MaxLucado.com: Vanderlei de Lima (2004 Olympics Athens)
He should’ve won the gold. He was leading when a deranged protester hurled himself into the runner–forcing him off course. De Lima resumed the race. But in the process he lost his rhythm, precious seconds, and his position. But he entered the stadium punching the air with his fists, both arms extended, weaving for joy!
I’m taking notes on this guy! He reminds me of another runner. Paul, the imprisoned apostle. His chains never come off. The guards never leave. He may appear to be bumped off track, but he’s actually right on target. Christ is preached. The mission is being accomplished.
Run the race!
Paul said, “I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. I Corinthians 9:23-24”
From Great Day Every Day
Matthew 25:1-30
The Parable of the Ten Virgins
“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3 The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4 The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5 The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
7 “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’
9 “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’
10 “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.
11 “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’
12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’
13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
The Parable of the Bags of Gold
14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. 15 To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag,[a] each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16 The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’
21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
22 “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’
23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Footnotes:
Matthew 25:15 Greek five talents … two talents … one talent; also throughout this parable; a talent was worth about 20 years of a day laborer’s wage.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Read: Habakkuk 2:2-14
The Lord’s Answer
2 Then the Lord replied:
“Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald[a] may run with it.
3 For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it[b] will certainly come
and will not delay.
4 “See, the enemy is puffed up;
his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness[c]—
5 indeed, wine betrays him;
he is arrogant and never at rest.
Because he is as greedy as the grave
and like death is never satisfied,
he gathers to himself all the nations
and takes captive all the peoples.
6 “Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn, saying,
“‘Woe to him who piles up stolen goods
and makes himself wealthy by extortion!
How long must this go on?’
7 Will not your creditors suddenly arise?
Will they not wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their prey.
8 Because you have plundered many nations,
the peoples who are left will plunder you.
For you have shed human blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
9 “Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain,
setting his nest on high
to escape the clutches of ruin!
10 You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,
shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.
11 The stones of the wall will cry out,
and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.
12 “Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed
and establishes a town by injustice!
13 Has not the Lord Almighty determined
that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire,
that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Footnotes:
Habakkuk 2:2 Or so that whoever reads it
Habakkuk 2:3 Or Though he linger, wait for him; / he
Habakkuk 2:4 Or faith
Divine Perspective
By Poh Fang Chia
For the vision is yet for an appointed time; . . . it will surely come. —Habakkuk 2:3
Jason took a trip to New York during spring break. One afternoon he and some friends piled into a cab and headed for the Empire State Building. To Jason, the ride on the ground seemed chaotic and dangerous. But when he got to the observation deck of the skyscraper and looked down on the city streets, to his amazement he saw order and design. What a difference a change in perspective made!
Habakkuk learned a similar lesson. When he looked at life from his earthly vantage point, it seemed that God was indifferent to the evil permeating society (Hab. 1:2-4). But God gave him a divine perspective and showed him that life is more than what it seems. The deeds of men cannot thwart the purposes of God (2:3).
Those who don’t show any regard for God may seem to prosper at the moment, but God will ultimately right all wrong. God acts sovereignly in all that comes to pass so that everything works toward His good purpose. God’s plan will surely take place and be on schedule (v.3).
We can’t sort out the whole picture from where we are in life; only God can. So let us continue to live by faith and not by sight. From His perspective, all things are working together for the believer’s good and for His honor.
Sovereign Ruler of the skies,
Ever gracious, ever wise,
All my times are in Your hand,
All events at Your command. —Ryland
Our times are in God’s hands; our souls are in His keeping.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, July 27, 2014
The Way to Knowledge
If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine . . . —John 7:17
The golden rule to follow to obtain spiritual understanding is not one of intellectual pursuit, but one of obedience. If a person wants scientific knowledge, then intellectual curiosity must be his guide. But if he desires knowledge and insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, he can only obtain it through obedience. If spiritual things seem dark and hidden to me, then I can be sure that there is a point of disobedience somewhere in my life. Intellectual darkness is the result of ignorance, but spiritual darkness is the result of something that I do not intend to obey.
No one ever receives a word from God without instantly being put to the test regarding it. We disobey and then wonder why we are not growing spiritually. Jesus said, “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). He is saying, in essence, “Don’t say another word to me; first be obedient by making things right.” The teachings of Jesus hit us where we live. We cannot stand as impostors before Him for even one second. He instructs us down to the very last detail. The Spirit of God uncovers our spirit of self-vindication and makes us sensitive to things that we have never even thought of before.
When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don’t try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually. As Jesus said, “First . . . go . . ..” Even at the risk of being thought of as fanatical, you must obey what God tells you.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Exodus 8 Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily:Trust Him
In Mark 5:23, Jairus pleads with Jesus, “My daughter is dying. Please come, heal her so she will live.”
He doesn’t barter with Jesus. He doesn’t negotiate. He just pleads. He asks Jesus for His help. And Jesus, who loves the honest heart, goes to give it. But before they get very far, they’re interrupted by emissaries who tell them, “Your daughter is dead. There’s no need to bother the Teacher anymore.”
Get ready. Hang on to your hat. Here’s where Jesus takes control. The Bible says: “But Jesus paid no attention to what they said.” I love that line! He ignored what the people said. Why don’t you do that? When falsehood, accusations, or negativism come, just ignore it. Close your ears. Walk away. Ignore the ones who say it’s too late to start over. Disregard those who say you’ll never amount to anything.
Jesus said to Jairus what He says to you: “Don’t be afraid—just believe!” “Trust Me,” Jesus is pleading. “Just trust Me.”
from He Still Moves Stones
Exodus 8
The Plague of Frogs
Seven days passed after the Lord struck the Nile. 8 1 [b]Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2 If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. 3 The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. 4 The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials.’”
5 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.’”
6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. 7 But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
8 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”
9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.”
10 “Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said.
Moses replied, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. 11 The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile.”
12 After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. 13 And the Lord did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. 14 They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. 15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.
The Plague of Gnats
16 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.” 17 They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came on people and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats. 18 But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not.
Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, 19 the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the Lord had said.
The Plague of Flies
20 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the river and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 21 If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies; even the ground will be covered with them.
22 “‘But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land. 23 I will make a distinction[c] between my people and your people. This sign will occur tomorrow.’”
24 And the Lord did this. Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh’s palace and into the houses of his officials; throughout Egypt the land was ruined by the flies.
25 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God here in the land.”
26 But Moses said, “That would not be right. The sacrifices we offer the Lord our God would be detestable to the Egyptians. And if we offer sacrifices that are detestable in their eyes, will they not stone us? 27 We must take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, as he commands us.”
28 Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the Lord your God in the wilderness, but you must not go very far. Now pray for me.”
29 Moses answered, “As soon as I leave you, I will pray to the Lord, and tomorrow the flies will leave Pharaoh and his officials and his people. Only let Pharaoh be sure that he does not act deceitfully again by not letting the people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”
30 Then Moses left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord, 31 and the Lord did what Moses asked. The flies left Pharaoh and his officials and his people; not a fly remained. 32 But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.
Exodus 8:1 In Hebrew texts 8:1-4 is numbered 7:26-29, and 8:5-32 is numbered 8:1-28.
Exodus 8:23 Septuagint and Vulgate; Hebrew will put a deliverance
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Read: Isaiah 17:7-11
In that day people will look to their Maker
and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
8 They will not look to the altars,
the work of their hands,
and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles[a]
and the incense altars their fingers have made.
9 In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation.
10 You have forgotten God your Savior;
you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
and plant imported vines,
11 though on the day you set them out, you make them grow,
and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud,
yet the harvest will be as nothing
in the day of disease and incurable pain.
Footnotes:
Isaiah 17:8 That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah
Insight
At the time of Isaiah’s prophecy, the Assyrians were a military threat to the region. The northern kingdom of Israel formed a military pact with Syria to fight the Assyrians. Because King Ahaz of Judah refused to join the alliance, Syria and Israel attacked Judah (2 Kings 16:5; Isa. 7:6). Isaiah had assured King Ahaz that God would protect and deliver Judah. But instead of trusting God for help and deliverance, Judah turned to the Assyrians for help and protection (2 Chron. 28:16-21; Isa. 7:1-12). Ahaz rejected God and turned to idols instead (2 Chron. 28:22-26). In Isaiah 17, the prophet pronounced judgment on Israel and Syria, warning that they would be defeated by the Assyrians (see also Isa. 7:17; 8:4).
The Work Of Our Hands
By Julie Ackerman Link
Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation, . . . the harvest will be a heap of ruins. —Isaiah 17:10–11
Spring had just turned into summer and crops were beginning to produce fruit as our train rolled across the fertile landscape of West Michigan’s shoreline. Strawberries had ripened, and people were kneeling in the morning dew to pick the sweet fruit. Blueberry bushes were soaking up sunshine from the sky and nutrients from the earth.
After passing field after field of ripening fruit, we came to a rusty pile of abandoned metal. The harsh image of orange scrap metal poking out of the earth was a sharp contrast to the soft greens of growing crops. The metal produces nothing. Fruit, on the other hand, grows, ripens, and nourishes hungry humans.
The contrast between the fruit and the metal reminds me of God’s prophecies against ancient cities like Damascus (Isa. 17:1,11). He says, “Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation, . . . the harvest will be a heap of ruins” (Isa. 17:10-11). This prophecy serves as a contemporary warning about the danger and futility of thinking we can produce anything on our own. Apart from God, the work of our hands will become a pile of ruins. But when we join with God in the work of His hands, God multiplies our effort and provides spiritual nourishment for many.
Lord, I want to be a part of what You are
doing in Your world. Apart from You, my
work is nothing. Lead me, fill me, use
me. Nourish others through me.
“Without Me you can do nothing.” —Jesus (John 15:5)
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, July 26, 2014
The Way to Purity
Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart . . . . For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man . . . —Matthew 15:18-20
Initially we trust in our ignorance, calling it innocence, and next we trust our innocence, calling it purity. Then when we hear these strong statements from our Lord, we shrink back, saying, “But I never felt any of those awful things in my heart.” We resent what He reveals. Either Jesus Christ is the supreme authority on the human heart, or He is not worth paying any attention to. Am I prepared to trust the penetration of His Word into my heart, or would I prefer to trust my own “innocent ignorance”? If I will take an honest look at myself, becoming fully aware of my so-called innocence and putting it to the test, I am very likely to have a rude awakening that what Jesus Christ said is true, and I will be appalled at the possibilities of the evil and the wrong within me. But as long as I remain under the false security of my own “innocence,” I am living in a fool’s paradise. If I have never been an openly rude and abusive person, the only reason is my own cowardice coupled with the sense of protection I receive from living a civilized life. But when I am open and completely exposed before God, I find that Jesus Christ is right in His diagnosis of me.
