Max Lucado Daily: PUT INTO PRACTICE
A not-so-bright fellow saw a sign in a travel agency window: Cruise–$100 cash. He walked in and when the fellow at the desk asked for the money, the not-so-bright guy started counting it out. When he got to one hundred, he was whacked on the head. He woke up in a barrel floating down a river. Another not-so-bright guy floated past and said, “Say, do they serve lunch on this cruise?” The first not-so-bright guy answered, “They didn’t last year!” It’s one thing not to know. It’s another to know and not learn.
Paul urged his readers: “Put into practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me” (Philippians 4:9 RSV).
If you want to be just like Jesus—spend time listening for him in his word until you have received your lesson for the day. Then apply it!
From Just Like Jesus
Hebrews 13
Jesus Doesn’t Change
1-4 Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it’s needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you. Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex.
5-6 Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have. Since God assured us, “I’ll never let you down, never walk off and leave you,” we can boldly quote,
God is there, ready to help;
I’m fearless no matter what.
Who or what can get to me?
7-8 Appreciate your pastoral leaders who gave you the Word of God. Take a good look at the way they live, and let their faithfulness instruct you, as well as their truthfulness. There should be a consistency that runs through us all. For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.
9 Don’t be lured away from him by the latest speculations about him. The grace of Christ is the only good ground for life. Products named after Christ don’t seem to do much for those who buy them.
10-12 The altar from which God gives us the gift of himself is not for exploitation by insiders who grab and loot. In the old system, the animals are killed and the bodies disposed of outside the camp. The blood is then brought inside to the altar as a sacrifice for sin. It’s the same with Jesus. He was crucified outside the city gates—that is where he poured out the sacrificial blood that was brought to God’s altar to cleanse his people.
13-15 So let’s go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This “insider world” is not our home. We have our eyes peeled for the City about to come. Let’s take our place outside with Jesus, no longer pouring out the sacrificial blood of animals but pouring out sacrificial praises from our lips to God in Jesus’ name.
16 Make sure you don’t take things for granted and go slack in working for the common good; share what you have with others. God takes particular pleasure in acts of worship—a different kind of “sacrifice”—that take place in kitchen and workplace and on the streets.
17 Be responsive to your pastoral leaders. Listen to their counsel. They are alert to the condition of your lives and work under the strict supervision of God. Contribute to the joy of their leadership, not its drudgery. Why would you want to make things harder for them?
18-21 Pray for us. We have no doubts about what we’re doing or why, but it’s hard going and we need your prayers. All we care about is living well before God. Pray that we may be together soon.
May God, who puts all things together,
makes all things whole,
Who made a lasting mark through the sacrifice of Jesus,
the sacrifice of blood that sealed the eternal covenant,
Who led Jesus, our Great Shepherd,
up and alive from the dead,
Now put you together, provide you
with everything you need to please him,
Make us into what gives him most pleasure,
by means of the sacrifice of Jesus, the Messiah.
All glory to Jesus forever and always!
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
22-23 Friends, please take what I’ve written most seriously. I’ve kept this as brief as possible; I haven’t piled on a lot of extras. You’ll be glad to know that Timothy has been let out of prison. If he leaves soon, I’ll come with him and get to see you myself.
24 Say hello to your pastoral leaders and all the congregations. Everyone here in Italy wants to be remembered to you.
25 Grace be with you, every one.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, March 20, 2017
Read: Mark 6:30–46 |
Supper for Five Thousand
30-31 The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on all that they had done and taught. Jesus said, “Come off by yourselves; let’s take a break and get a little rest.” For there was constant coming and going. They didn’t even have time to eat.
32-34 So they got in the boat and went off to a remote place by themselves. Someone saw them going and the word got around. From the surrounding towns people went out on foot, running, and got there ahead of them. When Jesus arrived, he saw this huge crowd. At the sight of them, his heart broke—like sheep with no shepherd they were. He went right to work teaching them.
35-36 When his disciples thought this had gone on long enough—it was now quite late in the day—they interrupted: “We are a long way out in the country, and it’s very late. Pronounce a benediction and send these folks off so they can get some supper.”
37 Jesus said, “You do it. Fix supper for them.”
They replied, “Are you serious? You want us to go spend a fortune on food for their supper?”
38 But he was quite serious. “How many loaves of bread do you have? Take an inventory.”
That didn’t take long. “Five,” they said, “plus two fish.”
39-44 Jesus got them all to sit down in groups of fifty or a hundred—they looked like a patchwork quilt of wildflowers spread out on the green grass! He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to the disciples, and the disciples in turn gave it to the people. He did the same with the fish. They all ate their fill. The disciples gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. More than five thousand were at the supper.
Walking on the Sea
45-46 As soon as the meal was finished, Jesus insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead across to Bethsaida while he dismissed the congregation. After sending them off, he climbed a mountain to pray.
Running and Rest
By David McCasland
[Jesus] said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark 6:31
The headline caught my eye: “Rest Days Important for Runners.” In Tommy Manning’s article, the former member of the U.S. Mountain Running Team emphasized a principle that dedicated athletes sometimes ignore—the body needs time to rest and rebuild after exercise. “Physiologically, the adaptations that occur as a result of training only happen during rest,” Manning wrote. “This means rest is as important as workouts.”
The same is true in our walk of faith and service. Regular times of rest are essential to avoid burnout and discouragement. Jesus sought spiritual balance during His life on Earth, even in the face of great demands. When His disciples returned from a strenuous time of teaching and healing others, “He said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest’” (Mark 6:31). But a large crowd followed them, so Jesus taught them and fed them with only five loaves and two fish (vv. 32–44). When everyone was gone, Jesus “went up on a mountainside to pray” (v. 46).
Jesus invites us to regularly join Him in a quiet place to pray and get some rest.
If our lives are defined by work, then what we do becomes less and less effective. Jesus invites us to regularly join Him in a quiet place to pray and get some rest.
Lord Jesus, thank You for Your example of prayer alone with Your Father. Give us wisdom and determination to make rest a priority as we follow You.
