Max Lucado Daily: PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Brian Reed served in a military unit in Baghdad, Iraq, in the fall of 2003. He and his unit went on regular street patrols to protect neighborhoods and build peace. It was often a thankless, fruitless assignment. Brian said his unit battled low morale daily.
An exception came in the form of a church service his men stumbled upon. It was filled with Arabic-speaking Coptic Christians who invited the soldiers to partake in the Lord’s Supper with them. Brian wrote, “Celebrating the Lord’s Supper and remembering Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins was the most important bridge builder and wall destroyer we could have experienced.”
They were “opposite yous” brought together by the cross of Christ. This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 97
God rules: there’s something to shout over!
On the double, mainlands and islands—celebrate!
2 Bright clouds and storm clouds circle ’round him;
Right and justice anchor his rule.
3 Fire blazes out before him,
Flaming high up the craggy mountains.
4 His lightnings light up the world;
Earth, wide-eyed, trembles in fear.
5 The mountains take one look at God
And melt, melt like wax before earth’s Lord.
6 The heavens announce that he’ll set everything right,
And everyone will see it happen—glorious!
7-8 All who serve handcrafted gods will be sorry—
And they were so proud of their ragamuffin gods!
On your knees, all you gods—worship him!
And Zion, you listen and take heart!
Daughters of Zion, sing your hearts out:
God has done it all, has set everything right.
9 You, God, are High God of the cosmos,
Far, far higher than any of the gods.
10 God loves all who hate evil,
And those who love him he keeps safe,
Snatches them from the grip of the wicked.
11 Light-seeds are planted in the souls of God’s people,
Joy-seeds are planted in good heart-soil.
12 So, God’s people, shout praise to God,
Give thanks to our Holy God!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, October 11, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 118:6–9, 21–25
The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?
7 The Lord is with me; he is my helper.
I look in triumph on my enemies.
8 It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in humans.
9 It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in princes.
I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
you have become my salvation.
22 The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
23 the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.
24 The Lord has done it this very day;
let us rejoice today and be glad.
25 Lord, save us!
Lord, grant us success!
Insight
Psalm 118 is one of the Hallel (praise) psalms that were sung at feast times in ancient Israel. Additionally, however, this particular song of celebration also contains elements of a messianic psalm—anticipating Israel’s Messiah. In Matthew 21:9, at Christ’s “triumphal entry,” the people affirm Psalm 118:25–26, saying, “Lord, save us! Lord, grant us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” The Hebrew word hosanna, meaning “Lord, save us,” echoes this song on the lips of the people. And when confronting the religious leadership in Matthew 21:42, Jesus claims Psalm 118:22–23 to be self-descriptive by affirming, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” While used liturgically in Israel’s feasts, Psalm 118 itself anticipates the coming of the One who would fulfill the ultimate meaning of those feasts.
By: Bill Crowder
The Main Actor
The Lord has done this. Psalm 118:23
I once heard about a student taking a class in preaching at a prominent seminary. The student, a young man who was a bit full of himself, delivered his sermon with eloquence and evident passion. He sat down self-satisfied, and the professor paused a moment before responding. “That was a powerful sermon,” he said. “It was well organized and moving. The only problem is that God was not the subject of a single one of your sentences.”
The professor highlighted a problem all of us struggle with at times: We can talk as if we’re the primary actor (emphasizing what we do, what we say) when in truth God is the primary actor in life. We often profess that God is somehow generally “in charge,” but we act as if all the outcomes depend on us.
The Scriptures insist that God is the true subject of our lives, the true force. Even our necessary acts of faith are done “in the name of the Lord”—in the Lord’s power (Psalm 118:10–11). God enacts our salvation. God rescues us. God tends to our needs. “The Lord has done this” (v. 23).
So the pressure’s off. We don’t need to fret, compare, work with compulsive energy, or feed our many anxieties. God is in charge. We need only trust and follow His lead in obedience. By: Winn Collier
Reflect & Pray
When are you most tempted to think you’re the main actor of your life? How has God invited you to let Him be the center of your life?
God, I’ve been paying lip service to You being in charge of my world. It’s exhausting, and I want to stop doing that. Help me trust You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, October 11, 2019
God’s Silence— Then What?
When He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. —John 11:6
Has God trusted you with His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences are actually His answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).
A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious— it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of His silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy— silence.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried. He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, October 11, 2019
The Avalanche Zone - #8545
He was having a great day on the slopes - a lot of fresh snow - an already deep base. It was just the kind of day an experienced skier would hope for. But then this one skier decided that he wanted more. He skied onto another part of the mountain; a section that was clearly marked with a large skull-and-crossbones sign; a warning about going any further written in bold print: "You may die. You decide." It couldn't be any plainer than that. Sadly, that skier decided to ski where he never should have gone. Yeah, that's when the massive avalanche came that drove him headlong into a tree and buried him in a snowy grave.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Avalanche Zone."
A man deliberately chose to go out-of-bounds into the forbidden zone. He ignored the warnings, and tragically, he paid for it with his life. Sadly, there's a tragedy like that being repeated every day by many, many people. They're out-of-bounds, they're in the avalanche zone, and when it comes, there's no escape.
That's actually a picture of the spiritual condition of someone who might be listening right now. In a way, it's a picture of all of us. Because the Bible says every one of us has decided to live our life outside of God's boundaries, even the most religious of us. God insists on truth, for example, and countless times, come on, we've settled for much less than telling the truth haven't we? God says we can have no other gods before Him, but we've pre-empted Him as the center of our life and many times pushed Him to the edge and put something else in the center of our universe.
The boundaries of God forbid destructive anger, lingering bitterness, hatred, and hurting other people. We're out-of-bounds with our pride, our sexual desires, our sexual involvement directed to anyone other than our husband or wife, our prejudice, our judgmental spirit. Your sins and my sins might be different - and you may think mine are more sinful than yours - but the Bible gives God's sobering bottom line: "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10) ... "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
And our sin has placed us squarely in the path of the avalanche of the judgment of Almighty God. Our instinctive fear of death is actually well-founded because we have to meet a holy God on the other side. James 1:15, our word for today from the Word of God, makes very clear the danger we're in. It says, "After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." The ultimate outcome of our sin will inevitably be death, the death of our self-respect, of relationships, of people's trust in us, of our reputation. But worst of all, our eternal separation from our God in a place Jesus called hell.
But the dying for your sin has already been done by Jesus Christ. In the words of the Bible, Jesus came to "do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26). That cross was for you. But read the warning sign: "Whoever does not believe (in Him) stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" (John 3:18). If you keep skiing past that warning, you will as the Bible says, "die in your sin" (John 8:21) and face the awful avalanche of a penalty that Jesus already paid.
That's what makes it so urgent that you turn around and reach for heaven's Rescuer, Jesus, your only hope of heaven. Don't just breeze by His cross again without doing something, without giving yourself to the One who gave Himself for you. Right where you are, you can say, "Jesus, I'm Yours. I have no hope but You."
Look, I'd love to invite you to go to our website as soon as you can today. Because I've tried to put there in the simplest of terms how you can be sure that you are forgiven and you are going to heaven when you die. The website is ANewStory.com.
Like the sign on that ski slope that day, God's warning says, "You choose." It's not a religious choice. No, it's literally a choice between life and death - heaven and hell. I pray that you will choose life.
Friday, October 11, 2019
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Psalm 96, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: LOVE THE SINNER
The catchphrase “hate the sin and love the sinner” fits nicely on a bumper sticker, but how do we embed the principle in our hearts? Maybe these ideas will help.
Reserve judgment. Let every person you meet be a new person in your mind. None of this labeling or preconceived notions. Listening is a healing balm for raw emotions. Happiness happens, not by fixing people, but by accepting people and entrusting them into the care of God. Jesus did this.
Resist the urge to shout. It’s better to keep quiet and keep a friend than to be loud and lose one. Besides, “They are God’s servants, not yours. They are responsible to him, not to you …” (Romans 14:4).
Let’s reason together. Let’s work together. And if discussion fails, let love succeed. This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 96
Sing God a brand-new song!
Earth and everyone in it, sing!
Sing to God—worship God!
2-3 Shout the news of his victory from sea to sea,
Take the news of his glory to the lost,
News of his wonders to one and all!
4-5 For God is great, and worth a thousand Hallelujahs.
His terrible beauty makes the gods look cheap;
Pagan gods are mere tatters and rags.
5-6 God made the heavens—
Royal splendor radiates from him,
A powerful beauty sets him apart.
7 Bravo, God, Bravo!
Everyone join in the great shout: Encore!
In awe before the beauty, in awe before the might.
8-9 Bring gifts and celebrate,
Bow before the beauty of God,
Then to your knees—everyone worship!
10 Get out the message—God Rules!
He put the world on a firm foundation;
He treats everyone fair and square.
11 Let’s hear it from Sky,
With Earth joining in,
And a huge round of applause from Sea.
12 Let Wilderness turn cartwheels,
Animals, come dance,
Put every tree of the forest in the choir—
13 An extravaganza before God as he comes,
As he comes to set everything right on earth,
Set everything right, treat everyone fair.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Acts 1:1–11
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.”
6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
Footnotes:
Acts 1:5 Or in
Acts 1:5 Or in
Insight
Acts 1:1–11 serves as a flashback to Luke’s “former book,” the gospel of Luke, and a prologue to the book of Acts. In both accounts, Jesus promised the apostles the Holy Spirit who would clothe them with power (Luke 24:46–49; Acts 1:8). The Holy Spirit serves as “a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession” (Ephesians 1:14); a promise that we will not be forgotten. By: Julie Schwab
Don’t Forget!
He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. Acts 1:9
My niece, her four-year-old daughter Kailyn, and I had a wonderful Saturday afternoon together. We enjoyed blowing bubbles outside, coloring in a princess coloring book, and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When they got in the car to leave, Kailyn sweetly called out the opened window, “Don’t forget me, Auntie Anne.” I quickly walked toward the car and whispered, “I could never forget you. I promise I will see you soon.”
In Acts 1, the disciples watched as Jesus was “taken up before their very eyes” into the sky (v. 9). I wonder if they thought they might be forgotten by their Master. But He’d just promised to send His Spirit to live in them and empower them to handle the persecution that was to come (v. 8). And He’d taught them He was going away to prepare a place for them and would come back and take them to be with Him (John 14:3). Yet they must have wondered how long they would have to wait. Perhaps they wanted to say, “Don’t forget us, Jesus!”
For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, He lives in us through the Holy Spirit. We still may wonder when He will come again and restore us and His creation fully. But it will happen—He won’t forget us. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). By: Anne Cetas
Reflect & Pray
How do you sense God’s presence in your life? What are you looking forward to the most in eternity?
We enjoy walking with You now, but we look forward to the day when all things will be fully restored. Come soon, Lord Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, October 10, 2019
How Will I Know?
Jesus answered and said, "I thank You, Father…that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes." —Matthew 11:25
We do not grow into a spiritual relationship step by step— we either have a relationship or we do not. God does not continue to cleanse us more and more from sin— “But if we walk in the light,” we are cleansed “from all sin” (1 John 1:7). It is a matter of obedience, and once we obey, the relationship is instantly perfected. But if we turn away from obedience for even one second, darkness and death are immediately at work again.
All of God’s revealed truths are sealed until they are opened to us through obedience. You will never open them through philosophy or thinking. But once you obey, a flash of light comes immediately. Let God’s truth work into you by immersing yourself in it, not by worrying into it. The only way you can get to know the truth of God is to stop trying to find out and by being born again. If you obey God in the first thing He shows you, then He instantly opens up the next truth to you. You could read volumes on the work of the Holy Spirit, when five minutes of total, uncompromising obedience would make things as clear as sunlight. Don’t say, “I suppose I will understand these things someday!” You can understand them now. And it is not study that brings understanding to you, but obedience. Even the smallest bit of obedience opens heaven, and the deepest truths of God immediately become yours. Yet God will never reveal more truth about Himself to you, until you have obeyed what you know already. Beware of becoming one of the “wise and prudent.” “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know…” (John 7:17).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Wherever the providence of God may dump us down, in a slum, in a shop, in the desert, we have to labour along the line of His direction. Never allow this thought—“I am of no use where I am,” because you certainly can be of no use where you are not! Wherever He has engineered your circumstances, pray. So Send I You, 1325 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, October 10, 2019
The Money Magnet - #8544
I used to really take heart when I saw my son poring over the newspaper, until I looked over his shoulder. He didn't care much about the news, but he was devouring the baseball statistics. Later, I'd see him poring over a magazine with almost no pictures in it, just names and numbers. It was the latest monthly magazine with the value on every baseball card imaginable. Our son got excited when certain players pitched a great game or got some of the runs batted in, or you know, they were tracking for an MVP award even if they played for a team he'd never root for. Now, what's going on here? Well if you've ever been, or if you've ever known a serious baseball card collector, you know that he had invested a lot of money in certain player cards and when they did well, he did well in the value of those cards. Like many investors, his interests followed his investments.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Money Magnet."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 6:19-21 - a little lesson in let's call it heavenly economics - "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy; where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Jesus is talking to us here about safe investments; those that are really invested in things that matter in heaven. You can't lose those. Then there are unsafe investments: things that you sank a lot into here on earth where you can lose them.
The bottom line on values - your heart will be wherever your money is. The things you'll care about most will be those things in which you have invested the most, earth stuff, or heaven stuff. So where are major chunks of your money going? Jesus said that's where most of your heart will be going: A house, a business, recreation, clothes, entertainment?
In many ways your checkbook tells what you really care about. Not the songs you sing in church, or even the beliefs you hold, or the activities you're involved in. Jesus said it's your money that tells the story of what you really value. When that's something on earth, it tends to become an idol. Why? Well because just like my son with his baseball cards. Our interests, our time and our energies follow our investment.
The ultimate financial advisor, that's Jesus, said to pour everything you can into what matters in heaven; like getting the Gospel of Jesus to people who have no hope without Him; advancing God's work on earth; meeting the needs of the hurting people, the helpless people.
Every dollar given in Jesus' name for lost people or hurting people is credited directly to your account in heaven where you are going to reap the dividends forever. I call it Eternity Inc. I'm glad Jesus gave this concrete, objective way to measure where your heart is. It's like a spiritual EKG.
We can't hide behind spiritual rhetoric or Christian busyness. Not when He said, "Where are you putting your money?" If it isn't in the agenda of Jesus, you probably love something more than you love Him. But, today might be your day to begin revaluing your life, and if necessary repenting of treasure that's been invested in too much of the temporary.
