Max Lucado Daily: VENGEANCE IS GOD’S
The Bible says
vengeance is God’s. He will repay. What a great reminder. Forgiveness
doesn’t diminish justice, it just entrusts it to God. We tend to give
too much or too little. But the God of justice has the precise
prescription. God can discipline your abusive boss or soften your angry
parent. He can bring your ex to his knees or her senses.
Forgiveness
doesn’t diminish justice, it just entrusts it to God. Unlike us, God
never gives up on a person. Never. Long after we’ve moved on, God is
still there, probing the conscience, stirring conviction, always
orchestrating redemption. Fix your enemies? That’s God’s job. When it
comes to forgiveness, all of us are beginners. No one owns a secret
formula. Remember this–as long as you are trying to forgive, you are
forgiving. Stay the course! You’ll find a way to be strong even when
you’ve been hurt. You will get through this.
From You’ll Get Through This
Isaiah 15
Poignant Cries Reverberate Through Moab
A Message concerning Moab:
Village Ar of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Kir of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Dibon climbs to its chapel in the hills,
goes up to lament.
Moab weeps and wails
over Nebo and Medba.
Every head is shaved bald,
every beard shaved clean.
They pour into the streets wearing black,
go up on the roofs, take to the town square,
Everyone in tears,
everyone in grief.
Towns Heshbon and Elealeh cry long and loud.
The sound carries as far as Jahaz.
Moab sobs, shaking in grief.
The soul of Moab trembles.
5-9 Oh, how I grieve for Moab!
Refugees stream to Zoar
and then on to Eglath-shelishiyah.
Up the slopes of Luhith they weep;
on the road to Horonaim they cry their loss.
The springs of Nimrim are dried up—
grass brown, buds stunted, nothing grows.
They leave, carrying all their possessions
on their backs, everything they own,
Making their way as best they can
across Willow Creek to safety.
Poignant cries reverberate
all through Moab,
Gut-wrenching sobs as far as Eglaim,
heart-racking sobs all the way to Beer-elim.
The banks of the Dibon crest with blood,
but God has worse in store for Dibon:
A lion—a lion to finish off the fugitives,
to clean up whoever’s left in the land.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, September 12, 2016
Read: Matthew 25:1–13
The Story of the Virgins
“God’s
kingdom is like ten young virgins who took oil lamps and went out to
greet the bridegroom. Five were silly and five were smart. The silly
virgins took lamps, but no extra oil. The smart virgins took jars of oil
to feed their lamps. The bridegroom didn’t show up when they expected
him, and they all fell asleep.
6 “In the middle of the night someone yelled out, ‘He’s here! The bride-groom’s here! Go out and greet him!’
7-8
“The ten virgins got up and got their lamps ready. The silly virgins
said to the smart ones, ‘Our lamps are going out; lend us some of your
oil.’
9 “They answered, ‘There might not be enough to go around; go buy your own.’
10
“They did, but while they were out buying oil, the bridegroom arrived.
When everyone who was there to greet him had gone into the wedding
feast, the door was locked.
11 “Much later, the other virgins, the silly ones, showed up and knocked on the door, saying, ‘Master, we’re here. Let us in.’
12 “He answered, ‘Do I know you? I don’t think I know you.’
13 “So stay alert. You have no idea when he might arrive.
INSIGHT:
David
Wenham, in his book The Parables of Jesus, comments on the parable of
the ten virgins: “It speaks of waiting for the coming of the master—in
this case the bridegroom—and of being prepared or unprepared for one’s
appointed task and of being rewarded or punished . . . . This is a
particularly suggestive picture of the outcome of final judgment.” We
don’t know when we will see the Bridegroom. Perhaps we will be alive and
looking for Him when he returns or we will be raised from the dead and
meet Him in the air (1 Thess. 4:16–17). What is important is that we are
ready when He comes.
Ready for the Wedding
By Amy Boucher Pye
Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. Matthew 25:13
“I’m
hungry,” said my eight-year-old daughter. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t
have anything for you. Let’s play tic-tac-toe.” We had been waiting
over an hour for the bride to arrive at the church for what was supposed
to be a noon wedding. As I wondered how much longer it would be, I
hoped I could occupy my daughter until the wedding started.
As
we waited, I felt like we were enacting a parable. Although the
vicarage where we live is a stone’s throw from the church, I knew if I
went to fetch some crackers, the bride could come at any moment and I
would miss her entrance. As I employed many distraction techniques with
my hungry daughter, I also thought about Jesus’s parable about the ten
virgins (Matt. 25:1–13). Five came prepared with enough oil for their
lamps to stay lit as they waited for the bridegroom, but five did not.
Just as it was too late for me to dash back to the vicarage, so it was
too late for the young women to go and buy more oil for their lamps.
What does waiting for Jesus’s return look like in your life?
Jesus
told this parable to emphasize that we need to be prepared, for when He
comes again we will give an account over the state of our hearts. Are
we waiting and ready?
What does waiting for Jesus’s return look like in your life? Have you left something undone that you could attend to today?
We need to be ready for Christ to come again.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, September 12, 2016
Going Through Spiritual Confusion
Jesus answered and said, "You do not know what you ask." —Matthew 20:22
There
are times in your spiritual life when there is confusion, and the way
out of it is not simply to say that you should not be confused. It is
not a matter of right and wrong, but a matter of God taking you through a
way that you temporarily do not understand. And it is only by going
through the spiritual confusion that you will come to the understanding
of what God wants for you.
The Shrouding of His
Friendship (see Luke 11:5-8). Jesus gave the illustration here of a man
who appears not to care for his friend. He was saying, in effect, that
is how the heavenly Father will appear to you at times. You will think
that He is an unkind friend, but remember— He is not. The time will come
when everything will be explained. There seems to be a cloud on the
friendship of the heart, and often even love itself has to wait in pain
and tears for the blessing of fuller fellowship and oneness. When God
appears to be completely shrouded, will you hang on with confidence in
Him?
The Shadow on His Fatherhood (see Luke 11:11-13).
Jesus said that there are times when your Father will appear as if He
were an unnatural father— as if He were callous and indifferent— but
remember, He is not. “Everyone who asks receives…” (Luke 11:10). If all
you see is a shadow on the face of the Father right now, hang on to the
fact that He will ultimately give you clear understanding and will fully
justify Himself in everything that He has allowed into your life.
The
Strangeness of His Faithfulness (see Luke 18:1-8). “When the Son of Man
comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Will He
find the kind of faith that counts on Him in spite of the confusion?
Stand firm in faith, believing that what Jesus said is true, although in
the meantime you do not understand what God is doing. He has bigger
issues at stake than the particular things you are asking of Him right
now.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God. Not Knowing Whither, 903 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, September 12, 2016
Keeping the Weight Off - #7741
Sometimes
I'll say kiddingly, "I've figured out what my thorn in the flesh is. My
metabolism." Is that possible? Well, unfortunately, my metabolism just
doesn't turn calories into energy fast enough. It seems like the more
birthdays you have, the more that's true. In other words, I could get
heavy pretty easily. Years ago, my not-very-tall body weighed in at 210
pounds. Yeah, well, I lost 40 or 50 pounds less, you know, and kept most
of that off over the years. I want to stay that way. But I still have
the same metabolism that got me to 210, and the bakery, and the candy
store, and the ice cream place. They still look just as tempting, but
I've got to remember what a battle it was to get that weight off! I
mean, it is worth saying no to some temptations to avoid the struggle of
having to get back in shape!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Keeping the Weight Off."
Okay,
this isn't really about physical weight. No, our word for today from
the Word of God comes from Galatians 5:1. Paul is addressing the issue
of bondage...the bondage of legalism, but also the bondage of sin. He
says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then,
and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Or,
like this goodies-loving, slow metabolism guy, you know – me? Why would
you go back to a way that you hated, that you were hooked on, and that
was very hard to get out of? You know how hard it is to get rid of that
weight. Why would you go back to it?
Maybe you're
facing the temptation, right now, to slip back to a sin that once
enslaved you; weight you carried spiritually for way too long. Look back
for a moment. Look at the spiritual weight that you used to carry – the
impatience that caused you grief because you would not wait for man and
you wouldn't wait for God. Or remember that destructive habit that
mastered you for so long and how hard it was to get past it? That
attitude that made you feel so dark inside and poisoned your
relationships, and that selfishness or that anger that hurt most the
people you love most? Remember the lust that used to take over so much
of your thought life or the wrong use of sex that left you with scars
and guilt and regrets?
You remember the weight and you
remember how it made you feel, and you remember how hard it was to get
that weight off of you. But now maybe there's a slow drift back toward
that burden. You have no intention of going back to where you were. I
have no intention of going back to what I used to weigh, but I could be
back there pretty fast if I didn't fight the early weight gains. I have
to do it all the time.
If you're going to keep from
carrying that sin-weight again, you'll have to fight it at the first
thought when it hits, the first time the temptation comes up, the first
weakening, the erosion, that first little compromise, "Just this once.
Not very much. Not for long." Notice God's words here are, "Stand firm!
Do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." In other
words, stop it now! Fight it when it's small! When it's easier to beat!
It's only going to get tougher to stop.
Jesus
gloriously liberated you from the sinful weight of that ugly old way of
living, that old way of thinking, that old way of meeting your needs, of
treating people. But it was painful getting the weight off, wasn't it?
You can't afford to let it start coming back. Say no now to the first
signs of that burden returning, the first weakening in your resolve!
Why
revisit the burdens of the past? Why repeat the struggle of beating
that sin again? You've got the weight off. Now with the strength of
Jesus, keep it off!
Monday, September 12, 2016
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Isaiah 13 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: A Deposit of Power
Many Christians view their conversion something like a car wash. You go in a filthy clunker, and you come out with your sins washed away-a cleansed clunker. But conversion is more than a removal of sin. It is a deposit of power! It is as if a brand-new Ferrari engine was mounted in your frame. God removed the old motor that was caked, cracked, and broken with rebellion and evil; and he replaced it with a humming, roaring version of himself.
The Apostle Paul described it as being "a new creation, old things have passed away; behold all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are fully equipped. Do you need more energy? You have it. More kindness? It's yours.
Hebrews 13:21 promises that God will equip you with all you need for doing His will. Just press the gas pedal. God has given you everything you need for living a godly life!
From Glory Days
Isaiah 13
Poignant Cries Reverberate Through Moab
A Message concerning Moab:
Village Ar of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Kir of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Dibon climbs to its chapel in the hills,
goes up to lament.
Moab weeps and wails
over Nebo and Medba.
Every head is shaved bald,
every beard shaved clean.
They pour into the streets wearing black,
go up on the roofs, take to the town square,
Everyone in tears,
everyone in grief.
Towns Heshbon and Elealeh cry long and loud.
The sound carries as far as Jahaz.
Moab sobs, shaking in grief.
The soul of Moab trembles.
5-9 Oh, how I grieve for Moab!
Refugees stream to Zoar
and then on to Eglath-shelishiyah.
Up the slopes of Luhith they weep;
on the road to Horonaim they cry their loss.
The springs of Nimrim are dried up—
grass brown, buds stunted, nothing grows.
They leave, carrying all their possessions
on their backs, everything they own,
Making their way as best they can
across Willow Creek to safety.
Poignant cries reverberate
all through Moab,
Gut-wrenching sobs as far as Eglaim,
heart-racking sobs all the way to Beer-elim.
The banks of the Dibon crest with blood,
but God has worse in store for Dibon:
A lion—a lion to finish off the fugitives,
to clean up whoever’s left in the land.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Read: Psalm 71:1–12
I run for dear life to God,
I’ll never live to regret it.
Do what you do so well:
get me out of this mess and up on my feet.
Put your ear to the ground and listen,
give me space for salvation.
Be a guest room where I can retreat;
you said your door was always open!
You’re my salvation—my vast, granite fortress.
4-7 My God, free me from the grip of Wicked,
from the clutch of Bad and Bully.
You keep me going when times are tough—
my bedrock, God, since my childhood.
I’ve hung on you from the day of my birth,
the day you took me from the cradle;
I’ll never run out of praise.
Many gasp in alarm when they see me,
but you take me in stride.
8-11 Just as each day brims with your beauty,
my mouth brims with praise.
But don’t turn me out to pasture when I’m old
or put me on the shelf when I can’t pull my weight.
My enemies are talking behind my back,
watching for their chance to knife me.
The gossip is: “God has abandoned him.
Pounce on him now; no one will help him.”
12-16 God, don’t just watch from the sidelines.
Come on! Run to my side!
My accusers—make them lose face.
Those out to get me—make them look
Like idiots, while I stretch out, reaching for you,
and daily add praise to praise.
I’ll write the book on your righteousness,
talk up your salvation the livelong day,
never run out of good things to write or say.
I come in the power of the Lord God,
I post signs marking his right-of-way.
INSIGHT:
In every generation, Christ-followers long for others to learn of and experience the greatness of God’s love and mercy. Examining the lyrics of Psalm 71, the first thing we learn is that this anonymous psalmist talks to God. In verse 9, we read, “Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone.” Verse 18 affirms this: “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God.” While many of the psalms sing about God, the writer of Psalm 71 sings a prayer to God. Everything in this psalm directs upward, whether it is the psalmist’s concerns (vv. 2–4), confidence (vv. 5–6), or aspirations (vv. 16–18).
Emergency Prayer
By Dennis Fisher
Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go. Psalm 71:3
On September 11, 2001, Stanley Praimnath was working on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center South Tower when he saw an airplane flying directly toward him. Stanley prayed a quick prayer as he dove under a desk for protection: “Lord, I can’t do this! You take over!”
The terrible impact of the plane crash trapped Stanley behind a wall of debris. But as he prayed and cried for help, Brian Clark, a worker from another office, heard and responded. Making their way through rubble and darkness, the two found their way down 80 flights of stairs to the ground floor and out.
But we can be confident that God hears our prayers and will walk alongside us through everything.
When encountering terrible threats, David asked God for help. He wanted to be assured of God’s nearness as he faced enemies in battle. In a heartfelt petition David said, “Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go . . . . Do not be far from me, my God; come quickly, God, to help me” (Ps. 71:3, 12).
We aren’t promised deliverance from every difficult situation we face. But we can be confident that God hears our prayers and will walk alongside us through everything.
Whatever comes my way, please come near to me, Lord, to help. I cannot make it through anything without You. Thank You.
Nearness to God is our conscious security. A child in the dark is comforted by grasping its father’s hand. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Missionary Weapons (2)
If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. —John 13:14
Ministering in Everyday Opportunities. Ministering in everyday opportunities that surround us does not mean that we select our own surroundings— it means being God’s very special choice to be available for use in any of the seemingly random surroundings which He has engineered for us. The very character we exhibit in our present surroundings is an indication of what we will be like in other surroundings.
The things Jesus did were the most menial of everyday tasks, and this is an indication that it takes all of God’s power in me to accomplish even the most common tasks in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels, dishes, sandals, and all the other ordinary things in our lives reveal what we are made of more quickly than anything else. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the most menial duty as it ought to be done.