In our life of faith and service, rest is as important as work.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, March 20, 2017
Friendship with God
Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing…? —Genesis 18:17
The Delights of His Friendship. Genesis 18 brings out the delight of true friendship with God, as compared with simply feeling His presence occasionally in prayer. This friendship means being so intimately in touch with God that you never even need to ask Him to show you His will. It is evidence of a level of intimacy which confirms that you are nearing the final stage of your discipline in the life of faith. When you have a right-standing relationship with God, you have a life of freedom, liberty, and delight; you are God’s will. And all of your commonsense decisions are actually His will for you, unless you sense a feeling of restraint brought on by a check in your spirit. You are free to make decisions in the light of a perfect and delightful friendship with God, knowing that if your decisions are wrong He will lovingly produce that sense of restraint. Once he does, you must stop immediately.
The Difficulties of His Friendship. Why did Abraham stop praying when he did? He stopped because he still was lacking the level of intimacy in his relationship with God, which would enable him boldly to continue on with the Lord in prayer until his desire was granted. Whenever we stop short of our true desire in prayer and say, “Well, I don’t know, maybe this is not God’s will,” then we still have another level to go. It shows that we are not as intimately acquainted with God as Jesus was, and as Jesus would have us to be— “…that they may be one just as We are one…” (John 17:22). Think of the last thing you prayed about— were you devoted to your desire or to God? Was your determination to get some gift of the Spirit for yourself or to get to God? “For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8). The reason for asking is so you may get to know God better. “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). We should keep praying to get a perfect understanding of God Himself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them. Workmen of God, 1341 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, March 20, 2017
Battery-Powered People - #7876
Waking up early most mornings is not an option for me. If I oversleep, it means missing a plane or a speaking commitment or radio broadcasts or some deadline or some important meeting. In other words, my clock radio had better work...and it does. Even on the days when many other clock radios might not. Because the power went out during the night, let's say. There have been mornings when I have been awakened by my clock radio-looked over at the other one in the room and seen it blinking at me some time when it was the middle of the night. See, that clock was plugged into the wall and sometime during the night the external power supply had failed. Good thing I wasn't depending on that one! But mine always comes through-because it's powered by batteries! You see, what keeps it going is inside!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Battery-Powered People."
If the Apostle Paul had been depending on a power source outside, he would have never made it through the hard times of his life-the times when the outside sources of energy failed him. Thankfully, Paul was energized by spiritual batteries-power on the inside that didn't depend on what was going on on the outside.
That's why this veteran of prison cells, beatings, assassination attempts-on both his body and his character-could write words like these. First Thessalonians 5:16, "Be joyful always." Really? Yeah, even when your outside sources of joy have failed you. "Give thanks in all circumstances," he wrote, "for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." When you allow your circumstances to take your joy or your attitude of gratitude, guess what? You've just left the will of God. That's a terrible place to be.
Paul modeled this, actually, when he wrote to the Philippian believers from a prison cell. He was chained to a guard 24 hours a day, he was grounded from the work that he loved, and other believers were rubbing it in by trying to capitalize on his being gone. The situation stunk. The environment was about as negative and depressing as you can imagine. If Paul had been letting his environment determine his attitude, he would have had a total power failure. But listen to this remarkable perspective-our word for today from the Word of God in Philippians 4:4. Here's what it says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!"
Notice he didn't say he was rejoicing in the situation he was in. His attitude was rooted in something no situation could ever take from him-his untouchable love-relationship with his Lord Jesus Christ. "Rejoice in the LORD." With that anchor for his attitude, Paul is then able to focus on the good that God is bringing out of this ugly situation, on the people who need his encouragement, on the things he can accomplish because he's in this ugly place.
God never intended for you to let your surroundings determine your attitude. He wants you to be shaped by your invironment-what He's doing inside you-never by your environment.
So if you belong to Jesus, there literally is no excuse for self-pity, no excuse for a bad attitude, no excuse for neglecting your relationship with Jesus, for a complaining spirit or spiritual carelessness. Okay, so your external energy sources went down-they have failed you again. That doesn't mean you have to go down, too, unless that's where your joy is plugged in; if that's where your thankfulness is plugged in. Now is a good time to find out that you've been counting on the wrong things maybe to have a joyful heart.
Your source is inside-the never-failing battery of a Savior in you-a Savior whose plans for you have not changed. They're right on schedule. Whose love for you has not changed. His love is endless and who will be your source of joy for all eternity.
Monday, March 20, 2017
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Hebrews 12, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Saved to Serve
Some people feel so saved they never serve. Some serve at the hope of being saved. Does one of these sentences describe you? Do you feel so saved that you never serve? So content in what God has done that you do nothing? The fact is, we're here to glorify God in our service.
Or is your tendency the opposite? Perhaps you always serve for fear of not being saved. You're worried there is a secret card that exists with your score written on it; and your score is not enough. Is that you? If so, know this: The blood of Jesus is enough to save you. John 1:29 announces that Jesus is "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world."
The blood of Christ doesn't cover your sins, conceal your sins, postpone or diminish your sins. It takes away your sins, once and for all! So…since you are saved, you can serve!
From He Chose the Nails
Hebrews 12
Discipline in a Long-Distance Race
1-3 Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!
4-11 In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don’t feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children?
My dear child, don’t shrug off God’s discipline,
but don’t be crushed by it either.
It’s the child he loves that he disciplines;
the child he embraces, he also corrects.
God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.
12-13 So don’t sit around on your hands! No more dragging your feet! Clear the path for long-distance runners so no one will trip and fall, so no one will step in a hole and sprain an ankle. Help each other out. And run for it!
14-17 Work at getting along with each other and with God. Otherwise you’ll never get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure no one gets left out of God’s generosity. Keep a sharp eye out for weeds of bitter discontent. A thistle or two gone to seed can ruin a whole garden in no time. Watch out for the Esau syndrome: trading away God’s lifelong gift in order to satisfy a short-term appetite. You well know how Esau later regretted that impulsive act and wanted God’s blessing—but by then it was too late, tears or no tears.
An Unshakable Kingdom
18-21 Unlike your ancestors, you didn’t come to Mount Sinai—all that volcanic blaze and earthshaking rumble—to hear God speak. The earsplitting words and soul-shaking message terrified them and they begged him to stop. When they heard the words—“If an animal touches the Mountain, it’s as good as dead”—they were afraid to move. Even Moses was terrified.
22-24 No, that’s not your experience at all. You’ve come to Mount Zion, the city where the living God resides. The invisible Jerusalem is populated by throngs of festive angels and Christian citizens. It is the city where God is Judge, with judgments that make us just. You’ve come to Jesus, who presents us with a new covenant, a fresh charter from God. He is the Mediator of this covenant. The murder of Jesus, unlike Abel’s—a homicide that cried out for vengeance—became a proclamation of grace.