Maybe this is the day you make Jesus Christ truly the Lord of your money, property, your possessions. Then you'll be reading different reports, you'll be hungry to know how the work of God is doing because that's where you're invested now.
If you're going to be a follower of Jesus, you will invest in the things He invested in with everything He had - the lives of those He died for.
The catchphrase “hate the sin and love the sinner” fits nicely on a bumper sticker, but how do we embed the principle in our hearts? Maybe these ideas will help.
Reserve judgment. Let every person you meet be a new person in your mind. None of this labeling or preconceived notions. Listening is a healing balm for raw emotions. Happiness happens, not by fixing people, but by accepting people and entrusting them into the care of God. Jesus did this.
Resist the urge to shout. It’s better to keep quiet and keep a friend than to be loud and lose one. Besides, “They are God’s servants, not yours. They are responsible to him, not to you …” (Romans 14:4).
Let’s reason together. Let’s work together. And if discussion fails, let love succeed. This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 96
Sing God a brand-new song!
Earth and everyone in it, sing!
Sing to God—worship God!
2-3 Shout the news of his victory from sea to sea,
Take the news of his glory to the lost,
News of his wonders to one and all!
4-5 For God is great, and worth a thousand Hallelujahs.
His terrible beauty makes the gods look cheap;
Pagan gods are mere tatters and rags.
5-6 God made the heavens—
Royal splendor radiates from him,
A powerful beauty sets him apart.
7 Bravo, God, Bravo!
Everyone join in the great shout: Encore!
In awe before the beauty, in awe before the might.
8-9 Bring gifts and celebrate,
Bow before the beauty of God,
Then to your knees—everyone worship!
10 Get out the message—God Rules!
He put the world on a firm foundation;
He treats everyone fair and square.
11 Let’s hear it from Sky,
With Earth joining in,
And a huge round of applause from Sea.
12 Let Wilderness turn cartwheels,
Animals, come dance,
Put every tree of the forest in the choir—
13 An extravaganza before God as he comes,
As he comes to set everything right on earth,
Set everything right, treat everyone fair.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Acts 1:1–11
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.”
6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
Footnotes:
Acts 1:5 Or in
Acts 1:5 Or in
Insight
Acts 1:1–11 serves as a flashback to Luke’s “former book,” the gospel of Luke, and a prologue to the book of Acts. In both accounts, Jesus promised the apostles the Holy Spirit who would clothe them with power (Luke 24:46–49; Acts 1:8). The Holy Spirit serves as “a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession” (Ephesians 1:14); a promise that we will not be forgotten. By: Julie Schwab
Don’t Forget!
He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. Acts 1:9
My niece, her four-year-old daughter Kailyn, and I had a wonderful Saturday afternoon together. We enjoyed blowing bubbles outside, coloring in a princess coloring book, and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When they got in the car to leave, Kailyn sweetly called out the opened window, “Don’t forget me, Auntie Anne.” I quickly walked toward the car and whispered, “I could never forget you. I promise I will see you soon.”
In Acts 1, the disciples watched as Jesus was “taken up before their very eyes” into the sky (v. 9). I wonder if they thought they might be forgotten by their Master. But He’d just promised to send His Spirit to live in them and empower them to handle the persecution that was to come (v. 8). And He’d taught them He was going away to prepare a place for them and would come back and take them to be with Him (John 14:3). Yet they must have wondered how long they would have to wait. Perhaps they wanted to say, “Don’t forget us, Jesus!”
For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, He lives in us through the Holy Spirit. We still may wonder when He will come again and restore us and His creation fully. But it will happen—He won’t forget us. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). By: Anne Cetas
Reflect & Pray
How do you sense God’s presence in your life? What are you looking forward to the most in eternity?
We enjoy walking with You now, but we look forward to the day when all things will be fully restored. Come soon, Lord Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, October 10, 2019
How Will I Know?
Jesus answered and said, "I thank You, Father…that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes." —Matthew 11:25
We do not grow into a spiritual relationship step by step— we either have a relationship or we do not. God does not continue to cleanse us more and more from sin— “But if we walk in the light,” we are cleansed “from all sin” (1 John 1:7). It is a matter of obedience, and once we obey, the relationship is instantly perfected. But if we turn away from obedience for even one second, darkness and death are immediately at work again.
All of God’s revealed truths are sealed until they are opened to us through obedience. You will never open them through philosophy or thinking. But once you obey, a flash of light comes immediately. Let God’s truth work into you by immersing yourself in it, not by worrying into it. The only way you can get to know the truth of God is to stop trying to find out and by being born again. If you obey God in the first thing He shows you, then He instantly opens up the next truth to you. You could read volumes on the work of the Holy Spirit, when five minutes of total, uncompromising obedience would make things as clear as sunlight. Don’t say, “I suppose I will understand these things someday!” You can understand them now. And it is not study that brings understanding to you, but obedience. Even the smallest bit of obedience opens heaven, and the deepest truths of God immediately become yours. Yet God will never reveal more truth about Himself to you, until you have obeyed what you know already. Beware of becoming one of the “wise and prudent.” “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know…” (John 7:17).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Wherever the providence of God may dump us down, in a slum, in a shop, in the desert, we have to labour along the line of His direction. Never allow this thought—“I am of no use where I am,” because you certainly can be of no use where you are not! Wherever He has engineered your circumstances, pray. So Send I You, 1325 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, October 10, 2019
The Money Magnet - #8544
I used to really take heart when I saw my son poring over the newspaper, until I looked over his shoulder. He didn't care much about the news, but he was devouring the baseball statistics. Later, I'd see him poring over a magazine with almost no pictures in it, just names and numbers. It was the latest monthly magazine with the value on every baseball card imaginable. Our son got excited when certain players pitched a great game or got some of the runs batted in, or you know, they were tracking for an MVP award even if they played for a team he'd never root for. Now, what's going on here? Well if you've ever been, or if you've ever known a serious baseball card collector, you know that he had invested a lot of money in certain player cards and when they did well, he did well in the value of those cards. Like many investors, his interests followed his investments.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Money Magnet."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 6:19-21 - a little lesson in let's call it heavenly economics - "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy; where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Jesus is talking to us here about safe investments; those that are really invested in things that matter in heaven. You can't lose those. Then there are unsafe investments: things that you sank a lot into here on earth where you can lose them.
The bottom line on values - your heart will be wherever your money is. The things you'll care about most will be those things in which you have invested the most, earth stuff, or heaven stuff. So where are major chunks of your money going? Jesus said that's where most of your heart will be going: A house, a business, recreation, clothes, entertainment?
In many ways your checkbook tells what you really care about. Not the songs you sing in church, or even the beliefs you hold, or the activities you're involved in. Jesus said it's your money that tells the story of what you really value. When that's something on earth, it tends to become an idol. Why? Well because just like my son with his baseball cards. Our interests, our time and our energies follow our investment.
The ultimate financial advisor, that's Jesus, said to pour everything you can into what matters in heaven; like getting the Gospel of Jesus to people who have no hope without Him; advancing God's work on earth; meeting the needs of the hurting people, the helpless people.
Every dollar given in Jesus' name for lost people or hurting people is credited directly to your account in heaven where you are going to reap the dividends forever. I call it Eternity Inc. I'm glad Jesus gave this concrete, objective way to measure where your heart is. It's like a spiritual EKG.
We can't hide behind spiritual rhetoric or Christian busyness. Not when He said, "Where are you putting your money?" If it isn't in the agenda of Jesus, you probably love something more than you love Him. But, today might be your day to begin revaluing your life, and if necessary repenting of treasure that's been invested in too much of the temporary.
Maybe this is the day you make Jesus Christ truly the Lord of your money, property, your possessions. Then you'll be reading different reports, you'll be hungry to know how the work of God is doing because that's where you're invested now.
If you're going to be a follower of Jesus, you will invest in the things He invested in with everything He had - the lives of those He died for.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Psalm 96, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily:GRACE, TRUTH, AND ACCEPTANCE
How does Jesus receive us? I know how he treated me. I was a twenty-year-old troublemaker on a downhill path. Though I’d made a commitment to Christ a decade earlier, you wouldn’t have known it by the way I lived.
Finally I came to Jesus, and he welcomed me back. Please note– he did not accept my behavior but he accepted me, his wayward child. He said, “Come back. I’ll clean you up.” He was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Not just grace, but also truth. Not just truth, but also grace.
Grace and truth. Grace told the adulterous woman, “I do not condemn you.” Truth told her, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). Jesus shared truth but graciously. Jesus offered grace but truthfully. Grace and truth. Acceptance seeks to offer both.
This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 96
1 Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
4 For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of his[a] holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
13 Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Isaiah 41:8–13
“But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
you descendants of Abraham my friend,
9 I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, ‘You are my servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
10 So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
11 “All who rage against you
will surely be ashamed and disgraced;
those who oppose you
will be as nothing and perish.
12 Though you search for your enemies,
you will not find them.
Those who wage war against you
will be as nothing at all.
13 For I am the Lord your God
who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear;
I will help you.
Insight
In the prophecies of Isaiah, chapters 1–39 are like an ever-darkening night anticipating a catastrophic consequence to Jerusalem’s love affair with idols (Isaiah 39:6–7). When the warnings come to pass, chapters 40–55 follow like a dawning light. According to the prophet, God would once again show His people the mercy He had shown Jacob—the lying, scheming father of their nation. He would call them from the streets of Babylon as He had led Abraham, the father of their faith, out of idolatrous Ur. In a way no one could have anticipated, He would rescue them by a foreign king who didn’t even know Him (45:1–13). Cyrus, king of Persia, would crush Babylon and offer the Jewish people their right of return. With words of hope and a hint of His greater plans for the world, He urges them not to be afraid of returning to Him (41:13). By: Mart DeHaan
Hang in There
I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10
My father-in-law turned seventy-eight recently, and during our family gathering to honor him, someone asked him, “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your life so far?” His answer? “Hang in there.”
Hang in there. It might be tempting to dismiss those words as simplistic. But my father-in-law wasn’t promoting blind optimism or positive thinking. He’s endured tough things in his nearly eight decades. His determination to press on wasn’t grounded in some vague hope that things might get better, but in Christ’s work in his life.
“Hanging in there”—the Bible calls it perseverance—isn’t possible through mere willpower. We persevere because God promised, over and over, that He’s with us, that He’ll give us strength, and that He’ll accomplish His purposes in our lives. That’s the message He spoke to the Israelites through Isaiah: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
What does it take to “hang in there”? According to Isaiah, the foundation for hope is God’s character. Knowing God’s goodness allows us to release our grip on fear so we can cling to the Father and His promise that He will provide what we need each day: strength, help, and God’s comforting, empowering, and upholding presence. By: Adam Holz
Reflect & Pray
How have you experienced God’s provision for you in moments of fear? How can the support of other believers help you to hang on?
Father, Your love gives us everything we need to “hang in there.” Help us to remember Your promise of strength and to rely upon it each day.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Building on the Atonement
…present…your members as instruments of righteousness to God. —Romans 6:13
I cannot save and sanctify myself; I cannot make atonement for sin; I cannot redeem the world; I cannot right what is wrong, purify what is impure, or make holy what is unholy. That is all the sovereign work of God. Do I have faith in what Jesus Christ has done? He has made the perfect atonement for sin. Am I in the habit of constantly realizing it? The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things. The redemption of Christ is not an experience, it is the great act of God which He has performed through Christ, and I have to build my faith on it. If I construct my faith on my own experience, I produce the most unscriptural kind of life— an isolated life, with my eyes focused solely on my own holiness. Beware of that human holiness that is not based on the atonement of the Lord. It has no value for anything except a life of isolation— it is useless to God and a nuisance to man. Measure every kind of experience you have by our Lord Himself. We cannot do anything pleasing to God unless we deliberately build on the foundation of the atonement by the Cross of Christ.
The atonement of Jesus must be exhibited in practical, unassuming ways in my life. Every time I obey, the absolute deity of God is on my side, so that the grace of God and my natural obedience are in perfect agreement. Obedience means that I have completely placed my trust in the atonement, and my obedience is immediately met by the delight of the supernatural grace of God.
Beware of the human holiness that denies the reality of the natural life— it is a fraud. Continually bring yourself to the trial or test of the atonement and ask, “Where is the discernment of the atonement in this, and in that?”
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
So Send I You
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT YOUR BAD NEWS - #8543
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
For years, her voice was one of the signature voices of Southern Gospel music. When Bill Gaither started doing his Homecoming videos, her commanding voice became known to a lot more people than ever before. She's with the Lord now, but when Vestal Goodman was around she belted out a song, and it captivated audiences. I was actually surprised to learn that Vestal Goodman's singing didn't always dominate a room. And whether you've ever heard of her or not, it's amazing how this all came to be. Her husband Howard said that when they first started traveling in itinerant ministry, his wife actually had this little, light soprano voice. Something obviously happened. The storm happened. This near hurricane-strength storm hit Monroe, Louisiana the day they were supposed to have a concert in their big tent. Well, those violent winds destroyed everything, including the tent and their sound system. They moved their meeting to a church that night, and Vestal asked Howard to accompany her on a song she had never sung before publicly. As he started to play that song, he said that's when it happened! Suddenly he was hearing his wife sing with this great booming voice he'd never heard before - a voice that belted out a Gospel song; not only for the folks in the church that night, but later for millions of people for decades to come.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Good News About Your Bad News."
While most of us will never sing like Vestal Goodman did, the same thing that uncorked her song may be what will help you find a song you've never had before. It's the power of the storm. The same turbulence that can blow away important things in your life can also be God's instrument to bring out a strength you never knew you had; to unleash from deep inside you a "song" that can touch many other lives unless you let the storm make you stop singing.
No doubt, you're well acquainted with the pain that one of life's storms can bring into your life. We all are. You may be in the middle of picking up the pieces of what the storm has destroyed. What we need help seeing is the potential of the storm; the possibilities that the storm brings into our life.
We see that bigger picture of the heavy blows in our life when we read Romans 5:3-5, our word for today from the Word of God. Paul says, "We also rejoice in our suffering" - Really? Yeah. "...because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit."