Jesus said, “I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15). Notice the kind of people that God brings around you, and you will be humiliated once you realize that this is actually His way of revealing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. Now He says we should exhibit to those around us exactly what He has exhibited to us.
Do you find yourself responding by saying, “Oh, I will do all that once I’m out on the mission field”? Talking in this way is like trying to produce the weapons of war while in the trenches of the battlefield— you will be killed while trying to do it.
We have to go the “second mile” with God (see Matthew 5:41). Yet some of us become worn out in the first ten steps. Then we say, “Well, I’ll just wait until I get closer to the next big crisis in my life.” But if we do not steadily minister in everyday opportunities, we will do nothing when the crisis comes.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves. The Place of Help, 1051 L
Many Christians view their conversion something like a car wash. You go in a filthy clunker, and you come out with your sins washed away-a cleansed clunker. But conversion is more than a removal of sin. It is a deposit of power! It is as if a brand-new Ferrari engine was mounted in your frame. God removed the old motor that was caked, cracked, and broken with rebellion and evil; and he replaced it with a humming, roaring version of himself.
The Apostle Paul described it as being "a new creation, old things have passed away; behold all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are fully equipped. Do you need more energy? You have it. More kindness? It's yours.
Hebrews 13:21 promises that God will equip you with all you need for doing His will. Just press the gas pedal. God has given you everything you need for living a godly life!
From Glory Days
Isaiah 13
Poignant Cries Reverberate Through Moab
A Message concerning Moab:
Village Ar of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Kir of Moab is in ruins,
destroyed in a night raid.
Village Dibon climbs to its chapel in the hills,
goes up to lament.
Moab weeps and wails
over Nebo and Medba.
Every head is shaved bald,
every beard shaved clean.
They pour into the streets wearing black,
go up on the roofs, take to the town square,
Everyone in tears,
everyone in grief.
Towns Heshbon and Elealeh cry long and loud.
The sound carries as far as Jahaz.
Moab sobs, shaking in grief.
The soul of Moab trembles.
5-9 Oh, how I grieve for Moab!
Refugees stream to Zoar
and then on to Eglath-shelishiyah.
Up the slopes of Luhith they weep;
on the road to Horonaim they cry their loss.
The springs of Nimrim are dried up—
grass brown, buds stunted, nothing grows.
They leave, carrying all their possessions
on their backs, everything they own,
Making their way as best they can
across Willow Creek to safety.
Poignant cries reverberate
all through Moab,
Gut-wrenching sobs as far as Eglaim,
heart-racking sobs all the way to Beer-elim.
The banks of the Dibon crest with blood,
but God has worse in store for Dibon:
A lion—a lion to finish off the fugitives,
to clean up whoever’s left in the land.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Read: Psalm 71:1–12
I run for dear life to God,
I’ll never live to regret it.
Do what you do so well:
get me out of this mess and up on my feet.
Put your ear to the ground and listen,
give me space for salvation.
Be a guest room where I can retreat;
you said your door was always open!
You’re my salvation—my vast, granite fortress.
4-7 My God, free me from the grip of Wicked,
from the clutch of Bad and Bully.
You keep me going when times are tough—
my bedrock, God, since my childhood.
I’ve hung on you from the day of my birth,
the day you took me from the cradle;
I’ll never run out of praise.
Many gasp in alarm when they see me,
but you take me in stride.
8-11 Just as each day brims with your beauty,
my mouth brims with praise.
But don’t turn me out to pasture when I’m old
or put me on the shelf when I can’t pull my weight.
My enemies are talking behind my back,
watching for their chance to knife me.
The gossip is: “God has abandoned him.
Pounce on him now; no one will help him.”
12-16 God, don’t just watch from the sidelines.
Come on! Run to my side!
My accusers—make them lose face.
Those out to get me—make them look
Like idiots, while I stretch out, reaching for you,
and daily add praise to praise.
I’ll write the book on your righteousness,
talk up your salvation the livelong day,
never run out of good things to write or say.
I come in the power of the Lord God,
I post signs marking his right-of-way.
INSIGHT:
In every generation, Christ-followers long for others to learn of and experience the greatness of God’s love and mercy. Examining the lyrics of Psalm 71, the first thing we learn is that this anonymous psalmist talks to God. In verse 9, we read, “Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone.” Verse 18 affirms this: “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God.” While many of the psalms sing about God, the writer of Psalm 71 sings a prayer to God. Everything in this psalm directs upward, whether it is the psalmist’s concerns (vv. 2–4), confidence (vv. 5–6), or aspirations (vv. 16–18).
Emergency Prayer
By Dennis Fisher
Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go. Psalm 71:3
On September 11, 2001, Stanley Praimnath was working on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center South Tower when he saw an airplane flying directly toward him. Stanley prayed a quick prayer as he dove under a desk for protection: “Lord, I can’t do this! You take over!”
The terrible impact of the plane crash trapped Stanley behind a wall of debris. But as he prayed and cried for help, Brian Clark, a worker from another office, heard and responded. Making their way through rubble and darkness, the two found their way down 80 flights of stairs to the ground floor and out.
But we can be confident that God hears our prayers and will walk alongside us through everything.
When encountering terrible threats, David asked God for help. He wanted to be assured of God’s nearness as he faced enemies in battle. In a heartfelt petition David said, “Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go . . . . Do not be far from me, my God; come quickly, God, to help me” (Ps. 71:3, 12).
We aren’t promised deliverance from every difficult situation we face. But we can be confident that God hears our prayers and will walk alongside us through everything.
Whatever comes my way, please come near to me, Lord, to help. I cannot make it through anything without You. Thank You.
Nearness to God is our conscious security. A child in the dark is comforted by grasping its father’s hand. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Missionary Weapons (2)
If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. —John 13:14
Ministering in Everyday Opportunities. Ministering in everyday opportunities that surround us does not mean that we select our own surroundings— it means being God’s very special choice to be available for use in any of the seemingly random surroundings which He has engineered for us. The very character we exhibit in our present surroundings is an indication of what we will be like in other surroundings.
The things Jesus did were the most menial of everyday tasks, and this is an indication that it takes all of God’s power in me to accomplish even the most common tasks in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels, dishes, sandals, and all the other ordinary things in our lives reveal what we are made of more quickly than anything else. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the most menial duty as it ought to be done.
Jesus said, “I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15). Notice the kind of people that God brings around you, and you will be humiliated once you realize that this is actually His way of revealing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. Now He says we should exhibit to those around us exactly what He has exhibited to us.
Do you find yourself responding by saying, “Oh, I will do all that once I’m out on the mission field”? Talking in this way is like trying to produce the weapons of war while in the trenches of the battlefield— you will be killed while trying to do it.
We have to go the “second mile” with God (see Matthew 5:41). Yet some of us become worn out in the first ten steps. Then we say, “Well, I’ll just wait until I get closer to the next big crisis in my life.” But if we do not steadily minister in everyday opportunities, we will do nothing when the crisis comes.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves. The Place of Help, 1051 L
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Isaiah 14 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Promised-Land Property
Most babies cry, “Mama!” I cried, “Mustang!” I had asked my dad for a car every day of my life! My father’s stock reply was, “You’ll have a car once you earn it, save for it, & pay for it.” But then came that glorious night when dad handed me keys. Not payment vouchers or requirements, but keys! He said, “Take the car I’m giving you.” I had a new car because he declared it.
In Joshua’s day, the Hebrews had a new land because their Father did the same. “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you.” So Joshua let the people depart, each to their own inheritance.
You have an inheritance! If you’ve given your heart to Christ, the Bible says “God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). Promised Land property—placed in your name!
From Glory Days
Isaiah 14
Now You Are Nothing
But not so with Jacob. God will have compassion on Jacob. Once again he’ll choose Israel. He’ll establish them in their own country. Outsiders will be attracted and throw their lot in with Jacob. The nations among whom they lived will actually escort them back home, and then Israel will pay them back by making slaves of them, men and women alike, possessing them as slaves in God’s country, capturing those who had captured them, ruling over those who had abused them.
3-4 When God has given you time to recover from the abuse and trouble and harsh servitude that you had to endure, you can amuse yourselves by taking up this satire, a taunt against the king of Babylon:
4-6 Can you believe it? The tyrant is gone!
The tyranny is over!
God has broken the rule of the wicked,
the power of the bully-rulers
That crushed many people.
A relentless rain of cruel outrage
Established a violent rule of anger
rife with torture and persecution.
7-10 And now it’s over, the whole earth quietly at rest.
Burst into song! Make the rafters ring!
Ponderosa pine trees are happy,
giant Lebanon cedars are relieved, saying,
“Since you’ve been cut down,
there’s no one around to cut us down.”
And the underworld dead are all excited,
preparing to welcome you when you come.
Getting ready to greet you are the ghostly dead,
all the famous names of earth.
All the buried kings of the nations
will stand up on their thrones
With well-prepared speeches,
royal invitations to death:
“Now you are as nothing as we are!
Make yourselves at home with us dead folks!”
11 This is where your pomp and fine music led you, Babylon,
to your underworld private chambers,
A king-size mattress of maggots for repose
and a quilt of crawling worms for warmth.
12 What a comedown this, O Babylon!
Daystar! Son of Dawn!
Flat on your face in the underworld mud,
you, famous for flattening nations!
13-14 You said to yourself,
“I’ll climb to heaven.
I’ll set my throne
over the stars of God.
I’ll run the assembly of angels
that meets on sacred Mount Zaphon.
I’ll climb to the top of the clouds.
I’ll take over as King of the Universe!”
15-17 But you didn’t make it, did you?
Instead of climbing up, you came down—
Down with the underground dead,
down to the abyss of the Pit.
People will stare and muse:
“Can this be the one
Who terrorized earth and its kingdoms,
turned earth to a moonscape,
Wasted its cities,
shut up his prisoners to a living death?”
18-20 Other kings get a decent burial,
honored with eulogies and placed in a tomb.
But you’re dumped in a ditch unburied,
like a stray dog or cat,
Covered with rotting bodies,
murdered and indigent corpses.
Your dead body desecrated, mutilated—
no state funeral for you!
You’ve left your land in ruins,
left a legacy of massacre.
The progeny of your evil life
will never be named. Oblivion!
21 Get a place ready to slaughter the sons of the wicked
and wipe out their father’s line.
Unthinkable that they should own a square foot of land
or desecrate the face of the world with their cities!
22-23 “I will confront them”—Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies—“and strip Babylon of name and survivors, children and grandchildren.” God’s Decree. “I’ll make it a worthless swamp and give it as a prize to the hedgehog. And then I’ll bulldoze it out of existence.” Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
Who Could Ever Cancel Such Plans?
24-27 God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks:
“Exactly as I planned,
it will happen.
Following my blueprints,
it will take shape.
I will shatter the Assyrian who trespasses my land
and stomp him into the dirt on my mountains.
I will ban his taking and making of slaves
and lift the weight of oppression from all shoulders.”
This is the plan,
planned for the whole earth,
And this is the hand that will do it,
reaching into every nation.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies has planned it.
Who could ever cancel such plans?
His is the hand that’s reached out.
Who could brush it aside?
28-31 In the year King Ahaz died, this Message came:
Hold it, Philistines! It’s too soon to celebrate
the defeat of your cruel oppressor.
From the death throes of that snake a worse snake will come,
and from that, one even worse.
The poor won’t have to worry.
The needy will escape the terror.
But you Philistines will be plunged into famine,
and those who don’t starve, God will kill.
Wail and howl, proud city!
Fall prostrate in fear, Philistia!
On the northern horizon, smoke from burned cities,
the wake of a brutal, disciplined destroyer.
32 What does one say to
outsiders who ask questions?
Tell them, “God has established Zion.
Those in need and in trouble find refuge in her.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Read: Acts 1:1–8
To the Ends of the World
Dear Theophilus, in the first volume of this book I wrote on everything that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he said good-bye to the apostles, the ones he had chosen through the Holy Spirit, and was taken up to heaven. After his death, he presented himself alive to them in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face-to-face meetings, he talked to them about things concerning the kingdom of God. As they met and ate meals together, he told them that they were on no account to leave Jerusalem but “must wait for what the Father promised: the promise you heard from me. John baptized in water; you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. And soon.”
6 When they were together for the last time they asked, “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? Is this the time?”
7-8 He told them, “You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.”
INSIGHT:
The book of Acts is penned by Luke, who also wrote the gospel of Luke. Both are addressed to Theophilus. Acts begins, “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1). The literal rendering of Theophilus is “he who loves God.” This may be the name of someone Luke knew or a generic name that addresses any reader who loves God and wants to learn about Him. Both Luke and Acts describe what Jesus taught and did. What did He do? He healed the sick, raised the dead, and walked on water. The signs and wonders Jesus performed confirm that His message should be taken seriously.
Evie’s Decision
By Dave Branon
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Mark 16:15
Evie was one of 25 American teenagers in a high school choir who traveled to Jamaica to sing, witness, and show God’s love to people of a different culture and generation. And for Evie, one day of that trip was particularly memorable and joy-filled.
That day, the choir went to a nursing home to sing and visit with the residents. After they sang, Evie sat down with a young woman who lived at the home, a woman in her early 30s. As they began to chat, Evie felt that she should talk about Jesus—who He is and what He did for us. She showed her verses in the Bible that explained salvation. Soon the woman said she wanted to trust Jesus as her Savior. And that’s just what she did.
Effective witnesses not only know their faith but show their faith.
Because of Evie’s decision to start a conversation about Jesus, our group celebrated a new birth into God’s family that day.
Mark 16:15 tells us that what Evie did is what is expected of all believers. Here’s how The Message paraphrases that verse: “Go everywhere and announce the Message of God’s good news to one and all.”
May we never underestimate the wonder of what it means for anyone, anywhere to hear the good news and to say yes to our Savior.
Lord, it’s not easy to strike up a conversation about the gospel. Please allow the Holy Spirit to work in me so I will be willing and able to mention the good news to anyone who needs You.
Effective witnesses not only know their faith but show their faith.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Missionary Weapons (1)
When you were under the fig tree, I saw you. —John 1:48
Worshiping in Everyday Occasions. We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us— it simply reveals what we are made of already. Do you find yourself saying, “If God calls me to battle, of course I will rise to the occasion”? Yet you won’t rise to the occasion unless you have done so on God’s training ground. If you are not doing the task that is closest to you now, which God has engineered into your life, when the crisis comes, instead of being fit for battle, you will be revealed as being unfit. Crises always reveal a person’s true character.
A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness. The time will come, as Nathanael experienced in this passage, that a private “fig-tree” life will no longer be possible. Everything will be out in the open, and you will find yourself to be of no value there if you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions in your own home. If your worship is right in your private relationship with God, then when He sets you free, you will be ready. It is in the unseen life, which only God saw, that you have become perfectly fit. And when the strain of the crisis comes, you can be relied upon by God.