25-27 So don’t turn a deaf ear to these gracious words. If those who ignored earthly warnings didn’t get away with it, what will happen to us if we turn our backs on heavenly warnings? His voice that time shook the earth to its foundations; this time—he’s told us this quite plainly—he’ll also rock the heavens: “One last shaking, from top to bottom, stem to stern.” The phrase “one last shaking” means a thorough housecleaning, getting rid of all the historical and religious junk so that the unshakable essentials stand clear and uncluttered.
28-29 Do you see what we’ve got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. He’s actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won’t quit until it’s all cleansed. God himself is Fire!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Read: James 3:3–12
A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!
5-6 It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.
7-10 This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
10-12 My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?
INSIGHT:
Foolish words are likened to a powerfully destructive “scorching fire” (Prov. 16:27), and the deadly weapons of war, the “flaming arrows of death” (26:18). Jesus said that our words come from our hearts and reveal if we are good or evil. “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). How can you use words that will delight God and bless others?
A Small Fire
By Bill Crowder
The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. James 3:5
It was a Sunday night in September and most people were sleeping when a small fire broke out in Thomas Farriner’s bakery on Pudding Lane. Soon the flames spread from house to house and London was engulfed in the Great Fire of 1666. Over 70,000 people were left homeless by the blaze that leveled four-fifths of the city. So much destruction from such a small fire!
The Bible warns us of another small but destructive fire. James was concerned about lives and relationships, not buildings, when he wrote, “The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark” (James 3:5).
Let your conversation be always full of grace. Colossians 4:6
But our words can also be constructive. Proverbs 16:24 reminds us, “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” The apostle Paul says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Col. 4:6). As salt flavors our food, grace flavors our words for building up others.
Through the help of the Holy Spirit our words can encourage people who are hurting, who want to grow in their faith, or who need to come to the Savior. Our words can put out fires instead of starting them.
Lord, I can always use help with the way I talk. For this day, help me to speak words of hope and encouragement to build up others.
What will our words be like today?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Abraham’s Life of Faith
He went out, not knowing where he was going. —Hebrews 11:8
In the Old Testament, a person’s relationship with God was seen by the degree of separation in that person’s life. This separation is exhibited in the life of Abraham by his separation from his country and his family. When we think of separation today, we do not mean to be literally separated from those family members who do not have a personal relationship with God, but to be separated mentally and morally from their viewpoints. This is what Jesus Christ was referring to in Luke 14:26.
Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason— a life of knowing Him who calls us to go. Faith is rooted in the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the world.
The final stage in the life of faith is the attainment of character, and we encounter many changes in the process. We feel the presence of God around us when we pray, yet we are only momentarily changed. We tend to keep going back to our everyday ways and the glory vanishes. A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles’ wings, but is a life of day-in and day-out consistency; a life of walking without fainting (see Isaiah 40:31). It is not even a question of the holiness of sanctification, but of something which comes much farther down the road. It is a faith that has been tried and proved and has withstood the test. Abraham is not a type or an example of the holiness of sanctification, but a type of the life of faith— a faith, tested and true, built on the true God. “Abraham believed God…” (Romans 4:3).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
When a man’s heart is right with God the mysterious utterances of the Bible are spirit and life to him. Spiritual truth is discernible only to a pure heart, not to a keen intellect. It is not a question of profundity of intellect, but of purity of heart. Bringing Sons Unto Glory, 231 L
Some people feel so saved they never serve. Some serve at the hope of being saved. Does one of these sentences describe you? Do you feel so saved that you never serve? So content in what God has done that you do nothing? The fact is, we're here to glorify God in our service.
Or is your tendency the opposite? Perhaps you always serve for fear of not being saved. You're worried there is a secret card that exists with your score written on it; and your score is not enough. Is that you? If so, know this: The blood of Jesus is enough to save you. John 1:29 announces that Jesus is "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world."
The blood of Christ doesn't cover your sins, conceal your sins, postpone or diminish your sins. It takes away your sins, once and for all! So…since you are saved, you can serve!
From He Chose the Nails
Hebrews 12
Discipline in a Long-Distance Race
1-3 Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!
4-11 In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don’t feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children?
My dear child, don’t shrug off God’s discipline,
but don’t be crushed by it either.
It’s the child he loves that he disciplines;
the child he embraces, he also corrects.
God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.
12-13 So don’t sit around on your hands! No more dragging your feet! Clear the path for long-distance runners so no one will trip and fall, so no one will step in a hole and sprain an ankle. Help each other out. And run for it!
14-17 Work at getting along with each other and with God. Otherwise you’ll never get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure no one gets left out of God’s generosity. Keep a sharp eye out for weeds of bitter discontent. A thistle or two gone to seed can ruin a whole garden in no time. Watch out for the Esau syndrome: trading away God’s lifelong gift in order to satisfy a short-term appetite. You well know how Esau later regretted that impulsive act and wanted God’s blessing—but by then it was too late, tears or no tears.
An Unshakable Kingdom
18-21 Unlike your ancestors, you didn’t come to Mount Sinai—all that volcanic blaze and earthshaking rumble—to hear God speak. The earsplitting words and soul-shaking message terrified them and they begged him to stop. When they heard the words—“If an animal touches the Mountain, it’s as good as dead”—they were afraid to move. Even Moses was terrified.
22-24 No, that’s not your experience at all. You’ve come to Mount Zion, the city where the living God resides. The invisible Jerusalem is populated by throngs of festive angels and Christian citizens. It is the city where God is Judge, with judgments that make us just. You’ve come to Jesus, who presents us with a new covenant, a fresh charter from God. He is the Mediator of this covenant. The murder of Jesus, unlike Abel’s—a homicide that cried out for vengeance—became a proclamation of grace.
25-27 So don’t turn a deaf ear to these gracious words. If those who ignored earthly warnings didn’t get away with it, what will happen to us if we turn our backs on heavenly warnings? His voice that time shook the earth to its foundations; this time—he’s told us this quite plainly—he’ll also rock the heavens: “One last shaking, from top to bottom, stem to stern.” The phrase “one last shaking” means a thorough housecleaning, getting rid of all the historical and religious junk so that the unshakable essentials stand clear and uncluttered.
28-29 Do you see what we’ve got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. He’s actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won’t quit until it’s all cleansed. God himself is Fire!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Read: James 3:3–12
A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!
5-6 It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.
7-10 This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!
