint is legitimate.
God has no right to treat me like this—
it isn’t fair!
If I knew where on earth to find him,
I’d go straight to him.
I’d lay my case before him face-to-face,
give him all my arguments firsthand.
I’d find out exactly what he’s thinking,
discover what’s going on in his head.
Do you think he’d dismiss me or bully me?
No, he’d take me seriously.
He’d see a straight-living man standing before him;
my Judge would acquit me for good of all charges.
8-9 “I travel East looking for him—I find no one;
then West, but not a trace;
I go North, but he’s hidden his tracks;
then South, but not even a glimpse.
10-12 “But he knows where I am and what I’ve done.
He can cross-examine me all he wants, and I’ll pass the test
with honors.
I’ve followed him closely, my feet in his footprints,
not once swerving from his way.
I’ve obeyed every word he’s spoken,
and not just obeyed his advice—I’ve treasured it.
INSIGHT:
In today’s passage, Job responds to the accusations brought by his friend Eliphaz, who sarcastically asks whether Job thinks God is judging him because of his reverence for Him (22:4). Eliphaz insists that Job is suffering for a hidden scandal (v. 5). With assumptions but no evidence, he explains Job’s troubles by accusing him of being a self-centered rich man who has mistreated weak people for his own material gain. And so Job expresses his desire to be able to argue his case before God (ch. 23). The wrong assumptions of his friends have become part of the fire that is testing and refining him (v. 10). Do we have the courage to express our honest questions and true feelings to the Lord?
Tried and Purified
By Jennifer Benson Schuldt
When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. Job 23:10
During an interview, singer and songwriter Meredith Andrews spoke about being overwhelmed as she tried to balance outreach, creative work, marital issues, and motherhood. Reflecting on her distress, she said, “I felt like God was taking me through a refining season, almost through a crushing process.”
Job was overwhelmed after losing his livelihood, his health, and his family. Worse still, although Job had been a daily worshiper of God, he felt that the Lord was ignoring his pleas for help. God seemed absent from the landscape of his life. Job claimed he could not see God whether he looked to the north, south, east, or west (Job 23:2–9).
Lord, I surrender myself to Your purposes.
In the middle of his despair, Job had a moment of clarity. His faith flickered to life like a candle in a dark room. He said, “[God] knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (v. 10). Christians are tried and purified when God uses difficulty to burn away our self-reliance, pride, and earthly wisdom. If it seems as if God is silent during this process and He is not answering our cries for help, He may be giving us an opportunity to grow stronger in our faith.
Pain and problems can produce the shining, rock-solid character that comes from trusting God when life is hard.
Dear Lord, help me to believe that You are with me, even when I can’t see You working in my life. I surrender myself to Your purpose for any suffering I may endure.
Faith-testing times can be faith-strengthening times.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, February 06, 2017
Are You Ready To Be Poured Out As an Offering? (2)
I am already being poured out as a drink offering… —2 Timothy 4:6
Are you ready to be poured out as an offering? It is an act of your will, not your emotions. Tell God you are ready to be offered as a sacrifice for Him. Then accept the consequences as they come, without any complaints, in spite of what God may send your way. God sends you through a crisis in private, where no other person can help you. From the outside your life may appear to be the same, but the difference is taking place in your will. Once you have experienced the crisis in your will, you will take no thought of the cost when it begins to affect you externally. If you don’t deal with God on the level of your will first, the result will be only to arouse sympathy for yourself.
“Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar” (Psalm 118:27). You must be willing to be placed on the altar and go through the fire; willing to experience what the altar represents— burning, purification, and separation for only one purpose— the elimination of every desire and affection not grounded in or directed toward God. But you don’t eliminate it, God does. You “bind the sacrifice…to the horns of the altar” and see to it that you don’t wallow in self-pity once the fire begins. After you have gone through the fire, there will be nothing that will be able to trouble or depress you. When another crisis arises, you will realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do. What fire lies ahead in your life?
Tell God you are ready to be poured out as an offering, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye. Disciples Indeed, 385 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, February 06, 2017
As Far As You Can Go Safely - #7846
The Garden of the Gods in Colorado is one of the most beautiful spots in America. And God has allowed the Navigators ministry to have their headquarters right there. My first time there was for a national committee meeting, where they really worked us hard. But finally someone suggested a hike to the waterfall. They told me this was some of the most beautiful, spectacular scenery around these parts. And being a rookie on the committee, little did I suspect this was also an initiation. Our walk started out on a nice path that ran next to this roaring mountain stream, and it was really roaring from the recent snowmelt in the mountains. Finally, we walked to this dead-end where there was only a rock wall in front of us. I said, "Where's the waterfall?" "Over there," they said, and they pointed across the stream. I asked the obvious question, "How do you get to it?” There was no bridge. Well, they pointed to this narrow pipe that spanned the stream and they said, "You cross the pipeline." I said, "You cross the pipeline!" They’re expecting me to balance myself on this little pipe and walk across this roaring stream? But that was the only way to get to the incredible beauty on the other side!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “As Far As You Can Go Safely.”
Standing on the edge of that roaring stream, I realized I had gone as far as I could go safely and so have you. It may very well be that God has led you to a point where He is asking you to move beyond where you feel safe. On the other side are some exciting new discoveries, things your heart really is hungry for. You're at the pipeline. By the way, I crossed the pipeline and it was everything they said it would be. And I crossed it a few times after that, too.