Are you saying, “But I can’t be expected to live a sanctified life in my present circumstances; I have no time for prayer or Bible study right now; besides, my opportunity for battle hasn’t come yet, but when it does, of course I will be ready”? No, you will not. If you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions, when you get involved in God’s work, you will not only be useless yourself but also a hindrance to those around you.
God’s training ground, where the missionary weapons are found, is the hidden, personal, worshiping life of the saint.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are all based on a conception of importance, either our own importance, or the importance of someone else; Jesus tells us to go and teach based on the revelation of His importance. “All power is given unto Me.… Go ye therefore ….” So Send I You, 1325 R
Most babies cry, “Mama!” I cried, “Mustang!” I had asked my dad for a car every day of my life! My father’s stock reply was, “You’ll have a car once you earn it, save for it, & pay for it.” But then came that glorious night when dad handed me keys. Not payment vouchers or requirements, but keys! He said, “Take the car I’m giving you.” I had a new car because he declared it.
In Joshua’s day, the Hebrews had a new land because their Father did the same. “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you.” So Joshua let the people depart, each to their own inheritance.
You have an inheritance! If you’ve given your heart to Christ, the Bible says “God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). Promised Land property—placed in your name!
From Glory Days
Isaiah 14
Now You Are Nothing
But not so with Jacob. God will have compassion on Jacob. Once again he’ll choose Israel. He’ll establish them in their own country. Outsiders will be attracted and throw their lot in with Jacob. The nations among whom they lived will actually escort them back home, and then Israel will pay them back by making slaves of them, men and women alike, possessing them as slaves in God’s country, capturing those who had captured them, ruling over those who had abused them.
3-4 When God has given you time to recover from the abuse and trouble and harsh servitude that you had to endure, you can amuse yourselves by taking up this satire, a taunt against the king of Babylon:
4-6 Can you believe it? The tyrant is gone!
The tyranny is over!
God has broken the rule of the wicked,
the power of the bully-rulers
That crushed many people.
A relentless rain of cruel outrage
Established a violent rule of anger
rife with torture and persecution.
7-10 And now it’s over, the whole earth quietly at rest.
Burst into song! Make the rafters ring!
Ponderosa pine trees are happy,
giant Lebanon cedars are relieved, saying,
“Since you’ve been cut down,
there’s no one around to cut us down.”
And the underworld dead are all excited,
preparing to welcome you when you come.
Getting ready to greet you are the ghostly dead,
all the famous names of earth.
All the buried kings of the nations
will stand up on their thrones
With well-prepared speeches,
royal invitations to death:
“Now you are as nothing as we are!
Make yourselves at home with us dead folks!”
11 This is where your pomp and fine music led you, Babylon,
to your underworld private chambers,
A king-size mattress of maggots for repose
and a quilt of crawling worms for warmth.
12 What a comedown this, O Babylon!
Daystar! Son of Dawn!
Flat on your face in the underworld mud,
you, famous for flattening nations!
13-14 You said to yourself,
“I’ll climb to heaven.
I’ll set my throne
over the stars of God.
I’ll run the assembly of angels
that meets on sacred Mount Zaphon.
I’ll climb to the top of the clouds.
I’ll take over as King of the Universe!”
15-17 But you didn’t make it, did you?
Instead of climbing up, you came down—
Down with the underground dead,
down to the abyss of the Pit.
People will stare and muse:
“Can this be the one
Who terrorized earth and its kingdoms,
turned earth to a moonscape,
Wasted its cities,
shut up his prisoners to a living death?”
18-20 Other kings get a decent burial,
honored with eulogies and placed in a tomb.
But you’re dumped in a ditch unburied,
like a stray dog or cat,
Covered with rotting bodies,
murdered and indigent corpses.
Your dead body desecrated, mutilated—
no state funeral for you!
You’ve left your land in ruins,
left a legacy of massacre.
The progeny of your evil life
will never be named. Oblivion!
21 Get a place ready to slaughter the sons of the wicked
and wipe out their father’s line.
Unthinkable that they should own a square foot of land
or desecrate the face of the world with their cities!
22-23 “I will confront them”—Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies—“and strip Babylon of name and survivors, children and grandchildren.” God’s Decree. “I’ll make it a worthless swamp and give it as a prize to the hedgehog. And then I’ll bulldoze it out of existence.” Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
Who Could Ever Cancel Such Plans?
24-27 God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks:
“Exactly as I planned,
it will happen.
Following my blueprints,
it will take shape.
I will shatter the Assyrian who trespasses my land
and stomp him into the dirt on my mountains.
I will ban his taking and making of slaves
and lift the weight of oppression from all shoulders.”
This is the plan,
planned for the whole earth,
And this is the hand that will do it,
reaching into every nation.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies has planned it.
Who could ever cancel such plans?
His is the hand that’s reached out.
Who could brush it aside?
28-31 In the year King Ahaz died, this Message came:
Hold it, Philistines! It’s too soon to celebrate
the defeat of your cruel oppressor.
From the death throes of that snake a worse snake will come,
and from that, one even worse.
The poor won’t have to worry.
The needy will escape the terror.
But you Philistines will be plunged into famine,
and those who don’t starve, God will kill.
Wail and howl, proud city!
Fall prostrate in fear, Philistia!
On the northern horizon, smoke from burned cities,
the wake of a brutal, disciplined destroyer.
32 What does one say to
outsiders who ask questions?
Tell them, “God has established Zion.
Those in need and in trouble find refuge in her.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Read: Acts 1:1–8
To the Ends of the World
Dear Theophilus, in the first volume of this book I wrote on everything that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he said good-bye to the apostles, the ones he had chosen through the Holy Spirit, and was taken up to heaven. After his death, he presented himself alive to them in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face-to-face meetings, he talked to them about things concerning the kingdom of God. As they met and ate meals together, he told them that they were on no account to leave Jerusalem but “must wait for what the Father promised: the promise you heard from me. John baptized in water; you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. And soon.”
6 When they were together for the last time they asked, “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? Is this the time?”
7-8 He told them, “You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.”
INSIGHT:
The book of Acts is penned by Luke, who also wrote the gospel of Luke. Both are addressed to Theophilus. Acts begins, “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1). The literal rendering of Theophilus is “he who loves God.” This may be the name of someone Luke knew or a generic name that addresses any reader who loves God and wants to learn about Him. Both Luke and Acts describe what Jesus taught and did. What did He do? He healed the sick, raised the dead, and walked on water. The signs and wonders Jesus performed confirm that His message should be taken seriously.
Evie’s Decision
By Dave Branon
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Mark 16:15
Evie was one of 25 American teenagers in a high school choir who traveled to Jamaica to sing, witness, and show God’s love to people of a different culture and generation. And for Evie, one day of that trip was particularly memorable and joy-filled.
That day, the choir went to a nursing home to sing and visit with the residents. After they sang, Evie sat down with a young woman who lived at the home, a woman in her early 30s. As they began to chat, Evie felt that she should talk about Jesus—who He is and what He did for us. She showed her verses in the Bible that explained salvation. Soon the woman said she wanted to trust Jesus as her Savior. And that’s just what she did.
Effective witnesses not only know their faith but show their faith.
Because of Evie’s decision to start a conversation about Jesus, our group celebrated a new birth into God’s family that day.
Mark 16:15 tells us that what Evie did is what is expected of all believers. Here’s how The Message paraphrases that verse: “Go everywhere and announce the Message of God’s good news to one and all.”
May we never underestimate the wonder of what it means for anyone, anywhere to hear the good news and to say yes to our Savior.
Lord, it’s not easy to strike up a conversation about the gospel. Please allow the Holy Spirit to work in me so I will be willing and able to mention the good news to anyone who needs You.
Effective witnesses not only know their faith but show their faith.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Missionary Weapons (1)
When you were under the fig tree, I saw you. —John 1:48
Worshiping in Everyday Occasions. We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us— it simply reveals what we are made of already. Do you find yourself saying, “If God calls me to battle, of course I will rise to the occasion”? Yet you won’t rise to the occasion unless you have done so on God’s training ground. If you are not doing the task that is closest to you now, which God has engineered into your life, when the crisis comes, instead of being fit for battle, you will be revealed as being unfit. Crises always reveal a person’s true character.
A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness. The time will come, as Nathanael experienced in this passage, that a private “fig-tree” life will no longer be possible. Everything will be out in the open, and you will find yourself to be of no value there if you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions in your own home. If your worship is right in your private relationship with God, then when He sets you free, you will be ready. It is in the unseen life, which only God saw, that you have become perfectly fit. And when the strain of the crisis comes, you can be relied upon by God.
Are you saying, “But I can’t be expected to live a sanctified life in my present circumstances; I have no time for prayer or Bible study right now; besides, my opportunity for battle hasn’t come yet, but when it does, of course I will be ready”? No, you will not. If you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions, when you get involved in God’s work, you will not only be useless yourself but also a hindrance to those around you.
God’s training ground, where the missionary weapons are found, is the hidden, personal, worshiping life of the saint.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are all based on a conception of importance, either our own importance, or the importance of someone else; Jesus tells us to go and teach based on the revelation of His importance. “All power is given unto Me.… Go ye therefore ….” So Send I You, 1325 R
Friday, September 9, 2016
Isaiah 13, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: HIS UNCHANGING CHARACTER
We pass much of life at mid-altitude. Most of life is Monday-ish obligations of carpools, expense reports and recipes. Occasionally we summit a peak: our wedding, a promotion, the birth of a child. But when the housing market crashes, or a test report comes back negative? Before we know it, we discover what the bottom looks like!
In Psalm 139:7 David asked, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?” You’ll never go where God is not. Acts 17:27 reminds us, “He is not far from each of us.” The Psalmist determined, “When I am afraid, I will trust in You.”
When all around my soul gives way, He then is still my hope and stay! Remember the song? Let it encourage you. Let it remind you to cling to God’s unchanging character. God is faithful. He is not caught off guard. He uses everything for His glory and your ultimate good. You will get through this.
From You’ll Get Through This
Isaiah 13
Babylon Is Doomed!
The Message on Babylon. Isaiah son of Amoz saw it:
2-3 “Run up a flag on an open hill.
Yell loud. Get their attention.
Wave them into formation.
Direct them to the nerve center of power.
I’ve taken charge of my special forces,
called up my crack troops.
They’re bursting with pride and passion
to carry out my angry judgment.”
4-5 Thunder rolls off the mountains
like a mob huge and noisy—
Thunder of kingdoms in an uproar,
nations assembling for war.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies is calling
his army into battle formation.
They come from far-off countries,
they pour in across the horizon.
It’s God on the move with the weapons of his wrath,
ready to destroy the whole country.
6-8 Wail! God’s Day of Judgment is near—
an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God!
Everyone paralyzed in the panic,
hysterical and unstrung,
Doubled up in pain
like a woman giving birth to a baby.
Horrified—everyone they see
is like a face out of a nightmare.
9-16 “Watch now. God’s Judgment Day comes.
Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger,
A day to waste the earth
and clean out all the sinners.
The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations,
will be nothing but black holes.
The sun will come up as a black disk,
and the moon a blank nothing.
I’ll put a full stop to the evil on earth,
terminate the dark acts of the wicked.
I’ll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them—
and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces.
Proud humanity will disappear from the earth.
I’ll make mortals rarer than hens’ teeth.
And yes, I’ll even make the sky shake,
and the earth quake to its roots
Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
the Judgment Day of his raging anger.
Like a hunted white-tailed deer,
like lost sheep with no shepherd,
People will huddle with a few of their own kind,
run off to some makeshift shelter.
But tough luck to stragglers—they’ll be killed on the spot,
throats cut, bellies ripped open,
Babies smashed on the rocks
while mothers and fathers watch,
Houses looted,
wives raped.
17-22 “And now watch this:
Against Babylon, I’m inciting the Medes,
A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes,
the kind of brutality that no one can blunt.
They massacre the young,
wantonly kick and kill even babies.
And Babylon, most glorious of all kingdoms,
the pride and joy of Chaldeans,
Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom,
and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them.
No one will live there anymore,
generation after generation a ghost town.
Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there.
Shepherds will give it a wide berth.
But strange and wild animals will like it just fine,
filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds.
Skunks will make it their home,
and unspeakable night hags will haunt it.
Hyenas will curdle your blood with their laughing,
and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers.
“Babylon is doomed.
It won’t be long now.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, September 09, 2016
Read: 1 John 4:7–19
God Is Love
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
13-16 This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
To Love, to Be Loved
17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
INSIGHT:
In 1 John we see what characterizes a life that exhibits God’s supernatural love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape, a self-sacrificial giving of one’s self in time, money, or energy. At the root of this divine care is the idea of esteem. God values human beings because we reflect His image.
What Matters Most
By Bill Crowder
He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 1 John 4:9
As Jesus’s beloved disciple John grew older, his teaching became increasingly narrowed, focusing entirely on the love of God in his three letters. In the book Knowing the Truth of God’s Love, Peter Kreeft cites an old legend which says that one of John’s young disciples once came to him complaining, “Why don’t you talk about anything else?” John replied, “Because there isn’t anything else.”
God’s love is certainly at the heart of the mission and message of Jesus. In his earlier gospel account, John recorded the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Thank You, O Lord, that Your love is rich and pure, measureless and strong!
The apostle Paul tells us that God’s love is at the core of how we live, and he reminds us that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).
God’s love is so strong, available, and stabilizing that we can confidently step into each day knowing that the good things are gifts from His hand and the challenges can be faced in His strength. For all of life, His love is what matters most.
Thank You, O Lord, that Your love is rich and pure, measureless and strong!
God’s love stands when all else has fallen.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, September 09, 2016
Do It Yourself (2)
…bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ… —2 Corinthians 10:5
Determinedly Discipline Other Things. This is another difficult aspect of the strenuous nature of sainthood. Paul said, according to the Moffatt translation of this verse, “…I take every project prisoner to make it obey Christ….” So much Christian work today has never been disciplined, but has simply come into being by impulse! In our Lord’s life every project was disciplined to the will of His Father. There was never the slightest tendency to follow the impulse of His own will as distinct from His Father’s will— “the Son can do nothing of Himself…” (John 5:19). Then compare this with what we do— we take “every thought” or project that comes to us by impulse and jump into action immediately, instead of imprisoning and disciplining ourselves to obey Christ.
Practical work for Christians is greatly overemphasized today, and the saints who are “bringing every thought [and project] into captivity” are criticized and told that they are not determined, and that they lack zeal for God or zeal for the souls of others. But true determination and zeal are found in obeying God, not in the inclination to serve Him that arises from our own undisciplined human nature. It is inconceivable, but true nevertheless, that saints are not “bringing every thought [and project] into captivity,” but are simply doing work for God that has been instigated by their own human nature, and has not been made spiritual through determined discipline.