10-12 My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?
INSIGHT:
Foolish words are likened to a powerfully destructive “scorching fire” (Prov. 16:27), and the deadly weapons of war, the “flaming arrows of death” (26:18). Jesus said that our words come from our hearts and reveal if we are good or evil. “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). How can you use words that will delight God and bless others?
A Small Fire
By Bill Crowder
The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. James 3:5
It was a Sunday night in September and most people were sleeping when a small fire broke out in Thomas Farriner’s bakery on Pudding Lane. Soon the flames spread from house to house and London was engulfed in the Great Fire of 1666. Over 70,000 people were left homeless by the blaze that leveled four-fifths of the city. So much destruction from such a small fire!
The Bible warns us of another small but destructive fire. James was concerned about lives and relationships, not buildings, when he wrote, “The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark” (James 3:5).
Let your conversation be always full of grace. Colossians 4:6
But our words can also be constructive. Proverbs 16:24 reminds us, “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” The apostle Paul says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Col. 4:6). As salt flavors our food, grace flavors our words for building up others.
Through the help of the Holy Spirit our words can encourage people who are hurting, who want to grow in their faith, or who need to come to the Savior. Our words can put out fires instead of starting them.
Lord, I can always use help with the way I talk. For this day, help me to speak words of hope and encouragement to build up others.
What will our words be like today?
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Abraham’s Life of Faith
He went out, not knowing where he was going. —Hebrews 11:8
In the Old Testament, a person’s relationship with God was seen by the degree of separation in that person’s life. This separation is exhibited in the life of Abraham by his separation from his country and his family. When we think of separation today, we do not mean to be literally separated from those family members who do not have a personal relationship with God, but to be separated mentally and morally from their viewpoints. This is what Jesus Christ was referring to in Luke 14:26.
Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason— a life of knowing Him who calls us to go. Faith is rooted in the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the world.
The final stage in the life of faith is the attainment of character, and we encounter many changes in the process. We feel the presence of God around us when we pray, yet we are only momentarily changed. We tend to keep going back to our everyday ways and the glory vanishes. A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles’ wings, but is a life of day-in and day-out consistency; a life of walking without fainting (see Isaiah 40:31). It is not even a question of the holiness of sanctification, but of something which comes much farther down the road. It is a faith that has been tried and proved and has withstood the test. Abraham is not a type or an example of the holiness of sanctification, but a type of the life of faith— a faith, tested and true, built on the true God. “Abraham believed God…” (Romans 4:3).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
When a man’s heart is right with God the mysterious utterances of the Bible are spirit and life to him. Spiritual truth is discernible only to a pure heart, not to a keen intellect. It is not a question of profundity of intellect, but of purity of heart. Bringing Sons Unto Glory, 231 L
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Lamentations 2 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: No Secrets
God has kept no secrets about this life. He has told us that we will experience trouble. Disease will afflict bodies. Divorce will break hearts. Death will make widows and devastation will destroy countries. We shouldn't expect any less.
Yet just because the devil shows up and cackles, we needn't panic. Jesus says in John 16:33, "In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." He speaks of an accomplished deed. "I HAVE overcome the world." It's finished. The battle is over.
Be alert but don't be alarmed. Satan is loosed for a season, but the season is oh, so brief. The devil knows this and Revelation 12:12 reminds us, "he is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short." Just a few more turns in the road, and his end will come! And we will have a new beginning.
From When Christ Comes
Lamentations 2
God Walked Away from His Holy Temple
Oh, oh, oh . . .
How the Master has cut down Daughter Zion
from the skies, dashed Israel’s glorious city to earth,
in his anger treated his favorite as throwaway junk.
2 The Master, without a second thought, took Israel in one gulp.
Raging, he smashed Judah’s defenses,
made hash of her king and princes.
3 His anger blazing, he knocked Israel flat,
broke Israel’s arm and turned his back just as the enemy approached,
came on Jacob like a wildfire from every direction.
4 Like an enemy, he aimed his bow, bared his sword,
and killed our young men, our pride and joy.
His anger, like fire, burned down the homes in Zion.
5 The Master became the enemy. He had Israel for supper.
He chewed up and spit out all the defenses.
He left Daughter Judah moaning and groaning.
6 He plowed up his old trysting place, trashed his favorite rendezvous.
God wiped out Zion’s memories of feast days and Sabbaths,
angrily sacked king and priest alike.
7 God abandoned his altar, walked away from his holy Temple
and turned the fortifications over to the enemy.
As they cheered in God’s Temple, you’d have thought it was a feast day!
8 God drew up plans to tear down the walls of Daughter Zion.
He assembled his crew, set to work and went at it.
Total demolition! The stones wept!
9 Her city gates, iron bars and all, disappeared in the rubble:
her kings and princes off to exile—no one left to instruct or lead;
her prophets useless—they neither saw nor heard anything from God.
10 The elders of Daughter Zion sit silent on the ground.
They throw dust on their heads, dress in rough penitential burlap—
the young virgins of Jerusalem, their faces creased with the dirt.
11 My eyes are blind with tears, my stomach in a knot.
My insides have turned to jelly over my people’s fate.
Babies and children are fainting all over the place,
12 Calling to their mothers, “I’m hungry! I’m thirsty!”
then fainting like dying soldiers in the streets,
breathing their last in their mothers’ laps.
13 How can I understand your plight, dear Jerusalem?
What can I say to give you comfort, dear Zion?
Who can put you together again? This bust-up is past understanding.
14 Your prophets courted you with sweet talk.
They didn’t face you with your sin so that you could repent.
Their sermons were all wishful thinking, deceptive illusions.
15 Astonished, passersby can’t believe what they see.
They rub their eyes, they shake their heads over Jerusalem.
Is this the city voted “Most Beautiful” and “Best Place to Live”?
16 But now your enemies gape, slack-jawed.
Then they rub their hands in glee: “We’ve got them!
We’ve been waiting for this! Here it is!”
17 God did carry out, item by item, exactly what he said he’d do.
He always said he’d do this. Now he’s done it—torn the place down.
He’s let your enemies walk all over you, declared them world champions!
18 Give out heart-cries to the Master, dear repentant Zion.
Let the tears roll like a river, day and night,
and keep at it—no time-outs. Keep those tears flowing!
19 As each night watch begins, get up and cry out in prayer.
Pour your heart out face-to-face with the Master.
Lift high your hands. Beg for the lives of your children
who are starving to death out on the streets.