The natural response is to focus on what the storm has taken. I get that. The healing response is to focus on what the storm can produce. These verses talk about a storm helping to transform us from a retreating wimp into a persevering warrior; to build or to reveal in us a character we may have never had before; to produce hope - the kind that comes when your hurt makes you a more caring and compassionate person because of what you've been through. And then you can give that hope to other broken people. You can give them the comfort you received from Christ.
It's our storms, more than any other factor in our life, that make us more useful to our Master and then put us in a position to tell others who might not otherwise listen about the storm-proof Savior that we're hanging onto. They'll listen to you because of what you've been through; which may mean that someone else may be in heaven with you someday because of the hurt you've been through. And that will last long after your storm is past. The psalmist tells us that "stormy winds do His bidding" (Psalm 148:8). So would you let God use your storm to produce in you a strength you've never had before; a song you've never been able to sing before?
The majestic eagle, unlike most other birds, refuses to run and hide when a storm's approaching. He actually perches on the edge of his nest, waiting for the storm. Because he lets those powerful currents carry him higher than his wings can take him - until he's actually seeing the sun and looking down on his storm.
Like the eagle, God wants you to use this storm to fly where you've never flown before.
How does Jesus receive us? I know how he treated me. I was a twenty-year-old troublemaker on a downhill path. Though I’d made a commitment to Christ a decade earlier, you wouldn’t have known it by the way I lived.
Finally I came to Jesus, and he welcomed me back. Please note– he did not accept my behavior but he accepted me, his wayward child. He said, “Come back. I’ll clean you up.” He was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Not just grace, but also truth. Not just truth, but also grace.
Grace and truth. Grace told the adulterous woman, “I do not condemn you.” Truth told her, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). Jesus shared truth but graciously. Jesus offered grace but truthfully. Grace and truth. Acceptance seeks to offer both.
This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 96
1 Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
4 For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of his[a] holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
13 Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Isaiah 41:8–13
“But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
you descendants of Abraham my friend,
9 I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, ‘You are my servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
10 So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
11 “All who rage against you
will surely be ashamed and disgraced;
those who oppose you
will be as nothing and perish.
12 Though you search for your enemies,
you will not find them.
Those who wage war against you
will be as nothing at all.
13 For I am the Lord your God
who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear;
I will help you.
Insight
In the prophecies of Isaiah, chapters 1–39 are like an ever-darkening night anticipating a catastrophic consequence to Jerusalem’s love affair with idols (Isaiah 39:6–7). When the warnings come to pass, chapters 40–55 follow like a dawning light. According to the prophet, God would once again show His people the mercy He had shown Jacob—the lying, scheming father of their nation. He would call them from the streets of Babylon as He had led Abraham, the father of their faith, out of idolatrous Ur. In a way no one could have anticipated, He would rescue them by a foreign king who didn’t even know Him (45:1–13). Cyrus, king of Persia, would crush Babylon and offer the Jewish people their right of return. With words of hope and a hint of His greater plans for the world, He urges them not to be afraid of returning to Him (41:13). By: Mart DeHaan
Hang in There
I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10
My father-in-law turned seventy-eight recently, and during our family gathering to honor him, someone asked him, “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your life so far?” His answer? “Hang in there.”
Hang in there. It might be tempting to dismiss those words as simplistic. But my father-in-law wasn’t promoting blind optimism or positive thinking. He’s endured tough things in his nearly eight decades. His determination to press on wasn’t grounded in some vague hope that things might get better, but in Christ’s work in his life.
“Hanging in there”—the Bible calls it perseverance—isn’t possible through mere willpower. We persevere because God promised, over and over, that He’s with us, that He’ll give us strength, and that He’ll accomplish His purposes in our lives. That’s the message He spoke to the Israelites through Isaiah: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
What does it take to “hang in there”? According to Isaiah, the foundation for hope is God’s character. Knowing God’s goodness allows us to release our grip on fear so we can cling to the Father and His promise that He will provide what we need each day: strength, help, and God’s comforting, empowering, and upholding presence. By: Adam Holz
Reflect & Pray
How have you experienced God’s provision for you in moments of fear? How can the support of other believers help you to hang on?
Father, Your love gives us everything we need to “hang in there.” Help us to remember Your promise of strength and to rely upon it each day.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Building on the Atonement
…present…your members as instruments of righteousness to God. —Romans 6:13
I cannot save and sanctify myself; I cannot make atonement for sin; I cannot redeem the world; I cannot right what is wrong, purify what is impure, or make holy what is unholy. That is all the sovereign work of God. Do I have faith in what Jesus Christ has done? He has made the perfect atonement for sin. Am I in the habit of constantly realizing it? The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things. The redemption of Christ is not an experience, it is the great act of God which He has performed through Christ, and I have to build my faith on it. If I construct my faith on my own experience, I produce the most unscriptural kind of life— an isolated life, with my eyes focused solely on my own holiness. Beware of that human holiness that is not based on the atonement of the Lord. It has no value for anything except a life of isolation— it is useless to God and a nuisance to man. Measure every kind of experience you have by our Lord Himself. We cannot do anything pleasing to God unless we deliberately build on the foundation of the atonement by the Cross of Christ.
The atonement of Jesus must be exhibited in practical, unassuming ways in my life. Every time I obey, the absolute deity of God is on my side, so that the grace of God and my natural obedience are in perfect agreement. Obedience means that I have completely placed my trust in the atonement, and my obedience is immediately met by the delight of the supernatural grace of God.
Beware of the human holiness that denies the reality of the natural life— it is a fraud. Continually bring yourself to the trial or test of the atonement and ask, “Where is the discernment of the atonement in this, and in that?”
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
So Send I You
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT YOUR BAD NEWS - #8543
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
For years, her voice was one of the signature voices of Southern Gospel music. When Bill Gaither started doing his Homecoming videos, her commanding voice became known to a lot more people than ever before. She's with the Lord now, but when Vestal Goodman was around she belted out a song, and it captivated audiences. I was actually surprised to learn that Vestal Goodman's singing didn't always dominate a room. And whether you've ever heard of her or not, it's amazing how this all came to be. Her husband Howard said that when they first started traveling in itinerant ministry, his wife actually had this little, light soprano voice. Something obviously happened. The storm happened. This near hurricane-strength storm hit Monroe, Louisiana the day they were supposed to have a concert in their big tent. Well, those violent winds destroyed everything, including the tent and their sound system. They moved their meeting to a church that night, and Vestal asked Howard to accompany her on a song she had never sung before publicly. As he started to play that song, he said that's when it happened! Suddenly he was hearing his wife sing with this great booming voice he'd never heard before - a voice that belted out a Gospel song; not only for the folks in the church that night, but later for millions of people for decades to come.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Good News About Your Bad News."
While most of us will never sing like Vestal Goodman did, the same thing that uncorked her song may be what will help you find a song you've never had before. It's the power of the storm. The same turbulence that can blow away important things in your life can also be God's instrument to bring out a strength you never knew you had; to unleash from deep inside you a "song" that can touch many other lives unless you let the storm make you stop singing.
No doubt, you're well acquainted with the pain that one of life's storms can bring into your life. We all are. You may be in the middle of picking up the pieces of what the storm has destroyed. What we need help seeing is the potential of the storm; the possibilities that the storm brings into our life.
We see that bigger picture of the heavy blows in our life when we read Romans 5:3-5, our word for today from the Word of God. Paul says, "We also rejoice in our suffering" - Really? Yeah. "...because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit."
The natural response is to focus on what the storm has taken. I get that. The healing response is to focus on what the storm can produce. These verses talk about a storm helping to transform us from a retreating wimp into a persevering warrior; to build or to reveal in us a character we may have never had before; to produce hope - the kind that comes when your hurt makes you a more caring and compassionate person because of what you've been through. And then you can give that hope to other broken people. You can give them the comfort you received from Christ.
It's our storms, more than any other factor in our life, that make us more useful to our Master and then put us in a position to tell others who might not otherwise listen about the storm-proof Savior that we're hanging onto. They'll listen to you because of what you've been through; which may mean that someone else may be in heaven with you someday because of the hurt you've been through. And that will last long after your storm is past. The psalmist tells us that "stormy winds do His bidding" (Psalm 148:8). So would you let God use your storm to produce in you a strength you've never had before; a song you've never been able to sing before?
The majestic eagle, unlike most other birds, refuses to run and hide when a storm's approaching. He actually perches on the edge of his nest, waiting for the storm. Because he lets those powerful currents carry him higher than his wings can take him - until he's actually seeing the sun and looking down on his storm.
Like the eagle, God wants you to use this storm to fly where you've never flown before.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Philippians 4, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: RESPONDING TO YOUR OPPOSITE YOU
Matthew was an apostle, a gospel writer. But before he was Matthew he was Levi, a Jew who worked for the Roman IRS. As long as Rome got its part, the tax collectors could take as much as they wanted. They got rich by making people poor.
One of the most difficult relationship questions is “What do we do with a Levi?” Your Levi is the person with whom you fundamentally disagree. You follow different value systems. Your Levi is your “opposite you.” What if your “opposite you” is your boss? Your parent or child?
How does God want us to respond to the Levis of the world? I wonder if the best answer might be found in this verse: “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7 NIV). This is how happiness happens.
Philippians 4 The Message (MSG)
My dear, dear friends! I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.
2 I urge Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences and make up. God doesn’t want his children holding grudges.
3 And, oh, yes, Syzygus, since you’re right there to help them work things out, do your best with them. These women worked for the Message hand in hand with Clement and me, and with the other veterans—worked as hard as any of us. Remember, their names are also in the Book of Life.
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.
10-14 I’m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess—happy that you’re again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had no chance to show it. Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. I don’t mean that your help didn’t mean a lot to me—it did. It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles.
15-17 You Philippians well know, and you can be sure I’ll never forget it, that when I first left Macedonia province, venturing out with the Message, not one church helped out in the give-and-take of this work except you. You were the only one. Even while I was in Thessalonica, you helped out—and not only once, but twice. Not that I’m looking for handouts, but I do want you to experience the blessing that issues from generosity.
18-20 And now I have it all—and keep getting more! The gifts you sent with Epaphroditus were more than enough, like a sweet-smelling sacrifice roasting on the altar, filling the air with fragrance, pleasing God no end. You can be sure that God will take care of everything you need, his generosity exceeding even yours in the glory that pours from Jesus. Our God and Father abounds in glory that just pours out into eternity. Yes.
21-22 Give our regards to every follower of Jesus you meet. Our friends here say hello. All the Christians here, especially the believers who work in the palace of Caesar, want to be remembered to you.
23 Receive and experience the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, deep, deep within yourselves.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Exodus 33:12–23
Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ 13 If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”
14 The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
15 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”
17 And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”
18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”
19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
21 Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”
Insight
Moses had a unique relationship with God. In Exodus 33:11 we read, “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” Yet in verse 20 God told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” The interaction Moses had with God was personal while still maintaining the separation necessary for a Creator and His creature. In the incarnation (Christ coming to earth as both God and a human being), Jesus bridged that gap. Creator became creature so we might again have a relationship with Him.
Shelter from the Storm
When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Exodus 33:22
As the story goes, in 1763, a young minister, traveling on a cliffside road in Somerset, England, ducked into a cave to escape the flashes of lightning and pounding rain. As he looked out at Cheddar Gorge, he pondered the gift of finding shelter and peace in God. Waiting there, he began to write a hymn, “Rock of Ages,” with its memorable opening lines: “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.”
We don’t know if Augustus Toplady thought about Moses’s experience in the cleft of a rock while writing the hymn (Exodus 33:22), but perhaps he did. The Exodus account tells of Moses seeking God’s reassurance and God’s response. When Moses asked God to reveal His glory to him, God answered graciously, knowing that “no one may see me and live” (v. 20). He tucked Moses into the rocks when He passed by, letting Moses only see His back. And Moses knew that God was with him.
We can trust that just as God said to Moses, “My Presence will go with you” (v. 14), so too we can find refuge in Him. We may experience many storms in our lives, as did Moses and the English minister in the story, but when we cry out to Him, He will give us the peace of His presence. By: Amy Boucher Pye
Reflect & Pray
As you look back at various seasons of your life, how do you see God’s loving presence during the storms? How do you experience His presence today?
Father God, help me to trust that You’re with me, even during the storms of life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
Coming to Jesus
Come to Me… —Matthew 11:28
Isn’t it humiliating to be told that we must come to Jesus! Think of the things about which we will not come to Jesus Christ. If you want to know how real you are, test yourself by these words— “Come to Me….” In every dimension in which you are not real, you will argue or evade the issue altogether rather than come; you will go through sorrow rather than come; and you will do anything rather than come the last lap of the race of seemingly unspeakable foolishness and say, “Just as I am, I come.” As long as you have even the least bit of spiritual disrespect, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do something very big, and yet all He is telling you to do is to “Come….”
“Come to Me….” When you hear those words, you will know that something must happen in you before you can come. The Holy Spirit will show you what you have to do, and it will involve anything that will uproot whatever is preventing you from getting through to Jesus. And you will never get any further until you are willing to do that very thing. The Holy Spirit will search out that one immovable stronghold within you, but He cannot budge it unless you are willing to let Him do so.
How often have you come to God with your requests and gone away thinking, “I’ve really received what I wanted this time!” And yet you go away with nothing, while all the time God has stood with His hands outstretched not only to take you but also for you to take Him. Just think of the invincible, unconquerable, and untiring patience of Jesus, who lovingly says, “Come to Me….”
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
When a man’s heart is right with God the mysterious utterances of the Bible are spirit and life to him. Spiritual truth is discernible only to a pure heart, not to a keen intellect. It is not a question of profundity of intellect, but of purity of heart. Bringing Sons Unto Glory, 231 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
Alone - Under Fire - and Okay - #8542
Years ago, not long after the Gulf War actually, an Air Force chaplain planted this mental picture in my head. It's still there! He told me what he considered to be the ultimate example of loneliness. The chaplain said, "To me, lonely is a fighter pilot in his F-16, on a night mission over enemy territory." The only light is this eerie glow from his instrument panel - and his instruments indicate that his plane has just been, as they say, "painted" as a target for, in this case, an Iraqi missile. The only sound he heard in that ultimately lonely moment was a song playing in his headset - "God Bless the USA."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Alone - Under Fire - and Okay."
Now, you're not a fighter pilot, but you may understand some of the feelings a pilot must feel at a moment like I just described. Because you know what it is to feel alone. You know what it is to feel under attack - scared of what may happen next - beyond human help. As you try to complete your mission here, what your heart is listening to may be all you have to sustain you - like a combat pilot playing the music that reminds him of what this is all for.