We have a tendency to forget that a person is not only committed to Jesus Christ for salvation, but is also committed, responsible, and accountable to Jesus Christ’s view of God, the world, and of sin and the devil. This means that each person must recognize the responsibility to “be transformed by the renewing of [his] mind….” (Romans 12:2).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him. Approved Unto God, 10 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, September 09, 2016
The Pieces Without The Plan - #7740
When my wife and I pulled up late to the Bed and Breakfast we were going to be staying at, I tried to be real quiet. I was afraid we might wake some people up, you know. Not a problem. That B & B was buzzing like a beehive. Inside there were ten women huddled around the dining room table, each one with a sewing machine right in front of her. Of course, I felt right at home. Okay. I learned that the other guests-all women-were there that weekend for a Mystery Quilt weekend. They were each making a quilt...some for the first time. And even though I felt like I had sort of crashed a grownup slumber party, I did ask a few questions like, "What pattern are you following?" They didn't know. See, it turns out that one of the women there, Millie, does these quilting weekends with ladies, and she has the pattern. It's a mystery quilt because each woman only has instructions for what to do with the next piece or pieces; she has no idea what all those pieces are going to make. The next day, one lady said to me, "I can't wait 'till I can see what all this is going to look like when it's all put together." Good thing she didn't leave early with her pile of pieces, huh? She would have never known what it all made.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Pieces Without The Plan."
Actually, we've just talked about a description of some of our lives: pieces without the plan-because we're away from the only One who has the plan. I guess, in a way, life is a mystery quilt. All we can see is the block we're working on right now. But every once in a while, we find ourselves asking that question that has haunted us for years, "Why am I doing all this? What does all this make?"
It could be that right now the pieces aren't making much sense at all. And you're not sure of the answer to the one question you have to answer while you're on earth, "Why am I here?" You miss that and you've missed the point of your whole life. And so far, none of the things, and none of the people you thought would make it make sense have done it. Life still seems like a pile of disconnected pieces.
I hope you'll be encouraged by our word for today from the Word of God. Jeremiah 29:11, "'I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" According to the Bible, you are a unique creation of God. Just look at your fingerprints if you don't believe He's made you one of a kind. And He has plans for you-great plans. Like the lady who organized that quilting weekend, God has the plan in His hand, but if you're away from the One who has the plan, there's no way to put the pieces together right.
So much of the confusion and many of the mistakes, a lot of the emptiness, the pain in your life, may have been because you've been trying to put it together without the only One who knows the plan. God is the only One who knows why you're here. The problem is that, again according to the Bible, every one of us has tried to do life our way instead of God's way. Here are God's words, "All of us have wandered away like sheep; each of us has turned to his own way." (Isaiah 53:6) Without divine intervention, you and I have hopelessly separated ourselves from the One who designed us.
But divine intervention did come on a brutal cross on a hill outside Jerusalem, where God's one and only Son died as a substitute for you and me, carrying our death penalty for our running of our own lives. Which means that where there was once an un-crossable divide, there is a bridge now and His name is Jesus.
And today, Jesus is coming to where you are, offering you the opportunity to tell Him that you want Him to be your Savior from your sin; to connect you to the God that you've been separated from, to be the One who holds the plans and purpose for your life in His hands. When you find Him, you have found the meaning of your life.
Have you ever reached out to Him to begin your relationship with Him? Why not today? Tell Him, "Jesus, beginning today, I'm yours." Please go to our website and there you'll find the information you need that will help you be sure you belong to Him; actually, how to begin that relationship with Him. Go to ANewStory.com, because today might be the beginning of your new story.
Maybe life has been a pile of confusing, disconnected pieces long enough. You need to come home to Jesus, the One who created you, who has wonderful plans for you. If you'll open up to Him, you'll finally start to get a look at the plan that puts all the pieces together.
We pass much of life at mid-altitude. Most of life is Monday-ish obligations of carpools, expense reports and recipes. Occasionally we summit a peak: our wedding, a promotion, the birth of a child. But when the housing market crashes, or a test report comes back negative? Before we know it, we discover what the bottom looks like!
In Psalm 139:7 David asked, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?” You’ll never go where God is not. Acts 17:27 reminds us, “He is not far from each of us.” The Psalmist determined, “When I am afraid, I will trust in You.”
When all around my soul gives way, He then is still my hope and stay! Remember the song? Let it encourage you. Let it remind you to cling to God’s unchanging character. God is faithful. He is not caught off guard. He uses everything for His glory and your ultimate good. You will get through this.
From You’ll Get Through This
Isaiah 13
Babylon Is Doomed!
The Message on Babylon. Isaiah son of Amoz saw it:
2-3 “Run up a flag on an open hill.
Yell loud. Get their attention.
Wave them into formation.
Direct them to the nerve center of power.
I’ve taken charge of my special forces,
called up my crack troops.
They’re bursting with pride and passion
to carry out my angry judgment.”
4-5 Thunder rolls off the mountains
like a mob huge and noisy—
Thunder of kingdoms in an uproar,
nations assembling for war.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies is calling
his army into battle formation.
They come from far-off countries,
they pour in across the horizon.
It’s God on the move with the weapons of his wrath,
ready to destroy the whole country.
6-8 Wail! God’s Day of Judgment is near—
an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God!
Everyone paralyzed in the panic,
hysterical and unstrung,
Doubled up in pain
like a woman giving birth to a baby.
Horrified—everyone they see
is like a face out of a nightmare.
9-16 “Watch now. God’s Judgment Day comes.
Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger,
A day to waste the earth
and clean out all the sinners.
The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations,
will be nothing but black holes.
The sun will come up as a black disk,
and the moon a blank nothing.
I’ll put a full stop to the evil on earth,
terminate the dark acts of the wicked.
I’ll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them—
and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces.
Proud humanity will disappear from the earth.
I’ll make mortals rarer than hens’ teeth.
And yes, I’ll even make the sky shake,
and the earth quake to its roots
Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
the Judgment Day of his raging anger.
Like a hunted white-tailed deer,
like lost sheep with no shepherd,
People will huddle with a few of their own kind,
run off to some makeshift shelter.
But tough luck to stragglers—they’ll be killed on the spot,
throats cut, bellies ripped open,
Babies smashed on the rocks
while mothers and fathers watch,
Houses looted,
wives raped.
17-22 “And now watch this:
Against Babylon, I’m inciting the Medes,
A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes,
the kind of brutality that no one can blunt.
They massacre the young,
wantonly kick and kill even babies.
And Babylon, most glorious of all kingdoms,
the pride and joy of Chaldeans,
Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom,
and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them.
No one will live there anymore,
generation after generation a ghost town.
Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there.
Shepherds will give it a wide berth.
But strange and wild animals will like it just fine,
filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds.
Skunks will make it their home,
and unspeakable night hags will haunt it.
Hyenas will curdle your blood with their laughing,
and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers.
“Babylon is doomed.
It won’t be long now.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, September 09, 2016
Read: 1 John 4:7–19
God Is Love
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
13-16 This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
To Love, to Be Loved
17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
INSIGHT:
In 1 John we see what characterizes a life that exhibits God’s supernatural love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape, a self-sacrificial giving of one’s self in time, money, or energy. At the root of this divine care is the idea of esteem. God values human beings because we reflect His image.
What Matters Most
By Bill Crowder
He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 1 John 4:9
As Jesus’s beloved disciple John grew older, his teaching became increasingly narrowed, focusing entirely on the love of God in his three letters. In the book Knowing the Truth of God’s Love, Peter Kreeft cites an old legend which says that one of John’s young disciples once came to him complaining, “Why don’t you talk about anything else?” John replied, “Because there isn’t anything else.”
God’s love is certainly at the heart of the mission and message of Jesus. In his earlier gospel account, John recorded the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Thank You, O Lord, that Your love is rich and pure, measureless and strong!
The apostle Paul tells us that God’s love is at the core of how we live, and he reminds us that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).
God’s love is so strong, available, and stabilizing that we can confidently step into each day knowing that the good things are gifts from His hand and the challenges can be faced in His strength. For all of life, His love is what matters most.
Thank You, O Lord, that Your love is rich and pure, measureless and strong!
God’s love stands when all else has fallen.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, September 09, 2016
Do It Yourself (2)
…bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ… —2 Corinthians 10:5
Determinedly Discipline Other Things. This is another difficult aspect of the strenuous nature of sainthood. Paul said, according to the Moffatt translation of this verse, “…I take every project prisoner to make it obey Christ….” So much Christian work today has never been disciplined, but has simply come into being by impulse! In our Lord’s life every project was disciplined to the will of His Father. There was never the slightest tendency to follow the impulse of His own will as distinct from His Father’s will— “the Son can do nothing of Himself…” (John 5:19). Then compare this with what we do— we take “every thought” or project that comes to us by impulse and jump into action immediately, instead of imprisoning and disciplining ourselves to obey Christ.
Practical work for Christians is greatly overemphasized today, and the saints who are “bringing every thought [and project] into captivity” are criticized and told that they are not determined, and that they lack zeal for God or zeal for the souls of others. But true determination and zeal are found in obeying God, not in the inclination to serve Him that arises from our own undisciplined human nature. It is inconceivable, but true nevertheless, that saints are not “bringing every thought [and project] into captivity,” but are simply doing work for God that has been instigated by their own human nature, and has not been made spiritual through determined discipline.
We have a tendency to forget that a person is not only committed to Jesus Christ for salvation, but is also committed, responsible, and accountable to Jesus Christ’s view of God, the world, and of sin and the devil. This means that each person must recognize the responsibility to “be transformed by the renewing of [his] mind….” (Romans 12:2).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him. Approved Unto God, 10 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, September 09, 2016
The Pieces Without The Plan - #7740
When my wife and I pulled up late to the Bed and Breakfast we were going to be staying at, I tried to be real quiet. I was afraid we might wake some people up, you know. Not a problem. That B & B was buzzing like a beehive. Inside there were ten women huddled around the dining room table, each one with a sewing machine right in front of her. Of course, I felt right at home. Okay. I learned that the other guests-all women-were there that weekend for a Mystery Quilt weekend. They were each making a quilt...some for the first time. And even though I felt like I had sort of crashed a grownup slumber party, I did ask a few questions like, "What pattern are you following?" They didn't know. See, it turns out that one of the women there, Millie, does these quilting weekends with ladies, and she has the pattern. It's a mystery quilt because each woman only has instructions for what to do with the next piece or pieces; she has no idea what all those pieces are going to make. The next day, one lady said to me, "I can't wait 'till I can see what all this is going to look like when it's all put together." Good thing she didn't leave early with her pile of pieces, huh? She would have never known what it all made.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Pieces Without The Plan."
Actually, we've just talked about a description of some of our lives: pieces without the plan-because we're away from the only One who has the plan. I guess, in a way, life is a mystery quilt. All we can see is the block we're working on right now. But every once in a while, we find ourselves asking that question that has haunted us for years, "Why am I doing all this? What does all this make?"
It could be that right now the pieces aren't making much sense at all. And you're not sure of the answer to the one question you have to answer while you're on earth, "Why am I here?" You miss that and you've missed the point of your whole life. And so far, none of the things, and none of the people you thought would make it make sense have done it. Life still seems like a pile of disconnected pieces.
I hope you'll be encouraged by our word for today from the Word of God. Jeremiah 29:11, "'I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" According to the Bible, you are a unique creation of God. Just look at your fingerprints if you don't believe He's made you one of a kind. And He has plans for you-great plans. Like the lady who organized that quilting weekend, God has the plan in His hand, but if you're away from the One who has the plan, there's no way to put the pieces together right.
So much of the confusion and many of the mistakes, a lot of the emptiness, the pain in your life, may have been because you've been trying to put it together without the only One who knows the plan. God is the only One who knows why you're here. The problem is that, again according to the Bible, every one of us has tried to do life our way instead of God's way. Here are God's words, "All of us have wandered away like sheep; each of us has turned to his own way." (Isaiah 53:6) Without divine intervention, you and I have hopelessly separated ourselves from the One who designed us.
But divine intervention did come on a brutal cross on a hill outside Jerusalem, where God's one and only Son died as a substitute for you and me, carrying our death penalty for our running of our own lives. Which means that where there was once an un-crossable divide, there is a bridge now and His name is Jesus.
And today, Jesus is coming to where you are, offering you the opportunity to tell Him that you want Him to be your Savior from your sin; to connect you to the God that you've been separated from, to be the One who holds the plans and purpose for your life in His hands. When you find Him, you have found the meaning of your life.
Have you ever reached out to Him to begin your relationship with Him? Why not today? Tell Him, "Jesus, beginning today, I'm yours." Please go to our website and there you'll find the information you need that will help you be sure you belong to Him; actually, how to begin that relationship with Him. Go to ANewStory.com, because today might be the beginning of your new story.
Maybe life has been a pile of confusing, disconnected pieces long enough. You need to come home to Jesus, the One who created you, who has wonderful plans for you. If you'll open up to Him, you'll finally start to get a look at the plan that puts all the pieces together.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Isaiah 12 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: ALL YOU NEED
Ginger was six years old when she and her Sunday school class made get well cards for church members. Hers was a bright purple card that said “I love you, but most of all God loves you!” She and her mom made the delivery.
My dad was bedfast, the end was near. He could extend his hand, but it was bent to a claw from disease. Ginger asked him a question as only a six year old can, “Are you going to die?” “Yes,” he responded, “but when, I don’t know.” She asked if he was afraid to go away. “Away is heaven,” he told her. “I’ll be with my Father. I’m ready to see Him eye to eye.”
A man near death, winking at the thought of it. Stripped of everything? It only appeared that way. In the end, Dad still had what no one could take—faith. And in the end, that’s all he needed!
From You’ll Get Through This
Isaiah 12
My Strength and Song
And you will say in that day,
“I thank you, God.
You were angry
but your anger wasn’t forever.
You withdrew your anger
and moved in and comforted me.
2 “Yes, indeed—God is my salvation.
I trust, I won’t be afraid.
God—yes God!—is my strength and song,
best of all, my salvation!”
3-4 Joyfully you’ll pull up buckets of water
from the wells of salvation.
And as you do it, you’ll say,
“Give thanks to God.
Call out his name.
Ask him anything!
Shout to the nations, tell them what he’s done,
spread the news of his great reputation!
5-6 “Sing praise-songs to God. He’s done it all!
Let the whole earth know what he’s done!
Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out, O Zion!
The Greatest lives among you: The Holy of Israel.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Read: 1 Chronicles 29:14–19
“But me—who am I, and who are these my people, that we should presume to be giving something to you? Everything comes from you; all we’re doing is giving back what we’ve been given from your generous hand. As far as you’re concerned, we’re homeless, shiftless wanderers like our ancestors, our lives mere shadows, hardly anything to us. God, our God, all these materials—these piles of stuff for building a house of worship for you, honoring your Holy Name—it all came from you! It was all yours in the first place! I know, dear God, that you care nothing for the surface—you want us, our true selves—and so I have given from the heart, honestly and happily. And now see all these people doing the same, giving freely, willingly—what a joy! O God, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, keep this generous spirit alive forever in these people always, keep their hearts set firmly in you. And give my son Solomon an uncluttered and focused heart so that he can obey what you command, live by your directions and counsel, and carry through with building The Temple for which I have provided.”