The only thing that truly provides protection is the redemption of Jesus Christ. If I will simply hand myself over to Him, I will never have to experience the terrible possibilities that lie within my heart. Purity is something far too deep for me to arrive at naturally. But when the Holy Spirit comes into me, He brings into the center of my personal life the very Spirit that was exhibited in the life of Jesus Christ, namely, the Holy Spirit, which is absolute unblemished purity.
In Mark 5:23, Jairus pleads with Jesus, “My daughter is dying. Please come, heal her so she will live.”
He doesn’t barter with Jesus. He doesn’t negotiate. He just pleads. He asks Jesus for His help. And Jesus, who loves the honest heart, goes to give it. But before they get very far, they’re interrupted by emissaries who tell them, “Your daughter is dead. There’s no need to bother the Teacher anymore.”
Get ready. Hang on to your hat. Here’s where Jesus takes control. The Bible says: “But Jesus paid no attention to what they said.” I love that line! He ignored what the people said. Why don’t you do that? When falsehood, accusations, or negativism come, just ignore it. Close your ears. Walk away. Ignore the ones who say it’s too late to start over. Disregard those who say you’ll never amount to anything.
Jesus said to Jairus what He says to you: “Don’t be afraid—just believe!” “Trust Me,” Jesus is pleading. “Just trust Me.”
from He Still Moves Stones
Exodus 8
The Plague of Frogs
Seven days passed after the Lord struck the Nile. 8 1 [b]Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2 If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. 3 The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. 4 The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials.’”
5 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.’”
6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. 7 But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
8 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”
9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.”
10 “Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said.
Moses replied, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. 11 The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile.”
12 After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. 13 And the Lord did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. 14 They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. 15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.
The Plague of Gnats
16 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.” 17 They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came on people and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats. 18 But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not.
Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, 19 the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the Lord had said.
The Plague of Flies
20 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the river and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 21 If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies; even the ground will be covered with them.
22 “‘But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land. 23 I will make a distinction[c] between my people and your people. This sign will occur tomorrow.’”
24 And the Lord did this. Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh’s palace and into the houses of his officials; throughout Egypt the land was ruined by the flies.
25 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God here in the land.”
26 But Moses said, “That would not be right. The sacrifices we offer the Lord our God would be detestable to the Egyptians. And if we offer sacrifices that are detestable in their eyes, will they not stone us? 27 We must take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, as he commands us.”
28 Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the Lord your God in the wilderness, but you must not go very far. Now pray for me.”
29 Moses answered, “As soon as I leave you, I will pray to the Lord, and tomorrow the flies will leave Pharaoh and his officials and his people. Only let Pharaoh be sure that he does not act deceitfully again by not letting the people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”
30 Then Moses left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord, 31 and the Lord did what Moses asked. The flies left Pharaoh and his officials and his people; not a fly remained. 32 But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.
Exodus 8:1 In Hebrew texts 8:1-4 is numbered 7:26-29, and 8:5-32 is numbered 8:1-28.
Exodus 8:23 Septuagint and Vulgate; Hebrew will put a deliverance
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Read: Isaiah 17:7-11
In that day people will look to their Maker
and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
8 They will not look to the altars,
the work of their hands,
and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles[a]
and the incense altars their fingers have made.
9 In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation.
10 You have forgotten God your Savior;
you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
and plant imported vines,
11 though on the day you set them out, you make them grow,
and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud,
yet the harvest will be as nothing
in the day of disease and incurable pain.
Footnotes:
Isaiah 17:8 That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah
Insight
At the time of Isaiah’s prophecy, the Assyrians were a military threat to the region. The northern kingdom of Israel formed a military pact with Syria to fight the Assyrians. Because King Ahaz of Judah refused to join the alliance, Syria and Israel attacked Judah (2 Kings 16:5; Isa. 7:6). Isaiah had assured King Ahaz that God would protect and deliver Judah. But instead of trusting God for help and deliverance, Judah turned to the Assyrians for help and protection (2 Chron. 28:16-21; Isa. 7:1-12). Ahaz rejected God and turned to idols instead (2 Chron. 28:22-26). In Isaiah 17, the prophet pronounced judgment on Israel and Syria, warning that they would be defeated by the Assyrians (see also Isa. 7:17; 8:4).
The Work Of Our Hands
By Julie Ackerman Link
Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation, . . . the harvest will be a heap of ruins. —Isaiah 17:10–11
Spring had just turned into summer and crops were beginning to produce fruit as our train rolled across the fertile landscape of West Michigan’s shoreline. Strawberries had ripened, and people were kneeling in the morning dew to pick the sweet fruit. Blueberry bushes were soaking up sunshine from the sky and nutrients from the earth.
After passing field after field of ripening fruit, we came to a rusty pile of abandoned metal. The harsh image of orange scrap metal poking out of the earth was a sharp contrast to the soft greens of growing crops. The metal produces nothing. Fruit, on the other hand, grows, ripens, and nourishes hungry humans.
The contrast between the fruit and the metal reminds me of God’s prophecies against ancient cities like Damascus (Isa. 17:1,11). He says, “Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation, . . . the harvest will be a heap of ruins” (Isa. 17:10-11). This prophecy serves as a contemporary warning about the danger and futility of thinking we can produce anything on our own. Apart from God, the work of our hands will become a pile of ruins. But when we join with God in the work of His hands, God multiplies our effort and provides spiritual nourishment for many.
Lord, I want to be a part of what You are
doing in Your world. Apart from You, my
work is nothing. Lead me, fill me, use
me. Nourish others through me.
“Without Me you can do nothing.” —Jesus (John 15:5)
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, July 26, 2014
The Way to Purity
Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart . . . . For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man . . . —Matthew 15:18-20
Initially we trust in our ignorance, calling it innocence, and next we trust our innocence, calling it purity. Then when we hear these strong statements from our Lord, we shrink back, saying, “But I never felt any of those awful things in my heart.” We resent what He reveals. Either Jesus Christ is the supreme authority on the human heart, or He is not worth paying any attention to. Am I prepared to trust the penetration of His Word into my heart, or would I prefer to trust my own “innocent ignorance”? If I will take an honest look at myself, becoming fully aware of my so-called innocence and putting it to the test, I am very likely to have a rude awakening that what Jesus Christ said is true, and I will be appalled at the possibilities of the evil and the wrong within me. But as long as I remain under the false security of my own “innocence,” I am living in a fool’s paradise. If I have never been an openly rude and abusive person, the only reason is my own cowardice coupled with the sense of protection I receive from living a civilized life. But when I am open and completely exposed before God, I find that Jesus Christ is right in His diagnosis of me.
The only thing that truly provides protection is the redemption of Jesus Christ. If I will simply hand myself over to Him, I will never have to experience the terrible possibilities that lie within my heart. Purity is something far too deep for me to arrive at naturally. But when the Holy Spirit comes into me, He brings into the center of my personal life the very Spirit that was exhibited in the life of Jesus Christ, namely, the Holy Spirit, which is absolute unblemished purity.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Exodus 7, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Alarms in Your Life
A fit of anger. Uncontrolled debt. A guilty conscience. Icy relationships. Alarms in your life. When they go off, how do you respond? Be honest, now. Hasn’t there been a time or two when you went outside for a solution, when you should have gone inward? Ever blamed your plight on government? Blamed your family for your failure? Called God to account for problems in your marriage? Your circumstances may be challenging, but blaming them is not the solution. Nor is neglecting them.
Consider David’s prayer in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” In Romans 12:2 Paul says, “Fix your attention on God. You will be changed from the inside out.”
Heaven knows you don’t silence life’s alarms by pretending they aren’t screaming. But heaven also knows it’s wise to look in the mirror before you peek out the window!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 7
Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, 4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”
6 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. 7 Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.
Aaron’s Staff Becomes a Snake
8 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 9 “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.”
10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. 11 Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: 12 Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. 13 Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.
The Plague of Blood
14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the river. Confront him on the bank of the Nile, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. 16 Then say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness. But until now you have not listened. 17 This is what the Lord says: By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. 18 The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.’”
19 The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs—and they will turn to blood.’ Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels[a] of wood and stone.”
20 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. 21 The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.
22 But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said. 23 Instead, he turned and went into his palace, and did not take even this to heart. 24 And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, July 25, 2014
Read: Luke 19:1-10
Zacchaeus the Tax Collector
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Insight
When Zacchaeus said he would “restore fourfold” (v.8), he followed the highest pattern rather than the one required under Jewish law. While fourfold restoration was required for sheep stealing (see Ex. 22:1 and David’s response to Nathan, 2 Sam. 12:5-6), the restitution for normal theft was a return of the principal plus an extra 20 percent.
Looking For Zacchaeus
By Dave Branon
Today salvation has come to this house. —Luke 19:9
Alf Clark walks the city streets looking for Zacchaeus. Well, not the actual one in the Bible—Jesus already found him. Alf and some friends who serve with an urban ministry do what Jesus did in Luke 19. They go purposefully through town to meet with and help those in need.
Alf walks house to house in his neighborhood, knocking on doors and saying to whoever peeks out, “Hi, I’m Alf. Do you have any needs I can pray for?” It’s his way of opening up communication and—like Jesus did with tax-collector Zacchaeus—seeking to supply needed counsel and spiritual life and hope.
Notice what Jesus did. Luke simply says that Jesus “passed through” Jericho (Luke 19:1). Of course, a crowd gathered, as usually occurred when Jesus came to town. Zacchaeus, being “height challenged,” climbed a tree. Jesus, while passing through, walked right over to his tree and told him He had to visit at his house. That day salvation came to Zacchaeus’s house. Jesus had “come to seek and to save that which was lost” (v.10).
Do we look for Zacchaeus? He is everywhere, needing Jesus. In what ways can we share Christ’s love with people who need the Savior?
God, guide our steps toward and not away
from those who need You. Then guide our words
and our actions so that we can be purposeful
in our encounters with others.
God’s good news is too good to keep to ourselves.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 25, 2014
Am I Blessed Like This?