The Old Testament Jeremiah, was in the middle of his mission when he became nearly overwhelmed by feelings of fear and loneliness and discouragement. Until he, in a sense, heard the music that filled his cockpit. He writes about being alone, under fire, and okay in our word for today from the Word of God in Lamentations 3:19. Listen to the struggle: "I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall - and my soul is downcast within me."
Then, suddenly, this depressing tune that focused on the hurts, and the failures, and the discouragements was replaced by a better tune. "My soul is downcast within me. Yet I call this to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed. For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."
When you're feeling alone, under attack, scared and beyond human help, you've got to fill your heart with some incredibly encouraging truths about the God who is in that cockpit with you. First, God will not let you be, as Jeremiah says, "consumed" - "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed." In other words, God has promised that, "He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Nothing is going to come into your life that has not been Father-filtered first - signed off on by a Heavenly Father who loves you deeply and knows your limits. Now, he may allow you to be taken to the edge, but never over the edge - to face what is hard to bear, but never what is unbearable.
The second encouragement in a dark moment is that God will never give you a day without the resources you need to handle it. His love just isn't some theology or theory - it's concretely expressed "every new morning" with His "mercies" - His "compassions." These are the resources you need to meet this day's challenges - the emotional resources, the material resources, the people you need, the protection you need, the miracles you need for this moment.
No matter how dark it seems, no matter how alone you feel, God has guaranteed that He will never let you be taken past the breaking point and He will never allow a challenge without giving you the resources to meet it. That is His promise. That is His character! That is His love for you!
Corrie ten Boom, who suffered and lost so much in a Nazi concentration camp for harboring Jews in World War II, said it so beautifully, "With Jesus, the worst may happen, but the best remains." You may be alone - you may be under fire - but, because of the Lord's "great love" you're okay!
Matthew was an apostle, a gospel writer. But before he was Matthew he was Levi, a Jew who worked for the Roman IRS. As long as Rome got its part, the tax collectors could take as much as they wanted. They got rich by making people poor.
One of the most difficult relationship questions is “What do we do with a Levi?” Your Levi is the person with whom you fundamentally disagree. You follow different value systems. Your Levi is your “opposite you.” What if your “opposite you” is your boss? Your parent or child?
How does God want us to respond to the Levis of the world? I wonder if the best answer might be found in this verse: “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7 NIV). This is how happiness happens.
Philippians 4 The Message (MSG)
My dear, dear friends! I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.
2 I urge Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences and make up. God doesn’t want his children holding grudges.
3 And, oh, yes, Syzygus, since you’re right there to help them work things out, do your best with them. These women worked for the Message hand in hand with Clement and me, and with the other veterans—worked as hard as any of us. Remember, their names are also in the Book of Life.
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.
10-14 I’m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess—happy that you’re again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had no chance to show it. Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. I don’t mean that your help didn’t mean a lot to me—it did. It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles.
15-17 You Philippians well know, and you can be sure I’ll never forget it, that when I first left Macedonia province, venturing out with the Message, not one church helped out in the give-and-take of this work except you. You were the only one. Even while I was in Thessalonica, you helped out—and not only once, but twice. Not that I’m looking for handouts, but I do want you to experience the blessing that issues from generosity.
18-20 And now I have it all—and keep getting more! The gifts you sent with Epaphroditus were more than enough, like a sweet-smelling sacrifice roasting on the altar, filling the air with fragrance, pleasing God no end. You can be sure that God will take care of everything you need, his generosity exceeding even yours in the glory that pours from Jesus. Our God and Father abounds in glory that just pours out into eternity. Yes.
21-22 Give our regards to every follower of Jesus you meet. Our friends here say hello. All the Christians here, especially the believers who work in the palace of Caesar, want to be remembered to you.
23 Receive and experience the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, deep, deep within yourselves.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Exodus 33:12–23
Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ 13 If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”
14 The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
15 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”
17 And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”
18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”
19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
21 Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”
Insight
Moses had a unique relationship with God. In Exodus 33:11 we read, “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” Yet in verse 20 God told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” The interaction Moses had with God was personal while still maintaining the separation necessary for a Creator and His creature. In the incarnation (Christ coming to earth as both God and a human being), Jesus bridged that gap. Creator became creature so we might again have a relationship with Him.
Shelter from the Storm
When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Exodus 33:22
As the story goes, in 1763, a young minister, traveling on a cliffside road in Somerset, England, ducked into a cave to escape the flashes of lightning and pounding rain. As he looked out at Cheddar Gorge, he pondered the gift of finding shelter and peace in God. Waiting there, he began to write a hymn, “Rock of Ages,” with its memorable opening lines: “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.”
We don’t know if Augustus Toplady thought about Moses’s experience in the cleft of a rock while writing the hymn (Exodus 33:22), but perhaps he did. The Exodus account tells of Moses seeking God’s reassurance and God’s response. When Moses asked God to reveal His glory to him, God answered graciously, knowing that “no one may see me and live” (v. 20). He tucked Moses into the rocks when He passed by, letting Moses only see His back. And Moses knew that God was with him.
We can trust that just as God said to Moses, “My Presence will go with you” (v. 14), so too we can find refuge in Him. We may experience many storms in our lives, as did Moses and the English minister in the story, but when we cry out to Him, He will give us the peace of His presence. By: Amy Boucher Pye
Reflect & Pray
As you look back at various seasons of your life, how do you see God’s loving presence during the storms? How do you experience His presence today?
Father God, help me to trust that You’re with me, even during the storms of life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
Coming to Jesus
Come to Me… —Matthew 11:28
Isn’t it humiliating to be told that we must come to Jesus! Think of the things about which we will not come to Jesus Christ. If you want to know how real you are, test yourself by these words— “Come to Me….” In every dimension in which you are not real, you will argue or evade the issue altogether rather than come; you will go through sorrow rather than come; and you will do anything rather than come the last lap of the race of seemingly unspeakable foolishness and say, “Just as I am, I come.” As long as you have even the least bit of spiritual disrespect, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do something very big, and yet all He is telling you to do is to “Come….”
“Come to Me….” When you hear those words, you will know that something must happen in you before you can come. The Holy Spirit will show you what you have to do, and it will involve anything that will uproot whatever is preventing you from getting through to Jesus. And you will never get any further until you are willing to do that very thing. The Holy Spirit will search out that one immovable stronghold within you, but He cannot budge it unless you are willing to let Him do so.
How often have you come to God with your requests and gone away thinking, “I’ve really received what I wanted this time!” And yet you go away with nothing, while all the time God has stood with His hands outstretched not only to take you but also for you to take Him. Just think of the invincible, unconquerable, and untiring patience of Jesus, who lovingly says, “Come to Me….”
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
When a man’s heart is right with God the mysterious utterances of the Bible are spirit and life to him. Spiritual truth is discernible only to a pure heart, not to a keen intellect. It is not a question of profundity of intellect, but of purity of heart. Bringing Sons Unto Glory, 231 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
Alone - Under Fire - and Okay - #8542
Years ago, not long after the Gulf War actually, an Air Force chaplain planted this mental picture in my head. It's still there! He told me what he considered to be the ultimate example of loneliness. The chaplain said, "To me, lonely is a fighter pilot in his F-16, on a night mission over enemy territory." The only light is this eerie glow from his instrument panel - and his instruments indicate that his plane has just been, as they say, "painted" as a target for, in this case, an Iraqi missile. The only sound he heard in that ultimately lonely moment was a song playing in his headset - "God Bless the USA."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Alone - Under Fire - and Okay."
Now, you're not a fighter pilot, but you may understand some of the feelings a pilot must feel at a moment like I just described. Because you know what it is to feel alone. You know what it is to feel under attack - scared of what may happen next - beyond human help. As you try to complete your mission here, what your heart is listening to may be all you have to sustain you - like a combat pilot playing the music that reminds him of what this is all for.
The Old Testament Jeremiah, was in the middle of his mission when he became nearly overwhelmed by feelings of fear and loneliness and discouragement. Until he, in a sense, heard the music that filled his cockpit. He writes about being alone, under fire, and okay in our word for today from the Word of God in Lamentations 3:19. Listen to the struggle: "I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall - and my soul is downcast within me."
Then, suddenly, this depressing tune that focused on the hurts, and the failures, and the discouragements was replaced by a better tune. "My soul is downcast within me. Yet I call this to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed. For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."
When you're feeling alone, under attack, scared and beyond human help, you've got to fill your heart with some incredibly encouraging truths about the God who is in that cockpit with you. First, God will not let you be, as Jeremiah says, "consumed" - "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed." In other words, God has promised that, "He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Nothing is going to come into your life that has not been Father-filtered first - signed off on by a Heavenly Father who loves you deeply and knows your limits. Now, he may allow you to be taken to the edge, but never over the edge - to face what is hard to bear, but never what is unbearable.
The second encouragement in a dark moment is that God will never give you a day without the resources you need to handle it. His love just isn't some theology or theory - it's concretely expressed "every new morning" with His "mercies" - His "compassions." These are the resources you need to meet this day's challenges - the emotional resources, the material resources, the people you need, the protection you need, the miracles you need for this moment.
No matter how dark it seems, no matter how alone you feel, God has guaranteed that He will never let you be taken past the breaking point and He will never allow a challenge without giving you the resources to meet it. That is His promise. That is His character! That is His love for you!
Corrie ten Boom, who suffered and lost so much in a Nazi concentration camp for harboring Jews in World War II, said it so beautifully, "With Jesus, the worst may happen, but the best remains." You may be alone - you may be under fire - but, because of the Lord's "great love" you're okay!
Monday, October 7, 2019
Psalm 95, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: A MODEL OF SERVANTHOOD
In the hallway of my memory hangs a photograph. It’s a picture of two people— a man and a woman in the seventh decade of life. The man lies in a hospital bed in the living room, not in a hospital room. His body, for all practical purposes, is useless. Muscles have been ravaged by ALS. And even though his body is ineffective, his eyes scan the room for his partner, a woman whose age is concealed by her youthful vigor.
She willingly goes about taking care of her husband. With unswerving loyalty she does what she’s done for the past two years: shave him, bathe him, feed him, comb his hair, and brush his teeth.
On the day we buried my father, I thanked my mom for modeling the servant spirit of Christ– quiet servanthood.
Psalm 95
Come, let’s shout praises to God,
raise the roof for the Rock who saved us!
Let’s march into his presence singing praises,
lifting the rafters with our hymns!
3-5 And why? Because God is the best,
High King over all the gods.
In one hand he holds deep caves and caverns,
in the other hand grasps the high mountains.
He made Ocean—he owns it!
His hands sculpted Earth!
6-7 So come, let us worship: bow before him,
on your knees before God, who made us!
Oh yes, he’s our God,
and we’re the people he pastures, the flock he feeds.
7-11 Drop everything and listen, listen as he speaks:
“Don’t turn a deaf ear as in the Bitter Uprising,
As on the day of the Wilderness Test,
when your ancestors turned and put me to the test.
For forty years they watched me at work among them,
as over and over they tried my patience.
And I was provoked—oh, was I provoked!
‘Can’t they keep their minds on God for five minutes?
Do they simply refuse to walk down my road?’
Exasperated, I exploded,
‘They’ll never get where they’re headed,
never be able to sit down and rest.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, October 07, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Genesis 38:16–26
Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.”
“And what will you give me to sleep with you?” she asked.
17 “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said.
“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?” she asked.
18 He said, “What pledge should I give you?”
“Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. 19 After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow’s clothes again.
20 Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get his pledge back from the woman, but he did not find her. 21 He asked the men who lived there, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?”
“There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here,” they said.
22 So he went back to Judah and said, “I didn’t find her. Besides, the men who lived there said, ‘There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here.’”
23 Then Judah said, “Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock. After all, I did send her this young goat, but you didn’t find her.”
24 About three months later Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.”
Judah said, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!”
25 As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. “I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” she said. And she added, “See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.”
26 Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again.
Insight
There isn’t a Hebrew word that directly translates hypocrite, but the Greek word hypokrites is used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) to render the word godless. The word hypokrites actually means “play actor.” It was a reference to the fact that Greek actors played their parts behind masks—implying that a hypocrite is one who deceives by masking their true intentions. By: Bill Crowder
God’s Heart for Hypocrites
She is more righteous than I. Genesis 38:26
“I’d be very disappointed if one of our team members did that,” said a cricket player, referring to a South African cricketer who’d cheated in a match in 2016. But only two years later, that same player was caught in a nearly identical scandal.
Few things rankle us more than hypocrisy. But in the story of Judah in Genesis 38, Judah’s hypocritical behavior nearly had deadly consequences. After two of his sons died soon after marrying Tamar, Judah had quietly abandoned his duty to provide for her needs (vv. 8–11). In desperation, Tamar disguised herself by wearing a prostitute’s veil, and Judah slept with her (vv. 15–16).
Yet when Judah learned that his widowed daughter-in-law was pregnant, his reaction was murderous. “Bring her out and have her burned to death!” he demanded (v. 24). But Tamar had proof that Judah was the father (v. 25).
Judah could have denied the truth. Instead he admitted his hypocrisy, and also accepted his responsibility to care for her, saying, “She is more righteous than I” (v. 26).
And God wove even this dark chapter of Judah and Tamar’s story into His story of our redemption. Tamar’s children (vv. 29–30) would become ancestors of Jesus (Matthew 1:2–3).
Why is Genesis 38 in the Bible? One reason is because it’s the story of our hypocritical human hearts—and of God’s heart of love, grace, and mercy. By: Tim Gustafson
Reflect & Pray
How do you react when you become aware of your hypocrisy? What would happen if we all became truly transparent with each other?
Help me to see, Father, that at the heart of the matter, we’re all hypocrites who need Your forgiveness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, October 07, 2019
The Nature of Reconciliation
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. —2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us…” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.
A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, October 07, 2019
One "Unloseable" Hope - #8541
The train left Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at 7:30 in the morning, headed for a popular resort area along the Indian Ocean. The train never made it. It was suddenly hit by this massive wall of water. It was a killer tsunami. It had devastated much of South Asia that day. The force of the waves actually tore the wheels off of some cars and leveled the train in this grove of palm trees. In one of those countless heart-wrenching scenes that come out of scenes like a tsunami, one young man at the train site wept in the arms of his friends as the body of his girlfriend was buried. He spoke out to his sweetheart who had died on that train: "We met in university. Is this the fate we hoped for?" Then, as he began to sob even more, he said, "My darling, you were the only hope for me." Tragic picture!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One 'Unloseable' Hope."