INSIGHT:
Today’s reading puts the true object of worship front and center. David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:14–19 appears nowhere else in the biblical account and focuses the reader’s attention on God rather than on the temple or on King David. This makes perfect sense given the timeframe and audience of the book. Although we cannot be certain, Jewish tradition identifies Ezra as the chronicler. And it’s believed he wrote between 450 and 400 bc, with his primary audience being those who had recently returned from exile in Babylonia. The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles are unique in that they are historical accounts written long after the events they describe. About half of Chronicles is material repeated from earlier Old Testament books.
Everything Comes from God
By Keila Ochoa
All of it belongs to you. 1 Chronicles 29:16
I was 18 years old when I got my first fulltime job, and I learned an important lesson about the discipline of saving money. I worked and saved until I had enough money for a year of school. Then my mom had emergency surgery, and I realized I had the money in the bank to pay for her operation.
My love for my mother suddenly took precedence over my plans for the future. These words in the book Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot took on new meaning: “If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, ‘If God gave it to me,’ we say, ‘it's mine. I can do what I want with it.’ No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, . . . ours to let go of.”
Everything belongs to God.
I realized that the job I had received and the discipline of saving were gifts from God! I could give generously to my family because I was sure God was capable of seeing me through school another way, and He did.
Today, how might God want us to apply David's prayer from 1 Chronicles 29:14, “Everything we have has come from you, and we give you only what you first gave us”? (nlt).
Lord, we know there is nothing that we have that we obtained on our own. It’s all Yours. Help us to have open hands for You
to give and take as You please. Increase our faith.
Everything belongs to God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Do It Yourself (1)
…casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God… —2 Corinthians 10:5
Determinedly Demolish Some Things. Deliverance from sin is not the same as deliverance from human nature. There are things in human nature, such as prejudices, that the saint can only destroy through sheer neglect. But there are other things that have to be destroyed through violence, that is, through God’s divine strength imparted by His Spirit. There are some things over which we are not to fight, but only to “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord…” (see Exodus 14:13). But every theory or thought that raises itself up as a fortified barrier “against the knowledge of God” is to be determinedly demolished by drawing on God’s power, not through human effort or by compromise (see 2 Corinthians 10:4).
It is only when God has transformed our nature and we have entered into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin— Jesus Christ conquered that in His redemption of us. The conflict is waged over turning our natural life into a spiritual life. This is never done easily, nor does God intend that it be so. It is accomplished only through a series of moral choices. God does not make us holy in the sense that He makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that He has made us innocent before Him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make. These choices are continually opposed and hostile to the things of our natural life which have become so deeply entrenched— the very things that raise themselves up as fortified barriers “against the knowledge of God.” We can either turn back, making ourselves of no value to the kingdom of God, or we can determinedly demolish these things, allowing Jesus to bring another son to glory (see Hebrews 2:10).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed God, not a confused God, not a God who stands apart from the problems, but One who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man. Disciples Indeed, 388 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Watching for the Wave - #7739
Boy from Illinois moves to East Coast and develops love affair with ocean. The Illinois boy – me. And I would love to sneak away with my wife to the New Jersey Shore and just let the majesty of the ocean kind of mellow out my spirit. One time, we drove down to a nearby Shore point for a Sunday afternoon and the day was a 10. I mean, blue sky, blue ocean, white puffy clouds, warm temperature. (Wish I was a painter.) After a walk on the beach, we sat down on a pier to watch four surfers who were bobbing around in the water nearby. They were in their wet suits, hugging their surfboards, and staring at the swells out there that were trying to grow up and become big waves. It was close to low tide, but that didn't stop them. And were they focused! They didn't talk to each other, they never looked around. They just kept staring at the waves that might be forming. And when one started to build, they turned toward shore, lay down on their board, and started paddling furiously. And as that wave built under them, they stood on that board, and their waiting and watching suddenly turned to the excitement of riding the surf wherever it would take them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Watching for the Wave."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the writings of the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk. God promised him that there was a mighty spiritual wave coming. Chapter 1, verse 5, "I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." While that promise, of course, had a specific application for that time, it may very well be that God wants you to be thinking that way. There may be a mighty work He's preparing to do in your life, through your life; something "you would not believe, even if you were told." But just like the prophet, it sure doesn't look like it now. There's not a big wave in sight.
But Habakkuk knew what to do when God promises a big wave is coming. Chapter 2, verse 1, "I will stand at my watch, and station myself on the ramparts." Kind of sounds like those surfers; watching, waiting expectantly. But maybe like your answer, your miracle, it's taking its time coming. Listen to the Lord's words to Habakkuk and I hope to you. Chapter 2, verse 3, "The revelation awaits an appointed time. Though it linger, wait for it, it certainly will come and will not delay."
It's coming! It will come at the perfect time. God has planned this all along. But apparently, it's going to come later than the time you think it should come. I've found that's almost always true. From God's perspective, "it will not delay." From your perspective, the word is "wait for it." That may be why the next verse says, "The righteous will live by his faith." Between the waiting time now and the wave of God's Holy Spirit, your job is to have faith, to watch for the wave, to be dressed for the wave, expecting the wave, ready to move like crazy when it comes. Act as if God's answer is coming, no matter how long it takes to arrive. And don't lose hope.
If you don't wait for the wave, you may just settle for hanging up your surfboard and trying to figure out your own way to make a wave or to get to shore. And you'll ruin what God is working on; this incredible thing He's planning that you wouldn't believe if He told you! But you'll ruin it if you give up, or you lose faith, or you take matters into your own hands, or you start trusting in you instead of in Him.
So, for now, get ready for the great wave of God. You know what the Bible says to do to get ready, "humble yourself, pray, seek God's face, turn from your wicked ways." (2 Chronicles 7:14) And then, like those surfers waiting patiently, expectantly watching for their wave, wait with patient faith for that mighty tide of God that is somewhere out there, moving your way.
Ginger was six years old when she and her Sunday school class made get well cards for church members. Hers was a bright purple card that said “I love you, but most of all God loves you!” She and her mom made the delivery.
My dad was bedfast, the end was near. He could extend his hand, but it was bent to a claw from disease. Ginger asked him a question as only a six year old can, “Are you going to die?” “Yes,” he responded, “but when, I don’t know.” She asked if he was afraid to go away. “Away is heaven,” he told her. “I’ll be with my Father. I’m ready to see Him eye to eye.”
A man near death, winking at the thought of it. Stripped of everything? It only appeared that way. In the end, Dad still had what no one could take—faith. And in the end, that’s all he needed!
From You’ll Get Through This
Isaiah 12
My Strength and Song
And you will say in that day,
“I thank you, God.
You were angry
but your anger wasn’t forever.
You withdrew your anger
and moved in and comforted me.
2 “Yes, indeed—God is my salvation.
I trust, I won’t be afraid.
God—yes God!—is my strength and song,
best of all, my salvation!”
3-4 Joyfully you’ll pull up buckets of water
from the wells of salvation.
And as you do it, you’ll say,
“Give thanks to God.
Call out his name.
Ask him anything!
Shout to the nations, tell them what he’s done,
spread the news of his great reputation!
5-6 “Sing praise-songs to God. He’s done it all!
Let the whole earth know what he’s done!
Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out, O Zion!
The Greatest lives among you: The Holy of Israel.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Read: 1 Chronicles 29:14–19
“But me—who am I, and who are these my people, that we should presume to be giving something to you? Everything comes from you; all we’re doing is giving back what we’ve been given from your generous hand. As far as you’re concerned, we’re homeless, shiftless wanderers like our ancestors, our lives mere shadows, hardly anything to us. God, our God, all these materials—these piles of stuff for building a house of worship for you, honoring your Holy Name—it all came from you! It was all yours in the first place! I know, dear God, that you care nothing for the surface—you want us, our true selves—and so I have given from the heart, honestly and happily. And now see all these people doing the same, giving freely, willingly—what a joy! O God, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, keep this generous spirit alive forever in these people always, keep their hearts set firmly in you. And give my son Solomon an uncluttered and focused heart so that he can obey what you command, live by your directions and counsel, and carry through with building The Temple for which I have provided.”
INSIGHT:
Today’s reading puts the true object of worship front and center. David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:14–19 appears nowhere else in the biblical account and focuses the reader’s attention on God rather than on the temple or on King David. This makes perfect sense given the timeframe and audience of the book. Although we cannot be certain, Jewish tradition identifies Ezra as the chronicler. And it’s believed he wrote between 450 and 400 bc, with his primary audience being those who had recently returned from exile in Babylonia. The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles are unique in that they are historical accounts written long after the events they describe. About half of Chronicles is material repeated from earlier Old Testament books.
Everything Comes from God
By Keila Ochoa
All of it belongs to you. 1 Chronicles 29:16
I was 18 years old when I got my first fulltime job, and I learned an important lesson about the discipline of saving money. I worked and saved until I had enough money for a year of school. Then my mom had emergency surgery, and I realized I had the money in the bank to pay for her operation.
My love for my mother suddenly took precedence over my plans for the future. These words in the book Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot took on new meaning: “If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, ‘If God gave it to me,’ we say, ‘it's mine. I can do what I want with it.’ No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, . . . ours to let go of.”
Everything belongs to God.
I realized that the job I had received and the discipline of saving were gifts from God! I could give generously to my family because I was sure God was capable of seeing me through school another way, and He did.
Today, how might God want us to apply David's prayer from 1 Chronicles 29:14, “Everything we have has come from you, and we give you only what you first gave us”? (nlt).
Lord, we know there is nothing that we have that we obtained on our own. It’s all Yours. Help us to have open hands for You
to give and take as You please. Increase our faith.
Everything belongs to God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Do It Yourself (1)
…casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God… —2 Corinthians 10:5
Determinedly Demolish Some Things. Deliverance from sin is not the same as deliverance from human nature. There are things in human nature, such as prejudices, that the saint can only destroy through sheer neglect. But there are other things that have to be destroyed through violence, that is, through God’s divine strength imparted by His Spirit. There are some things over which we are not to fight, but only to “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord…” (see Exodus 14:13). But every theory or thought that raises itself up as a fortified barrier “against the knowledge of God” is to be determinedly demolished by drawing on God’s power, not through human effort or by compromise (see 2 Corinthians 10:4).
It is only when God has transformed our nature and we have entered into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin— Jesus Christ conquered that in His redemption of us. The conflict is waged over turning our natural life into a spiritual life. This is never done easily, nor does God intend that it be so. It is accomplished only through a series of moral choices. God does not make us holy in the sense that He makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that He has made us innocent before Him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make. These choices are continually opposed and hostile to the things of our natural life which have become so deeply entrenched— the very things that raise themselves up as fortified barriers “against the knowledge of God.” We can either turn back, making ourselves of no value to the kingdom of God, or we can determinedly demolish these things, allowing Jesus to bring another son to glory (see Hebrews 2:10).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed God, not a confused God, not a God who stands apart from the problems, but One who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man. Disciples Indeed, 388 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Watching for the Wave - #7739
Boy from Illinois moves to East Coast and develops love affair with ocean. The Illinois boy – me. And I would love to sneak away with my wife to the New Jersey Shore and just let the majesty of the ocean kind of mellow out my spirit. One time, we drove down to a nearby Shore point for a Sunday afternoon and the day was a 10. I mean, blue sky, blue ocean, white puffy clouds, warm temperature. (Wish I was a painter.) After a walk on the beach, we sat down on a pier to watch four surfers who were bobbing around in the water nearby. They were in their wet suits, hugging their surfboards, and staring at the swells out there that were trying to grow up and become big waves. It was close to low tide, but that didn't stop them. And were they focused! They didn't talk to each other, they never looked around. They just kept staring at the waves that might be forming. And when one started to build, they turned toward shore, lay down on their board, and started paddling furiously. And as that wave built under them, they stood on that board, and their waiting and watching suddenly turned to the excitement of riding the surf wherever it would take them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Watching for the Wave."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the writings of the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk. God promised him that there was a mighty spiritual wave coming. Chapter 1, verse 5, "I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." While that promise, of course, had a specific application for that time, it may very well be that God wants you to be thinking that way. There may be a mighty work He's preparing to do in your life, through your life; something "you would not believe, even if you were told." But just like the prophet, it sure doesn't look like it now. There's not a big wave in sight.
But Habakkuk knew what to do when God promises a big wave is coming. Chapter 2, verse 1, "I will stand at my watch, and station myself on the ramparts." Kind of sounds like those surfers; watching, waiting expectantly. But maybe like your answer, your miracle, it's taking its time coming. Listen to the Lord's words to Habakkuk and I hope to you. Chapter 2, verse 3, "The revelation awaits an appointed time. Though it linger, wait for it, it certainly will come and will not delay."
It's coming! It will come at the perfect time. God has planned this all along. But apparently, it's going to come later than the time you think it should come. I've found that's almost always true. From God's perspective, "it will not delay." From your perspective, the word is "wait for it." That may be why the next verse says, "The righteous will live by his faith." Between the waiting time now and the wave of God's Holy Spirit, your job is to have faith, to watch for the wave, to be dressed for the wave, expecting the wave, ready to move like crazy when it comes. Act as if God's answer is coming, no matter how long it takes to arrive. And don't lose hope.
If you don't wait for the wave, you may just settle for hanging up your surfboard and trying to figure out your own way to make a wave or to get to shore. And you'll ruin what God is working on; this incredible thing He's planning that you wouldn't believe if He told you! But you'll ruin it if you give up, or you lose faith, or you take matters into your own hands, or you start trusting in you instead of in Him.
So, for now, get ready for the great wave of God. You know what the Bible says to do to get ready, "humble yourself, pray, seek God's face, turn from your wicked ways." (2 Chronicles 7:14) And then, like those surfers waiting patiently, expectantly watching for their wave, wait with patient faith for that mighty tide of God that is somewhere out there, moving your way.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Isaiah 11, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: GOD WON’T BREAK A PROMISE
All of a sudden you’re cleaning out your desk. The voices of doubt and fear raise their volume. How will I pay the bills? Who’s going to hire me? Do you think you’ve lost it all? Determine not to make this mistake. You haven’t lost it all. Romans 11:29 promises God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty—never canceled, never rescinded.
What do you have that you cannot lose? Here is what you tell yourself: “I’m still God’s child. My life’s more than this life. These days are a vapor, a passing breeze. This will eventually pass. God will make something good out of this. I will work hard, stay faithful, and trust Him no matter what.” Choose to heed the call of God on your life. You are God’s child. Your life is more than this life; more than this broken heart; more than this difficult time. God won’t break a promise. You will get through this!