You know, Abraham was at the pipeline in his life. In our word for today from the Word of God, Genesis 12:1-4: "The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people, your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you." Notice His first word to Abram—leave. Leave all your comfort, leave all your security blankets and let Me take you into a place I will show you. What God did in Abraham's life, He does in the lives of all His children. God brings you to the point where you've gone as far as you can go safely, comfortably. Now He wants you to cross the pipeline.
God tells Abram what's on the other side. "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing." That's pretty spectacular scenery, but not if you stay on your side of the comfort zone.
The Bible says, "So Abram left, as the Lord had told him" and Abram crossed the pipeline. I did that day in Colorado. The beauty I saw on the other side was worth the risk I took. When Abram moved beyond safety, his life took off like he could have never dreamed. God wants to do something like that for you. But first you'll have to trust Him enough to cross the pipeline.
But you're looking at the "what ifs" and the "coulds" and a lot of unanswered questions. And maybe you're holding back from the step that your Lord is clearly asking you to take. In a sense, could you be addicted to comfort? And those who are addicted to comfort, will sooner or later, miss the will of God. You might be at the threshold. Remember, this Jesus you follow left the most comfortable place in all the universe for the most uncomfortable place in all the universe—the cross. But on the other side, the glory of the resurrection and the rescue of millions like you and me.
Now that Jesus is asking you to step beyond your comfort zone into a bold and beautiful place you can only get to one way—by crossing the pipeline. You've gone as far as you can go safely. Don't miss what's on the other side. If you’ll look on the other side, that's Jesus beckoning to you to come follow Him.
If your problems are great, then your cause is too small. When your cause is great, your problems begin to shrink. Do you have a holy cause? A faith worth preserving? A mission worth living for? Ask God to give you a cause to claim to his glory: an orphanage to serve…a neighbor to encourage…a class to teach. It really is better to give than to receive.
Want to see your troubles evaporate? Help others with theirs. You’ll always face troubles, but you don’t have to face them in the same way. Instead, immerse your mind in God thoughts. Turn a deaf ear to doubters and set your mind on a holy cause. Once you find your mountain, no giant will stop you; no age will disqualify you; and no problems will defeat you.
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 1
1-3 Going through a long line of prophets, God has been addressing our ancestors in different ways for centuries. Recently he spoke to us directly through his Son. By his Son, God created the world in the beginning, and it will all belong to the Son at the end. This Son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature. He holds everything together by what he says—powerful words!
The Son Is Higher than Angels
3-6 After he finished the sacrifice for sins, the Son took his honored place high in the heavens right alongside God, far higher than any angel in rank and rule. Did God ever say to an angel, “You’re my Son; today I celebrate you” or “I’m his Father, he’s my Son”? When he presents his honored Son to the world, he says, “All angels must worship him.”
7 Regarding angels he says,
The messengers are winds,
the servants are tongues of fire.
8-9 But he says to the Son,
You’re God, and on the throne for good;
your rule makes everything right.
You love it when things are right;
you hate it when things are wrong.
That is why God, your God,
poured fragrant oil on your head,
Marking you out as king,
far above your dear companions.
10-12 And again to the Son,
You, Master, started it all, laid earth’s foundations,
then crafted the stars in the sky.
Earth and sky will wear out, but not you;
they become threadbare like an old coat;
You’ll fold them up like a worn-out cloak,
and lay them away on the shelf.
But you’ll stay the same, year after year;
you’ll never fade, you’ll never wear out.
13 And did he ever say anything like this to an angel?
Sit alongside me here on my throne
Until I make your enemies a stool for your feet.
14 Isn’t it obvious that all angels are sent to help out with those lined up to receive salvation?
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, February 06, 2017
Read: Job 23:1–12 |
I’m Completely in the Dark
1-7 Job replied:
“I’m not letting up—I’m standing my ground.
My complaint is legitimate.
God has no right to treat me like this—
it isn’t fair!
If I knew where on earth to find him,
I’d go straight to him.
I’d lay my case before him face-to-face,
give him all my arguments firsthand.
I’d find out exactly what he’s thinking,
discover what’s going on in his head.
Do you think he’d dismiss me or bully me?
No, he’d take me seriously.
He’d see a straight-living man standing before him;
my Judge would acquit me for good of all charges.
8-9 “I travel East looking for him—I find no one;
then West, but not a trace;
I go North, but he’s hidden his tracks;
then South, but not even a glimpse.
10-12 “But he knows where I am and what I’ve done.
He can cross-examine me all he wants, and I’ll pass the test
with honors.
I’ve followed him closely, my feet in his footprints,
not once swerving from his way.
I’ve obeyed every word he’s spoken,
and not just obeyed his advice—I’ve treasured it.
INSIGHT:
In today’s passage, Job responds to the accusations brought by his friend Eliphaz, who sarcastically asks whether Job thinks God is judging him because of his reverence for Him (22:4). Eliphaz insists that Job is suffering for a hidden scandal (v. 5). With assumptions but no evidence, he explains Job’s troubles by accusing him of being a self-centered rich man who has mistreated weak people for his own material gain. And so Job expresses his desire to be able to argue his case before God (ch. 23). The wrong assumptions of his friends have become part of the fire that is testing and refining him (v. 10). Do we have the courage to express our honest questions and true feelings to the Lord?
Tried and Purified
By Jennifer Benson Schuldt
When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. Job 23:10
During an interview, singer and songwriter Meredith Andrews spoke about being overwhelmed as she tried to balance outreach, creative work, marital issues, and motherhood. Reflecting on her distress, she said, “I felt like God was taking me through a refining season, almost through a crushing process.”