It's hard to think of a more devastating feeling than losing what you had put all your hopes in. Maybe that's a feeling you know if you've lost your health, or maybe like me - the love of your life, your job, your retirement. Maybe you've lost an anchor person in your life, or the thing you've invested so much in, the thing - or the person - that's sort of been the glue holding your life together. You know, I have friends who have been told by their marriage partner of decades, "I don't love you anymore." When I asked one of those friends how he's doing, he just said, "I'm crushed."
So many of us either lost, or will lose, someone or something that we've put a lot of our hopes in. Hope is snatched away by death, or divorce, or desertion, disease, disaster. Suddenly, our life is thrown into confusion and anxiety, even despair. What we need is something to put our hope in that's going to be "unloseable" - something that can't be touched by death or disease, or can't be touched by divorce or disaster; something that will never desert us. Actually, someone who will never desert us. Surprisingly, many people have discovered that in losing their source of hope, they finally found the one hope they could never lose. It could happen to you.
That hope is spelled out beautifully in Psalm 62, beginning with verse 1, our word for today from the Word of God. "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress; I will never be shaken...Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him."
The only life-anchor, the only life-hope you can never lose is a personal love relationship with God and God alone. Not a religion, but a relationship. It's possible to have a lot of religion and totally miss the relationship with God that you were made for. Any hope we get from anyone or anything on earth is just an unsatisfying substitute for belonging to God. When you belong to Him and you know you do, your soul can finally, as the psalmist said, "rest." But until you're belonging to God, your soul is rest-less.
That unloseable relationship with God comes one way and only one, because we're away from the God we need so much - away by our choice, certainly not His. We've repeatedly chosen our way instead of His way and that's built this wall between us and God. A wall that God Himself acted to tear down by sending His only Son, Jesus, to pay for all our sins when He died on the cross.
And then He rose from His grave, came back to life so He could come into your life today. He loves you enough to have died for you. That's how much He wants you. But you've got to want Him bad enough to say, "I'm sorry for my sin, God. I don't want it to be this way anymore. I'm putting all my hope and all my trust in Your Son who gave His life so I could belong to You."
You know, our website is set up for just a moment like this where you need this information to know how to totally belong to Him and know that you do. And I hope you'll go to ANewStory.com today.
That hope you've lost and the emptiness you feel could actually lead you today to the hope you'll never lose. Because hope has a name, and His name is Jesus.
In the hallway of my memory hangs a photograph. It’s a picture of two people— a man and a woman in the seventh decade of life. The man lies in a hospital bed in the living room, not in a hospital room. His body, for all practical purposes, is useless. Muscles have been ravaged by ALS. And even though his body is ineffective, his eyes scan the room for his partner, a woman whose age is concealed by her youthful vigor.
She willingly goes about taking care of her husband. With unswerving loyalty she does what she’s done for the past two years: shave him, bathe him, feed him, comb his hair, and brush his teeth.
On the day we buried my father, I thanked my mom for modeling the servant spirit of Christ– quiet servanthood.
Psalm 95
Come, let’s shout praises to God,
raise the roof for the Rock who saved us!
Let’s march into his presence singing praises,
lifting the rafters with our hymns!
3-5 And why? Because God is the best,
High King over all the gods.
In one hand he holds deep caves and caverns,
in the other hand grasps the high mountains.
He made Ocean—he owns it!
His hands sculpted Earth!
6-7 So come, let us worship: bow before him,
on your knees before God, who made us!
Oh yes, he’s our God,
and we’re the people he pastures, the flock he feeds.
7-11 Drop everything and listen, listen as he speaks:
“Don’t turn a deaf ear as in the Bitter Uprising,
As on the day of the Wilderness Test,
when your ancestors turned and put me to the test.
For forty years they watched me at work among them,
as over and over they tried my patience.
And I was provoked—oh, was I provoked!
‘Can’t they keep their minds on God for five minutes?
Do they simply refuse to walk down my road?’
Exasperated, I exploded,
‘They’ll never get where they’re headed,
never be able to sit down and rest.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, October 07, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Genesis 38:16–26
Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.”
“And what will you give me to sleep with you?” she asked.
17 “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said.
“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?” she asked.
18 He said, “What pledge should I give you?”
“Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. 19 After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow’s clothes again.
20 Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get his pledge back from the woman, but he did not find her. 21 He asked the men who lived there, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?”
“There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here,” they said.
22 So he went back to Judah and said, “I didn’t find her. Besides, the men who lived there said, ‘There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here.’”
23 Then Judah said, “Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock. After all, I did send her this young goat, but you didn’t find her.”
24 About three months later Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.”
Judah said, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!”
25 As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. “I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” she said. And she added, “See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.”
26 Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again.
Insight
There isn’t a Hebrew word that directly translates hypocrite, but the Greek word hypokrites is used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) to render the word godless. The word hypokrites actually means “play actor.” It was a reference to the fact that Greek actors played their parts behind masks—implying that a hypocrite is one who deceives by masking their true intentions. By: Bill Crowder
God’s Heart for Hypocrites
She is more righteous than I. Genesis 38:26
“I’d be very disappointed if one of our team members did that,” said a cricket player, referring to a South African cricketer who’d cheated in a match in 2016. But only two years later, that same player was caught in a nearly identical scandal.
Few things rankle us more than hypocrisy. But in the story of Judah in Genesis 38, Judah’s hypocritical behavior nearly had deadly consequences. After two of his sons died soon after marrying Tamar, Judah had quietly abandoned his duty to provide for her needs (vv. 8–11). In desperation, Tamar disguised herself by wearing a prostitute’s veil, and Judah slept with her (vv. 15–16).
Yet when Judah learned that his widowed daughter-in-law was pregnant, his reaction was murderous. “Bring her out and have her burned to death!” he demanded (v. 24). But Tamar had proof that Judah was the father (v. 25).
Judah could have denied the truth. Instead he admitted his hypocrisy, and also accepted his responsibility to care for her, saying, “She is more righteous than I” (v. 26).
And God wove even this dark chapter of Judah and Tamar’s story into His story of our redemption. Tamar’s children (vv. 29–30) would become ancestors of Jesus (Matthew 1:2–3).
Why is Genesis 38 in the Bible? One reason is because it’s the story of our hypocritical human hearts—and of God’s heart of love, grace, and mercy. By: Tim Gustafson
Reflect & Pray
How do you react when you become aware of your hypocrisy? What would happen if we all became truly transparent with each other?
Help me to see, Father, that at the heart of the matter, we’re all hypocrites who need Your forgiveness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, October 07, 2019
The Nature of Reconciliation
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. —2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us…” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.
A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, October 07, 2019
One "Unloseable" Hope - #8541
The train left Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at 7:30 in the morning, headed for a popular resort area along the Indian Ocean. The train never made it. It was suddenly hit by this massive wall of water. It was a killer tsunami. It had devastated much of South Asia that day. The force of the waves actually tore the wheels off of some cars and leveled the train in this grove of palm trees. In one of those countless heart-wrenching scenes that come out of scenes like a tsunami, one young man at the train site wept in the arms of his friends as the body of his girlfriend was buried. He spoke out to his sweetheart who had died on that train: "We met in university. Is this the fate we hoped for?" Then, as he began to sob even more, he said, "My darling, you were the only hope for me." Tragic picture!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One 'Unloseable' Hope."
It's hard to think of a more devastating feeling than losing what you had put all your hopes in. Maybe that's a feeling you know if you've lost your health, or maybe like me - the love of your life, your job, your retirement. Maybe you've lost an anchor person in your life, or the thing you've invested so much in, the thing - or the person - that's sort of been the glue holding your life together. You know, I have friends who have been told by their marriage partner of decades, "I don't love you anymore." When I asked one of those friends how he's doing, he just said, "I'm crushed."
So many of us either lost, or will lose, someone or something that we've put a lot of our hopes in. Hope is snatched away by death, or divorce, or desertion, disease, disaster. Suddenly, our life is thrown into confusion and anxiety, even despair. What we need is something to put our hope in that's going to be "unloseable" - something that can't be touched by death or disease, or can't be touched by divorce or disaster; something that will never desert us. Actually, someone who will never desert us. Surprisingly, many people have discovered that in losing their source of hope, they finally found the one hope they could never lose. It could happen to you.
That hope is spelled out beautifully in Psalm 62, beginning with verse 1, our word for today from the Word of God. "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress; I will never be shaken...Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him."
The only life-anchor, the only life-hope you can never lose is a personal love relationship with God and God alone. Not a religion, but a relationship. It's possible to have a lot of religion and totally miss the relationship with God that you were made for. Any hope we get from anyone or anything on earth is just an unsatisfying substitute for belonging to God. When you belong to Him and you know you do, your soul can finally, as the psalmist said, "rest." But until you're belonging to God, your soul is rest-less.
That unloseable relationship with God comes one way and only one, because we're away from the God we need so much - away by our choice, certainly not His. We've repeatedly chosen our way instead of His way and that's built this wall between us and God. A wall that God Himself acted to tear down by sending His only Son, Jesus, to pay for all our sins when He died on the cross.
And then He rose from His grave, came back to life so He could come into your life today. He loves you enough to have died for you. That's how much He wants you. But you've got to want Him bad enough to say, "I'm sorry for my sin, God. I don't want it to be this way anymore. I'm putting all my hope and all my trust in Your Son who gave His life so I could belong to You."
You know, our website is set up for just a moment like this where you need this information to know how to totally belong to Him and know that you do. And I hope you'll go to ANewStory.com today.
That hope you've lost and the emptiness you feel could actually lead you today to the hope you'll never lose. Because hope has a name, and His name is Jesus.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
Psalm 94, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: From Glory to Glory
Do you sense a disconnect between the promises of the Bible and the reality of your life? Jesus offers abundant joy, yet you live with oppressive grief. Romans 8:37 promises we are more than conquerors-yet you are commonly conquered by temptations or weaknesses. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18 you can live from glory to glory. The deed to your new life is already signed. From dry land to the Promised Land; from manna to feasts.
Joshua 21:43-45 says, "So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it." You can personalize that promise! You can realize your Glory Days! I invite you to join me in a Glory Days Scripture Memory Challenge and take to heart Joshua 21: 43-45. Let's memorize these verses together at GloryDaysToday.com!
Psalm 94
God, put an end to evil;
avenging God, show your colors!
Judge of the earth, take your stand;
throw the book at the arrogant.
3-4 God, the wicked get away with murder—
how long will you let this go on?
They brag and boast
and crow about their crimes!
5-7 They walk all over your people, God,
exploit and abuse your precious people.
They take out anyone who gets in their way;
if they can’t use them, they kill them.
They think, “God isn’t looking,
Jacob’s God is out to lunch.”
8-11 Well, think again, you idiots,
fools—how long before you get smart?
Do you think Ear-Maker doesn’t hear,
Eye-Shaper doesn’t see?
Do you think the trainer of nations doesn’t correct,
the teacher of Adam doesn’t know?
God knows, all right—
knows your stupidity,
sees your shallowness.
12-15 How blessed the man you train, God,
the woman you instruct in your Word,
Providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil,
while a jail is being built for the wicked.
God will never walk away from his people,
never desert his precious people.
Rest assured that justice is on its way
and every good heart put right.
16-19 Who stood up for me against the wicked?
Who took my side against evil workers?
If God hadn’t been there for me,
I never would have made it.
The minute I said, “I’m slipping, I’m falling,”
your love, God, took hold and held me fast.
When I was upset and beside myself,
you calmed me down and cheered me up.
20-23 Can Misrule have anything in common with you?
Can Troublemaker pretend to be on your side?
They ganged up on good people,
plotted behind the backs of the innocent.
But God became my hideout,
God was my high mountain retreat,
Then boomeranged their evil back on them:
for their evil ways he wiped them out,
our God cleaned them out for good.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, October 06, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
James 1:22–25
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
Insight
In the Bible, various metaphors are used to describe the truth of the Scriptures: a mirror (James 1:23); fire and a hammer (Jeremiah 23:29), a lamp (Psalm 119:105), water (Ephesians 5:26), a seed (1 Peter 1:23), food (Job 23:12), and milk (1 Peter 2:2). Scripture reveals, consumes, breaks, illuminates, purifies, convicts, regenerates, satisfies, and nourishes the believer. It’s not enough to know the Bible; we need to obey it (James 1:22–25).
Do What It Says
Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it. Luke 11:28
Brian was scheduled to be an usher at his brother’s wedding, but he was a no-show. Understandably, family members were disappointed, including his sister Jasmine who was the Scripture reader for the occasion. At the ceremony she flawlessly read from the well-known Scripture passage about love in 1 Corinthians 13. But after the wedding when her father asked her to deliver a birthday gift to Brian, she hesitated. She found it harder to live the words about love than to read them. Before the evening was over, however, she had a change of mind and admitted, “I can’t stand and read Scripture about love and not practice it.”
Have you ever been convicted by Scripture that you read or heard but found it difficult to carry out? You’re not alone. It’s easier to read and listen to God’s Word than to obey it. That’s why James’s challenge is so fitting: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22). His mirror illustration makes us smile because we know what it means to observe something about ourselves that needs attention. But we’re deceived if we think that observing alone is enough. When James nudges us to “[look] intently into” and “[continue] in” God’s truth (v. 25), he encourages us to do what Jasmine was compelled to do—live it. God’s Word calls for it, and He deserves nothing less. By: Arthur Jackson
Reflect & Pray
When did you make a change in your life after looking intently into the Scriptures? How was your life enriched?
Heavenly Father, help me to better understand what it means to look intently into Your Word and live out what I read.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, October 06, 2019
The Nature of Regeneration
When it pleased God…to reveal His Son in me… —Galatians 1:15-16
If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “…until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
No one could have had a more sensitive love in human relationship than Jesus; and yet He says there are times when love to father and mother must be hatred in comparison to our love for Him. So Send I You, 1301 L
Do you sense a disconnect between the promises of the Bible and the reality of your life? Jesus offers abundant joy, yet you live with oppressive grief. Romans 8:37 promises we are more than conquerors-yet you are commonly conquered by temptations or weaknesses. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18 you can live from glory to glory. The deed to your new life is already signed. From dry land to the Promised Land; from manna to feasts.