Blessed are . . . —Matthew 5:3-11
When we first read the statements of Jesus, they seem wonderfully simple and unstartling, and they sink unnoticed into our subconscious minds. For instance, the Beatitudes initially seem to be merely soothing and beautiful precepts for overly spiritual and seemingly useless people, but of very little practical use in the rigid, fast-paced workdays of the world in which we live. We soon find, however, that the Beatitudes contain the “dynamite” of the Holy Spirit. And they “explode” when the circumstances of our lives cause them to do so. When the Holy Spirit brings to our remembrance one of the Beatitudes, we say, “What a startling statement that is!” Then we must decide whether or not we will accept the tremendous spiritual upheaval that will be produced in our circumstances if we obey His words. That is the way the Spirit of God works. We do not need to be born again to apply the Sermon on the Mount literally. The literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is as easy as child’s play. But the interpretation by the Spirit of God as He applies our Lord’s statements to our circumstances is the strict and difficult work of a saint.
The teachings of Jesus are all out of proportion when compared to our natural way of looking at things, and they come to us initially with astonishing discomfort. We gradually have to conform our walk and conversation to the precepts of Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit applies them to our circumstances. The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations— it is a picture of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His unhindered way with us.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, July 25, 2014
ROYAL TREATMENT - #7185
"When I was young..." Kids hate those words. If you're a parent, I'll bet your kids do. But here I go. I'm going to do it anyway. When I was young, there was this woman named Emily Post, and she was the expert on etiquette. And so, we would often ask, "Well, what does Emily Post say we're supposed to do in this situation?"
From Emily we learned that we, men, were supposed to open doors for women. We're supposed to walk on the outside when you're walking with a woman in sort of this protective role. You should be saying "please" and "thank you" regularly. Now, today, Emily Post is right next to the dinosaurs in the National History Museum. Maybe she's been consigned there. Then along came a replacement named Miss Manners. Unfortunately, Miss Manners would have an uphill struggle in our culture today, because we live in a world of fast food, fast track, and me first. So who's got time for courtesy any more? The King's kids do.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Royal Treatment."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 10. And before we take a look at it, let's take a look at the generation we're living in. I mean, we live in a world where courtesy seems to be kind of burdensome and trivial, and even unknown to a lot of people. People think that's a lot of unnecessary, picky little rules. And you say, "Well, who says I'm supposed to do this at dinner? Who says I'm supposed to treat a girl this way? Who says I'm supposed to say that?"
Well, let's take a look at the lifestyle of a King's kid; someone who knows the King of kings personally through Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 10:23-24. "Everything is permissible..." Paul says, "...but not everything is beneficial." In other words, he comments here on the attitude that says, "Hey, listen! I can do what I feel like. Who needs rules? Who needs boundaries?" He says, "Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good but the good of others."
Verse 33, "Even as I try to please everybody in every way..." He's saying, "I want to be a pleasing person. I'm not seeking my own good, but the good of many so that they may be saved." Verse 31, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God." Now, he's not talking here about some little rules you have to follow because some Emily Post or Miss Manners or rule book said you have to. It's just having an attitude of doing the things that put the other person first; that's sensitive to how they're going to respond, how this is going to make them feel. That's what courtesy is...even reaching to how I eat and drink. It's like caring about your feelings.
I have a higher reason to learn courtesy than satisfying some etiquette book. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I want to make you feel comfortable. I want to make you feel special. I want to make you feel relaxed. I want to make you feel like royalty. We're living in a world where people are treated shabbily. They're treated cheap. They feel cheap, and they act cheap.
But as a follower of Jesus, I above all others ought to let the other guy go ahead of me. I should be the one who treats a woman like a queen, even if it's just the lady checking out my groceries at the store. If I'm going to put other people first, I'm going to say "thank you." I'm going to write the note that says "thank you" to them and not just act like I'm entitled to what they gave me. I'll say, "excuse me." I'll eat with grace, so that some of them may even be saved because they have been treated and put first.
You're going to be a standout if you are a courteous person. You will have, honestly, a refreshing edge on a lot of other people. You don't have to fall into the barnyard manners of our "selfie" society. Because you're a King's kid, give people royal treatment.
A fit of anger. Uncontrolled debt. A guilty conscience. Icy relationships. Alarms in your life. When they go off, how do you respond? Be honest, now. Hasn’t there been a time or two when you went outside for a solution, when you should have gone inward? Ever blamed your plight on government? Blamed your family for your failure? Called God to account for problems in your marriage? Your circumstances may be challenging, but blaming them is not the solution. Nor is neglecting them.
Consider David’s prayer in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” In Romans 12:2 Paul says, “Fix your attention on God. You will be changed from the inside out.”
Heaven knows you don’t silence life’s alarms by pretending they aren’t screaming. But heaven also knows it’s wise to look in the mirror before you peek out the window!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 7
Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, 4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”
6 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. 7 Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.
Aaron’s Staff Becomes a Snake
8 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 9 “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.”
10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. 11 Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: 12 Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. 13 Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.
The Plague of Blood
14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the river. Confront him on the bank of the Nile, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. 16 Then say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness. But until now you have not listened. 17 This is what the Lord says: By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. 18 The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.’”
19 The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs—and they will turn to blood.’ Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels[a] of wood and stone.”
20 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. 21 The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.
22 But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said. 23 Instead, he turned and went into his palace, and did not take even this to heart. 24 And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, July 25, 2014
Read: Luke 19:1-10
Zacchaeus the Tax Collector
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Insight
When Zacchaeus said he would “restore fourfold” (v.8), he followed the highest pattern rather than the one required under Jewish law. While fourfold restoration was required for sheep stealing (see Ex. 22:1 and David’s response to Nathan, 2 Sam. 12:5-6), the restitution for normal theft was a return of the principal plus an extra 20 percent.
Looking For Zacchaeus
By Dave Branon
Today salvation has come to this house. —Luke 19:9
Alf Clark walks the city streets looking for Zacchaeus. Well, not the actual one in the Bible—Jesus already found him. Alf and some friends who serve with an urban ministry do what Jesus did in Luke 19. They go purposefully through town to meet with and help those in need.
Alf walks house to house in his neighborhood, knocking on doors and saying to whoever peeks out, “Hi, I’m Alf. Do you have any needs I can pray for?” It’s his way of opening up communication and—like Jesus did with tax-collector Zacchaeus—seeking to supply needed counsel and spiritual life and hope.
Notice what Jesus did. Luke simply says that Jesus “passed through” Jericho (Luke 19:1). Of course, a crowd gathered, as usually occurred when Jesus came to town. Zacchaeus, being “height challenged,” climbed a tree. Jesus, while passing through, walked right over to his tree and told him He had to visit at his house. That day salvation came to Zacchaeus’s house. Jesus had “come to seek and to save that which was lost” (v.10).
Do we look for Zacchaeus? He is everywhere, needing Jesus. In what ways can we share Christ’s love with people who need the Savior?
God, guide our steps toward and not away
from those who need You. Then guide our words
and our actions so that we can be purposeful
in our encounters with others.
God’s good news is too good to keep to ourselves.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 25, 2014
Am I Blessed Like This?
Blessed are . . . —Matthew 5:3-11
When we first read the statements of Jesus, they seem wonderfully simple and unstartling, and they sink unnoticed into our subconscious minds. For instance, the Beatitudes initially seem to be merely soothing and beautiful precepts for overly spiritual and seemingly useless people, but of very little practical use in the rigid, fast-paced workdays of the world in which we live. We soon find, however, that the Beatitudes contain the “dynamite” of the Holy Spirit. And they “explode” when the circumstances of our lives cause them to do so. When the Holy Spirit brings to our remembrance one of the Beatitudes, we say, “What a startling statement that is!” Then we must decide whether or not we will accept the tremendous spiritual upheaval that will be produced in our circumstances if we obey His words. That is the way the Spirit of God works. We do not need to be born again to apply the Sermon on the Mount literally. The literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is as easy as child’s play. But the interpretation by the Spirit of God as He applies our Lord’s statements to our circumstances is the strict and difficult work of a saint.
The teachings of Jesus are all out of proportion when compared to our natural way of looking at things, and they come to us initially with astonishing discomfort. We gradually have to conform our walk and conversation to the precepts of Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit applies them to our circumstances. The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations— it is a picture of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His unhindered way with us.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, July 25, 2014
ROYAL TREATMENT - #7185
"When I was young..." Kids hate those words. If you're a parent, I'll bet your kids do. But here I go. I'm going to do it anyway. When I was young, there was this woman named Emily Post, and she was the expert on etiquette. And so, we would often ask, "Well, what does Emily Post say we're supposed to do in this situation?"
From Emily we learned that we, men, were supposed to open doors for women. We're supposed to walk on the outside when you're walking with a woman in sort of this protective role. You should be saying "please" and "thank you" regularly. Now, today, Emily Post is right next to the dinosaurs in the National History Museum. Maybe she's been consigned there. Then along came a replacement named Miss Manners. Unfortunately, Miss Manners would have an uphill struggle in our culture today, because we live in a world of fast food, fast track, and me first. So who's got time for courtesy any more? The King's kids do.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Royal Treatment."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 10. And before we take a look at it, let's take a look at the generation we're living in. I mean, we live in a world where courtesy seems to be kind of burdensome and trivial, and even unknown to a lot of people. People think that's a lot of unnecessary, picky little rules. And you say, "Well, who says I'm supposed to do this at dinner? Who says I'm supposed to treat a girl this way? Who says I'm supposed to say that?"
Well, let's take a look at the lifestyle of a King's kid; someone who knows the King of kings personally through Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 10:23-24. "Everything is permissible..." Paul says, "...but not everything is beneficial." In other words, he comments here on the attitude that says, "Hey, listen! I can do what I feel like. Who needs rules? Who needs boundaries?" He says, "Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good but the good of others."
Verse 33, "Even as I try to please everybody in every way..." He's saying, "I want to be a pleasing person. I'm not seeking my own good, but the good of many so that they may be saved." Verse 31, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God." Now, he's not talking here about some little rules you have to follow because some Emily Post or Miss Manners or rule book said you have to. It's just having an attitude of doing the things that put the other person first; that's sensitive to how they're going to respond, how this is going to make them feel. That's what courtesy is...even reaching to how I eat and drink. It's like caring about your feelings.
I have a higher reason to learn courtesy than satisfying some etiquette book. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I want to make you feel comfortable. I want to make you feel special. I want to make you feel relaxed. I want to make you feel like royalty. We're living in a world where people are treated shabbily. They're treated cheap. They feel cheap, and they act cheap.