Job was overwhelmed after losing his livelihood, his health, and his family. Worse still, although Job had been a daily worshiper of God, he felt that the Lord was ignoring his pleas for help. God seemed absent from the landscape of his life. Job claimed he could not see God whether he looked to the north, south, east, or west (Job 23:2–9).
Lord, I surrender myself to Your purposes.
In the middle of his despair, Job had a moment of clarity. His faith flickered to life like a candle in a dark room. He said, “[God] knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (v. 10). Christians are tried and purified when God uses difficulty to burn away our self-reliance, pride, and earthly wisdom. If it seems as if God is silent during this process and He is not answering our cries for help, He may be giving us an opportunity to grow stronger in our faith.
Pain and problems can produce the shining, rock-solid character that comes from trusting God when life is hard.
Dear Lord, help me to believe that You are with me, even when I can’t see You working in my life. I surrender myself to Your purpose for any suffering I may endure.
Faith-testing times can be faith-strengthening times.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, February 06, 2017
Are You Ready To Be Poured Out As an Offering? (2)
I am already being poured out as a drink offering… —2 Timothy 4:6
Are you ready to be poured out as an offering? It is an act of your will, not your emotions. Tell God you are ready to be offered as a sacrifice for Him. Then accept the consequences as they come, without any complaints, in spite of what God may send your way. God sends you through a crisis in private, where no other person can help you. From the outside your life may appear to be the same, but the difference is taking place in your will. Once you have experienced the crisis in your will, you will take no thought of the cost when it begins to affect you externally. If you don’t deal with God on the level of your will first, the result will be only to arouse sympathy for yourself.
“Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar” (Psalm 118:27). You must be willing to be placed on the altar and go through the fire; willing to experience what the altar represents— burning, purification, and separation for only one purpose— the elimination of every desire and affection not grounded in or directed toward God. But you don’t eliminate it, God does. You “bind the sacrifice…to the horns of the altar” and see to it that you don’t wallow in self-pity once the fire begins. After you have gone through the fire, there will be nothing that will be able to trouble or depress you. When another crisis arises, you will realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do. What fire lies ahead in your life?
Tell God you are ready to be poured out as an offering, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye. Disciples Indeed, 385 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, February 06, 2017
As Far As You Can Go Safely - #7846
The Garden of the Gods in Colorado is one of the most beautiful spots in America. And God has allowed the Navigators ministry to have their headquarters right there. My first time there was for a national committee meeting, where they really worked us hard. But finally someone suggested a hike to the waterfall. They told me this was some of the most beautiful, spectacular scenery around these parts. And being a rookie on the committee, little did I suspect this was also an initiation. Our walk started out on a nice path that ran next to this roaring mountain stream, and it was really roaring from the recent snowmelt in the mountains. Finally, we walked to this dead-end where there was only a rock wall in front of us. I said, "Where's the waterfall?" "Over there," they said, and they pointed across the stream. I asked the obvious question, "How do you get to it?” There was no bridge. Well, they pointed to this narrow pipe that spanned the stream and they said, "You cross the pipeline." I said, "You cross the pipeline!" They’re expecting me to balance myself on this little pipe and walk across this roaring stream? But that was the only way to get to the incredible beauty on the other side!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about “As Far As You Can Go Safely.”
Standing on the edge of that roaring stream, I realized I had gone as far as I could go safely and so have you. It may very well be that God has led you to a point where He is asking you to move beyond where you feel safe. On the other side are some exciting new discoveries, things your heart really is hungry for. You're at the pipeline. By the way, I crossed the pipeline and it was everything they said it would be. And I crossed it a few times after that, too.
You know, Abraham was at the pipeline in his life. In our word for today from the Word of God, Genesis 12:1-4: "The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people, your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you." Notice His first word to Abram—leave. Leave all your comfort, leave all your security blankets and let Me take you into a place I will show you. What God did in Abraham's life, He does in the lives of all His children. God brings you to the point where you've gone as far as you can go safely, comfortably. Now He wants you to cross the pipeline.
God tells Abram what's on the other side. "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing." That's pretty spectacular scenery, but not if you stay on your side of the comfort zone.
The Bible says, "So Abram left, as the Lord had told him" and Abram crossed the pipeline. I did that day in Colorado. The beauty I saw on the other side was worth the risk I took. When Abram moved beyond safety, his life took off like he could have never dreamed. God wants to do something like that for you. But first you'll have to trust Him enough to cross the pipeline.
But you're looking at the "what ifs" and the "coulds" and a lot of unanswered questions. And maybe you're holding back from the step that your Lord is clearly asking you to take. In a sense, could you be addicted to comfort? And those who are addicted to comfort, will sooner or later, miss the will of God. You might be at the threshold. Remember, this Jesus you follow left the most comfortable place in all the universe for the most uncomfortable place in all the universe—the cross. But on the other side, the glory of the resurrection and the rescue of millions like you and me.
Now that Jesus is asking you to step beyond your comfort zone into a bold and beautiful place you can only get to one way—by crossing the pipeline. You've gone as far as you can go safely. Don't miss what's on the other side. If you’ll look on the other side, that's Jesus beckoning to you to come follow Him.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Jeremiah 46 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: The Real Deal
Susie's most treasured possession was a string of fake pearls given to her by her father. As he put her to bed one evening after he returned from a lengthy trip, he asked this question: "Do you love me?" "Yes, daddy. I love you more than anything," she replied. He paused. "More than the pearls? Would you give me your pearls?" "Oh daddy," she replied. "I couldn't do that. I love my pearls!" But the next day she went to see him. "Daddy, I love you more than these. Here you take them." He said, "I brought you a gift from my trip." She opened the small flat box and gasped. Pearls…genuine pearls!