Joshua 21:43-45 says, "So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it." You can personalize that promise! You can realize your Glory Days! I invite you to join me in a Glory Days Scripture Memory Challenge and take to heart Joshua 21: 43-45. Let's memorize these verses together at GloryDaysToday.com!
Psalm 94
God, put an end to evil;
avenging God, show your colors!
Judge of the earth, take your stand;
throw the book at the arrogant.
3-4 God, the wicked get away with murder—
how long will you let this go on?
They brag and boast
and crow about their crimes!
5-7 They walk all over your people, God,
exploit and abuse your precious people.
They take out anyone who gets in their way;
if they can’t use them, they kill them.
They think, “God isn’t looking,
Jacob’s God is out to lunch.”
8-11 Well, think again, you idiots,
fools—how long before you get smart?
Do you think Ear-Maker doesn’t hear,
Eye-Shaper doesn’t see?
Do you think the trainer of nations doesn’t correct,
the teacher of Adam doesn’t know?
God knows, all right—
knows your stupidity,
sees your shallowness.
12-15 How blessed the man you train, God,
the woman you instruct in your Word,
Providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil,
while a jail is being built for the wicked.
God will never walk away from his people,
never desert his precious people.
Rest assured that justice is on its way
and every good heart put right.
16-19 Who stood up for me against the wicked?
Who took my side against evil workers?
If God hadn’t been there for me,
I never would have made it.
The minute I said, “I’m slipping, I’m falling,”
your love, God, took hold and held me fast.
When I was upset and beside myself,
you calmed me down and cheered me up.
20-23 Can Misrule have anything in common with you?
Can Troublemaker pretend to be on your side?
They ganged up on good people,
plotted behind the backs of the innocent.
But God became my hideout,
God was my high mountain retreat,
Then boomeranged their evil back on them:
for their evil ways he wiped them out,
our God cleaned them out for good.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, October 06, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
James 1:22–25
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
Insight
In the Bible, various metaphors are used to describe the truth of the Scriptures: a mirror (James 1:23); fire and a hammer (Jeremiah 23:29), a lamp (Psalm 119:105), water (Ephesians 5:26), a seed (1 Peter 1:23), food (Job 23:12), and milk (1 Peter 2:2). Scripture reveals, consumes, breaks, illuminates, purifies, convicts, regenerates, satisfies, and nourishes the believer. It’s not enough to know the Bible; we need to obey it (James 1:22–25).
Do What It Says
Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it. Luke 11:28
Brian was scheduled to be an usher at his brother’s wedding, but he was a no-show. Understandably, family members were disappointed, including his sister Jasmine who was the Scripture reader for the occasion. At the ceremony she flawlessly read from the well-known Scripture passage about love in 1 Corinthians 13. But after the wedding when her father asked her to deliver a birthday gift to Brian, she hesitated. She found it harder to live the words about love than to read them. Before the evening was over, however, she had a change of mind and admitted, “I can’t stand and read Scripture about love and not practice it.”
Have you ever been convicted by Scripture that you read or heard but found it difficult to carry out? You’re not alone. It’s easier to read and listen to God’s Word than to obey it. That’s why James’s challenge is so fitting: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22). His mirror illustration makes us smile because we know what it means to observe something about ourselves that needs attention. But we’re deceived if we think that observing alone is enough. When James nudges us to “[look] intently into” and “[continue] in” God’s truth (v. 25), he encourages us to do what Jasmine was compelled to do—live it. God’s Word calls for it, and He deserves nothing less. By: Arthur Jackson
Reflect & Pray
When did you make a change in your life after looking intently into the Scriptures? How was your life enriched?
Heavenly Father, help me to better understand what it means to look intently into Your Word and live out what I read.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, October 06, 2019
The Nature of Regeneration
When it pleased God…to reveal His Son in me… —Galatians 1:15-16
If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “…until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
No one could have had a more sensitive love in human relationship than Jesus; and yet He says there are times when love to father and mother must be hatred in comparison to our love for Him. So Send I You, 1301 L
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Psalm 93, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: The Life God Has Given You
In the schoolroom of ancient societies Israel was the kid with the black eye, bullied and beat up. Except for the Glory Days of Israel-seven years between the difficult days of Exodus and the dark days of the judges. Seven years in which the Jordan River opened up and the Jericho walls fell down. Joshua 21:43-45 are verses I invite you to memorize in our Glory Days Scripture Memory Challenge this week.
"So the Lord gave Israel all the land He had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there. The Lord gave them rest on every side just as He had sworn to their ancestors. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the Lord handed all their enemies over to them. Not one of the Lord's good promises to Israel failed. Every one was fulfilled."
From Glory Days
Psalm 93
God is King, robed and ruling,
God is robed and surging with strength.
And yes, the world is firm, immovable,
Your throne ever firm—you’re Eternal!
3-4 Sea storms are up, God,
Sea storms wild and roaring,
Sea storms with thunderous breakers.
Stronger than wild sea storms,
Mightier than sea-storm breakers,
Mighty God rules from High Heaven.
5 What you say goes—it always has.
“Beauty” and “Holy” mark your palace rule,
God, to the very end of time.
94 1-2 God, put an end to evil;
avenging God, show your colors!
Judge of the earth, take your stand;
throw the book at the arrogant.
3-4 God, the wicked get away with murder—
how long will you let this go on?
They brag and boast
and crow about their crimes!
5-7 They walk all over your people, God,
exploit and abuse your precious people.
They take out anyone who gets in their way;
if they can’t use them, they kill them.
They think, “God isn’t looking,
Jacob’s God is out to lunch.”
8-11 Well, think again, you idiots,
fools—how long before you get smart?
Do you think Ear-Maker doesn’t hear,
Eye-Shaper doesn’t see?
Do you think the trainer of nations doesn’t correct,
the teacher of Adam doesn’t know?
God knows, all right—
knows your stupidity,
sees your shallowness.
12-15 How blessed the man you train, God,
the woman you instruct in your Word,
Providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil,
while a jail is being built for the wicked.
God will never walk away from his people,
never desert his precious people.
Rest assured that justice is on its way
and every good heart put right.
16-19 Who stood up for me against the wicked?
Who took my side against evil workers?
If God hadn’t been there for me,
I never would have made it.
The minute I said, “I’m slipping, I’m falling,”
your love, God, took hold and held me fast.
When I was upset and beside myself,
you calmed me down and cheered me up.
20-23 Can Misrule have anything in common with you?
Can Troublemaker pretend to be on your side?
They ganged up on good people,
plotted behind the backs of the innocent.
But God became my hideout,
God was my high mountain retreat,
Then boomeranged their evil back on them:
for their evil ways he wiped them out,
our God cleaned them out for good.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, October 05, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
1 Samuel 17:34–39
But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off.
Insight
David’s fearsome opponent was Goliath, a Philistine. Philistia bordered the Mediterranean Sea and was west of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Philistines had long been a thorn in the side of the Israelites. Goliath was from the city of Gath in Philistia, and was sent by the Philistines to battle against one of the Israelites in Saul’s army. Whoever was the victor would decide the fate of the entire army (1 Samuel 17:8–11). Decked out in impressively heavy armor, Goliath was a giant of a man—“six cubits and a span,” about 9'9" tall! (vv. 4–7). When young David stepped up to battle, he did so under God’s power (v. 45). By: Alyson Kieda
Trust Your Armor
Go, and the Lord be with you. 1 Samuel 17:37
As a young writer I was often unsure of myself when I was in writing workshops. I would look around and see rooms filled with giants, if you will—people with formal training or years of experience. I had neither. But what I did have was an ear formed by the language and tone and cadences of the King James Version of the Bible. It was very much my armor, so to speak, what I was used to, and allowing it to inform my writing style and voice has become a joy to me, and I hope to others.
We don’t get the impression that David the young shepherd was unsure of himself when it came to wearing Saul’s armor to fight Goliath (1 Samuel 17:38–39). He simply couldn’t move around in it. David realized one man’s armor can be another man’s prison—“I cannot go in these” (v. 39). So he trusted what he knew. God had prepared him for that moment with just what was needed (vv. 34–35). The sling and stones were what David was used to, his armor, and God used them to bring joy to the ranks of Israel that day.
Have you ever felt unsure of yourself, thinking If I just had what someone else has, then my life would be different? Consider the gifts or experiences God has given specifically to you. Trust your God-given armor. By: John Blase
Reflect & Pray
What’s an example of someone else’s armor that’s been a matter of comparison or even jealousy for you? How might your armor be just what’s needed for this day?
Sovereign God, at times it’s easy to feel unsure of myself, especially in situations where challenges feel like giants. Help me to trust that You’ve given me just what I need. You’ve crafted my life’s story.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, October 05, 2019
The Nature of Degeneration
Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… —Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own god.” This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light…” (John 3:19).
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
In the schoolroom of ancient societies Israel was the kid with the black eye, bullied and beat up. Except for the Glory Days of Israel-seven years between the difficult days of Exodus and the dark days of the judges. Seven years in which the Jordan River opened up and the Jericho walls fell down. Joshua 21:43-45 are verses I invite you to memorize in our Glory Days Scripture Memory Challenge this week.
"So the Lord gave Israel all the land He had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there. The Lord gave them rest on every side just as He had sworn to their ancestors. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the Lord handed all their enemies over to them. Not one of the Lord's good promises to Israel failed. Every one was fulfilled."
From Glory Days
Psalm 93
God is King, robed and ruling,
God is robed and surging with strength.
And yes, the world is firm, immovable,
Your throne ever firm—you’re Eternal!
3-4 Sea storms are up, God,
Sea storms wild and roaring,
Sea storms with thunderous breakers.
Stronger than wild sea storms,
Mightier than sea-storm breakers,
Mighty God rules from High Heaven.
5 What you say goes—it always has.
“Beauty” and “Holy” mark your palace rule,
God, to the very end of time.
94 1-2 God, put an end to evil;
avenging God, show your colors!
Judge of the earth, take your stand;
throw the book at the arrogant.
3-4 God, the wicked get away with murder—
how long will you let this go on?
They brag and boast
and crow about their crimes!
5-7 They walk all over your people, God,
exploit and abuse your precious people.
They take out anyone who gets in their way;
if they can’t use them, they kill them.
They think, “God isn’t looking,
Jacob’s God is out to lunch.”
8-11 Well, think again, you idiots,
fools—how long before you get smart?
Do you think Ear-Maker doesn’t hear,
Eye-Shaper doesn’t see?
Do you think the trainer of nations doesn’t correct,
the teacher of Adam doesn’t know?
God knows, all right—
knows your stupidity,
sees your shallowness.
12-15 How blessed the man you train, God,
the woman you instruct in your Word,
Providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil,
while a jail is being built for the wicked.
God will never walk away from his people,
never desert his precious people.
Rest assured that justice is on its way
and every good heart put right.
16-19 Who stood up for me against the wicked?
Who took my side against evil workers?
If God hadn’t been there for me,
I never would have made it.
The minute I said, “I’m slipping, I’m falling,”
your love, God, took hold and held me fast.
When I was upset and beside myself,
you calmed me down and cheered me up.
20-23 Can Misrule have anything in common with you?
Can Troublemaker pretend to be on your side?
They ganged up on good people,
plotted behind the backs of the innocent.
But God became my hideout,
God was my high mountain retreat,
Then boomeranged their evil back on them:
for their evil ways he wiped them out,
our God cleaned them out for good.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, October 05, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
1 Samuel 17:34–39
But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off.
Insight
David’s fearsome opponent was Goliath, a Philistine. Philistia bordered the Mediterranean Sea and was west of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Philistines had long been a thorn in the side of the Israelites. Goliath was from the city of Gath in Philistia, and was sent by the Philistines to battle against one of the Israelites in Saul’s army. Whoever was the victor would decide the fate of the entire army (1 Samuel 17:8–11). Decked out in impressively heavy armor, Goliath was a giant of a man—“six cubits and a span,” about 9'9" tall! (vv. 4–7). When young David stepped up to battle, he did so under God’s power (v. 45). By: Alyson Kieda
Trust Your Armor
Go, and the Lord be with you. 1 Samuel 17:37
As a young writer I was often unsure of myself when I was in writing workshops. I would look around and see rooms filled with giants, if you will—people with formal training or years of experience. I had neither. But what I did have was an ear formed by the language and tone and cadences of the King James Version of the Bible. It was very much my armor, so to speak, what I was used to, and allowing it to inform my writing style and voice has become a joy to me, and I hope to others.
We don’t get the impression that David the young shepherd was unsure of himself when it came to wearing Saul’s armor to fight Goliath (1 Samuel 17:38–39). He simply couldn’t move around in it. David realized one man’s armor can be another man’s prison—“I cannot go in these” (v. 39). So he trusted what he knew. God had prepared him for that moment with just what was needed (vv. 34–35). The sling and stones were what David was used to, his armor, and God used them to bring joy to the ranks of Israel that day.
Have you ever felt unsure of yourself, thinking If I just had what someone else has, then my life would be different? Consider the gifts or experiences God has given specifically to you. Trust your God-given armor. By: John Blase
Reflect & Pray
What’s an example of someone else’s armor that’s been a matter of comparison or even jealousy for you? How might your armor be just what’s needed for this day?
Sovereign God, at times it’s easy to feel unsure of myself, especially in situations where challenges feel like giants. Help me to trust that You’ve given me just what I need. You’ve crafted my life’s story.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, October 05, 2019
The Nature of Degeneration
Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… —Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own god.” This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light…” (John 3:19).
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
Friday, October 4, 2019
Philippians 3, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: IT’S YOUR SERVE
“And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:27–28).
Jesus came to serve. Suppose you took that role. Be the family member who offers to wash the dishes after dinner. Be the neighbor who mows the grass of the elderly people. Find happiness in serving others. Doing good does the doer good.
What would happen if everyone took on the role of a servant? How many marriages would be blessed? If politicians set out to serve people more than serve themselves, would their country benefit? If churches were populated by sincere servants, how many people would hear the invitation of a lifetime? Service… it’s how happiness happens.
Philippians 3
And that’s about it, friends. Be glad in God!
I don’t mind repeating what I have written in earlier letters, and I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. Better safe than sorry—so here goes.
2-6 Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances—knife-happy circumcisers, I call them. The real believers are the ones the Spirit of God leads to work away at this ministry, filling the air with Christ’s praise as we do it. We couldn’t carry this off by our own efforts, and we know it—even though we can list what many might think are impressive credentials. You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.
7-9 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.
10-11 I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.
12-14 I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
15-16 So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it.