20 “Look at us, God. Think it over. Have you ever treated anyone like this?
Should women eat their own babies, the very children they raised?
Should priests and prophets be murdered in the Master’s own Sanctuary?
21 “Boys and old men lie in the gutters of the streets,
my young men and women killed in their prime.
Angry, you killed them in cold blood, cut them down without mercy.
22 “You invited, like friends to a party, men to swoop down in attack
so that on the big day of God’s wrath no one would get away.
The children I loved and reared—gone, gone, gone.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Read: Psalm 34:11–18
Come, children, listen closely;
I’ll give you a lesson in God worship.
12 Who out there has a lust for life?
Can’t wait each day to come upon beauty?
13 Guard your tongue from profanity,
and no more lying through your teeth.
14 Turn your back on sin; do something good.
Embrace peace—don’t let it get away!
15 God keeps an eye on his friends,
his ears pick up every moan and groan.
16 God won’t put up with rebels;
he’ll cull them from the pack.
17 Is anyone crying for help? God is listening,
ready to rescue you.
18 If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there;
if you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath.
INSIGHT:
First Samuel 21:10–15 records the story of David pretending madness to the Philistines in order to escape the pursuit of King Saul, and it was this event to which David addressed Psalm 34. His joyful gratefulness for divine protection can be seen in verses 4–6, and he recommends that the reader also “taste and see that the Lord is good” (v. 8). A wonderful verse of ongoing thanksgiving and worship is verse 5: “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” The Wycliffe Bible Commentary tells us that this psalm is not only for ourselves but for the next generation: “Those addressed as children are again the humble and teachable disciples of any age (vv. 11–22).” God works in our lives at the most difficult times and His gracious lessons are worth passing on to others.
Something’s Wrong
By Jolene Philo
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18
The morning after our son, Allen, was born, the doctor sat down in a chair near the foot of my bed and said, “Something’s wrong.” Our son, so perfect on the outside, had a life-threatening birth defect and needed to be flown to a hospital 700 miles away for immediate surgery.
When the doctor tells you something is wrong with your child, your life changes. Fear of what lies ahead can crush your spirit and you stumble along, desperate for a God who will strengthen you so you can support your child.
The best kind of friend is a praying friend.
Would a loving God allow this? you wonder. Does He care about my child? Is He there? These and other thoughts shook my faith that morning.
Then my husband, Hiram, arrived and heard the news. After the doctor left, Hiram said, “Jolene, let’s pray.” I nodded and he took my hand. “Thank You, Father, for giving Allen to us. He’s Yours, God, not ours. You loved him before we knew him, and he belongs to You. Be with him when we can’t. Amen.”
Hiram has always been a man of few words. He struggles to speak his thoughts and often doesn’t try, knowing that I have enough words to fill any silence. But on a day when my heart was broken, my spirit crushed, and my faith gone, God gave Hiram strength to speak the words I couldn’t say. And clinging to my husband’s hand, in deep silence and through many tears, I sensed that God was very near.
How has God used people to strengthen you when your spirit was crushed? Share your story at Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
The best kind of friend is a praying friend.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Will I Bring Myself Up to This Level?
…perfecting holiness in the fear of God. —2 Corinthians 7:1
“Therefore, having these promises….” I claim God’s promises for my life and look to their fulfillment, and rightly so, but that shows only the human perspective on them. God’s perspective is that through His promises I will come to recognize His claim of ownership on me. For example, do I realize that my “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” or am I condoning some habit in my body which clearly could not withstand the light of God on it? (1 Corinthians 6:19). God formed His Son in me through sanctification, setting me apart from sin and making me holy in His sight (see Galatians 4:19). But I must begin to transform my natural life into spiritual life by obedience to Him. God instructs us even in the smallest details of life. And when He brings you conviction of sin, do not “confer with flesh and blood,” but cleanse yourself from it at once (Galatians 1:16). Keep yourself cleansed in your daily walk.
I must cleanse myself from all filthiness in my flesh and my spirit until both are in harmony with the nature of God. Is the mind of my spirit in perfect agreement with the life of the Son of God in me, or am I mentally rebellious and defiant? Am I allowing the mind of Christ to be formed in me? (see Philippians 2:5). Christ never spoke of His right to Himself, but always maintained an inner vigilance to submit His spirit continually to His Father. I also have the responsibility to keep my spirit in agreement with His Spirit. And when I do, Jesus gradually lifts me up to the level where He lived— a level of perfect submission to His Father’s will— where I pay no attention to anything else. Am I perfecting this kind of holiness in the fear of God? Is God having His way with me, and are people beginning to see God in my life more and more?
Be serious in your commitment to God and gladly leave everything else alone. Literally put God first in your life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
God has kept no secrets about this life. He has told us that we will experience trouble. Disease will afflict bodies. Divorce will break hearts. Death will make widows and devastation will destroy countries. We shouldn't expect any less.
Yet just because the devil shows up and cackles, we needn't panic. Jesus says in John 16:33, "In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." He speaks of an accomplished deed. "I HAVE overcome the world." It's finished. The battle is over.
Be alert but don't be alarmed. Satan is loosed for a season, but the season is oh, so brief. The devil knows this and Revelation 12:12 reminds us, "he is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short." Just a few more turns in the road, and his end will come! And we will have a new beginning.
From When Christ Comes
Lamentations 2
God Walked Away from His Holy Temple
Oh, oh, oh . . .
How the Master has cut down Daughter Zion
from the skies, dashed Israel’s glorious city to earth,
in his anger treated his favorite as throwaway junk.
2 The Master, without a second thought, took Israel in one gulp.
Raging, he smashed Judah’s defenses,
made hash of her king and princes.
3 His anger blazing, he knocked Israel flat,
broke Israel’s arm and turned his back just as the enemy approached,
came on Jacob like a wildfire from every direction.
4 Like an enemy, he aimed his bow, bared his sword,
and killed our young men, our pride and joy.
His anger, like fire, burned down the homes in Zion.
5 The Master became the enemy. He had Israel for supper.
He chewed up and spit out all the defenses.
He left Daughter Judah moaning and groaning.
6 He plowed up his old trysting place, trashed his favorite rendezvous.
God wiped out Zion’s memories of feast days and Sabbaths,
angrily sacked king and priest alike.
7 God abandoned his altar, walked away from his holy Temple
and turned the fortifications over to the enemy.
As they cheered in God’s Temple, you’d have thought it was a feast day!