But as a follower of Jesus, I above all others ought to let the other guy go ahead of me. I should be the one who treats a woman like a queen, even if it's just the lady checking out my groceries at the store. If I'm going to put other people first, I'm going to say "thank you." I'm going to write the note that says "thank you" to them and not just act like I'm entitled to what they gave me. I'll say, "excuse me." I'll eat with grace, so that some of them may even be saved because they have been treated and put first.
You're going to be a standout if you are a courteous person. You will have, honestly, a refreshing edge on a lot of other people. You don't have to fall into the barnyard manners of our "selfie" society. Because you're a King's kid, give people royal treatment.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Matthew 24:29-51, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Look Inside Yourself
When my daughter Jenna was six years old, I discovered her standing in front of a full-length mirror looking down her throat. I asked her what she was doing and she answered, “I’m looking to see if God is in my heart.” I chuckled and turned then overheard her ask Him, “Are you in there?”
She was asking the right question. “Are you in there?” It wasn’t enough for you to appear in a bush or dwell in the temple? It wasn’t enough for you to become human flesh and walk on the earth? You had to go further? You had to take up residence in us?
Paul wrote, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” (I Corinthians 6:19). Perhaps you didn’t. If not, thanks for letting me remind you. The world says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find God.
From When God Whispers Your Name
Matthew 24:29-51
New International Version (NIV)
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[a]
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[b] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[c] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[d] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
The Day and Hour Unknown
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[e] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. 47 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ 49 and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51 He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Footnotes:
Matthew 24:29 Isaiah 13:10; 34:4
Matthew 24:30 Or the tribes of the land
Matthew 24:30 See Daniel 7:13-14.
Matthew 24:33 Or he
Matthew 24:36 Some manuscripts do not have nor the Son.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Read: Psalm 147:1-9
Praise the Lord.[a]
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!
2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.
6 The Lord sustains the humble
but casts the wicked to the ground.
7 Sing to the Lord with grateful praise;
make music to our God on the harp.
8 He covers the sky with clouds;
he supplies the earth with rain
and makes grass grow on the hills.
9 He provides food for the cattle
and for the young ravens when they call.
Footnotes:
Psalm 147:1 Hebrew Hallelu Yah; also in verse 20
Insight
The book of Psalms concludes with five hymns of praise (Psalms 146–150) that begin and end with the refrain, “Praise the Lord!” (Hebrew, Hallelujah). In Psalm 147, the psalmist calls for grateful worship (vv.1,7) as he reflects on the goodness of God to Israel (vv.2-3,6) and on His greatness in creation (vv.4-5,8-9). The psalmist celebrates God’s loving faithfulness in caring and blessing His chosen people individually (vv.2-3,7) and in displaying His mighty power in creating and sustaining His creation generally (vv.4-5,8-9). Focusing not only on God’s greatness but also on His closeness, goodness, and kindness, the psalmist affirms that it is God alone who provides security and prosperity (vv.13-14).
He Calls The Stars By Name
By David C. McCasland
He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. —Psalm 147:4
On a plateau high above the Atacama Desert in Chile, the world’s largest radio telescope is giving astronomers a view of the universe never seen before. In an Associated Press article, Luis Andres Henao spoke of scientists from many countries “looking for clues about the dawn of the cosmos—from the coldest gases and dust where galaxies are formed and stars are born to the energy produced by the Big Bang.”
The Bible celebrates the mighty power and infinite understanding of God who “counts the number of the stars” and “calls them all by name” (Ps. 147:4). Yet the Creator of the universe is not a remote, uncaring force, but a loving heavenly Father who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (v.3). “The Lord lifts up the humble” (v.6) and “takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy” (v.11).
He loves us so much that “He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
British author J. B. Phillips called Earth “the visited planet,” where the Prince of Glory is still working out His plan.
Our hope for today and forever lies in the loving mercy of God who calls each star by name.
The God who made the firmament,
Who made the deepest sea,
The God who put the stars in place
Is the God who cares for me. —Berg
God, who knows the name of every star, knows all our names as well.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, July 24, 2014
His Nature and Our Motives
. . . unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven —Matthew 5:20
The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in his motives, having been made good by the supernatural grace of God. The only thing that exceeds right-doing is right-being. Jesus Christ came to place within anyone who would let Him a new heredity that would have a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus is saying, “If you are My disciple, you must be right not only in your actions, but also in your motives, your aspirations, and in the deep recesses of the thoughts of your mind.” Your motives must be so pure that God Almighty can see nothing to rebuke. Who can stand in the eternal light of God and have nothing for Him to rebuke? Only the Son of God, and Jesus Christ claims that through His redemption He can place within anyone His own nature and make that person as pure and as simple as a child. The purity that God demands is impossible unless I can be remade within, and that is exactly what Jesus has undertaken to do through His redemption.
No one can make himself pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ does not give us rules and regulations— He gives us His teachings which are truths that can only be interpreted by His nature which He places within us. The great wonder of Jesus Christ’s salvation is that He changes our heredity. He does not change human nature— He changes its source, and thereby its motives as well.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, July 24, 2014
TELLING ISN'T TRUSTING - #7184
Okay, I've got to admit this. When something's wrong with our car, you're not going to usually find me under the hood. I'm not really that good at that, so I head for the gas station. Now, Dave has worked on our car for years, and he does a very good job. So I would tell Dave the symptoms of what seems to be wrong with the car; the noise, the starting problem, or the loss of power. And then Dave talks back to me. He tells me what he thinks it might be, what he thinks it might cost and how long it might take to fix it. What do I do? Do I say, "Thanks, Dave!" and then chug away in my ailing car? Well, duh, no! I leave it there.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Telling Isn't Trusting."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 7 beginning at verse 2. "A certain Centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The Centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with Him." Now at this point they're telling Jesus about the problem just like I tell the mechanic about my car's problem. In this case it's a very valued servant.
Now, Jesus responds and the Centurion sends a message back and says, "'I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, "Go," and he goes; and that one, "Come," and he comes. I say to my servant, "Do this," and he does it.' When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him He said, 'I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.' Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well."
Look at those words, "such great faith." Now, why does Jesus say that? Well, see, this Centurion didn't just tell Jesus about the problem. He didn't just bring it to His attention. He trusted Jesus with it totally. That's why he got the miracle he needed.
See, it doesn't do any good if I just go to my mechanic and tell him about the problem. I have to leave my car in his hands; I've got to turn it over to him. I drive away in another car. I leave my car there because I trust the one I've taken it to.
Maybe you're looking at a problem or a need that really needs the touch of God right now. He's the Master Mechanic. He's the ultimate fixer. You say, "Well, I've prayed about it a lot, Ron." We always say, "I've prayed so much about it." Well, you've prayed about it, but have you left it with Him? You told Him, but have you trusted Him?
Notice the Centurion said, "Just say the word and it will be done." See, great faith recognizes the total authority of Jesus over this impossible situation and acts as if it's totally in Jesus' hands. He's the Lord of the outcome. He'll decide the outcome. That's great faith. And that's how you are when you pray about someone or something if you're exercising great faith. "Lord, if you say 'come' it will come. If you say 'go' it will go. If you say 'do this' it will be done."
When Jesus has the problem, you don't have it any more. When you tell Jesus about it, you walk in all bent over carrying this big load, but you walk out of that Throne Room... still bent over? No. When you've really trusted Him with it, you walk in bent over, but you walk out standing tall because you left your load in Jesus' hands. Relax in His total authority over your situation. Exercise that faith that brings down the supernatural; such great faith.
It's like the old song says, "I must tell Jesus all of my troubles." Let's upgrade that, "I must trust Jesus with all of my troubles." So, drive it to Jesus and then leave it there.
When my daughter Jenna was six years old, I discovered her standing in front of a full-length mirror looking down her throat. I asked her what she was doing and she answered, “I’m looking to see if God is in my heart.” I chuckled and turned then overheard her ask Him, “Are you in there?”
She was asking the right question. “Are you in there?” It wasn’t enough for you to appear in a bush or dwell in the temple? It wasn’t enough for you to become human flesh and walk on the earth? You had to go further? You had to take up residence in us?
Paul wrote, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” (I Corinthians 6:19). Perhaps you didn’t. If not, thanks for letting me remind you. The world says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find God.
From When God Whispers Your Name
Matthew 24:29-51
New International Version (NIV)
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[a]
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[b] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[c] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[d] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
The Day and Hour Unknown
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[e] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. 47 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ 49 and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51 He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Footnotes:
Matthew 24:29 Isaiah 13:10; 34:4
Matthew 24:30 Or the tribes of the land
Matthew 24:30 See Daniel 7:13-14.
Matthew 24:33 Or he
Matthew 24:36 Some manuscripts do not have nor the Son.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Read: Psalm 147:1-9
Praise the Lord.[a]
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!
2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.
6 The Lord sustains the humble
but casts the wicked to the ground.
7 Sing to the Lord with grateful praise;
make music to our God on the harp.
8 He covers the sky with clouds;
he supplies the earth with rain
and makes grass grow on the hills.
9 He provides food for the cattle
and for the young ravens when they call.
Footnotes:
Psalm 147:1 Hebrew Hallelu Yah; also in verse 20
Insight
The book of Psalms concludes with five hymns of praise (Psalms 146–150) that begin and end with the refrain, “Praise the Lord!” (Hebrew, Hallelujah). In Psalm 147, the psalmist calls for grateful worship (vv.1,7) as he reflects on the goodness of God to Israel (vv.2-3,6) and on His greatness in creation (vv.4-5,8-9). The psalmist celebrates God’s loving faithfulness in caring and blessing His chosen people individually (vv.2-3,7) and in displaying His mighty power in creating and sustaining His creation generally (vv.4-5,8-9). Focusing not only on God’s greatness but also on His closeness, goodness, and kindness, the psalmist affirms that it is God alone who provides security and prosperity (vv.13-14).
He Calls The Stars By Name
By David C. McCasland
He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. —Psalm 147:4
On a plateau high above the Atacama Desert in Chile, the world’s largest radio telescope is giving astronomers a view of the universe never seen before. In an Associated Press article, Luis Andres Henao spoke of scientists from many countries “looking for clues about the dawn of the cosmos—from the coldest gases and dust where galaxies are formed and stars are born to the energy produced by the Big Bang.”
The Bible celebrates the mighty power and infinite understanding of God who “counts the number of the stars” and “calls them all by name” (Ps. 147:4). Yet the Creator of the universe is not a remote, uncaring force, but a loving heavenly Father who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (v.3). “The Lord lifts up the humble” (v.6) and “takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy” (v.11).