From You’ll Get Through This
Isaiah 11
A Green Shoot from Jesse’s Stump
A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump,
from his roots a budding Branch.
The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him,
the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength,
the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of-God.
Fear-of-God
will be all his joy and delight.
He won’t judge by appearances,
won’t decide on the basis of hearsay.
He’ll judge the needy by what is right,
render decisions on earth’s poor with justice.
His words will bring everyone to awed attention.
A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked.
Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots,
and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.
A Living Knowledge of God
6-9 The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
10 On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples. The nations will all come to him. His headquarters will be glorious.
11 Also on that day, the Master for the second time will reach out to bring back what’s left of his scattered people. He’ll bring them back from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Ethiopia, Elam, Sinar, Hamath, and the ocean islands.
12-16 And he’ll raise that rallying banner high, visible to all nations,
gather in all the scattered exiles of Israel,
Pull in all the dispersed refugees of Judah
from the four winds and the seven seas.
The jealousy of Ephraim will dissolve,
the hostility of Judah will vanish—
Ephraim no longer the jealous rival of Judah,
Judah no longer the hostile rival of Ephraim!
Blood brothers united, they’ll pounce on the Philistines in the west,
join forces to plunder the people in the east.
They’ll attack Edom and Moab.
The Ammonites will fall into line.
God will once again dry up Egypt’s Red Sea,
making for an easy crossing.
He’ll send a blistering wind
down on the great River Euphrates,
Reduce it to seven mere trickles.
None even need get their feet wet!
In the end there’ll be a highway all the way from Assyria,
easy traveling for what’s left of God’s people—
A highway just like the one Israel had
when he marched up out of Egypt.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Read: Mark 14:3–9
Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper. While he was eating dinner, a woman came up carrying a bottle of very expensive perfume. Opening the bottle, she poured it on his head. Some of the guests became furious among themselves. “That’s criminal! A sheer waste! This perfume could have been sold for well over a year’s wages and handed out to the poor.” They swelled up in anger, nearly bursting with indignation over her.
6-9 But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives. Whenever you feel like it, you can do something for them. Not so with me. She did what she could when she could—she pre-anointed my body for burial. And you can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she just did is going to be talked about admiringly.”
INSIGHT:
Bethany, the location featured in today’s article, was a village on the slopes of the Mount of Olives less than two miles from Jerusalem. Pilgrims traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem, a journey of twenty-four kilometers or about fifteen miles, would pass through Bethany. Three famous siblings resided there: Lazarus, Martha, and Mary (John 11:1–2). Early in Jesus’s ministry, Martha opened her home in Bethany to Him (Luke 10:38). Jesus would stay there whenever he was in Jerusalem to teach or to celebrate the Passover. During the Passion Week, Jesus spent His last few nights—probably Palm Sunday to Wednesday—with the three siblings (Matt. 21:17; Mark 11:11, 19).
She Did What She Could
By Tim Gustafson
She did what she could. Mark 14:8
When her friends say thoughtless or outrageous things on social media, Charlotte chimes in with gentle but firm dissent. She respects the dignity of everyone, and her words are unfailingly positive.
A few years ago she became Facebook friends with a man who harbored anger toward Christians. He appreciated Charlotte’s rare honesty and grace. Over time his hostility melted. Then Charlotte suffered a bad fall. Now housebound, she fretted over what she could do. About that time her Facebook friend died and then this message arrived from his sister: “[Because of your witness] I know he’s now experiencing God’s complete and abiding love for him.”
How can you show God's love to others today?
During the week in which Christ would be killed, Mary of Bethany anointed Him with expensive perfume (John 12:3; Mark 14:3). Some of those present were appalled, but Jesus applauded her. “She has done a beautiful thing to me,” He said. “She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial” (Mark 14:6–8).
“She did what she could.” Christ’s words take the pressure off. Our world is full of broken, hurting people. But we don’t have to worry about what we can’t do. Charlotte did what she could. So can we. The rest is in His capable hands.
Lord, help us not to define our self-worth by what we do for You, but by what You have done for us. Show us how we can show Your love to others.
For further study, read Being Jesus Online at discoveryseries.org/q0737.
Do thy duty, that is best; leave unto the Lord the rest. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Fountains of Blessings
The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. —John 4:14
The picture our Lord described here is not that of a simple stream of water, but an overflowing fountain. Continue to “be filled” (Ephesians 5:18) and the sweetness of your vital relationship to Jesus will flow as generously out of you as it has been given to you. If you find that His life is not springing up as it should, you are to blame— something is obstructing the flow. Was Jesus saying to stay focused on the Source so that you may be blessed personally? No, you are to focus on the Source so that out of you “will flow rivers of living water”— irrepressible life (John 7:38).
We are to be fountains through which Jesus can flow as “rivers of living water” in blessing to everyone. Yet some of us are like the Dead Sea, always receiving but never giving, because our relationship is not right with the Lord Jesus. As surely as we receive blessings from Him, He will pour out blessings through us. But whenever the blessings are not being poured out in the same measure they are received, there is a defect in our relationship with Him. Is there anything between you and Jesus Christ? Is there anything hindering your faith in Him? If not, then Jesus says that out of you “will flow rivers of living water.” It is not a blessing that you pass on, or an experience that you share with others, but a river that continually flows through you. Stay at the Source, closely guarding your faith in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow into the lives of others with no dryness or deadness whatsoever.
Is it excessive to say that rivers will flow out of one individual believer? Do you look at yourself and say, “But I don’t see the rivers”? Through the history of God’s work you will usually find that He has started with the obscure, the unknown, the ignored, but those who have been steadfastly true to Jesus Christ.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Heaven's Heroes - #7738
Part of the incredible impact of the attacks on the World Trade Center was that everyday people suddenly became national heroes. Fire trucks would roll through New York City with weary firefighters on board. You can picture it; I know that you can. And New Yorkers would erupt in spontaneous cheers; scenes we will never forget. Ground Zero, that devastated area at and around the site of the collapsed towers, became known as Ground Hero. Professional athletes, who are supposedly our nation's heroes in less turbulent times, kept saying, "We're not the heroes – they're the heroes." Americans will not soon forget those firefighters, the police, the medical personnel, and those countless volunteers who gave everything they had to try to rescue those who were caught in those collapsing towers. Honestly, the word "hero" may never be the same.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Heaven's Heroes."
We know what a hero is. Ultimately, it is someone who does whatever it takes to rescue someone who will die if they don't. Apparently, that's God's definition of a "hero" too.
Consider this exciting promise from Daniel 12:3. I love this verse. It's our word for today from the Word of God. "Those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever." Wow! God seems to be reserving special reward, special recognition, and special significance for those who lead people into a right relationship with Him. And heaven's applause will last "forever and ever". In other words, heaven's heroes are those who help other people get to heaven.
Proverbs 24:11 underscores, I guess I call it the "life-or-deathness" of our spiritual rescue mission. God says, "Rescue those being led away to death." Ezekiel puts it in the context of a watchman on the city wall helping people know when there's approaching danger. "If the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood." Boy, that's a sobering verse.
If you belong to Jesus Christ, you have a life-or-death responsibility for the folks in your world who don't belong to Jesus Christ. You have the information. You know what they need to know about what Jesus did for them on the cross and how they can begin a relationship with Him – and that message is their only hope of heaven. You can't keep it to yourself. Your silence is like giving them a silent death sentence.
So you are uniquely positioned to be the spiritual rescuer of the people you know, the people you care about. You are where you are to give the people there a chance to go to heaven. That's why God put you there. Don't let them down. This isn't about rescuing someone so they can have 30 or 40 more years to live on earth. This is about whether they live or die for all eternity!
Yes, it feels risky to tell them about Jesus. "Oh, I might lose this. This might happen." All the yeah, buts. But then rescue is always risky. The reason you take the risks is because you can't stand the thought of that person dying without a chance to live. So you go where they are, you pray with a desperate urgency for God's open doors and God's words, and you give whatever you have to give to bring them out.
Saving lives makes a person a hero. When you lead someone to the Man who died for them, you're saving a life forever. And you just became one of heaven's heroes.
All of a sudden you’re cleaning out your desk. The voices of doubt and fear raise their volume. How will I pay the bills? Who’s going to hire me? Do you think you’ve lost it all? Determine not to make this mistake. You haven’t lost it all. Romans 11:29 promises God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty—never canceled, never rescinded.
What do you have that you cannot lose? Here is what you tell yourself: “I’m still God’s child. My life’s more than this life. These days are a vapor, a passing breeze. This will eventually pass. God will make something good out of this. I will work hard, stay faithful, and trust Him no matter what.” Choose to heed the call of God on your life. You are God’s child. Your life is more than this life; more than this broken heart; more than this difficult time. God won’t break a promise. You will get through this!
From You’ll Get Through This
Isaiah 11
A Green Shoot from Jesse’s Stump
A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump,
from his roots a budding Branch.
The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him,
the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength,
the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of-God.
Fear-of-God
will be all his joy and delight.
He won’t judge by appearances,
won’t decide on the basis of hearsay.
He’ll judge the needy by what is right,
render decisions on earth’s poor with justice.
His words will bring everyone to awed attention.
A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked.
Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots,
and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.
A Living Knowledge of God
6-9 The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
10 On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples. The nations will all come to him. His headquarters will be glorious.
11 Also on that day, the Master for the second time will reach out to bring back what’s left of his scattered people. He’ll bring them back from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Ethiopia, Elam, Sinar, Hamath, and the ocean islands.
12-16 And he’ll raise that rallying banner high, visible to all nations,
gather in all the scattered exiles of Israel,
Pull in all the dispersed refugees of Judah
from the four winds and the seven seas.
The jealousy of Ephraim will dissolve,
the hostility of Judah will vanish—
Ephraim no longer the jealous rival of Judah,
Judah no longer the hostile rival of Ephraim!
Blood brothers united, they’ll pounce on the Philistines in the west,
join forces to plunder the people in the east.
They’ll attack Edom and Moab.
The Ammonites will fall into line.
God will once again dry up Egypt’s Red Sea,
making for an easy crossing.
He’ll send a blistering wind
down on the great River Euphrates,
Reduce it to seven mere trickles.
None even need get their feet wet!
In the end there’ll be a highway all the way from Assyria,
easy traveling for what’s left of God’s people—
A highway just like the one Israel had
when he marched up out of Egypt.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Read: Mark 14:3–9
Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper. While he was eating dinner, a woman came up carrying a bottle of very expensive perfume. Opening the bottle, she poured it on his head. Some of the guests became furious among themselves. “That’s criminal! A sheer waste! This perfume could have been sold for well over a year’s wages and handed out to the poor.” They swelled up in anger, nearly bursting with indignation over her.
6-9 But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives. Whenever you feel like it, you can do something for them. Not so with me. She did what she could when she could—she pre-anointed my body for burial. And you can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she just did is going to be talked about admiringly.”
INSIGHT:
Bethany, the location featured in today’s article, was a village on the slopes of the Mount of Olives less than two miles from Jerusalem. Pilgrims traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem, a journey of twenty-four kilometers or about fifteen miles, would pass through Bethany. Three famous siblings resided there: Lazarus, Martha, and Mary (John 11:1–2). Early in Jesus’s ministry, Martha opened her home in Bethany to Him (Luke 10:38). Jesus would stay there whenever he was in Jerusalem to teach or to celebrate the Passover. During the Passion Week, Jesus spent His last few nights—probably Palm Sunday to Wednesday—with the three siblings (Matt. 21:17; Mark 11:11, 19).
She Did What She Could
By Tim Gustafson
She did what she could. Mark 14:8
When her friends say thoughtless or outrageous things on social media, Charlotte chimes in with gentle but firm dissent. She respects the dignity of everyone, and her words are unfailingly positive.
A few years ago she became Facebook friends with a man who harbored anger toward Christians. He appreciated Charlotte’s rare honesty and grace. Over time his hostility melted. Then Charlotte suffered a bad fall. Now housebound, she fretted over what she could do. About that time her Facebook friend died and then this message arrived from his sister: “[Because of your witness] I know he’s now experiencing God’s complete and abiding love for him.”
How can you show God's love to others today?
During the week in which Christ would be killed, Mary of Bethany anointed Him with expensive perfume (John 12:3; Mark 14:3). Some of those present were appalled, but Jesus applauded her. “She has done a beautiful thing to me,” He said. “She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial” (Mark 14:6–8).
“She did what she could.” Christ’s words take the pressure off. Our world is full of broken, hurting people. But we don’t have to worry about what we can’t do. Charlotte did what she could. So can we. The rest is in His capable hands.
Lord, help us not to define our self-worth by what we do for You, but by what You have done for us. Show us how we can show Your love to others.
For further study, read Being Jesus Online at discoveryseries.org/q0737.
Do thy duty, that is best; leave unto the Lord the rest. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Fountains of Blessings
The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. —John 4:14
The picture our Lord described here is not that of a simple stream of water, but an overflowing fountain. Continue to “be filled” (Ephesians 5:18) and the sweetness of your vital relationship to Jesus will flow as generously out of you as it has been given to you. If you find that His life is not springing up as it should, you are to blame— something is obstructing the flow. Was Jesus saying to stay focused on the Source so that you may be blessed personally? No, you are to focus on the Source so that out of you “will flow rivers of living water”— irrepressible life (John 7:38).
We are to be fountains through which Jesus can flow as “rivers of living water” in blessing to everyone. Yet some of us are like the Dead Sea, always receiving but never giving, because our relationship is not right with the Lord Jesus. As surely as we receive blessings from Him, He will pour out blessings through us. But whenever the blessings are not being poured out in the same measure they are received, there is a defect in our relationship with Him. Is there anything between you and Jesus Christ? Is there anything hindering your faith in Him? If not, then Jesus says that out of you “will flow rivers of living water.” It is not a blessing that you pass on, or an experience that you share with others, but a river that continually flows through you. Stay at the Source, closely guarding your faith in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow into the lives of others with no dryness or deadness whatsoever.
Is it excessive to say that rivers will flow out of one individual believer? Do you look at yourself and say, “But I don’t see the rivers”? Through the history of God’s work you will usually find that He has started with the obscure, the unknown, the ignored, but those who have been steadfastly true to Jesus Christ.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Heaven's Heroes - #7738
Part of the incredible impact of the attacks on the World Trade Center was that everyday people suddenly became national heroes. Fire trucks would roll through New York City with weary firefighters on board. You can picture it; I know that you can. And New Yorkers would erupt in spontaneous cheers; scenes we will never forget. Ground Zero, that devastated area at and around the site of the collapsed towers, became known as Ground Hero. Professional athletes, who are supposedly our nation's heroes in less turbulent times, kept saying, "We're not the heroes – they're the heroes." Americans will not soon forget those firefighters, the police, the medical personnel, and those countless volunteers who gave everything they had to try to rescue those who were caught in those collapsing towers. Honestly, the word "hero" may never be the same.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Heaven's Heroes."