8 God drew up plans to tear down the walls of Daughter Zion.
He assembled his crew, set to work and went at it.
Total demolition! The stones wept!
9 Her city gates, iron bars and all, disappeared in the rubble:
her kings and princes off to exile—no one left to instruct or lead;
her prophets useless—they neither saw nor heard anything from God.
10 The elders of Daughter Zion sit silent on the ground.
They throw dust on their heads, dress in rough penitential burlap—
the young virgins of Jerusalem, their faces creased with the dirt.
11 My eyes are blind with tears, my stomach in a knot.
My insides have turned to jelly over my people’s fate.
Babies and children are fainting all over the place,
12 Calling to their mothers, “I’m hungry! I’m thirsty!”
then fainting like dying soldiers in the streets,
breathing their last in their mothers’ laps.
13 How can I understand your plight, dear Jerusalem?
What can I say to give you comfort, dear Zion?
Who can put you together again? This bust-up is past understanding.
14 Your prophets courted you with sweet talk.
They didn’t face you with your sin so that you could repent.
Their sermons were all wishful thinking, deceptive illusions.
15 Astonished, passersby can’t believe what they see.
They rub their eyes, they shake their heads over Jerusalem.
Is this the city voted “Most Beautiful” and “Best Place to Live”?
16 But now your enemies gape, slack-jawed.
Then they rub their hands in glee: “We’ve got them!
We’ve been waiting for this! Here it is!”
17 God did carry out, item by item, exactly what he said he’d do.
He always said he’d do this. Now he’s done it—torn the place down.
He’s let your enemies walk all over you, declared them world champions!
18 Give out heart-cries to the Master, dear repentant Zion.
Let the tears roll like a river, day and night,
and keep at it—no time-outs. Keep those tears flowing!
19 As each night watch begins, get up and cry out in prayer.
Pour your heart out face-to-face with the Master.
Lift high your hands. Beg for the lives of your children
who are starving to death out on the streets.
20 “Look at us, God. Think it over. Have you ever treated anyone like this?
Should women eat their own babies, the very children they raised?
Should priests and prophets be murdered in the Master’s own Sanctuary?
21 “Boys and old men lie in the gutters of the streets,
my young men and women killed in their prime.
Angry, you killed them in cold blood, cut them down without mercy.
22 “You invited, like friends to a party, men to swoop down in attack
so that on the big day of God’s wrath no one would get away.
The children I loved and reared—gone, gone, gone.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Read: Psalm 34:11–18
Come, children, listen closely;
I’ll give you a lesson in God worship.
12 Who out there has a lust for life?
Can’t wait each day to come upon beauty?
13 Guard your tongue from profanity,
and no more lying through your teeth.
14 Turn your back on sin; do something good.
Embrace peace—don’t let it get away!
15 God keeps an eye on his friends,
his ears pick up every moan and groan.
16 God won’t put up with rebels;
he’ll cull them from the pack.
17 Is anyone crying for help? God is listening,
ready to rescue you.
18 If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there;
if you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath.
INSIGHT:
First Samuel 21:10–15 records the story of David pretending madness to the Philistines in order to escape the pursuit of King Saul, and it was this event to which David addressed Psalm 34. His joyful gratefulness for divine protection can be seen in verses 4–6, and he recommends that the reader also “taste and see that the Lord is good” (v. 8). A wonderful verse of ongoing thanksgiving and worship is verse 5: “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” The Wycliffe Bible Commentary tells us that this psalm is not only for ourselves but for the next generation: “Those addressed as children are again the humble and teachable disciples of any age (vv. 11–22).” God works in our lives at the most difficult times and His gracious lessons are worth passing on to others.
Something’s Wrong
By Jolene Philo
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18
The morning after our son, Allen, was born, the doctor sat down in a chair near the foot of my bed and said, “Something’s wrong.” Our son, so perfect on the outside, had a life-threatening birth defect and needed to be flown to a hospital 700 miles away for immediate surgery.
When the doctor tells you something is wrong with your child, your life changes. Fear of what lies ahead can crush your spirit and you stumble along, desperate for a God who will strengthen you so you can support your child.
The best kind of friend is a praying friend.
Would a loving God allow this? you wonder. Does He care about my child? Is He there? These and other thoughts shook my faith that morning.
Then my husband, Hiram, arrived and heard the news. After the doctor left, Hiram said, “Jolene, let’s pray.” I nodded and he took my hand. “Thank You, Father, for giving Allen to us. He’s Yours, God, not ours. You loved him before we knew him, and he belongs to You. Be with him when we can’t. Amen.”
Hiram has always been a man of few words. He struggles to speak his thoughts and often doesn’t try, knowing that I have enough words to fill any silence. But on a day when my heart was broken, my spirit crushed, and my faith gone, God gave Hiram strength to speak the words I couldn’t say. And clinging to my husband’s hand, in deep silence and through many tears, I sensed that God was very near.
How has God used people to strengthen you when your spirit was crushed? Share your story at Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
The best kind of friend is a praying friend.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Will I Bring Myself Up to This Level?
…perfecting holiness in the fear of God. —2 Corinthians 7:1
“Therefore, having these promises….” I claim God’s promises for my life and look to their fulfillment, and rightly so, but that shows only the human perspective on them. God’s perspective is that through His promises I will come to recognize His claim of ownership on me. For example, do I realize that my “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” or am I condoning some habit in my body which clearly could not withstand the light of God on it? (1 Corinthians 6:19). God formed His Son in me through sanctification, setting me apart from sin and making me holy in His sight (see Galatians 4:19). But I must begin to transform my natural life into spiritual life by obedience to Him. God instructs us even in the smallest details of life. And when He brings you conviction of sin, do not “confer with flesh and blood,” but cleanse yourself from it at once (Galatians 1:16). Keep yourself cleansed in your daily walk.
I must cleanse myself from all filthiness in my flesh and my spirit until both are in harmony with the nature of God. Is the mind of my spirit in perfect agreement with the life of the Son of God in me, or am I mentally rebellious and defiant? Am I allowing the mind of Christ to be formed in me? (see Philippians 2:5). Christ never spoke of His right to Himself, but always maintained an inner vigilance to submit His spirit continually to His Father. I also have the responsibility to keep my spirit in agreement with His Spirit. And when I do, Jesus gradually lifts me up to the level where He lived— a level of perfect submission to His Father’s will— where I pay no attention to anything else. Am I perfecting this kind of holiness in the fear of God? Is God having His way with me, and are people beginning to see God in my life more and more?