He loves us so much that “He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
British author J. B. Phillips called Earth “the visited planet,” where the Prince of Glory is still working out His plan.
Our hope for today and forever lies in the loving mercy of God who calls each star by name.
The God who made the firmament,
Who made the deepest sea,
The God who put the stars in place
Is the God who cares for me. —Berg
God, who knows the name of every star, knows all our names as well.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, July 24, 2014
His Nature and Our Motives
. . . unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven —Matthew 5:20
The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in his motives, having been made good by the supernatural grace of God. The only thing that exceeds right-doing is right-being. Jesus Christ came to place within anyone who would let Him a new heredity that would have a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus is saying, “If you are My disciple, you must be right not only in your actions, but also in your motives, your aspirations, and in the deep recesses of the thoughts of your mind.” Your motives must be so pure that God Almighty can see nothing to rebuke. Who can stand in the eternal light of God and have nothing for Him to rebuke? Only the Son of God, and Jesus Christ claims that through His redemption He can place within anyone His own nature and make that person as pure and as simple as a child. The purity that God demands is impossible unless I can be remade within, and that is exactly what Jesus has undertaken to do through His redemption.
No one can make himself pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ does not give us rules and regulations— He gives us His teachings which are truths that can only be interpreted by His nature which He places within us. The great wonder of Jesus Christ’s salvation is that He changes our heredity. He does not change human nature— He changes its source, and thereby its motives as well.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, July 24, 2014
TELLING ISN'T TRUSTING - #7184
Okay, I've got to admit this. When something's wrong with our car, you're not going to usually find me under the hood. I'm not really that good at that, so I head for the gas station. Now, Dave has worked on our car for years, and he does a very good job. So I would tell Dave the symptoms of what seems to be wrong with the car; the noise, the starting problem, or the loss of power. And then Dave talks back to me. He tells me what he thinks it might be, what he thinks it might cost and how long it might take to fix it. What do I do? Do I say, "Thanks, Dave!" and then chug away in my ailing car? Well, duh, no! I leave it there.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Telling Isn't Trusting."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 7 beginning at verse 2. "A certain Centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The Centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with Him." Now at this point they're telling Jesus about the problem just like I tell the mechanic about my car's problem. In this case it's a very valued servant.
Now, Jesus responds and the Centurion sends a message back and says, "'I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, "Go," and he goes; and that one, "Come," and he comes. I say to my servant, "Do this," and he does it.' When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him He said, 'I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.' Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well."
Look at those words, "such great faith." Now, why does Jesus say that? Well, see, this Centurion didn't just tell Jesus about the problem. He didn't just bring it to His attention. He trusted Jesus with it totally. That's why he got the miracle he needed.
See, it doesn't do any good if I just go to my mechanic and tell him about the problem. I have to leave my car in his hands; I've got to turn it over to him. I drive away in another car. I leave my car there because I trust the one I've taken it to.
Maybe you're looking at a problem or a need that really needs the touch of God right now. He's the Master Mechanic. He's the ultimate fixer. You say, "Well, I've prayed about it a lot, Ron." We always say, "I've prayed so much about it." Well, you've prayed about it, but have you left it with Him? You told Him, but have you trusted Him?
Notice the Centurion said, "Just say the word and it will be done." See, great faith recognizes the total authority of Jesus over this impossible situation and acts as if it's totally in Jesus' hands. He's the Lord of the outcome. He'll decide the outcome. That's great faith. And that's how you are when you pray about someone or something if you're exercising great faith. "Lord, if you say 'come' it will come. If you say 'go' it will go. If you say 'do this' it will be done."
When Jesus has the problem, you don't have it any more. When you tell Jesus about it, you walk in all bent over carrying this big load, but you walk out of that Throne Room... still bent over? No. When you've really trusted Him with it, you walk in bent over, but you walk out standing tall because you left your load in Jesus' hands. Relax in His total authority over your situation. Exercise that faith that brings down the supernatural; such great faith.
It's like the old song says, "I must tell Jesus all of my troubles." Let's upgrade that, "I must trust Jesus with all of my troubles." So, drive it to Jesus and then leave it there.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Exodus 6, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily:Help From the Inside Out
When your hope comes from within you, your life is good as long as you are good. Your faith is strong as long as you are strong. But therein lies the problem. The Bible says, no one is good. Nor is anyone always strong; nor always secure. We need help from the inside out.
Jesus promised this kind of help in John 14:16-17 when he said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. . .you know Him because He lives with you and will be in you.”
Not near us. Not above us. Not around us. But in us. In the part of us we don’t even know. In the heart no one else has seen. In the hidden recesses of our being dwells, not an angel, not a philosophy, not a genie, but Spirit of God. Imagine that!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 6
God Promises Deliverance
Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.”
6 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.”
2 God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty,[d] but by my name the Lord[e] I did not make myself fully known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’”
9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.
10 Then the Lord said to Moses, 11 “Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country.”
12 But Moses said to the Lord, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips[f]?”
Family Record of Moses and Aaron
13 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron about the Israelites and Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he commanded them to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.
14 These were the heads of their families[g]:
The sons of Reuben the firstborn son of Israel were Hanok and Pallu, Hezron and Karmi. These were the clans of Reuben.
15 The sons of Simeon were Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jakin, Zohar and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman. These were the clans of Simeon.
16 These were the names of the sons of Levi according to their records: Gershon, Kohath and Merari. Levi lived 137 years.
17 The sons of Gershon, by clans, were Libni and Shimei.
18 The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Kohath lived 133 years.
19 The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi.
These were the clans of Levi according to their records.
20 Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.
21 The sons of Izhar were Korah, Nepheg and Zikri.
22 The sons of Uzziel were Mishael, Elzaphan and Sithri.
23 Aaron married Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon, and she bore him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.
24 The sons of Korah were Assir, Elkanah and Abiasaph. These were the Korahite clans.
25 Eleazar son of Aaron married one of the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas.
These were the heads of the Levite families, clan by clan.
26 It was this Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.” 27 They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt—this same Moses and Aaron.
Aaron to Speak for Moses
28 Now when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, 29 he said to him, “I am the Lord. Tell Pharaoh king of Egypt everything I tell you.”
30 But Moses said to the Lord, “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?”
Exodus 6:3 Hebrew El-Shaddai
Exodus 6:3 See note at 3:15.
Exodus 6:12 Hebrew I am uncircumcised of lips; also in verse 30
Exodus 6:14 The Hebrew for families here and in verse 25 refers to units larger than clans.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Read: Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Love the Lord Your God
These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Footnotes:
Deuteronomy 6:4 Or The Lord our God is one Lord; or The Lord is our God, the Lord is one; or The Lord is our God, the Lord alone
Insight
Deuteronomy 6:4 contains the Shema (or Shema Yisrael). This affirmation of the oneness of God (“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!”) is the centerpiece of the morning and evening prayers of observant Jews. The title Shema comes from the Hebrew term for the first word in the verse, hear.
Waving The White Flag
By Joe Stowell
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God. —Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Recently, while watching a video of a church service held in South America, I noticed something I had never seen before in church. As the pastor passionately called his flock to yield their lives to Jesus, one of the parishioners took a white hankie out of his pocket and started waving it in the air. Then another, and another. With tears running down their cheeks, they were expressing full surrender to Christ.
But I wonder if there was more to the moment than the flags of surrender. I think they were waving flags of love to God. When God told His people to “love the Lord your God” (Deut. 6:5), it was in the context of His urging them to surrender their lives to Him.
From God’s point of view, life with Him is far more than just trying to be good. It is always about relationship—relationship in which surrender is the way we express our grateful love to Him. Jesus, in amazing love for us, surrendered Himself on the cross to rescue us from our helpless bondage to sin and set us on a journey to all that is good and glorious.
We don’t have enough words to tell God how much we love Him! So, let’s show Him our love by surrendering our hearts and lives to follow Him.
Lord, take my life and make it wholly Thine;
Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine.
Take all my will, my passion, self, and pride;
I now surrender, Lord—in me abide. —Orr
Surrender is God’s love language.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Sanctification (2)
But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us . . . sanctification . . . —1 Corinthians 1:30
The Life Side. The mystery of sanctification is that the perfect qualities of Jesus Christ are imparted as a gift to me, not gradually, but instantly once I enter by faith into the realization that He “became for [me] . . . sanctification . . . .” Sanctification means nothing less than the holiness of Jesus becoming mine and being exhibited in my life.
The most wonderful secret of living a holy life does not lie in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfect qualities of Jesus exhibit themselves in my human flesh. Sanctification is “Christ in you . . .” (Colossians 1:27). It is His wonderful life that is imparted to me in sanctification— imparted by faith as a sovereign gift of God’s grace. Am I willing for God to make sanctification as real in me as it is in His Word?
Sanctification means the impartation of the holy qualities of Jesus Christ to me. It is the gift of His patience, love, holiness, faith, purity, and godliness that is exhibited in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy— it is drawing from Jesus the very holiness that was exhibited in Him, and that He now exhibits in me. Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation. Imitation is something altogether different. The perfection of everything is in Jesus Christ, and the mystery of sanctification is that all the perfect qualities of Jesus are at my disposal. Consequently, I slowly but surely begin to live a life of inexpressible order, soundness, and holiness— “. . . kept by the power of God . . .” (1 Peter 1:5).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
MOUNT EVEREST IS CLOSED - #7183
It just sounds weird: "Mount Everest is closed." But that was the headline No one was going to climb that most iconic of all mountaineering quests, because 16 Sherpa guides were lost on the mountain, as blocks of ice as big as automobiles cascaded down on them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mount Everest is Closed."
You don't venture onto that peak without a Sherpa. They are the legendary people of the mountain; the guides who take climbers there - climbers who pay up to $100,000 to the Nepalese government to go. And the Sherpas didn't want the mountain "open for business" the rest of the year because it had cost too much. Did you know getting to the top of a mountain often does.
Our personal "Everest's"; that treasured goal that we're driven to achieve. "I will be married no matter what." So many who conquered that slope now wish they had never dreamed the dream, because it turned into a nightmare.
"I will get to the top in what I do, whatever it takes." Only to sacrifice a spouse, a marriage, a child, a good name to get there. A price too high to pay. "My kid's going to be a winner. I'll make sure of it." So he or she becomes more of a performer than a person. A creation of a parent's ego rather than the person God made them to be. A robot programmed to please, but dangerously lonely and stressed.