Do you suppose your Father wants to give you some as well? He offers authentic love. His devotion is the real deal. He will give you the genuine when you surrender the imitation!
From A Love Worth Giving
Jeremiah 46
You Vainly Collect Medicines
God’s Messages through the prophet Jeremiah regarding the godless nations.
2-5 The Message to Egypt and the army of Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt at the time it was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon while camped at Carchemish on the Euphrates River in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah:
“‘Present arms!
March to the front!
Harness the horses!
Up in the saddles!
Battle formation! Helmets on,
spears sharpened, armor in place!’
But what’s this I see?
They’re scared out of their wits!
They break ranks and run for cover.
Their soldiers panic.
They run this way and that,
stampeding blindly.
It’s total chaos, total confusion, danger everywhere!”
God’s Decree.
6 “The swiftest runners won’t get away,
the strongest soldiers won’t escape.
In the north country, along the River Euphrates,
they’ll stagger, stumble, and fall.
7-9 “Who is this like the Nile in flood?
like its streams torrential?
Why, it’s Egypt like the Nile in flood,
like its streams torrential,
Saying, ‘I’ll take over the world.
I’ll wipe out cities and peoples.’
Run, horses!
Roll, chariots!
Advance, soldiers
from Cush and Put with your shields,
Soldiers from Lud,
experts with bow and arrow.
10 “But it’s not your day. It’s the Master’s, me, God-of-the-Angel-Armies—
the day when I have it out with my enemies,
The day when Sword puts an end to my enemies,
when Sword exacts vengeance.
I, the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
will pile them on an altar—a huge sacrifice!—
In the great north country,
along the mighty Euphrates.
11-12 “Oh, virgin Daughter Egypt,
climb into the mountains of Gilead, get healing balm.
You will vainly collect medicines,
for nothing will be able to cure what ails you.
The whole world will hear your anguished cries.
Your wails fill the earth,
As soldier falls against soldier
and they all go down in a heap.”
Egypt’s Army Slithers Like a Snake
13 The Message that God gave to the prophet Jeremiah when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon was on his way to attack Egypt:
14 “Tell Egypt, alert Migdol,
post warnings in Noph and Tahpanhes:
‘Wake up! Be prepared!
War’s coming!’
15-19 “Why will your bull-god Apis run off?
Because God will drive him off.
Your ragtag army will fall to pieces.
The word is passing through the ranks,
‘Let’s get out of here while we still can.
Let’s head for home and save our skins.’
When they get home they’ll nickname Pharaoh
‘Big-Talk-Bad-Luck.’
As sure as I am the living God”
—the King’s Decree, God-of-the-Angel-Armies is his name—
“A conqueror is coming: like Tabor, singular among mountains;
like Carmel, jutting up from the sea!
So pack your bags for exile,
you coddled daughters of Egypt,
For Memphis will soon be nothing,
a vacant lot grown over with weeds.
20-21 “Too bad, Egypt, a beautiful sleek heifer
attacked by a horsefly from the north!
All her hired soldiers are stationed to defend her—
like well-fed calves they are.
But when their lives are on the line, they’ll run off,
cowards every one.
When the going gets tough,
they’ll take the easy way out.
22-24 “Egypt will slither and hiss like a snake
as the enemy army comes in force.
They will rush in, swinging axes
like lumberjacks cutting down trees.
They’ll level the country”—God’s Decree—“nothing
and no one standing for as far as you can see.
The invaders will be a swarm of locusts,
innumerable, past counting.
Daughter Egypt will be ravished,
raped by vandals from the north.”
25-26 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says, “Watch out when I visit doom on the god Amon of Thebes, Egypt and its gods and kings, Pharaoh and those who trust in him. I’ll turn them over to those who are out to kill them, to Nebuchadnezzar and his military. Egypt will be set back a thousand years. Eventually people will live there again.” God’s Decree.
27-28 “But you, dear Jacob my servant, you have nothing to fear.
Israel, there’s no need to worry.
Look up! I’ll save you from that far country,
I’ll get your children out of the land of exile.
Things are going to be normal again for Jacob,
safe and secure, smooth sailing.
Yes, dear Jacob my servant, you have nothing to fear.
Depend on it, I’m on your side.
I’ll finish off all the godless nations
among which I’ve scattered you,
But I won’t finish you off.
I have more work left to do on you.
I’ll punish you, but fairly.
No, I’m not finished with you yet.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, February 05, 2017
Read: Psalm 136:1–9 |
1-3 Thank God! He deserves your thanks.
His love never quits.
Thank the God of all gods,
His love never quits.
Thank the Lord of all lords.
His love never quits.
4-22 Thank the miracle-working God,
His love never quits.
The God whose skill formed the cosmos,
His love never quits.
The God who laid out earth on ocean foundations,
His love never quits.
The God who filled the skies with light,
His love never quits.
The sun to watch over the day,
His love never quits.
Moon and stars as guardians of the night,
His love never quits.
The God who struck down the Egyptian firstborn,
His love never quits.
And rescued Israel from Egypt’s oppression,
His love never quits.
Took Israel in hand with his powerful hand,
His love never quits.
Split the Red Sea right in half,
His love never quits.
Led Israel right through the middle,
His love never quits.
Dumped Pharaoh and his army in the sea,
His love never quits.