Be serious in your commitment to God and gladly leave everything else alone. Literally put God first in your life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word. Disciples Indeed, 386 R
Friday, March 17, 2017
Lamentations 1, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: HE WHO HAS EARS LET HIM HEAR
It’s not that we don’t have ears…it’s that we don’t use them! Scripture has always place a premium on hearing God’s voice. The great command from God through Moses began with the words, “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4 KJV). Proverbs 8:34 says, “Happy are those who listen to me.”
Jesus urges us to listen like sheep. “The sheep recognize his voice. . .they follow because they’re familiar with the shepherd’s voice” (John 10:3-5). Each of the seven churches in Revelation is addressed in the same manner: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7; 2:11; 2:17; 2:29; 3:6; 3:13; 3:22).
Our ears, unlike our eyes, do not have lids. They are intended to remain open! How long has it been since you had your hearing checked? When God sows seed your way, what is the result? Remember,“Faith comes from hearing…” (Romans 10:17).
From Just Like Jesus
Lamentations 1
Worthless, Cheap, Abject!
Oh, oh, oh . . .
How empty the city, once teeming with people.
A widow, this city, once in the front rank of nations,
once queen of the ball, she’s now a drudge in the kitchen.
2 She cries herself to sleep each night, tears soaking her pillow.
No one’s left among her lovers to sit and hold her hand.
Her friends have all dumped her.
3 After years of pain and hard labor, Judah has gone into exile.
She camps out among the nations, never feels at home.
Hunted by all, she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place.
4 Zion’s roads weep, empty of pilgrims headed to the feasts.
All her city gates are deserted, her priests in despair.
Her virgins are sad. How bitter her fate.
5 Her enemies have become her masters. Her foes are living it up
because God laid her low, punishing her repeated rebellions.
Her children, prisoners of the enemy, trudge into exile.
6 All beauty has drained from Daughter Zion’s face.
Her princes are like deer famished for food,
chased to exhaustion by hunters.
7 Jerusalem remembers the day she lost everything,
when her people fell into enemy hands, and not a soul there to help.
Enemies looked on and laughed, laughed at her helpless silence.
8 Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world, is an outcast.
All who admired her despise her now that they see beneath the surface.
Miserable, she groans and turns away in shame.
9 She played fast and loose with life, she never considered tomorrow,
and now she’s crashed royally, with no one to hold her hand:
“Look at my pain, O God! And how the enemy cruelly struts.”
10 The enemy reached out to take all her favorite things. She watched
as pagans barged into her Sanctuary, those very people for whom
you posted orders: keep out: this assembly off-limits.
11 All the people groaned, so desperate for food, so desperate to stay alive
that they bartered their favorite things for a bit of breakfast:
“O God, look at me! Worthless, cheap, abject!
12 “And you passersby, look at me! Have you ever seen anything like this?
Ever seen pain like my pain, seen what he did to me,
what God did to me in his rage?
13 “He struck me with lightning, skewered me from head to foot,
then he set traps all around so I could hardly move.
He left me with nothing—left me sick, and sick of living.
14 “He wove my sins into a rope
and harnessed me to captivity’s yoke.
I’m goaded by cruel taskmasters.
15 “The Master piled up my best soldiers in a heap,
then called in thugs to break their fine young necks.
The Master crushed the life out of fair virgin Judah.
16 “For all this I weep, weep buckets of tears,
and not a soul within miles around cares for my soul.
My children are wasted, my enemy got his way.”
17 Zion reached out for help, but no one helped.
God ordered Jacob’s enemies to surround him,
and now no one wants anything to do with Jerusalem.
18 “God has right on his side. I’m the one who did wrong.
Listen everybody! Look at what I’m going through!
My fair young women, my fine young men, all herded into exile!
19 “I called to my friends; they betrayed me.
My priests and my leaders only looked after themselves,
trying but failing to save their own skins.
20 “O God, look at the trouble I’m in! My stomach in knots,
my heart wrecked by a life of rebellion.
Massacres in the streets, starvation in the houses.
21 “Oh, listen to my groans. No one listens, no one cares.
When my enemies heard of the trouble you gave me, they cheered.
Bring on Judgment Day! Let them get what I got!
22 “Take a good look at their evil ways and give it to them!
Give them what you gave me for my sins.
Groaning in pain, body and soul, I’ve had all I can take.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, March 17, 2017
Read: Genesis 13:1–18
1-2 So Abram left Egypt and went back to the Negev, he and his wife and everything he owned, and Lot still with him. By now Abram was very rich, loaded with cattle and silver and gold.
3-4 He moved on from the Negev, camping along the way, to Bethel, the place he had first set up his tent between Bethel and Ai and built his first altar. Abram prayed there to God.
5-7 Lot, who was traveling with Abram, was also rich in sheep and cattle and tents. But the land couldn’t support both of them; they had too many possessions. They couldn’t both live there—quarrels broke out between Abram’s shepherds and Lot’s shepherds. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living on the land at the time.
8-9 Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have fighting between us, between your shepherds and my shepherds. After all, we’re family. Look around. Isn’t there plenty of land out there? Let’s separate. If you go left, I’ll go right; if you go right, I’ll go left.”
10-11 Lot looked. He saw the whole plain of the Jordan spread out, well watered (this was before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah), like God’s garden, like Egypt, and stretching all the way to Zoar. Lot took the whole plain of the Jordan. Lot set out to the east.
11-12 That’s how they came to part company, uncle and nephew. Abram settled in Canaan; Lot settled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent near Sodom.
13 The people of Sodom were evil—flagrant sinners against God.
14-17 After Lot separated from him, God said to Abram, “Open your eyes, look around. Look north, south, east, and west. Everything you see, the whole land spread out before you, I will give to you and your children forever. I’ll make your descendants like dust—counting your descendants will be as impossible as counting the dust of the Earth. So—on your feet, get moving! Walk through the country, its length and breadth; I’m giving it all to you.”
18 Abram moved his tent. He went and settled by the Oaks of Mamre in Hebron. There he built an altar to God.
After You
By David McCasland
Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left. Genesis 13:9
In some cultures a younger person is expected to permit his elder to enter a room first. In others, the most important or highest ranking individual enters first. No matter what our traditions, there are times when we find it difficult to allow someone to choose first on important matters, especially when that privilege rightfully belongs to us.