Success. We each have our own definition. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to climb our mountain. But in the words of Jesus, "Count the cost" in relationships, in integrity. What's it going to cost you in your health, in the lives of your children, in your personal peace?
No conquest, no dream is worth ending up in the emergency room with a medical crisis of your own or the emotional meltdown of someone you love, leaving behind you a trail of people wounded or crushed as you race for your finish line. That's a price too high to pay.
I've seen it too many times. Driving for a goal - even a noble goal - can make you blind to the needs around you and deaf to their cries, and oblivious to the cost until the avalanche.
Jesus asked a haunting question. It's in our word for today from the Word of God in Mark 8:36. It is worth thinking about seriously. "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" And so many have. It's a price too high to pay.
Isn't it amazing that we keep climbing these mountains thinking that surely the peace I've been looking for, the significance I've been looking for, the meaning I've been looking for, the wholeness I've been looking for in my soul, it will be at the top of this mountain. You got to the top of the mountain and it wasn't there. Or you think it's going to be at the top of the mountain, but the people who've been there have found nothing there.
There's a reason for that, because we were never meant ultimately to find our happiness, and find our wholeness, and find our identity in anything other than the person who gave us our life in the first place. And that is the God who put us here. It says in the Bible, "You were created by Him and for Him." And we've lived for everything else but Him. There's only one hill you can climb, only one mountain, where you're going to find what you're looking for. It's called Skull Hill in the Bible. There's a cross at the top, and that is where God's Son died to pay the price to reunite you and me with the God who fills the hole in our soul and who holds our eternity in His hands.
Maybe you've been climbing the wrong hills. Maybe you've been climbing the wrong mountains. It's time to find your way to where Jesus has died for you and say, "Jesus, I am Yours." And to finally find what has eluded you for a lifetime that can only be found in Him. If you've never done that, and you say, "I wish I knew how to begin that personal relationship with Him." I want to invite you to our website where I'd love to show you how - ANewStory.com. Because there is no Everest that is worth giving up an irreplaceable treasure.
When your hope comes from within you, your life is good as long as you are good. Your faith is strong as long as you are strong. But therein lies the problem. The Bible says, no one is good. Nor is anyone always strong; nor always secure. We need help from the inside out.
Jesus promised this kind of help in John 14:16-17 when he said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. . .you know Him because He lives with you and will be in you.”
Not near us. Not above us. Not around us. But in us. In the part of us we don’t even know. In the heart no one else has seen. In the hidden recesses of our being dwells, not an angel, not a philosophy, not a genie, but Spirit of God. Imagine that!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 6
God Promises Deliverance
Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.”
6 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.”
2 God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty,[d] but by my name the Lord[e] I did not make myself fully known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’”
9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.
10 Then the Lord said to Moses, 11 “Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country.”
12 But Moses said to the Lord, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips[f]?”
Family Record of Moses and Aaron
13 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron about the Israelites and Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he commanded them to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.
14 These were the heads of their families[g]:
The sons of Reuben the firstborn son of Israel were Hanok and Pallu, Hezron and Karmi. These were the clans of Reuben.
15 The sons of Simeon were Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jakin, Zohar and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman. These were the clans of Simeon.
16 These were the names of the sons of Levi according to their records: Gershon, Kohath and Merari. Levi lived 137 years.
17 The sons of Gershon, by clans, were Libni and Shimei.
18 The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Kohath lived 133 years.
19 The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi.
These were the clans of Levi according to their records.
20 Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.
21 The sons of Izhar were Korah, Nepheg and Zikri.
22 The sons of Uzziel were Mishael, Elzaphan and Sithri.
23 Aaron married Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon, and she bore him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.
24 The sons of Korah were Assir, Elkanah and Abiasaph. These were the Korahite clans.
25 Eleazar son of Aaron married one of the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas.
These were the heads of the Levite families, clan by clan.
26 It was this Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.” 27 They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt—this same Moses and Aaron.
Aaron to Speak for Moses
28 Now when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, 29 he said to him, “I am the Lord. Tell Pharaoh king of Egypt everything I tell you.”
30 But Moses said to the Lord, “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?”
Exodus 6:3 Hebrew El-Shaddai
Exodus 6:3 See note at 3:15.
Exodus 6:12 Hebrew I am uncircumcised of lips; also in verse 30
Exodus 6:14 The Hebrew for families here and in verse 25 refers to units larger than clans.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Read: Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Love the Lord Your God
These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Footnotes:
Deuteronomy 6:4 Or The Lord our God is one Lord; or The Lord is our God, the Lord is one; or The Lord is our God, the Lord alone
Insight
Deuteronomy 6:4 contains the Shema (or Shema Yisrael). This affirmation of the oneness of God (“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!”) is the centerpiece of the morning and evening prayers of observant Jews. The title Shema comes from the Hebrew term for the first word in the verse, hear.
Waving The White Flag
By Joe Stowell
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God. —Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Recently, while watching a video of a church service held in South America, I noticed something I had never seen before in church. As the pastor passionately called his flock to yield their lives to Jesus, one of the parishioners took a white hankie out of his pocket and started waving it in the air. Then another, and another. With tears running down their cheeks, they were expressing full surrender to Christ.
But I wonder if there was more to the moment than the flags of surrender. I think they were waving flags of love to God. When God told His people to “love the Lord your God” (Deut. 6:5), it was in the context of His urging them to surrender their lives to Him.
From God’s point of view, life with Him is far more than just trying to be good. It is always about relationship—relationship in which surrender is the way we express our grateful love to Him. Jesus, in amazing love for us, surrendered Himself on the cross to rescue us from our helpless bondage to sin and set us on a journey to all that is good and glorious.
We don’t have enough words to tell God how much we love Him! So, let’s show Him our love by surrendering our hearts and lives to follow Him.
Lord, take my life and make it wholly Thine;
Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine.
Take all my will, my passion, self, and pride;
I now surrender, Lord—in me abide. —Orr
Surrender is God’s love language.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Sanctification (2)
But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us . . . sanctification . . . —1 Corinthians 1:30
The Life Side. The mystery of sanctification is that the perfect qualities of Jesus Christ are imparted as a gift to me, not gradually, but instantly once I enter by faith into the realization that He “became for [me] . . . sanctification . . . .” Sanctification means nothing less than the holiness of Jesus becoming mine and being exhibited in my life.
The most wonderful secret of living a holy life does not lie in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfect qualities of Jesus exhibit themselves in my human flesh. Sanctification is “Christ in you . . .” (Colossians 1:27). It is His wonderful life that is imparted to me in sanctification— imparted by faith as a sovereign gift of God’s grace. Am I willing for God to make sanctification as real in me as it is in His Word?
Sanctification means the impartation of the holy qualities of Jesus Christ to me. It is the gift of His patience, love, holiness, faith, purity, and godliness that is exhibited in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy— it is drawing from Jesus the very holiness that was exhibited in Him, and that He now exhibits in me. Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation. Imitation is something altogether different. The perfection of everything is in Jesus Christ, and the mystery of sanctification is that all the perfect qualities of Jesus are at my disposal. Consequently, I slowly but surely begin to live a life of inexpressible order, soundness, and holiness— “. . . kept by the power of God . . .” (1 Peter 1:5).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
MOUNT EVEREST IS CLOSED - #7183
It just sounds weird: "Mount Everest is closed." But that was the headline No one was going to climb that most iconic of all mountaineering quests, because 16 Sherpa guides were lost on the mountain, as blocks of ice as big as automobiles cascaded down on them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Mount Everest is Closed."
You don't venture onto that peak without a Sherpa. They are the legendary people of the mountain; the guides who take climbers there - climbers who pay up to $100,000 to the Nepalese government to go. And the Sherpas didn't want the mountain "open for business" the rest of the year because it had cost too much. Did you know getting to the top of a mountain often does.
Our personal "Everest's"; that treasured goal that we're driven to achieve. "I will be married no matter what." So many who conquered that slope now wish they had never dreamed the dream, because it turned into a nightmare.
"I will get to the top in what I do, whatever it takes." Only to sacrifice a spouse, a marriage, a child, a good name to get there. A price too high to pay. "My kid's going to be a winner. I'll make sure of it." So he or she becomes more of a performer than a person. A creation of a parent's ego rather than the person God made them to be. A robot programmed to please, but dangerously lonely and stressed.
Success. We each have our own definition. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to climb our mountain. But in the words of Jesus, "Count the cost" in relationships, in integrity. What's it going to cost you in your health, in the lives of your children, in your personal peace?
No conquest, no dream is worth ending up in the emergency room with a medical crisis of your own or the emotional meltdown of someone you love, leaving behind you a trail of people wounded or crushed as you race for your finish line. That's a price too high to pay.
I've seen it too many times. Driving for a goal - even a noble goal - can make you blind to the needs around you and deaf to their cries, and oblivious to the cost until the avalanche.
Jesus asked a haunting question. It's in our word for today from the Word of God in Mark 8:36. It is worth thinking about seriously. "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" And so many have. It's a price too high to pay.
Isn't it amazing that we keep climbing these mountains thinking that surely the peace I've been looking for, the significance I've been looking for, the meaning I've been looking for, the wholeness I've been looking for in my soul, it will be at the top of this mountain. You got to the top of the mountain and it wasn't there. Or you think it's going to be at the top of the mountain, but the people who've been there have found nothing there.
There's a reason for that, because we were never meant ultimately to find our happiness, and find our wholeness, and find our identity in anything other than the person who gave us our life in the first place. And that is the God who put us here. It says in the Bible, "You were created by Him and for Him." And we've lived for everything else but Him. There's only one hill you can climb, only one mountain, where you're going to find what you're looking for. It's called Skull Hill in the Bible. There's a cross at the top, and that is where God's Son died to pay the price to reunite you and me with the God who fills the hole in our soul and who holds our eternity in His hands.
Maybe you've been climbing the wrong hills. Maybe you've been climbing the wrong mountains. It's time to find your way to where Jesus has died for you and say, "Jesus, I am Yours." And to finally find what has eluded you for a lifetime that can only be found in Him. If you've never done that, and you say, "I wish I knew how to begin that personal relationship with Him." I want to invite you to our website where I'd love to show you how - ANewStory.com. Because there is no Everest that is worth giving up an irreplaceable treasure.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Exodus 5 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: At Peace with Yourself
There is a correlation between the way you feel about yourself and the way you feel about others. If you are at peace with yourself—you’ll get along with others. The converse is also true. If you are ashamed, embarrassed, or angry, other people are going to know it. The tragic thing is we tend to take it out on those we love unless the cycle is interrupted.