17-19 Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
20-21 But there’s far more to life for us. We’re citizens of high heaven! We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He’ll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him.
The Message (MSG)
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, October 04, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Matthew 14:23–33
After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
29 “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Insight
The gospels of Matthew and Mark describe two separate occasions when Jesus, in the presence of His frightened disciples, calms a storm on the lake of Galilee. In the first of these events, Jesus is asleep in the bow of the boat when a storm threatens to sink it (Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41). In the second, the disciples are crossing the lake by themselves when Jesus comes to them in the storm walking on the waves (Matthew 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–51).
Although Luke describes only the occasion when Jesus was asleep in the boat (8:22–25) and John describes only the storm that occurred while He walked on water (6:16–21), the accounts in Matthew and Mark show us that by the time Christ stepped into the boat and calmed a storm with His presence, the disciples had already seen Him calm a storm with His command. By: Mart DeHaan
He Calms the Storms
But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Matthew 14:27
Jim was frantically sharing about problems he was encountering with his work team: division, judgmental attitudes, and misunderstandings. After an hour of patiently listening to his concerns, I suggested, “Let’s ask Jesus what He would have us do in this situation.” We sat quietly for five minutes. Then something amazing happened. We both felt God’s peace cover us like a blanket. We were more relaxed as we experienced His presence and guidance, and we felt confident to wade back into the difficulties.
Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples, needed God’s comforting presence. One night he and the other disciples were sailing across the Sea of Galilee when a strong storm arose. All of a sudden, Jesus showed up walking on water! Naturally, this took the disciples by surprise. He reassured them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid” (Matthew 14:27). Peter impulsively asked Jesus if he could join Him. He stepped out of the boat and walked toward Jesus. But he soon lost focus, became aware of the dangerous and humanly impossible circumstance he was in, and started sinking. He cried out, “Lord, save me!” and Jesus lovingly rescued him (vv. 30–31).
Like Peter, we can learn that Jesus, the Son of God, is with us even in the storms of life! By: Estera Pirosca Escobar
Reflect & Pray
What storm of life are you going through today? What can you do to shift your focus from the storm to the One who can calm it?
Jesus, thank You that You have the power and authority to calm the storms in our lives. Help us to trust You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, October 04, 2019
The Vision and The Reality
…to those who are…called to be saints… —1 Corinthians 1:2
Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.
There are times when we do know what God’s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends on us, not on God. If we prefer to relax on the mountaintop and live in the memory of the vision, then we will be of no real use in the ordinary things of which human life is made. We have to learn to live in reliance upon what we saw in the vision, not simply live in ecstatic delight and conscious reflection upon God. This means living the realities of our lives in the light of the vision until the truth of the vision is actually realized in us. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making His demands known.
Our little “I am” always sulks and pouts when God says do. Let your little “I am” be shriveled up in God’s wrath and indignation— “I AM WHO I AM…has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). He must dominate. Isn’t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl! He will hunt us down as fast as a flash of lightning. No human being knows human beings as God does.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The place for the comforter is not that of one who preaches, but of the comrade who says nothing, but prays to God about the matter. The biggest thing you can do for those who are suffering is not to talk platitudes, not to ask questions, but to get into contact with God, and the “greater works” will be done by prayer (see John 14:12–13). Baffled to Fight Better, 56 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, October 04, 2019
How to Be Sure You'll Make it Home - #8540
Our friend commuted in his private plane hundreds of times. He flew from a little airfield near his house to the community where his office was. Well, knowing that he wanted to get home one day before the weather set in, he left his office earlier than usual and he headed for his plane. As he was boarding, he told a friend, "I'm going home!" Those may have been his last words. As he landed a few minutes later, the plane went into a skid and slammed into a tree. He probably died instantly, but he still made it home.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Be Sure You'll Make it Home."
Our friend had made it known to a lot of people that he cared about that he had placed his total trust in Jesus Christ to forgive his sins and take him to heaven when he died. And while it was his home on earth he thought he was heading for, his last words had more meaning than he could have ever known. He really was going home - to the eternal home in heaven that we all hope we'll go to when we take our last flight.
I hope you have that kind of security. I hope you know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are, in the words of the Bible, "prepared to meet your God" (Amos 4:12). That you are going to heaven when you die. It has nothing to do with being good enough to be in heaven. It has everything to do with what Jesus did when He died to remove the only thing that will keep you out of heaven, which is all the sins of your life.
There's a peace and a security that is beyond words in knowing that death no longer has any hold over you. It is, in reality, a non-issue because of Jesus. In Hebrews 2:14, our word for today from the Word of God, God says that Jesus "shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." Or as another Bible writer says, "Christ Jesus...has destroyed death" (2 Timothy 1:10).
The Bible doesn't take death lightly. In fact, it refers to death as "the last enemy to be destroyed" (1 Corinthians 15:26). But it goes on to say that "death has been swallowed up in victory" by Jesus blowing the doors off death when He rose from the dead on Easter morning.
One Easter Sunday morning, Dr. Adrian Rogers' daughter read an amazing poem in their church service. King Death and Father Time are talking outside of Jesus' tomb. Death tells Time that he is "guarding just one grave" because Jesus has threatened to challenge him. And Death says, "When I steps in to cut 'em down, it's for eternity." But three days later, Time finds Death quivering on the ground.
When Time asks what happened, Death says, "He came and got ahold of me and He threw me to the ground. He put His foot here on my neck and He took my keys and crown. Two angels came to talk with Him. They glistened like the sun. He said, 'The job's all finished, boys. Redemption's work is done.'" Wow! And Death concludes by saying, "I'm just a lowly servant now. I've little time to roam. I open up the soul gate and help the saints go home."
That's the only thing death can do now is take you to heaven if you know Jesus Christ personally. Maybe you've never grabbed Jesus as your only hope. Eternity is just too long to risk one more day without Him. Today why don't you tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours. I believe I was made by You and I was made for You, but I've wandered away from You. I've done things that have broken Your laws and broken Your heart. And I believe You loved me so much that when You died on the cross, some of that sin You were dying for was my sin. And I believe You're alive today, and I want You to be alive in me. I want to belong to You from this day on."
You know, if that's where your heart is right now, you're feeling that tug of Jesus his direction, I want to ask you to make one of your next steps to go to our website and find there, the information that will help you get this settled once and for all. That site is ANewStory.com.
Beginning this day, you can know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are going to heaven when you die. Why? Because you've put yourself in the hands of the only One who can take you there. And whenever your last day on earth is, you'll just be going home.
“And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:27–28).
Jesus came to serve. Suppose you took that role. Be the family member who offers to wash the dishes after dinner. Be the neighbor who mows the grass of the elderly people. Find happiness in serving others. Doing good does the doer good.
What would happen if everyone took on the role of a servant? How many marriages would be blessed? If politicians set out to serve people more than serve themselves, would their country benefit? If churches were populated by sincere servants, how many people would hear the invitation of a lifetime? Service… it’s how happiness happens.
Philippians 3
And that’s about it, friends. Be glad in God!
I don’t mind repeating what I have written in earlier letters, and I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. Better safe than sorry—so here goes.
2-6 Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances—knife-happy circumcisers, I call them. The real believers are the ones the Spirit of God leads to work away at this ministry, filling the air with Christ’s praise as we do it. We couldn’t carry this off by our own efforts, and we know it—even though we can list what many might think are impressive credentials. You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.
7-9 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.
10-11 I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.
12-14 I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
15-16 So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it.
17-19 Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
20-21 But there’s far more to life for us. We’re citizens of high heaven! We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He’ll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him.
The Message (MSG)
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, October 04, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Matthew 14:23–33
After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
29 “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Insight
The gospels of Matthew and Mark describe two separate occasions when Jesus, in the presence of His frightened disciples, calms a storm on the lake of Galilee. In the first of these events, Jesus is asleep in the bow of the boat when a storm threatens to sink it (Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41). In the second, the disciples are crossing the lake by themselves when Jesus comes to them in the storm walking on the waves (Matthew 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–51).
Although Luke describes only the occasion when Jesus was asleep in the boat (8:22–25) and John describes only the storm that occurred while He walked on water (6:16–21), the accounts in Matthew and Mark show us that by the time Christ stepped into the boat and calmed a storm with His presence, the disciples had already seen Him calm a storm with His command. By: Mart DeHaan
He Calms the Storms
But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Matthew 14:27
Jim was frantically sharing about problems he was encountering with his work team: division, judgmental attitudes, and misunderstandings. After an hour of patiently listening to his concerns, I suggested, “Let’s ask Jesus what He would have us do in this situation.” We sat quietly for five minutes. Then something amazing happened. We both felt God’s peace cover us like a blanket. We were more relaxed as we experienced His presence and guidance, and we felt confident to wade back into the difficulties.
Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples, needed God’s comforting presence. One night he and the other disciples were sailing across the Sea of Galilee when a strong storm arose. All of a sudden, Jesus showed up walking on water! Naturally, this took the disciples by surprise. He reassured them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid” (Matthew 14:27). Peter impulsively asked Jesus if he could join Him. He stepped out of the boat and walked toward Jesus. But he soon lost focus, became aware of the dangerous and humanly impossible circumstance he was in, and started sinking. He cried out, “Lord, save me!” and Jesus lovingly rescued him (vv. 30–31).
Like Peter, we can learn that Jesus, the Son of God, is with us even in the storms of life! By: Estera Pirosca Escobar
Reflect & Pray
What storm of life are you going through today? What can you do to shift your focus from the storm to the One who can calm it?
Jesus, thank You that You have the power and authority to calm the storms in our lives. Help us to trust You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, October 04, 2019
The Vision and The Reality
…to those who are…called to be saints… —1 Corinthians 1:2
Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.
There are times when we do know what God’s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends on us, not on God. If we prefer to relax on the mountaintop and live in the memory of the vision, then we will be of no real use in the ordinary things of which human life is made. We have to learn to live in reliance upon what we saw in the vision, not simply live in ecstatic delight and conscious reflection upon God. This means living the realities of our lives in the light of the vision until the truth of the vision is actually realized in us. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making His demands known.
Our little “I am” always sulks and pouts when God says do. Let your little “I am” be shriveled up in God’s wrath and indignation— “I AM WHO I AM…has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). He must dominate. Isn’t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl! He will hunt us down as fast as a flash of lightning. No human being knows human beings as God does.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The place for the comforter is not that of one who preaches, but of the comrade who says nothing, but prays to God about the matter. The biggest thing you can do for those who are suffering is not to talk platitudes, not to ask questions, but to get into contact with God, and the “greater works” will be done by prayer (see John 14:12–13). Baffled to Fight Better, 56 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, October 04, 2019
How to Be Sure You'll Make it Home - #8540
Our friend commuted in his private plane hundreds of times. He flew from a little airfield near his house to the community where his office was. Well, knowing that he wanted to get home one day before the weather set in, he left his office earlier than usual and he headed for his plane. As he was boarding, he told a friend, "I'm going home!" Those may have been his last words. As he landed a few minutes later, the plane went into a skid and slammed into a tree. He probably died instantly, but he still made it home.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How to Be Sure You'll Make it Home."
Our friend had made it known to a lot of people that he cared about that he had placed his total trust in Jesus Christ to forgive his sins and take him to heaven when he died. And while it was his home on earth he thought he was heading for, his last words had more meaning than he could have ever known. He really was going home - to the eternal home in heaven that we all hope we'll go to when we take our last flight.
I hope you have that kind of security. I hope you know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are, in the words of the Bible, "prepared to meet your God" (Amos 4:12). That you are going to heaven when you die. It has nothing to do with being good enough to be in heaven. It has everything to do with what Jesus did when He died to remove the only thing that will keep you out of heaven, which is all the sins of your life.
There's a peace and a security that is beyond words in knowing that death no longer has any hold over you. It is, in reality, a non-issue because of Jesus. In Hebrews 2:14, our word for today from the Word of God, God says that Jesus "shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." Or as another Bible writer says, "Christ Jesus...has destroyed death" (2 Timothy 1:10).
The Bible doesn't take death lightly. In fact, it refers to death as "the last enemy to be destroyed" (1 Corinthians 15:26). But it goes on to say that "death has been swallowed up in victory" by Jesus blowing the doors off death when He rose from the dead on Easter morning.
One Easter Sunday morning, Dr. Adrian Rogers' daughter read an amazing poem in their church service. King Death and Father Time are talking outside of Jesus' tomb. Death tells Time that he is "guarding just one grave" because Jesus has threatened to challenge him. And Death says, "When I steps in to cut 'em down, it's for eternity." But three days later, Time finds Death quivering on the ground.
When Time asks what happened, Death says, "He came and got ahold of me and He threw me to the ground. He put His foot here on my neck and He took my keys and crown. Two angels came to talk with Him. They glistened like the sun. He said, 'The job's all finished, boys. Redemption's work is done.'" Wow! And Death concludes by saying, "I'm just a lowly servant now. I've little time to roam. I open up the soul gate and help the saints go home."
That's the only thing death can do now is take you to heaven if you know Jesus Christ personally. Maybe you've never grabbed Jesus as your only hope. Eternity is just too long to risk one more day without Him. Today why don't you tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours. I believe I was made by You and I was made for You, but I've wandered away from You. I've done things that have broken Your laws and broken Your heart. And I believe You loved me so much that when You died on the cross, some of that sin You were dying for was my sin. And I believe You're alive today, and I want You to be alive in me. I want to belong to You from this day on."
You know, if that's where your heart is right now, you're feeling that tug of Jesus his direction, I want to ask you to make one of your next steps to go to our website and find there, the information that will help you get this settled once and for all. That site is ANewStory.com.
Beginning this day, you can know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are going to heaven when you die. Why? Because you've put yourself in the hands of the only One who can take you there. And whenever your last day on earth is, you'll just be going home.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Psalm 92, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: JESUS SERVED HIS DISCIPLES
The disciples were on the Sea of Galilee when they heard Jesus call out from the shore. When they reached the beach, they saw the most extraordinary sight. Jesus was cooking! He told them, “Come and eat breakfast” (John 21:12).
Shouldn’t the roles be reversed? Jesus had just ripped the gates of hell off their hinges. He’d made a deposit of grace that forever offsets our debt of sin. He, the unrivaled Commander of the Universe, wore the apron? Even more, he has yet to remove it. He promises a feast in heaven at which “he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37).