The God who marched his people through the desert,
His love never quits.
Smashed huge kingdoms right and left,
His love never quits.
Struck down the famous kings,
His love never quits.
Struck Sihon the Amorite king,
His love never quits.
Struck Og the Bashanite king,
His love never quits.
Then distributed their land as booty,
His love never quits.
Handed the land over to Israel.
His love never quits.
INSIGHT:
This worship song praises the wonders of God’s creation and His providential intervention for His people. The repeating refrain is, “His love endures forever.” The list of items for which to thank God, our Creator, are vast and extensive: God is good (v. 1), He is over all other “gods” (v. 2), He is the Lord of lords (v. 3), God alone does great wonders (v. 4), God by His understanding made the heavens (v. 5), He placed the earth on the waters (v. 6), He made the great lights (v. 7), He made the sun to govern the day (v. 8), and He made the moon and stars to govern the night (v. 9). As we behold the wonders of nature, we marvel at their Creator.
Begin Where You Are
By David Roper
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Psalm 19:1
I came across a solitary flower growing in a meadow today—a tiny purple blossom “wasting its sweetness in the desert air,” to borrow from the poet Thomas Gray’s wonderful line. I’m sure no one had seen this particular flower before, and perhaps no one will see it again. Why this beauty in this place? I thought.
Nature is never wasted. It daily displays the truth, goodness, and beauty of the One who brought it into being. Every day nature offers a new and fresh declaration of God’s glory. Do I see Him through that beauty, or do I merely glance at it and shrug it off in indifference?
All nature declares the beauty of the One who made it.
All nature declares the beauty of the One who made it. Our response can be worship, adoration, and thanksgiving—for the radiance of a cornflower, the splendor of a morning sunrise, the symmetry of one particular tree.
Author C. S. Lewis describes a walk in the forest on a hot summer day. He had just asked his friend how best to cultivate a heart thankful toward God. His hiking companion turned to a nearby brook, splashed his face and hands in a little waterfall, and asked, “Why not begin with this?” Lewis said he learned a great principle in that moment: “Begin where you are.”
A trickling waterfall, the wind in the willows, a baby robin, the blue sky, a tiny flower. Why not begin your thankfulness with this?
Father, may we always be reminded that You have placed beauty here because it reflects Your character. We praise You!
What are you thankful for today? Share it with us on Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
[God] is the beauty behind all beauty. Steve DeWitt
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, February 05, 2017
If I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. —Philippians 2:17
Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for the work of another believer—to pour out your life sacrificially for the ministry and faith of others? Or do you say, “I am not willing to be poured out right now, and I don’t want God to tell me how to serve Him. I want to choose the place of my own sacrifice. And I want to have certain people watching me and saying, ‘Well done.’ ”
It is one thing to follow God’s way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a “doormat” under other people’s feet. God’s purpose may be to teach you to say, “I know how to be abased…” (Philippians 4:12). Are you ready to be sacrificed like that? Are you ready to be less than a mere drop in the bucket— to be so totally insignificant that no one remembers you even if they think of those you served? Are you willing to give and be poured out until you are used up and exhausted— not seeking to be ministered to, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude, because they feel such service is beneath their dignity.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
God does not further our spiritual life in spite of our circumstances, but in and by our circumstances. Not Knowing Whither, 900 L
Susie's most treasured possession was a string of fake pearls given to her by her father. As he put her to bed one evening after he returned from a lengthy trip, he asked this question: "Do you love me?" "Yes, daddy. I love you more than anything," she replied. He paused. "More than the pearls? Would you give me your pearls?" "Oh daddy," she replied. "I couldn't do that. I love my pearls!" But the next day she went to see him. "Daddy, I love you more than these. Here you take them." He said, "I brought you a gift from my trip." She opened the small flat box and gasped. Pearls…genuine pearls!
Do you suppose your Father wants to give you some as well? He offers authentic love. His devotion is the real deal. He will give you the genuine when you surrender the imitation!
From A Love Worth Giving
Jeremiah 46
You Vainly Collect Medicines
God’s Messages through the prophet Jeremiah regarding the godless nations.
2-5 The Message to Egypt and the army of Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt at the time it was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon while camped at Carchemish on the Euphrates River in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah:
“‘Present arms!
March to the front!
Harness the horses!
Up in the saddles!
Battle formation! Helmets on,
spears sharpened, armor in place!’
But what’s this I see?
They’re scared out of their wits!
They break ranks and run for cover.
Their soldiers panic.
They run this way and that,
stampeding blindly.
It’s total chaos, total confusion, danger everywhere!”
God’s Decree.
6 “The swiftest runners won’t get away,
the strongest soldiers won’t escape.
In the north country, along the River Euphrates,
they’ll stagger, stumble, and fall.
7-9 “Who is this like the Nile in flood?
like its streams torrential?
Why, it’s Egypt like the Nile in flood,
like its streams torrential,
Saying, ‘I’ll take over the world.
I’ll wipe out cities and peoples.’
Run, horses!
Roll, chariots!
Advance, soldiers
from Cush and Put with your shields,
Soldiers from Lud,
experts with bow and arrow.
10 “But it’s not your day. It’s the Master’s, me, God-of-the-Angel-Armies—
the day when I have it out with my enemies,
The day when Sword puts an end to my enemies,
when Sword exacts vengeance.
I, the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
will pile them on an altar—a huge sacrifice!—
In the great north country,
along the mighty Euphrates.
11-12 “Oh, virgin Daughter Egypt,
climb into the mountains of Gilead, get healing balm.