Which takes us to the question, “How does a person get relief?” Which takes us to one of the kindest verses in the Bible. In Matthew 11:28 Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest.”
Be honest with Him. Admit you have soul secrets you’ve never dealt with. He’s just waiting for you to ask Him for help. You’ll be glad you did. Those near to you will be glad as well.
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 5
Bricks Without Straw
Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness.’”
2 Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.”
3 Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.”
4 But the king of Egypt said, “Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labor? Get back to your work!” 5 Then Pharaoh said, “Look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working.”
6 That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and overseers in charge of the people: 7 “You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8 But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9 Make the work harder for the people so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”
10 Then the slave drivers and the overseers went out and said to the people, “This is what Pharaoh says: ‘I will not give you any more straw. 11 Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all.’” 12 So the people scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble to use for straw. 13 The slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, “Complete the work required of you for each day, just as when you had straw.” 14 And Pharaoh’s slave drivers beat the Israelite overseers they had appointed, demanding, “Why haven’t you met your quota of bricks yesterday or today, as before?”
15 Then the Israelite overseers went and appealed to Pharaoh: “Why have you treated your servants this way? 16 Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told, ‘Make bricks!’ Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people.”
17 Pharaoh said, “Lazy, that’s what you are—lazy! That is why you keep saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ 18 Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.”
19 The Israelite overseers realized they were in trouble when they were told, “You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day.” 20 When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, 21 and they said, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
God Promises Deliverance
22 Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Read: Psalm 32:1-7
Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit.
3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.[b]
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
6 Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters
will not reach them.
7 You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.
Footnotes:
Psalm 32:1 Title: Probably a literary or musical term
Psalm 32:4 The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here and at the end of verses 5 and 7.
Insight
For about a year after his adultery with Bathsheba, David refused to repent of his sins (covetousness, adultery, deceit, and murder) until the prophet Nathan confronted him (2 Sam. 11–12). David penned Psalms 32 and 51 thereafter. In today’s psalm, David speaks of the heavy burden of guilt in his year-long denial of sin (vv.3-4). He also tells of the joy of receiving God’s gift of forgiveness when, with a contrite heart, he confesses and repents (vv.1-2,5) and becomes receptive to God’s rule in his life (vv.7-11). Warning of God’s disciplining hand (v.4), David urges all who have sinned to repent without delay (v.6).
Lasting Regrets
By Bill Crowder
When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. —Psalm 32:3
While I was talking with a gifted pianist, she asked me if I played any musical instruments. When I responded, “I play the radio,” she laughed and asked if I had ever wanted to play any instrument. My embarrassed answer was, “I took piano lessons as a boy but gave it up.” Now, in my adult years, I regret not continuing with the piano. I love music and wish I could play today. That conversation was a fresh reminder to me that life is often constituted by the choices we make—and some of them produce regret.
Some choices produce much more serious and painful regrets. King David discovered this when he chose to sleep with another man’s wife and then killed that man. He described the guilt that filled him as devastating, saying, “When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer” (Ps. 32:3-4). But David acknowledged and confessed his sin to God and found forgiveness (v.5).
It is only from God that we can receive the grace of forgiveness when our choices have produced painful regrets. And only in Him do we find the wisdom to make better choices.
Father of mercies, forgive me for the foolish choices
I have made. Please enable me to be wiser in
my choices. Teach me the value of resting
in Your grace.
God’s forgiveness frees us from the chains of regret.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Sanctification (1)
This is the will of God, your sanctification. . . —1 Thessalonians 4:3
The Death Side. In sanctification God has to deal with us on the death side as well as on the life side. Sanctification requires our coming to the place of death, but many of us spend so much time there that we become morbid. There is always a tremendous battle before sanctification is realized— something within us pushing with resentment against the demands of Christ. When the Holy Spirit begins to show us what sanctification means, the struggle starts immediately. Jesus said, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate . . . his own life . . . he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26).
In the process of sanctification, the Spirit of God will strip me down until there is nothing left but myself, and that is the place of death. Am I willing to be myself and nothing more? Am I willing to have no friends, no father, no brother, and no self-interest— simply to be ready for death? That is the condition required for sanctification. No wonder Jesus said, “I did not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). This is where the battle comes, and where so many of us falter. We refuse to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ on this point. We say, “But this is so strict. Surely He does not require that of me.” Our Lord is strict, and He does require that of us.
Am I willing to reduce myself down to simply “me”? Am I determined enough to strip myself of all that my friends think of me, and all that I think of myself? Am I willing and determined to hand over my simple naked self to God? Once I am, He will immediately sanctify me completely, and my life will be free from being determined and persistent toward anything except God (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).
When I pray, “Lord, show me what sanctification means for me,” He will show me. It means being made one with Jesus. Sanctification is not something Jesus puts in me— it is Himself in me (see 1 Corinthians 1:30).
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Just the Two of Us - #7182
It had been a while since my wife and I had been able to have a vacation. In fact, it even took a few all-nighters to get us to a point where we could leave responsibly. But we did! It was a bit unusual for a vacation, because almost always there had been at least one of the three kids with us. But our daughter was married, our oldest son was involved in full-time ministry, and our youngest son was in college. It became a vacation like the pre-children days a very long time ago. See, for most of our year, the needs of our children shaped our daily schedules and the needs of many people. And most of our vacations we had to factor in what the kids would enjoy. We planned a lot of vacation days around them, as you probably have as a parent.
But suddenly we were waking up in the morning with just each other. It was great to ask just my wife, "What would you like to do today?" Every meal, every conversation, every choice, every activity-just us. And before everyone else, even our precious children, that's how it was. It was just us. We came back to the voices and needs of a lot of people again, but I want to live with that same bottom line, keeping my core relationship always at the center. But for a very special time, there were only two people in the whole world.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Just the Two of Us."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Isaiah 50:4. "The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning; wakens my ear to listen like one being taught." Now, look, you may or may not be a morning person; you might even hate morning people. But this is the way to begin each new day; the Lord getting you up for another day He has made; morning by morning Him waking you up.
And then speaking to your heart in those untouched, unspoiled moments, His preparation for what only He knows is going to be coming that day. The verse makes me think about Mary. It says that she sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what He said. Now, there was a lot of hustle and bustle around her. Her sister, Martha, was getting everything ready for dinner. But for those moments, there were only two people in the world. Mary could say, "Jesus and me."
See, that's how God wants you to begin every day; spending focused, one-on-one, exclusive time with Him, remembering again who you are supposed to be living for. It's kind of like a short, spiritual vacation like I took with my wife, where for that short time there were only two people in the whole world. With that number one relationship clarified; the one with Jesus, your priorities are straight. You're ready to "seek first the kingdom of God." You can face the day's demands without wandering off course.
Jesus knows exactly what you need to know each new morning. He knows what temptations you're going to be hitting, what surprises good or bad, what people you're going to be with, what questions you're going to need the answers for. He knows what pressures are going to be squeezing you, and He wants to get you ready for all that. But you do have to reserve time as it says here to "listen like one being taught" morning by morning.
Are you doing that? He wants to whisper words in your heart, usually through the book He wrote. And as you listen to music about Him, you read verses about Him, you pour out your heart to Him, you are filling up on Jesus before facing the rest of the world.
It made such a difference for me to be with my wife alone; to remember how much she means to me, to hear no voice but hers. I need that with my Savior each new day and so do you. Life's bottom line needs daily reinforcement. It ultimately comes down to just two people-Jesus and you.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Exodus 4, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: An Itchy, Scratchy Burlap Sack
You have a sack. An itchy, scratchy burlap sack! You probably aren’t even aware of it, you may not have been told about it, but it was given to you. You needed the sack to carry the rocks, boulders, pebbles. All are unwanted. Some were rocks of rejection. You thought you were good enough for the team, but the coach didn’t. The instructor didn’t. They and how many others? It doesn’t take long before you get a collection of stones. Make a bad choice…get called a few names…get abused. And so the sack gets heavy with stones we don’t deserve, along with a few we do.
How can you have dreams for the future when all your energy is required to shoulder the past? Jesus says He is the solution for weariness of the soul. Go to Him. “Come to me, all who are weak and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He already knows what your stones are. He’s just waiting for you to give Him your sack!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 4
Signs for Moses
Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”
2 Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A staff,” he replied.
3 The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.”
Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.”
6 Then the Lord said, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, the skin was leprous[a]—it had become as white as snow.
7 “Now put it back into your cloak,” he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.
8 Then the Lord said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. 9 But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.”
10 Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
13 But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”
14 Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. 15 You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. 16 He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. 17 But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.”
Moses Returns to Egypt
18 Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.”
Jethro said, “Go, and I wish you well.”
19 Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead.” 20 So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.
21 The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’”
24 At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses[b] and was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it.[c] “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. 26 So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)
27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 Then Moses told Aaron everything the Lord had sent him to say, and also about all the signs he had commanded him to perform.
29 Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, 30 and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, 31 and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, July 21, 2014
Read: John 4:7-15
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Footnotes:
John 4:9 Or do not use dishes Samaritans have used
Insight
The stories of Nicodemus (John 3) and the woman at the well (John 4) are found side by side in Scripture, yet there is great contrast between them. Contrary to Nicodemus, the woman at the well recognized that Jesus was offering something that she could not do without. Nicodemus’ last words to Jesus were, “How can these things be?” (3:9). The woman simply responded, “Sir, give me this water” (4:15).
Water For The World
By C. P. Hia
He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. —John 7:38
Although 70 percent of the world is covered by water, less than 1 percent of it is drinkable by humans. Water conservation and sanitation are crucial matters in many parts of the world, as all life depends on having sanitary water.
Jesus went out of His way to introduce a lost woman to another kind of life-giving water. He deliberately chose to go to a town in Samaria, a place where no respectable rabbi would set foot. There, He told this woman about “living water.” Those who drink of it, He said, “will never thirst.” It will “become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).
The living water is Jesus Himself. Those who receive Him have eternal life (v.14). But the living water He provides also serves another function. Jesus said of those who receive it: “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (7:38). The living water that refreshes us is to refresh others also.
As fresh-water distribution is uneven in the world, so too is the distribution of living water. Many people do not know followers of Jesus who really care about them. It is our privilege to share Him. Christ is, after all, the living water for whom people are thirsting.
Lord Jesus, I want to live for You. May Your
life and love flow through me as I go about my
duties today so that others may see You through
me and be drawn to the living water.