Can you imagine the sight? Someone asks, “Has anyone seen Jesus?” “Yes, He’s on the other side of the banquet room serving ice tea.” This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 92
A Sabbath Song
What a beautiful thing, God, to give thanks,
to sing an anthem to you, the High God!
To announce your love each daybreak,
sing your faithful presence all through the night,
Accompanied by dulcimer and harp,
the full-bodied music of strings.
4-9 You made me so happy, God
I saw your work and I shouted for joy.
How magnificent your work, God!
How profound your thoughts!
Dullards never notice what you do;
fools never do get it.
When the wicked popped up like weeds
and all the evil men and women took over,
You mowed them down,
finished them off once and for all.
You, God, are High and Eternal.
Look at your enemies, God!
Look at your enemies—ruined!
Scattered to the winds, all those hirelings of evil!
10-14 But you’ve made me strong as a charging bison,
you’ve honored me with a festive parade.
The sight of my critics going down is still fresh,
the rout of my malicious detractors.
My ears are filled with the sounds of promise:
“Good people will prosper like palm trees,
Grow tall like Lebanon cedars;
transplanted to God’s courtyard,
They’ll grow tall in the presence of God,
lithe and green, virile still in old age.”
15 Such witnesses to upright God!
My Mountain, my huge, holy Mountain!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, October 03, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 139:1–10
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Insight
A simple definition of the word theology is “the study of God.” In Psalm 139, David didn’t set out to write a mini-course on theology, but his prayer-filled composition is just that. Verses 1–18 include three unique characteristics of the God of the Bible: He is omniscient (all-knowing, vv. 1–6), omnipresent (always present, vv. 7–12), and omnipotent (all-powerful, vv. 13–18). It’s staggering when we think of God in the way Psalm 139 depicts Him. The psalmist’s writing is very personal (notice the number of first-person pronouns). David doesn’t leave us with abstract thoughts about a distant God, but his reflections lead to personal application: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (vv. 23–24).
To learn more about basic Christian beliefs visit christianuniversity.org/ST101. By: Arthur Jackson
Love’s Long Reach
Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! Romans 11:33
Mary Lee is a sixteen-foot, 3,500-pound great white shark tagged by oceanographers off the east coast of the US in 2012. The transmitter attached to her dorsal fin would be tracked by satellite when she surfaced. For the next five years Mary Lee’s movements were observed online by everyone from researchers to surfers, up and down the coast. She was tracked for nearly 40,000 miles until one day her signal stopped—probably because the battery on her transmitter expired.
Human knowledge and technology reach only so far. Those “following” Mary Lee lost track of her, but you and I can never evade God’s awareness throughout every moment of our lives. David prayed, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7–8). “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,” he exclaims gratefully (v. 6).
God chooses to know us because He loves us. He cares enough not only to observe our lives but also to enter into them and make them new. He drew near through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, so we could know Him in return and love Him for eternity. We can never go beyond the reach of God’s love. By: James Banks
Reflect & Pray
How does the thought that God knows and loves us completely encourage you? How will you reach out to others with His love today?
Thank You for always seeing me, Father! Help me to live today with a growing awareness of Your presence and perfect love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, October 03, 2019
The Place of Ministry
He said to them, "This kind [of unclean spirit] can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting." —Mark 9:29
“His disciples asked Him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ ” (Mark 9:28). The answer lies in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “This kind can come out by nothing but” concentrating on Him, and then doubling and redoubling that concentration on Him. We can remain powerless forever, as the disciples were in this situation, by trying to do God’s work without concentrating on His power, and by following instead the ideas that we draw from our own nature. We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.
When you are brought face to face with a difficult situation and nothing happens externally, you can still know that freedom and release will be given because of your continued concentration on Jesus Christ. Your duty in service and ministry is to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself. Is there anything between you and Jesus even now? If there is, you must get through it, not by ignoring it as an irritation, or by going up and over it, but by facing it and getting through it into the presence of Jesus Christ. Then that very problem itself, and all that you have been through in connection with it, will glorify Jesus Christ in a way that you will never know until you see Him face to face.
We must be able to “mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31), but we must also know how to come down. The power of the saint lies in the coming down and in the living that is done in the valley. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) and what he was referring to were mostly humiliating things. And yet it is in our power to refuse to be humiliated and to say, “No, thank you, I much prefer to be on the mountaintop with God.” Can I face things as they actually are in the light of the reality of Jesus Christ, or do things as they really are destroy my faith in Him, and put me into a panic?
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
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, October 03, 2019
Out of Sight - #8539
I had been going through this basement closet. I found some buried treasure. Actually, it was a little suitcase filled with the love letters that my wife and I had exchanged over two years of our courtship and engagement - and no you can't see them. It was pretty moving for me to read them again after all these years. As I relived our early romance through those letters, I had an idea, why not put some of these in a scrapbook and give them as a gift to my wife. Small problem: how am I going to do this and keep it a surprise? I actually set up a partition in the back half of our basement. I moved some big furniture around to further obstruct the view, and I made myself a secret "No Trespassing" workshop! Finally, one day I presented to my Honey this book entitled "Chronicles of a Lifetime Love." She had no idea what I'd been working on for her, because, see, I did all the work on it out of her sight!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Out of Sight."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Hebrews 11:1 - I think you'll see what this has to do with it. "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Why is it so important to understand what faith is all about? Well, chapter 11 verse 6 says, "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Faith is the way to God's heart. Faith is "...being certain of what we do not see." This is not how we're wired to think. Right? Instinctively, we're only sure of what we can see - what we can hold. We're slaves to the visible - the tangible. God is like me working on that scrapbook in the basement, He's doing something really special, but He's doing it mostly out of our sight.
Faith isn't based on the evidence that you can see. It's based on the character of the God you're trusting. In chapter 11 verse 3 in Hebrews it says, "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command." Hello! If He can do that, isn't your situation like a piece of cake compared to forming the universe? It could be that what you can see right now is pretty discouraging: 'I can't see where the money is going to come from, the place I need, the person I need, the strength, the healing I need.' What's in your hand or even in your reach isn't going to do it. But, remember much of God's greatest work is done out of your sight.
The flowers that burst and bloom in the spring? Well, they've been germinating out of sight for a long time before that. That new born baby you hold in your hands has been developing out of sight for months. In fact, it takes a test to find out that that little person's even there at first. God does some awesome work invisibly, and He's doing invisible work for you right now. If you react or you decide, based on just what you can see, you're going to be proceeding on incomplete data, and you're likely to make a mistake!
Faith reaches beyond the visible and it says, "God is going to keep His promises." He always does. The God factor radically changes the whole equation. He's working right now on the answer that will bring Him the most glory and me the most good.
Now look, I don't need to panic, I'm not going to abandon ship, I'm not going to act as if things are out of control. Run around and try to fix it myself. Why? Because faith is being certain of what we do not see because of the kind of God we have.
My wife had no idea what was going on behind that screen in the basement, but she trusted me. Behind the screen, God is working on a gift for you that is very special, and you'll see it when it's done. Until then, trust in the One whose work you cannot see, but whose love you should never doubt.
The disciples were on the Sea of Galilee when they heard Jesus call out from the shore. When they reached the beach, they saw the most extraordinary sight. Jesus was cooking! He told them, “Come and eat breakfast” (John 21:12).
Shouldn’t the roles be reversed? Jesus had just ripped the gates of hell off their hinges. He’d made a deposit of grace that forever offsets our debt of sin. He, the unrivaled Commander of the Universe, wore the apron? Even more, he has yet to remove it. He promises a feast in heaven at which “he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37).
Can you imagine the sight? Someone asks, “Has anyone seen Jesus?” “Yes, He’s on the other side of the banquet room serving ice tea.” This is how happiness happens.
Psalm 92
A Sabbath Song
What a beautiful thing, God, to give thanks,
to sing an anthem to you, the High God!
To announce your love each daybreak,
sing your faithful presence all through the night,
Accompanied by dulcimer and harp,
the full-bodied music of strings.
4-9 You made me so happy, God
I saw your work and I shouted for joy.
How magnificent your work, God!
How profound your thoughts!
Dullards never notice what you do;
fools never do get it.
When the wicked popped up like weeds
and all the evil men and women took over,
You mowed them down,
finished them off once and for all.
You, God, are High and Eternal.
Look at your enemies, God!
Look at your enemies—ruined!
Scattered to the winds, all those hirelings of evil!
10-14 But you’ve made me strong as a charging bison,
you’ve honored me with a festive parade.
The sight of my critics going down is still fresh,
the rout of my malicious detractors.
My ears are filled with the sounds of promise:
“Good people will prosper like palm trees,
Grow tall like Lebanon cedars;
transplanted to God’s courtyard,
They’ll grow tall in the presence of God,
lithe and green, virile still in old age.”
15 Such witnesses to upright God!
My Mountain, my huge, holy Mountain!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, October 03, 2019
Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 139:1–10
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Insight
A simple definition of the word theology is “the study of God.” In Psalm 139, David didn’t set out to write a mini-course on theology, but his prayer-filled composition is just that. Verses 1–18 include three unique characteristics of the God of the Bible: He is omniscient (all-knowing, vv. 1–6), omnipresent (always present, vv. 7–12), and omnipotent (all-powerful, vv. 13–18). It’s staggering when we think of God in the way Psalm 139 depicts Him. The psalmist’s writing is very personal (notice the number of first-person pronouns). David doesn’t leave us with abstract thoughts about a distant God, but his reflections lead to personal application: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (vv. 23–24).
To learn more about basic Christian beliefs visit christianuniversity.org/ST101. By: Arthur Jackson
Love’s Long Reach
Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! Romans 11:33
Mary Lee is a sixteen-foot, 3,500-pound great white shark tagged by oceanographers off the east coast of the US in 2012. The transmitter attached to her dorsal fin would be tracked by satellite when she surfaced. For the next five years Mary Lee’s movements were observed online by everyone from researchers to surfers, up and down the coast. She was tracked for nearly 40,000 miles until one day her signal stopped—probably because the battery on her transmitter expired.
Human knowledge and technology reach only so far. Those “following” Mary Lee lost track of her, but you and I can never evade God’s awareness throughout every moment of our lives. David prayed, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7–8). “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,” he exclaims gratefully (v. 6).
God chooses to know us because He loves us. He cares enough not only to observe our lives but also to enter into them and make them new. He drew near through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, so we could know Him in return and love Him for eternity. We can never go beyond the reach of God’s love. By: James Banks
Reflect & Pray
How does the thought that God knows and loves us completely encourage you? How will you reach out to others with His love today?
Thank You for always seeing me, Father! Help me to live today with a growing awareness of Your presence and perfect love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, October 03, 2019
The Place of Ministry
He said to them, "This kind [of unclean spirit] can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting." —Mark 9:29
“His disciples asked Him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ ” (Mark 9:28). The answer lies in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “This kind can come out by nothing but” concentrating on Him, and then doubling and redoubling that concentration on Him. We can remain powerless forever, as the disciples were in this situation, by trying to do God’s work without concentrating on His power, and by following instead the ideas that we draw from our own nature. We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.
When you are brought face to face with a difficult situation and nothing happens externally, you can still know that freedom and release will be given because of your continued concentration on Jesus Christ. Your duty in service and ministry is to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself. Is there anything between you and Jesus even now? If there is, you must get through it, not by ignoring it as an irritation, or by going up and over it, but by facing it and getting through it into the presence of Jesus Christ. Then that very problem itself, and all that you have been through in connection with it, will glorify Jesus Christ in a way that you will never know until you see Him face to face.
We must be able to “mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31), but we must also know how to come down. The power of the saint lies in the coming down and in the living that is done in the valley. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) and what he was referring to were mostly humiliating things. And yet it is in our power to refuse to be humiliated and to say, “No, thank you, I much prefer to be on the mountaintop with God.” Can I face things as they actually are in the light of the reality of Jesus Christ, or do things as they really are destroy my faith in Him, and put me into a panic?
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
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, October 03, 2019
Out of Sight - #8539
I had been going through this basement closet. I found some buried treasure. Actually, it was a little suitcase filled with the love letters that my wife and I had exchanged over two years of our courtship and engagement - and no you can't see them. It was pretty moving for me to read them again after all these years. As I relived our early romance through those letters, I had an idea, why not put some of these in a scrapbook and give them as a gift to my wife. Small problem: how am I going to do this and keep it a surprise? I actually set up a partition in the back half of our basement. I moved some big furniture around to further obstruct the view, and I made myself a secret "No Trespassing" workshop! Finally, one day I presented to my Honey this book entitled "Chronicles of a Lifetime Love." She had no idea what I'd been working on for her, because, see, I did all the work on it out of her sight!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Out of Sight."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Hebrews 11:1 - I think you'll see what this has to do with it. "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Why is it so important to understand what faith is all about? Well, chapter 11 verse 6 says, "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Faith is the way to God's heart. Faith is "...being certain of what we do not see." This is not how we're wired to think. Right? Instinctively, we're only sure of what we can see - what we can hold. We're slaves to the visible - the tangible. God is like me working on that scrapbook in the basement, He's doing something really special, but He's doing it mostly out of our sight.
Faith isn't based on the evidence that you can see. It's based on the character of the God you're trusting. In chapter 11 verse 3 in Hebrews it says, "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command." Hello! If He can do that, isn't your situation like a piece of cake compared to forming the universe? It could be that what you can see right now is pretty discouraging: 'I can't see where the money is going to come from, the place I need, the person I need, the strength, the healing I need.' What's in your hand or even in your reach isn't going to do it. But, remember much of God's greatest work is done out of your sight.
The flowers that burst and bloom in the spring? Well, they've been germinating out of sight for a long time before that. That new born baby you hold in your hands has been developing out of sight for months. In fact, it takes a test to find out that that little person's even there at first. God does some awesome work invisibly, and He's doing invisible work for you right now. If you react or you decide, based on just what you can see, you're going to be proceeding on incomplete data, and you're likely to make a mistake!
Faith reaches beyond the visible and it says, "God is going to keep His promises." He always does. The God factor radically changes the whole equation. He's working right now on the answer that will bring Him the most glory and me the most good.
Now look, I don't need to panic, I'm not going to abandon ship, I'm not going to act as if things are out of control. Run around and try to fix it myself. Why? Because faith is being certain of what we do not see because of the kind of God we have.
My wife had no idea what was going on behind that screen in the basement, but she trusted me. Behind the screen, God is working on a gift for you that is very special, and you'll see it when it's done. Until then, trust in the One whose work you cannot see, but whose love you should never doubt.
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