You will vainly collect medicines,
for nothing will be able to cure what ails you.
The whole world will hear your anguished cries.
Your wails fill the earth,
As soldier falls against soldier
and they all go down in a heap.”
Egypt’s Army Slithers Like a Snake
13 The Message that God gave to the prophet Jeremiah when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon was on his way to attack Egypt:
14 “Tell Egypt, alert Migdol,
post warnings in Noph and Tahpanhes:
‘Wake up! Be prepared!
War’s coming!’
15-19 “Why will your bull-god Apis run off?
Because God will drive him off.
Your ragtag army will fall to pieces.
The word is passing through the ranks,
‘Let’s get out of here while we still can.
Let’s head for home and save our skins.’
When they get home they’ll nickname Pharaoh
‘Big-Talk-Bad-Luck.’
As sure as I am the living God”
—the King’s Decree, God-of-the-Angel-Armies is his name—
“A conqueror is coming: like Tabor, singular among mountains;
like Carmel, jutting up from the sea!
So pack your bags for exile,
you coddled daughters of Egypt,
For Memphis will soon be nothing,
a vacant lot grown over with weeds.
20-21 “Too bad, Egypt, a beautiful sleek heifer
attacked by a horsefly from the north!
All her hired soldiers are stationed to defend her—
like well-fed calves they are.
But when their lives are on the line, they’ll run off,
cowards every one.
When the going gets tough,
they’ll take the easy way out.
22-24 “Egypt will slither and hiss like a snake
as the enemy army comes in force.
They will rush in, swinging axes
like lumberjacks cutting down trees.
They’ll level the country”—God’s Decree—“nothing
and no one standing for as far as you can see.
The invaders will be a swarm of locusts,
innumerable, past counting.
Daughter Egypt will be ravished,
raped by vandals from the north.”
25-26 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says, “Watch out when I visit doom on the god Amon of Thebes, Egypt and its gods and kings, Pharaoh and those who trust in him. I’ll turn them over to those who are out to kill them, to Nebuchadnezzar and his military. Egypt will be set back a thousand years. Eventually people will live there again.” God’s Decree.
27-28 “But you, dear Jacob my servant, you have nothing to fear.
Israel, there’s no need to worry.
Look up! I’ll save you from that far country,
I’ll get your children out of the land of exile.
Things are going to be normal again for Jacob,
safe and secure, smooth sailing.
Yes, dear Jacob my servant, you have nothing to fear.
Depend on it, I’m on your side.
I’ll finish off all the godless nations
among which I’ve scattered you,
But I won’t finish you off.
I have more work left to do on you.
I’ll punish you, but fairly.
No, I’m not finished with you yet.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, February 05, 2017
Read: Psalm 136:1–9 |
1-3 Thank God! He deserves your thanks.
His love never quits.
Thank the God of all gods,
His love never quits.
Thank the Lord of all lords.
His love never quits.
4-22 Thank the miracle-working God,
His love never quits.
The God whose skill formed the cosmos,
His love never quits.
The God who laid out earth on ocean foundations,
His love never quits.
The God who filled the skies with light,
His love never quits.
The sun to watch over the day,
His love never quits.
Moon and stars as guardians of the night,
His love never quits.
The God who struck down the Egyptian firstborn,
His love never quits.
And rescued Israel from Egypt’s oppression,
His love never quits.
Took Israel in hand with his powerful hand,
His love never quits.
Split the Red Sea right in half,
His love never quits.
Led Israel right through the middle,
His love never quits.
Dumped Pharaoh and his army in the sea,
His love never quits.
The God who marched his people through the desert,
His love never quits.
Smashed huge kingdoms right and left,
His love never quits.
Struck down the famous kings,
His love never quits.
Struck Sihon the Amorite king,
His love never quits.
Struck Og the Bashanite king,
His love never quits.
Then distributed their land as booty,
His love never quits.
Handed the land over to Israel.
His love never quits.
INSIGHT:
This worship song praises the wonders of God’s creation and His providential intervention for His people. The repeating refrain is, “His love endures forever.” The list of items for which to thank God, our Creator, are vast and extensive: God is good (v. 1), He is over all other “gods” (v. 2), He is the Lord of lords (v. 3), God alone does great wonders (v. 4), God by His understanding made the heavens (v. 5), He placed the earth on the waters (v. 6), He made the great lights (v. 7), He made the sun to govern the day (v. 8), and He made the moon and stars to govern the night (v. 9). As we behold the wonders of nature, we marvel at their Creator.
Begin Where You Are
By David Roper
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Psalm 19:1
I came across a solitary flower growing in a meadow today—a tiny purple blossom “wasting its sweetness in the desert air,” to borrow from the poet Thomas Gray’s wonderful line. I’m sure no one had seen this particular flower before, and perhaps no one will see it again. Why this beauty in this place? I thought.
Nature is never wasted. It daily displays the truth, goodness, and beauty of the One who brought it into being. Every day nature offers a new and fresh declaration of God’s glory. Do I see Him through that beauty, or do I merely glance at it and shrug it off in indifference?
All nature declares the beauty of the One who made it.
All nature declares the beauty of the One who made it. Our response can be worship, adoration, and thanksgiving—for the radiance of a cornflower, the splendor of a morning sunrise, the symmetry of one particular tree.
Author C. S. Lewis describes a walk in the forest on a hot summer day. He had just asked his friend how best to cultivate a heart thankful toward God. His hiking companion turned to a nearby brook, splashed his face and hands in a little waterfall, and asked, “Why not begin with this?” Lewis said he learned a great principle in that moment: “Begin where you are.”