We know what a hero is. Ultimately, it is someone who does whatever it takes to rescue someone who will die if they don't. Apparently, that's God's definition of a "hero" too.
Consider this exciting promise from Daniel 12:3. I love this verse. It's our word for today from the Word of God. "Those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever." Wow! God seems to be reserving special reward, special recognition, and special significance for those who lead people into a right relationship with Him. And heaven's applause will last "forever and ever". In other words, heaven's heroes are those who help other people get to heaven.
Proverbs 24:11 underscores, I guess I call it the "life-or-deathness" of our spiritual rescue mission. God says, "Rescue those being led away to death." Ezekiel puts it in the context of a watchman on the city wall helping people know when there's approaching danger. "If the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood." Boy, that's a sobering verse.
If you belong to Jesus Christ, you have a life-or-death responsibility for the folks in your world who don't belong to Jesus Christ. You have the information. You know what they need to know about what Jesus did for them on the cross and how they can begin a relationship with Him – and that message is their only hope of heaven. You can't keep it to yourself. Your silence is like giving them a silent death sentence.
So you are uniquely positioned to be the spiritual rescuer of the people you know, the people you care about. You are where you are to give the people there a chance to go to heaven. That's why God put you there. Don't let them down. This isn't about rescuing someone so they can have 30 or 40 more years to live on earth. This is about whether they live or die for all eternity!
Yes, it feels risky to tell them about Jesus. "Oh, I might lose this. This might happen." All the yeah, buts. But then rescue is always risky. The reason you take the risks is because you can't stand the thought of that person dying without a chance to live. So you go where they are, you pray with a desperate urgency for God's open doors and God's words, and you give whatever you have to give to bring them out.
Saving lives makes a person a hero. When you lead someone to the Man who died for them, you're saving a life forever. And you just became one of heaven's heroes.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Ephesians 2 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: HIS CHILD FOREVER
I’m entering my fourth decade as a pastor and I’ve learned the question to ask. If we were having this talk over coffee and you were telling me about your tough times, I’d lean across the table and say, “What do you still have that you cannot lose?” The difficulties have taken much away. I get that. But there’s one gift your troubles cannot touch. Your destiny. Can we talk about it? You are God’s child. He saw you, picked you, and placed you. Jesus said, “You did not choose Me. I chose you.”
I remember a groom once leaned over just minutes before the ceremony and told me, “You weren’t my first choice.” “I wasn’t?” I responded. “No,” he said, “the preacher I wanted couldn’t make it.” “Oh,” I said. He whispered, “But thanks for filling in.” You’ll never hear such words from God. He chose you. Replacement or fill-in? Hardly. You are His first choice. His open, willful, voluntary choice. This child is mine! His child forever–that’s who you are.
From You’ll Get Through This
Ephesians 2
He Tore Down the Wall
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
11-13 But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14-15 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16-18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
Read: Romans 5:6–15
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
9-11 Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!
The Death-Dealing Sin, the Life-Giving Gift
12-14 You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
15-17 Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
INSIGHT:
A key word in Romans 5 is through. It is used seventeen times in this brief chapter. In today’s passage, we read that through Christ we have been saved from wrath (v. 9), been reconciled to God (vv. 10–11), and have reason to boast in God (v. 11). Christ is the mediator of our salvation (1 Tim. 2:5).
Graded with Grace
By Jennifer Benson Schuldt
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
My son’s blue eyes sparkled with excitement as he showed me a paper he had brought home from school. It was a math test, marked with a red star and a grade of 100 percent. As we looked at the exam, he said he had three questions left to answer when the teacher said time was up. Puzzled, I asked how he could have received a perfect score. He replied, “My teacher gave me grace. She let me finish the test although I had run out of time.”
As my son and I discussed the meaning of grace, I pointed out that God has given us more than we deserve through Christ. We deserve death because of our sin (Rom. 3:23). Yet, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). We were unworthy, yet Jesus—sinless and holy—gave up His life so we could escape the penalty for our sin and one day live forever in heaven.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
Eternal life is a gift from God. It’s not something we earn by working for it. We are saved by God’s grace, through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8–9).
Dear God, Your undeserved favor has made it possible for us to be saved from our sin. You have shown us amazing grace. Thank You for
the gift You gave. Use me to tell others about You and what You have done.
Grace and mercy are unearned blessings.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
The Far-Reaching Rivers of Life
He who believes in Me…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. —John 7:38
A river reaches places which its source never knows. And Jesus said that, if we have received His fullness, “rivers of living water” will flow out of us, reaching in blessing even “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8) regardless of how small the visible effects of our lives may appear to be. We have nothing to do with the outflow— “This is the work of God, that you believe…” (John 6:29). God rarely allows a person to see how great a blessing he is to others.
A river is victoriously persistent, overcoming all barriers. For a while it goes steadily on its course, but then comes to an obstacle. And for a while it is blocked, yet it soon makes a pathway around the obstacle. Or a river will drop out of sight for miles, only later to emerge again even broader and greater than ever. Do you see God using the lives of others, but an obstacle has come into your life and you do not seem to be of any use to God? Then keep paying attention to the Source, and God will either take you around the obstacle or remove it. The river of the Spirit of God overcomes all obstacles. Never focus your eyes on the obstacle or the difficulty. The obstacle will be a matter of total indifference to the river that will flow steadily through you if you will simply remember to stay focused on the Source. Never allow anything to come between you and Jesus Christ— not emotion nor experience— nothing must keep you from the one great sovereign Source.
Think of the healing and far-reaching rivers developing and nourishing themselves in our souls! God has been opening up wonderful truths to our minds, and every point He has opened up is another indication of the wider power of the river that He will flow through us. If you believe in Jesus, you will find that God has developed and nourished in you mighty, rushing rivers of blessing for others.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
Getting Left To Get Found - #7737
Our church's youth group had just been out whitewater rafting all day. I had been invited to wrap up the day with an inspirational talk. And when I arrived at the rafting facility they were using, I was expecting to see just the youth group. As it turned out, this recreational company had 1500 people on the river that day. (They must have run out of river.) They were all from all these different groups! So, I wandered around looking lost until someone from our church found me. And that night we had a wonderful get-together under the trees.
Now, I didn't know that one girl at the back was there, and she had not planned to be there at all. She was a Girl Scout who had been there for the day with her troop. And they had somehow gone off and left her all alone. And she saw this group of teenagers meeting, so she wandered over to check it out. And she stayed...and she listened...and at the end, she was one of the young people who indicated they wanted to begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That's cool!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Getting Left To Get Found."
That was one very happy Girl Scout, even before she found a ride home. In a very real sense, she got left so she could get found...spiritually. Actually, that could be what's happening in your life right now.
You're probably not a Girl Scout, and you're not stuck out in the woods, but it could be that you have been left, or you're feeling lost. A person you were counting on bailed out or maybe even died. Or something that has been one of your life anchors isn't there any more. You've been left out or left behind or left high and dry. And you're not sure which way home is. Because so much in life is temporary, it's only a matter of time before we all experience the pain of being left or being lost.
Which makes our word for today from the Word of God especially important. It's Jesus' personal mission statement in Luke 19:10, "The Son of Man (that's Jesus) came to seek and to save what was lost." Now He's talking about you and me. That Girl Scout at that camp that night was lost, separated from the people who could get her home, wandering on her own.
Well, that's the picture the Bible paints of you and me. Oh, sure, on the outside we look like we've got it all together. But inside, there's a lot of loneliness, a lot of hurt, and a lot of unanswered questions. We are, in Jesus' words, "lost" because we're separated from the one Person who can get us home-who is home for our searching heart...our Creator. In God's own words, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2).
See, we have broken God's laws and we're paying the price. It's a wall between Him and us; a wall that's there forever if we die with it still there. A wall that Jesus died on a cross to remove by paying the death penalty for all the sinning we ever did. But He has a hard time getting us to realize that He's the only one who can finally fill that hole in our heart. Maybe that's why God has allowed you to be left or to be lost-so you'd finally realize no earth-love is going to be enough, no earth-empire, no earth-spirituality. I have to tell you honestly, it isn't until our earth-anchors let us down and leave us stranded, that we finally realize we were made for Jesus and we were paid for by Jesus.
And now this Savior has come looking for you. He said He would "seek and save what was lost." That tug you feel in your heart? That's Jesus Himself, knocking on the door of your heart. Your relationship with Him can begin right where you are if you'll just tell Him that you're trusting Him to be your Savior from your sin. All the disappointments have been so you could finally find the one love that will never let you down, never leave you, and never die on you.
You tell Him, "Jesus, I'm putting all my faith in what You did on the cross, paying for my sin. I believe You walked out of your grave; you're alive. Come into my life today." Tell Him that where you are. And please go to our website, and there I've laid out as simply as I could the things from God's own Word that will help you be sure you belong to Jesus. It's ANewStory.com.
Jesus has allowed you to be left, to be lost...so you could get found. By the One who went all the way to a cross to bring you home.
I’m entering my fourth decade as a pastor and I’ve learned the question to ask. If we were having this talk over coffee and you were telling me about your tough times, I’d lean across the table and say, “What do you still have that you cannot lose?” The difficulties have taken much away. I get that. But there’s one gift your troubles cannot touch. Your destiny. Can we talk about it? You are God’s child. He saw you, picked you, and placed you. Jesus said, “You did not choose Me. I chose you.”
I remember a groom once leaned over just minutes before the ceremony and told me, “You weren’t my first choice.” “I wasn’t?” I responded. “No,” he said, “the preacher I wanted couldn’t make it.” “Oh,” I said. He whispered, “But thanks for filling in.” You’ll never hear such words from God. He chose you. Replacement or fill-in? Hardly. You are His first choice. His open, willful, voluntary choice. This child is mine! His child forever–that’s who you are.
From You’ll Get Through This
Ephesians 2
He Tore Down the Wall
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
11-13 But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14-15 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16-18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
Read: Romans 5:6–15
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
9-11 Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!
The Death-Dealing Sin, the Life-Giving Gift
12-14 You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
15-17 Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
INSIGHT:
A key word in Romans 5 is through. It is used seventeen times in this brief chapter. In today’s passage, we read that through Christ we have been saved from wrath (v. 9), been reconciled to God (vv. 10–11), and have reason to boast in God (v. 11). Christ is the mediator of our salvation (1 Tim. 2:5).
Graded with Grace
By Jennifer Benson Schuldt
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
My son’s blue eyes sparkled with excitement as he showed me a paper he had brought home from school. It was a math test, marked with a red star and a grade of 100 percent. As we looked at the exam, he said he had three questions left to answer when the teacher said time was up. Puzzled, I asked how he could have received a perfect score. He replied, “My teacher gave me grace. She let me finish the test although I had run out of time.”
As my son and I discussed the meaning of grace, I pointed out that God has given us more than we deserve through Christ. We deserve death because of our sin (Rom. 3:23). Yet, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). We were unworthy, yet Jesus—sinless and holy—gave up His life so we could escape the penalty for our sin and one day live forever in heaven.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
Eternal life is a gift from God. It’s not something we earn by working for it. We are saved by God’s grace, through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8–9).
Dear God, Your undeserved favor has made it possible for us to be saved from our sin. You have shown us amazing grace. Thank You for
the gift You gave. Use me to tell others about You and what You have done.
Grace and mercy are unearned blessings.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
The Far-Reaching Rivers of Life
He who believes in Me…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. —John 7:38
A river reaches places which its source never knows. And Jesus said that, if we have received His fullness, “rivers of living water” will flow out of us, reaching in blessing even “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8) regardless of how small the visible effects of our lives may appear to be. We have nothing to do with the outflow— “This is the work of God, that you believe…” (John 6:29). God rarely allows a person to see how great a blessing he is to others.
A river is victoriously persistent, overcoming all barriers. For a while it goes steadily on its course, but then comes to an obstacle. And for a while it is blocked, yet it soon makes a pathway around the obstacle. Or a river will drop out of sight for miles, only later to emerge again even broader and greater than ever. Do you see God using the lives of others, but an obstacle has come into your life and you do not seem to be of any use to God? Then keep paying attention to the Source, and God will either take you around the obstacle or remove it. The river of the Spirit of God overcomes all obstacles. Never focus your eyes on the obstacle or the difficulty. The obstacle will be a matter of total indifference to the river that will flow steadily through you if you will simply remember to stay focused on the Source. Never allow anything to come between you and Jesus Christ— not emotion nor experience— nothing must keep you from the one great sovereign Source.
Think of the healing and far-reaching rivers developing and nourishing themselves in our souls! God has been opening up wonderful truths to our minds, and every point He has opened up is another indication of the wider power of the river that He will flow through us. If you believe in Jesus, you will find that God has developed and nourished in you mighty, rushing rivers of blessing for others.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
Getting Left To Get Found - #7737
Our church's youth group had just been out whitewater rafting all day. I had been invited to wrap up the day with an inspirational talk. And when I arrived at the rafting facility they were using, I was expecting to see just the youth group. As it turned out, this recreational company had 1500 people on the river that day. (They must have run out of river.) They were all from all these different groups! So, I wandered around looking lost until someone from our church found me. And that night we had a wonderful get-together under the trees.
Now, I didn't know that one girl at the back was there, and she had not planned to be there at all. She was a Girl Scout who had been there for the day with her troop. And they had somehow gone off and left her all alone. And she saw this group of teenagers meeting, so she wandered over to check it out. And she stayed...and she listened...and at the end, she was one of the young people who indicated they wanted to begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That's cool!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Getting Left To Get Found."
That was one very happy Girl Scout, even before she found a ride home. In a very real sense, she got left so she could get found...spiritually. Actually, that could be what's happening in your life right now.
You're probably not a Girl Scout, and you're not stuck out in the woods, but it could be that you have been left, or you're feeling lost. A person you were counting on bailed out or maybe even died. Or something that has been one of your life anchors isn't there any more. You've been left out or left behind or left high and dry. And you're not sure which way home is. Because so much in life is temporary, it's only a matter of time before we all experience the pain of being left or being lost.
Which makes our word for today from the Word of God especially important. It's Jesus' personal mission statement in Luke 19:10, "The Son of Man (that's Jesus) came to seek and to save what was lost." Now He's talking about you and me. That Girl Scout at that camp that night was lost, separated from the people who could get her home, wandering on her own.
Well, that's the picture the Bible paints of you and me. Oh, sure, on the outside we look like we've got it all together. But inside, there's a lot of loneliness, a lot of hurt, and a lot of unanswered questions. We are, in Jesus' words, "lost" because we're separated from the one Person who can get us home-who is home for our searching heart...our Creator. In God's own words, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2).
See, we have broken God's laws and we're paying the price. It's a wall between Him and us; a wall that's there forever if we die with it still there. A wall that Jesus died on a cross to remove by paying the death penalty for all the sinning we ever did. But He has a hard time getting us to realize that He's the only one who can finally fill that hole in our heart. Maybe that's why God has allowed you to be left or to be lost-so you'd finally realize no earth-love is going to be enough, no earth-empire, no earth-spirituality. I have to tell you honestly, it isn't until our earth-anchors let us down and leave us stranded, that we finally realize we were made for Jesus and we were paid for by Jesus.