Jesus is a never-ending supply of living water for a parched world.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, July 21, 2014
The Doorway to the Kingdom
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . —Matthew 5:3
Beware of thinking of our Lord as only a teacher. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, then all He can do is frustrate me by setting a standard before me I cannot attain. What is the point of presenting me with such a lofty ideal if I cannot possibly come close to reaching it? I would be happier if I never knew it. What good is there in telling me to be what I can never be— to be “pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8), to do more than my duty, or to be completely devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as my Savior before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of a lofty ideal which only leads to despair. But when I am born again by the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come only to teach— He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The redemption means that Jesus Christ can place within anyone the same nature that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives us are based on that nature.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces a sense of despair in the natural man— exactly what Jesus means for it to do. As long as we have some self-righteous idea that we can carry out our Lord’s teaching, God will allow us to continue until we expose our own ignorance by stumbling over some obstacle in our way. Only then are we willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . .” This is the first principle in the kingdom of God. The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus, but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, “Lord, I cannot even begin to do it.” Then Jesus says, “Blessed are you . . .” (Matthew 5:11). This is the doorway to the kingdom, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are actually poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, July 21, 2014
WHAT YOU'RE MISSING WHEN YOU'RE FLYING - #7181
P3 (right click to save)
I was on a typical wall-to-wall schedule, and old man winter wasn't cooperating. I was traveling with my wife and we were slipping and sliding through this major snow storm to get to our flight at the airport. We heard on the radio that flights were being seriously delayed. I told my wife, "That airport's going to close. I know it is." So we made a last-minute decision. We called Amtrak. They had two seats left on the train, and we diverted from the airport to the train station.
Now, it worked, but I was not a happy camper. I had no choice. They did close the airport that day, and as it turned out, we had to take the train both ways - to Chicago and back. But you know, as I watched America go by outside my window, I have to confess I began to unwind. This is the stuff I usually fly over in my rush to get to my destination. Now I've got a confession to make. The next trip my wife and I had to make - I asked her to check on the train.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What You're Missing When You're Flying."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from some of the most familiar, beautiful words in the Bible, Psalm 23. "The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul." This is my favorite picture of my relationship with the Lord: I love Him shepherd, me sheep.
And this is an unusual ministry that the shepherd has. It's described in these verses; one that you might be having in your life right now. It's what I call the ministry of the enforced slowdown. He says, "He makes me lie down." But not in a bad place; it's in green pastures. And He makes you lie down to see some things you could never see when you're running through or flying by.
Now, the Lord has many means of making us lie down, doesn't he? I've experienced a few. Or at least to get you to slow down. He's got medical brakes that He steps on to slow you down, financial brakes, family brakes; some situation that forces us to stop and give it attention. Some circumstance comes along that forces you to go slower.
And then there's me when I had to take the train, grumbling and resisting every step of the way. Maybe you're there right now. But God has things for you to see that you're missing when you're going full throttle. Maybe you've been missing the person you're married to, and God's saying, "Slow down! Rediscover the treasure I gave you in this person."
Maybe you've been missing the daily drama of your child growing up right before your eyes; days you can never get back. And God's putting on the brakes so you can get to know your son or daughter. And unfortunately, a crisis is often what brings a family closer to each other than anything else.
Possibly you've been missing quality time with the Lord Himself, and God is saying, "Be still and know that I am God." Not be busy and know, and you've been flying right past your Lord day after day. Your priorities got jumbled somewhere. At the speed you've been traveling, you can't even see the faces of people. You can't hear what they're saying. You can't enjoy the journey because you're so obsessed with the destination. So in His love, the Shepherd has declared a slowdown for you. Embrace it!
If all of a sudden you can't fly like you're used to doing, don't pound the wall or don't complain. Thank the Lord for making you lie down so you can see some green pastures that you've been flying right by.
You have a sack. An itchy, scratchy burlap sack! You probably aren’t even aware of it, you may not have been told about it, but it was given to you. You needed the sack to carry the rocks, boulders, pebbles. All are unwanted. Some were rocks of rejection. You thought you were good enough for the team, but the coach didn’t. The instructor didn’t. They and how many others? It doesn’t take long before you get a collection of stones. Make a bad choice…get called a few names…get abused. And so the sack gets heavy with stones we don’t deserve, along with a few we do.
How can you have dreams for the future when all your energy is required to shoulder the past? Jesus says He is the solution for weariness of the soul. Go to Him. “Come to me, all who are weak and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He already knows what your stones are. He’s just waiting for you to give Him your sack!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Exodus 4
Signs for Moses
Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”
2 Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A staff,” he replied.
3 The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.”
Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.”
6 Then the Lord said, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, the skin was leprous[a]—it had become as white as snow.
7 “Now put it back into your cloak,” he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.
8 Then the Lord said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. 9 But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.”
10 Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
13 But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”
14 Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. 15 You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. 16 He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. 17 But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.”
Moses Returns to Egypt
18 Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.”
Jethro said, “Go, and I wish you well.”
19 Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead.” 20 So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.
21 The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’”
24 At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses[b] and was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it.[c] “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. 26 So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)
27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 Then Moses told Aaron everything the Lord had sent him to say, and also about all the signs he had commanded him to perform.
29 Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, 30 and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, 31 and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, July 21, 2014
Read: John 4:7-15
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Footnotes:
John 4:9 Or do not use dishes Samaritans have used
Insight
The stories of Nicodemus (John 3) and the woman at the well (John 4) are found side by side in Scripture, yet there is great contrast between them. Contrary to Nicodemus, the woman at the well recognized that Jesus was offering something that she could not do without. Nicodemus’ last words to Jesus were, “How can these things be?” (3:9). The woman simply responded, “Sir, give me this water” (4:15).
Water For The World
By C. P. Hia
He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. —John 7:38
Although 70 percent of the world is covered by water, less than 1 percent of it is drinkable by humans. Water conservation and sanitation are crucial matters in many parts of the world, as all life depends on having sanitary water.
Jesus went out of His way to introduce a lost woman to another kind of life-giving water. He deliberately chose to go to a town in Samaria, a place where no respectable rabbi would set foot. There, He told this woman about “living water.” Those who drink of it, He said, “will never thirst.” It will “become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).
The living water is Jesus Himself. Those who receive Him have eternal life (v.14). But the living water He provides also serves another function. Jesus said of those who receive it: “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (7:38). The living water that refreshes us is to refresh others also.
As fresh-water distribution is uneven in the world, so too is the distribution of living water. Many people do not know followers of Jesus who really care about them. It is our privilege to share Him. Christ is, after all, the living water for whom people are thirsting.
Lord Jesus, I want to live for You. May Your
life and love flow through me as I go about my
duties today so that others may see You through
me and be drawn to the living water.
Jesus is a never-ending supply of living water for a parched world.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, July 21, 2014
The Doorway to the Kingdom
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . —Matthew 5:3
Beware of thinking of our Lord as only a teacher. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, then all He can do is frustrate me by setting a standard before me I cannot attain. What is the point of presenting me with such a lofty ideal if I cannot possibly come close to reaching it? I would be happier if I never knew it. What good is there in telling me to be what I can never be— to be “pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8), to do more than my duty, or to be completely devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as my Savior before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of a lofty ideal which only leads to despair. But when I am born again by the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come only to teach— He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The redemption means that Jesus Christ can place within anyone the same nature that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives us are based on that nature.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces a sense of despair in the natural man— exactly what Jesus means for it to do. As long as we have some self-righteous idea that we can carry out our Lord’s teaching, God will allow us to continue until we expose our own ignorance by stumbling over some obstacle in our way. Only then are we willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . .” This is the first principle in the kingdom of God. The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus, but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, “Lord, I cannot even begin to do it.” Then Jesus says, “Blessed are you . . .” (Matthew 5:11). This is the doorway to the kingdom, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are actually poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, July 21, 2014
WHAT YOU'RE MISSING WHEN YOU'RE FLYING - #7181
P3 (right click to save)
I was on a typical wall-to-wall schedule, and old man winter wasn't cooperating. I was traveling with my wife and we were slipping and sliding through this major snow storm to get to our flight at the airport. We heard on the radio that flights were being seriously delayed. I told my wife, "That airport's going to close. I know it is." So we made a last-minute decision. We called Amtrak. They had two seats left on the train, and we diverted from the airport to the train station.
Now, it worked, but I was not a happy camper. I had no choice. They did close the airport that day, and as it turned out, we had to take the train both ways - to Chicago and back. But you know, as I watched America go by outside my window, I have to confess I began to unwind. This is the stuff I usually fly over in my rush to get to my destination. Now I've got a confession to make. The next trip my wife and I had to make - I asked her to check on the train.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What You're Missing When You're Flying."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from some of the most familiar, beautiful words in the Bible, Psalm 23. "The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul." This is my favorite picture of my relationship with the Lord: I love Him shepherd, me sheep.
And this is an unusual ministry that the shepherd has. It's described in these verses; one that you might be having in your life right now. It's what I call the ministry of the enforced slowdown. He says, "He makes me lie down." But not in a bad place; it's in green pastures. And He makes you lie down to see some things you could never see when you're running through or flying by.
Now, the Lord has many means of making us lie down, doesn't he? I've experienced a few. Or at least to get you to slow down. He's got medical brakes that He steps on to slow you down, financial brakes, family brakes; some situation that forces us to stop and give it attention. Some circumstance comes along that forces you to go slower.
And then there's me when I had to take the train, grumbling and resisting every step of the way. Maybe you're there right now. But God has things for you to see that you're missing when you're going full throttle. Maybe you've been missing the person you're married to, and God's saying, "Slow down! Rediscover the treasure I gave you in this person."
Maybe you've been missing the daily drama of your child growing up right before your eyes; days you can never get back. And God's putting on the brakes so you can get to know your son or daughter. And unfortunately, a crisis is often what brings a family closer to each other than anything else.
Possibly you've been missing quality time with the Lord Himself, and God is saying, "Be still and know that I am God." Not be busy and know, and you've been flying right past your Lord day after day. Your priorities got jumbled somewhere. At the speed you've been traveling, you can't even see the faces of people. You can't hear what they're saying. You can't enjoy the journey because you're so obsessed with the destination. So in His love, the Shepherd has declared a slowdown for you. Embrace it!
If all of a sudden you can't fly like you're used to doing, don't pound the wall or don't complain. Thank the Lord for making you lie down so you can see some green pastures that you've been flying right by.
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