A trickling waterfall, the wind in the willows, a baby robin, the blue sky, a tiny flower. Why not begin your thankfulness with this?
Father, may we always be reminded that You have placed beauty here because it reflects Your character. We praise You!
What are you thankful for today? Share it with us on Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
[God] is the beauty behind all beauty. Steve DeWitt
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, February 05, 2017
If I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. —Philippians 2:17
Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for the work of another believer—to pour out your life sacrificially for the ministry and faith of others? Or do you say, “I am not willing to be poured out right now, and I don’t want God to tell me how to serve Him. I want to choose the place of my own sacrifice. And I want to have certain people watching me and saying, ‘Well done.’ ”
It is one thing to follow God’s way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a “doormat” under other people’s feet. God’s purpose may be to teach you to say, “I know how to be abased…” (Philippians 4:12). Are you ready to be sacrificed like that? Are you ready to be less than a mere drop in the bucket— to be so totally insignificant that no one remembers you even if they think of those you served? Are you willing to give and be poured out until you are used up and exhausted— not seeking to be ministered to, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude, because they feel such service is beneath their dignity.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
God does not further our spiritual life in spite of our circumstances, but in and by our circumstances. Not Knowing Whither, 900 L
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Jeremiah 45 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Don't Be Jealous
Suppose you spotted a flame in your house. How would you react? Would you shrug your shoulders and walk away, saying, "A little fire never hurt any house." Of course not. You would put it out! Why? Because you know left untended, fire consumes all that's consumable. For the sake of your house, you don't play with fire.
For the sake of your heart, the same is true. The name of the fire? Solomon tagged it in Song of Solomon 8:6. "Jealousy is cruel as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire." Do you know what causes jealousy? Distrust. Do you know what is the cure for jealousy? It is trust. Is the flame of jealousy beginning to consume your heart? Are you jealous of someone's success or possessions? Then, ask God for deeper trust. He will help put out the fire.
From A Love Worth Giving
Jeremiah 45
God’s Piling On the Pain
45 This is what Jeremiah told Baruch one day in the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign as he was taking dictation from the prophet:
2-3 “These are the words of God, the God of Israel, to you, Baruch. You say, ‘These are bad times for me! It’s one thing after another. God is piling on the pain. I’m worn out and there’s no end in sight.’
4-5 “But God says, ‘Look around. What I’ve built I’m about to wreck, and what I’ve planted I’m about to rip up. And I’m doing it everywhere—all over the whole earth! So forget about making any big plans for yourself. Things are going to get worse before they get better. But don’t worry. I’ll keep you alive through the whole business.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, February 04, 2017
Read: 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18
Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.
INSIGHT:
In the final instructions of his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul culminates the theme of living out our faith. In addition to his challenge to be thankful in everything, we see a rapid-fire series of challenges (5:16–22): “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances . . . . Do not quench the Spirit. . . . hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.” This could feel intimidating if we were expected to accomplish this on our own, but God has given us the Holy Spirit. The challenge that undergirds all the others is “Do not quench the Spirit.” Instead of resisting (“quenching”) the Spirit’s help, as we yield to His control and guidance in our lives He equips us to live out our faith.
For more on the work of the Spirit, check out the Discovery Series booklet How Can I Be Filled with the Spirit? at discoveryseries.org/q0301.
In All Circumstances
By Lawrence Darmani
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18
In our suburb we complain about the constant power outages. They can hit three times in a week and last up to twenty-four hours, plunging the neighborhood into darkness. The inconvenience is hard to bear when we cannot use basic household appliances.
Our Christian neighbor often asks, “Is this also something to thank God for?” She is referring to 1 Thessalonians 5:18: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” We always say, “Yes, of course, we thank God in all things.” But the half-hearted manner in which we say it is contradicted by our grumbling every time the power goes off.
Help us to see You at work in every circumstance, no matter how difficult.
One day, however, our belief in thanking God in all circumstances took on new meaning. I returned from work to find our neighbor visibly shaken as she cried, “Thank Jesus the power was off. My house would have burned down, and my family and I would have perished!”
A refuse-collection truck had hit the electricity pole in front of her house and brought down the high-tension cables right over several houses. Had there been power in the cables, fatalities would have been likely.
The difficult circumstances we face can make it hard to say, “Thanks, Lord.” We can be thankful to our God who sees in every situation an opportunity for us to trust Him—whether or not we see His purpose.
Father, we honor You with our words, but so often our actions reveal that our hearts don’t trust You. Help us to see You at work in every circumstance, no matter how difficult.
By God’s grace we can be thankful in all things.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, February 04, 2017
The Compelling Majesty of His Power
The love of Christ compels us… —2 Corinthians 5:14
Paul said that he was overpowered, subdued, and held as in a vise by “the love of Christ.” Very few of us really know what it means to be held in the grip of the love of God. We tend so often to be controlled simply by our own experience. The one thing that gripped and held Paul, to the exclusion of everything else, was the love of God. “The love of Christ compels us….” When you hear that coming from the life of a man or woman it is unmistakable. You will know that the Spirit of God is completely unhindered in that person’s life.