And now this Savior has come looking for you. He said He would "seek and save what was lost." That tug you feel in your heart? That's Jesus Himself, knocking on the door of your heart. Your relationship with Him can begin right where you are if you'll just tell Him that you're trusting Him to be your Savior from your sin. All the disappointments have been so you could finally find the one love that will never let you down, never leave you, and never die on you.
You tell Him, "Jesus, I'm putting all my faith in what You did on the cross, paying for my sin. I believe You walked out of your grave; you're alive. Come into my life today." Tell Him that where you are. And please go to our website, and there I've laid out as simply as I could the things from God's own Word that will help you be sure you belong to Jesus. It's ANewStory.com.
Jesus has allowed you to be left, to be lost...so you could get found. By the One who went all the way to a cross to bring you home.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Ephesians 1, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: GOD TAKES HIS TIME
Sometimes God takes His time. One-hundred and twenty years to prepare Noah for the flood. Eighty years to prepare Moses for his work. God called young David to be king, but returned him to the sheep pasture. He called Paul to be an apostle and then isolated him in Arabia for fourteen years.
How long will God take with you? His history is redeemed, not in minutes, but in lifetimes. We fear the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, the pain will never leave. Will this sky ever brighten? This load ever lighten? Life in the pit stinks. Yet for all its rottenness, doesn’t it do this much? Doesn’t it force us to look upward? The Bible promises, at the right time, in God’s hands, intended evil becomes eventual good. You will get through this!
From You’ll Get Through This
Ephesians 1
I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.
The God of Glory
3-6 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11-12 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
13-14 It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
15-19 That’s why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn’t stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
20-23 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, September 05, 2016
Read: 2 Corinthians 4:7–18
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!
13-15 We’re not keeping this quiet, not on your life. Just like the psalmist who wrote, “I believed it, so I said it,” we say what we believe. And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people, more and more praise!
16-18 So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
INSIGHT:
In fulfilling his calling as an apostle (Acts 9:15), Paul endured great suffering. But in the midst of great opposition, persecution, and painful suffering, Paul’s refrain is: “We do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:1, 16). His confidence is not rooted in himself but in God’s sovereign power, in His sustaining grace, in Christ’s resurrected life, and in the expectation of future reward and eternal glory (vv. 7–18).
A Bubble Break
By Anne Cetas
We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. 2 Corinthians 4:18
A young boy showered my husband, Carl, and me with bubbles as he came running by us on the Atlantic City boardwalk. It was a light and fun moment on a difficult day. We had come to the city to visit our brother-in-law in the hospital and to help Carl’s sister who was struggling and having trouble getting to her doctors’ appointments. So as we took a break and walked along the seaside boardwalk we were feeling a bit overwhelmed by the needs of our family.
Then came the bubbles. Just bubbles blown at us whimsically by a little boy in the ocean breeze—but they had a special significance to me. I love bubbles and keep a bottle in my office to use whenever I need the smile of a bubble break. Those bubbles and the vast Atlantic Ocean reminded me of what I can count on: God is always close. He is powerful. He always cares. And He can use even the smallest experiences, and briefest moments, to help us remember that His presence is like an ocean of grace in the middle of our heavy moments.
Jesus provides an oasis of grace in the desert of trials.
Maybe one day our troubles will seem like bubbles—momentary in light of eternity for “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).
What gifts of grace has God given to you in a difficult time? How might you be a blessing to others?
Share with us on our Facebook page: Facebook.com/ourdailybread
Jesus provides an oasis of grace in the desert of trials.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, September 05, 2016
Watching With Jesus
Stay here and watch with Me. —Matthew 26:38
“Watch with Me.” Jesus was saying, in effect, “Watch with no private point of view at all, but watch solely and entirely with Me.” In the early stages of our Christian life, we do not watch with Jesus, we watch for Him. We do not watch with Him through the revealed truth of the Bible even in the circumstances of our own lives. Our Lord is trying to introduce us to identification with Himself through a particular “Gethsemane” experience of our own. But we refuse to go, saying, “No, Lord, I can’t see the meaning of this, and besides, it’s very painful.” And how can we possibly watch with Someone who is so incomprehensible? How are we going to understand Jesus sufficiently to watch with Him in His Gethsemane, when we don’t even know why He is suffering? We don’t know how to watch with Him— we are only used to the idea of Jesus watching with us.
The disciples loved Jesus Christ to the limit of their natural capacity, but they did not fully understand His purpose. In the Garden of Gethsemane they slept as a result of their own sorrow, and at the end of three years of the closest and most intimate relationship of their lives they “all…forsook Him and fled” (Matthew 26:56).
“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2:4). “They” refers to the same people, but something wonderful has happened between these two events— our Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension— and the disciples have now been invaded and “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Our Lord had said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” (Acts 1:8). This meant that they learned to watch with Him the rest of their lives.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To live a life alone with God does not mean that we live it apart from everyone else. The connection between godly men and women and those associated with them is continually revealed in the Bible, e.g., 1 Timothy 4:10. Not Knowing Whither, 867 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, September 05, 2016
The 'Game Time' Difference - #7736
Years ago, when my son-in-law lived in the Chicago area, he was in his "hay day" because it was the "hay day" of the Chicago Bulls. That was hard for me, being in the New York area as a New York Knicks fan. But, listen! Back then the Bulls had one of the most amazing teams in basketball history. Actually, I think my son-in-law had to go into a recovery program for Bulls addicts back then. But he reminds me of the Bulls' greatness regularly. In the days when they were building their basketball juggernaut, I was told the players would get in a circle and one of them would ask, "What time is it?" And they'd answer louder every time they asked the question, "It's game time!" They seemed to know what time it was almost every time they got on the court. In fact, Bulls fans told me back then that the players weren't really that close off the court. Reportedly, it was pretty quiet when they were traveling, didn't even talk to each other much. When it's wasn't game time they didn't get together off the court. But, when it was game time, the differences didn't matter, they had a job to do. They were a team!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The 'Game Time' Difference."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians 4:1-3 "...live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."
If you know Christ, welcome to Team Jesus. Yep, you're on God's team. And I'll bet there are some people on that team that aren't your favorite kind of people. Am I right? Are you thinking of somebody? You clash with their personality. Maybe they aggravate you, they're not your type, or they see things differently than you do. God knows that. In fact, it seems He plans it so we can grow from being around people who aren't like us.
But He makes it clear how you are supposed to relate to your teammates. "Be completely humble." In other words, be thinking about what will be good for them, not just what's going to be good for you. Put your self-interest behind their interests. Then He says, "Be gentle." Now, that's God's command regarding how you are to treat your teammates-as if they're fragile, they're breakable. Then it says, "Bear with one another in love." It doesn't say "be a bear with one another." Now, don't get that wrong. "Bear with one another." Overlooking slights, overlooking frustrations, love covering a multitude of sins. See, un-love keeps a record of every sin, every offence, and every frustration.
Then God says work real hard to keep the unity that is the natural condition of those in whom God's Holy Spirit lives. He says here to keep the unity. It doesn't say to go after it trying to get it. You already have it, you just ruin it if you don't do the bond of peace. That's why He doesn't say, "Get unified" He says, "Stay together." Together is what you really are in Christ and really will be forever in eternity.
So don't lose that unity; do whatever will contribute to peace between you and your teammates whatever will contribute to peace. Because, as the Chicago Bulls said in their "hay day", "It's game time!" They knew that their mission was too important to be at the mercy of the differences between them. They play together whether or not they liked or appreciated every teammate. And they were champions as a result.
Our mission is infinitely, eternally more important. It is the work of God on earth. And His work is too important to be at the mercy of your moods, your differences, your self-pity, your attitude, or your gripes. I have no right to carry my negative baggage onto the court where we are playing for eternal stakes and neither do you. We have to win this one for Jesus! Our differences don't matter now. It's game time!
Sometimes God takes His time. One-hundred and twenty years to prepare Noah for the flood. Eighty years to prepare Moses for his work. God called young David to be king, but returned him to the sheep pasture. He called Paul to be an apostle and then isolated him in Arabia for fourteen years.
How long will God take with you? His history is redeemed, not in minutes, but in lifetimes. We fear the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, the pain will never leave. Will this sky ever brighten? This load ever lighten? Life in the pit stinks. Yet for all its rottenness, doesn’t it do this much? Doesn’t it force us to look upward? The Bible promises, at the right time, in God’s hands, intended evil becomes eventual good. You will get through this!
From You’ll Get Through This
Ephesians 1
I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.
The God of Glory
3-6 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11-12 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
13-14 It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
15-19 That’s why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn’t stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!
20-23 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, September 05, 2016
Read: 2 Corinthians 4:7–18
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!
13-15 We’re not keeping this quiet, not on your life. Just like the psalmist who wrote, “I believed it, so I said it,” we say what we believe. And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people, more and more praise!
16-18 So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
INSIGHT:
In fulfilling his calling as an apostle (Acts 9:15), Paul endured great suffering. But in the midst of great opposition, persecution, and painful suffering, Paul’s refrain is: “We do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:1, 16). His confidence is not rooted in himself but in God’s sovereign power, in His sustaining grace, in Christ’s resurrected life, and in the expectation of future reward and eternal glory (vv. 7–18).
A Bubble Break
By Anne Cetas
We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. 2 Corinthians 4:18
A young boy showered my husband, Carl, and me with bubbles as he came running by us on the Atlantic City boardwalk. It was a light and fun moment on a difficult day. We had come to the city to visit our brother-in-law in the hospital and to help Carl’s sister who was struggling and having trouble getting to her doctors’ appointments. So as we took a break and walked along the seaside boardwalk we were feeling a bit overwhelmed by the needs of our family.
Then came the bubbles. Just bubbles blown at us whimsically by a little boy in the ocean breeze—but they had a special significance to me. I love bubbles and keep a bottle in my office to use whenever I need the smile of a bubble break. Those bubbles and the vast Atlantic Ocean reminded me of what I can count on: God is always close. He is powerful. He always cares. And He can use even the smallest experiences, and briefest moments, to help us remember that His presence is like an ocean of grace in the middle of our heavy moments.
Jesus provides an oasis of grace in the desert of trials.
Maybe one day our troubles will seem like bubbles—momentary in light of eternity for “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).
What gifts of grace has God given to you in a difficult time? How might you be a blessing to others?
Share with us on our Facebook page: Facebook.com/ourdailybread
Jesus provides an oasis of grace in the desert of trials.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, September 05, 2016
Watching With Jesus
Stay here and watch with Me. —Matthew 26:38
“Watch with Me.” Jesus was saying, in effect, “Watch with no private point of view at all, but watch solely and entirely with Me.” In the early stages of our Christian life, we do not watch with Jesus, we watch for Him. We do not watch with Him through the revealed truth of the Bible even in the circumstances of our own lives. Our Lord is trying to introduce us to identification with Himself through a particular “Gethsemane” experience of our own. But we refuse to go, saying, “No, Lord, I can’t see the meaning of this, and besides, it’s very painful.” And how can we possibly watch with Someone who is so incomprehensible? How are we going to understand Jesus sufficiently to watch with Him in His Gethsemane, when we don’t even know why He is suffering? We don’t know how to watch with Him— we are only used to the idea of Jesus watching with us.
The disciples loved Jesus Christ to the limit of their natural capacity, but they did not fully understand His purpose. In the Garden of Gethsemane they slept as a result of their own sorrow, and at the end of three years of the closest and most intimate relationship of their lives they “all…forsook Him and fled” (Matthew 26:56).
“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2:4). “They” refers to the same people, but something wonderful has happened between these two events— our Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension— and the disciples have now been invaded and “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Our Lord had said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” (Acts 1:8). This meant that they learned to watch with Him the rest of their lives.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To live a life alone with God does not mean that we live it apart from everyone else. The connection between godly men and women and those associated with them is continually revealed in the Bible, e.g., 1 Timothy 4:10. Not Knowing Whither, 867 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, September 05, 2016
The 'Game Time' Difference - #7736
Years ago, when my son-in-law lived in the Chicago area, he was in his "hay day" because it was the "hay day" of the Chicago Bulls. That was hard for me, being in the New York area as a New York Knicks fan. But, listen! Back then the Bulls had one of the most amazing teams in basketball history. Actually, I think my son-in-law had to go into a recovery program for Bulls addicts back then. But he reminds me of the Bulls' greatness regularly. In the days when they were building their basketball juggernaut, I was told the players would get in a circle and one of them would ask, "What time is it?" And they'd answer louder every time they asked the question, "It's game time!" They seemed to know what time it was almost every time they got on the court. In fact, Bulls fans told me back then that the players weren't really that close off the court. Reportedly, it was pretty quiet when they were traveling, didn't even talk to each other much. When it's wasn't game time they didn't get together off the court. But, when it was game time, the differences didn't matter, they had a job to do. They were a team!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The 'Game Time' Difference."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians 4:1-3 "...live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."
If you know Christ, welcome to Team Jesus. Yep, you're on God's team. And I'll bet there are some people on that team that aren't your favorite kind of people. Am I right? Are you thinking of somebody? You clash with their personality. Maybe they aggravate you, they're not your type, or they see things differently than you do. God knows that. In fact, it seems He plans it so we can grow from being around people who aren't like us.
But He makes it clear how you are supposed to relate to your teammates. "Be completely humble." In other words, be thinking about what will be good for them, not just what's going to be good for you. Put your self-interest behind their interests. Then He says, "Be gentle." Now, that's God's command regarding how you are to treat your teammates-as if they're fragile, they're breakable. Then it says, "Bear with one another in love." It doesn't say "be a bear with one another." Now, don't get that wrong. "Bear with one another." Overlooking slights, overlooking frustrations, love covering a multitude of sins. See, un-love keeps a record of every sin, every offence, and every frustration.
Then God says work real hard to keep the unity that is the natural condition of those in whom God's Holy Spirit lives. He says here to keep the unity. It doesn't say to go after it trying to get it. You already have it, you just ruin it if you don't do the bond of peace. That's why He doesn't say, "Get unified" He says, "Stay together." Together is what you really are in Christ and really will be forever in eternity.
So don't lose that unity; do whatever will contribute to peace between you and your teammates whatever will contribute to peace. Because, as the Chicago Bulls said in their "hay day", "It's game time!" They knew that their mission was too important to be at the mercy of the differences between them. They play together whether or not they liked or appreciated every teammate. And they were champions as a result.
Our mission is infinitely, eternally more important. It is the work of God on earth. And His work is too important to be at the mercy of your moods, your differences, your self-pity, your attitude, or your gripes. I have no right to carry my negative baggage onto the court where we are playing for eternal stakes and neither do you. We have to win this one for Jesus! Our differences don't matter now. It's game time!
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