When we are born again by the Spirit of God, our testimony is based solely on what God has done for us, and rightly so. But that will change and be removed forever once you “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” (Acts 1:8). Only then will you begin to realize what Jesus meant when He went on to say, “…you shall be witnesses to Me….” Not witnesses to what Jesus can do— that is basic and understood— but “witnesses to Me….” We will accept everything that happens as if it were happening to Him, whether we receive praise or blame, persecution or reward. No one is able to take this stand for Jesus Christ who is not totally compelled by the majesty of His power. It is the only thing that matters, and yet it is strange that it’s the last thing we as Christian workers realize. Paul said that he was gripped by the love of God and that is why he acted as he did. People could perceive him as mad or sane— he did not care. There was only one thing he lived for— to persuade people of the coming judgment of God and to tell them of “the love of Christ.” This total surrender to “the love of Christ” is the only thing that will bear fruit in your life. And it will always leave the mark of God’s holiness and His power, never drawing attention to your personal holiness.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L
Suppose you spotted a flame in your house. How would you react? Would you shrug your shoulders and walk away, saying, "A little fire never hurt any house." Of course not. You would put it out! Why? Because you know left untended, fire consumes all that's consumable. For the sake of your house, you don't play with fire.
For the sake of your heart, the same is true. The name of the fire? Solomon tagged it in Song of Solomon 8:6. "Jealousy is cruel as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire." Do you know what causes jealousy? Distrust. Do you know what is the cure for jealousy? It is trust. Is the flame of jealousy beginning to consume your heart? Are you jealous of someone's success or possessions? Then, ask God for deeper trust. He will help put out the fire.
From A Love Worth Giving
Jeremiah 45
God’s Piling On the Pain
45 This is what Jeremiah told Baruch one day in the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign as he was taking dictation from the prophet:
2-3 “These are the words of God, the God of Israel, to you, Baruch. You say, ‘These are bad times for me! It’s one thing after another. God is piling on the pain. I’m worn out and there’s no end in sight.’
4-5 “But God says, ‘Look around. What I’ve built I’m about to wreck, and what I’ve planted I’m about to rip up. And I’m doing it everywhere—all over the whole earth! So forget about making any big plans for yourself. Things are going to get worse before they get better. But don’t worry. I’ll keep you alive through the whole business.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, February 04, 2017
Read: 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18
Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.
INSIGHT:
In the final instructions of his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul culminates the theme of living out our faith. In addition to his challenge to be thankful in everything, we see a rapid-fire series of challenges (5:16–22): “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances . . . . Do not quench the Spirit. . . . hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.” This could feel intimidating if we were expected to accomplish this on our own, but God has given us the Holy Spirit. The challenge that undergirds all the others is “Do not quench the Spirit.” Instead of resisting (“quenching”) the Spirit’s help, as we yield to His control and guidance in our lives He equips us to live out our faith.
For more on the work of the Spirit, check out the Discovery Series booklet How Can I Be Filled with the Spirit? at discoveryseries.org/q0301.
In All Circumstances
By Lawrence Darmani
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18
In our suburb we complain about the constant power outages. They can hit three times in a week and last up to twenty-four hours, plunging the neighborhood into darkness. The inconvenience is hard to bear when we cannot use basic household appliances.
Our Christian neighbor often asks, “Is this also something to thank God for?” She is referring to 1 Thessalonians 5:18: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” We always say, “Yes, of course, we thank God in all things.” But the half-hearted manner in which we say it is contradicted by our grumbling every time the power goes off.
Help us to see You at work in every circumstance, no matter how difficult.
One day, however, our belief in thanking God in all circumstances took on new meaning. I returned from work to find our neighbor visibly shaken as she cried, “Thank Jesus the power was off. My house would have burned down, and my family and I would have perished!”
A refuse-collection truck had hit the electricity pole in front of her house and brought down the high-tension cables right over several houses. Had there been power in the cables, fatalities would have been likely.
The difficult circumstances we face can make it hard to say, “Thanks, Lord.” We can be thankful to our God who sees in every situation an opportunity for us to trust Him—whether or not we see His purpose.
Father, we honor You with our words, but so often our actions reveal that our hearts don’t trust You. Help us to see You at work in every circumstance, no matter how difficult.
By God’s grace we can be thankful in all things.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, February 04, 2017
The Compelling Majesty of His Power
The love of Christ compels us… —2 Corinthians 5:14
Paul said that he was overpowered, subdued, and held as in a vise by “the love of Christ.” Very few of us really know what it means to be held in the grip of the love of God. We tend so often to be controlled simply by our own experience. The one thing that gripped and held Paul, to the exclusion of everything else, was the love of God. “The love of Christ compels us….” When you hear that coming from the life of a man or woman it is unmistakable. You will know that the Spirit of God is completely unhindered in that person’s life.
When we are born again by the Spirit of God, our testimony is based solely on what God has done for us, and rightly so. But that will change and be removed forever once you “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” (Acts 1:8). Only then will you begin to realize what Jesus meant when He went on to say, “…you shall be witnesses to Me….” Not witnesses to what Jesus can do— that is basic and understood— but “witnesses to Me….” We will accept everything that happens as if it were happening to Him, whether we receive praise or blame, persecution or reward. No one is able to take this stand for Jesus Christ who is not totally compelled by the majesty of His power. It is the only thing that matters, and yet it is strange that it’s the last thing we as Christian workers realize. Paul said that he was gripped by the love of God and that is why he acted as he did. People could perceive him as mad or sane— he did not care. There was only one thing he lived for— to persuade people of the coming judgment of God and to tell them of “the love of Christ.” This total surrender to “the love of Christ” is the only thing that will bear fruit in your life. And it will always leave the mark of God’s holiness and His power, never drawing attention to your personal holiness.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L
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