Abram (later called Abraham) and his nephew Lot had so many flocks, herds, and tents that the land could not support both of them as they traveled together. To avoid conflict, Abram suggested they part company and generously gave Lot first choice of the land. His nephew took the fertile Jordan Valley, leaving Abram with the less desirable land.
God always gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him. —Jim Elliot
Abram did not insist on his rights as the elder in this situation but trusted his future to God. “So Abram said to Lot, ‘Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me . . . . Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left’ ” (Gen. 13:8–9). Lot’s choice eventually led to dire consequences for his entire family (see Gen. 19).
Today, as we face choices of many kinds, we can trust our Father to guide us in His way. He has promised to care for us. He will always give us what we need.
Father, Your unfailing love and faithfulness guide us in every choice we make. May our lives speak well of You and honor You today.
God always gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him. Jim Elliot
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, March 17, 2017
The Servant’s Primary Goal
We make it our aim…to be well pleasing to Him. —2 Corinthians 5:9
“We make it our aim….” It requires a conscious decision and effort to keep our primary goal constantly in front of us. It means holding ourselves to the highest priority year in and year out; not making our first priority to win souls, or to establish churches, or to have revivals, but seeking only “to be well pleasing to Him.” It is not a lack of spiritual experience that leads to failure, but a lack of working to keep our eyes focused and on the right goal. At least once a week examine yourself before God to see if your life is measuring up to the standard He has for you. Paul was like a musician who gives no thought to audience approval, if he can only catch a look of approval from his Conductor.
Any goal we have that diverts us even to the slightest degree from the central goal of being “approved to God” (2 Timothy 2:15) may result in our rejection from further service for Him. When you discern where the goal leads, you will understand why it is so necessary to keep “looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2). Paul spoke of the importance of controlling his own body so that it would not take him in the wrong direction. He said, “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest…I myself should become disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27).
I must learn to relate everything to the primary goal, maintaining it without interruption. My worth to God publicly is measured by what I really am in my private life. Is my primary goal in life to please Him and to be acceptable to Him, or is it something less, no matter how lofty it may sound?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them. Workmen of God, 1341 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, March 17, 2017
Family Infections - #7875
I don't get sick very often, but that one year I did pick up the special flu bug of the year. Which, of course, meant my wife soon followed suit. We believed in sharing everything. Then our friend, Janice, got a similar flu – sick for four or five days. Then her husband got it – sick for four or five days. Then their lucky daughter took her turn – sick for four or five days. Their teenage son was the only one who didn't get it. His mom said he was the one walking around the house with a can of Lysol all the time! You can almost count on it – when one person is infected with a germ, it's probably going to end up infecting the people closest to them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Family Infections."
Every family has them – those germs that get passed around the family. And they're not all the kind you go to a doctor for. The most virulent, most damaging family infections of all come from moral germs, spiritual germs, some of which have infected generations or are in the process right now of being passed on to yet another generation.
One writer tells about his friend, George, and the angry explosions he had with his wife – angry words which unfortunately his little son could sometimes hear down the hall in his room. There was one particularly bitter argument where George yelled to his wife, "I don't need you. I don't want you, and I can't stand you!" A few weeks later, George was awakened by sounds down the hall from his bedroom. They were coming from his little boy's room. George tiptoed down there and he stood and listened in horror as his son was angrily telling a stuffed animal of his, "I don't need you. I don't want you. I can't stand you!"
That's how the family diseases are transmitted from one generation to the next. There are those weaknesses that scarred our parents' lives, probably their parents' lives, and who knows how many other generations! Tragically, we tend to carry that baggage into our lives and then infect another generation with them. We seem to be unable to stop the things in us that hurt most the people we love most: that anger, that selfishness, the criticism, the abuse, the addictions, the negativity.
But there's wonderful news about our family infections in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:18-19. Listen. God says, "You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, with the precious blood of Christ." Translation: there is a connection between my hurtful weakness and what Jesus Christ did when He died on the cross. If I open myself up to the love and the power of Jesus Christ, the disease can stop in this generation! I can be in the Bible's word "redeemed" from it.
The central disease we all have that poisons our closest relationships is the disease of me – a disease the Bible calls sin. That's just a life you run instead of God running it, and it can only be conquered by the One who died to pay the death penalty for all our sinning, and that's Jesus. When you put your total trust in Him to be your "Savior" from all your sin, He enters your life. He unleashes His power which raised Him from the dead to start changing you from the inside out.
The Bible says, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has gone. A new life has begun." If you're ready to finally be forgiven, if you're ready to finally be free, then you're ready to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ.
What you do is you say to Him, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hope on you because you died for me. I am yours beginning today." That's a new beginning for you and for your family. I'd love to share with you more how you can be sure you belong to Him and what this relationship can do for you at our website. And I want to encourage you to go there today – ANewStory.com.
The spiritual infections in your family; haven't they done enough damage? And the Man who died for you is willing to begin His miracle healing of your past, your present, and your future. Think what it could mean to you and to those you love, "It stops here – in this generation! Because Jesus is running things now!"
It’s not that we don’t have ears…it’s that we don’t use them! Scripture has always place a premium on hearing God’s voice. The great command from God through Moses began with the words, “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4 KJV). Proverbs 8:34 says, “Happy are those who listen to me.”
Jesus urges us to listen like sheep. “The sheep recognize his voice. . .they follow because they’re familiar with the shepherd’s voice” (John 10:3-5). Each of the seven churches in Revelation is addressed in the same manner: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7; 2:11; 2:17; 2:29; 3:6; 3:13; 3:22).
Our ears, unlike our eyes, do not have lids. They are intended to remain open! How long has it been since you had your hearing checked? When God sows seed your way, what is the result? Remember,“Faith comes from hearing…” (Romans 10:17).
From Just Like Jesus
Lamentations 1
Worthless, Cheap, Abject!
Oh, oh, oh . . .
How empty the city, once teeming with people.
A widow, this city, once in the front rank of nations,
once queen of the ball, she’s now a drudge in the kitchen.
2 She cries herself to sleep each night, tears soaking her pillow.
No one’s left among her lovers to sit and hold her hand.
Her friends have all dumped her.
3 After years of pain and hard labor, Judah has gone into exile.
She camps out among the nations, never feels at home.
Hunted by all, she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place.
4 Zion’s roads weep, empty of pilgrims headed to the feasts.
All her city gates are deserted, her priests in despair.
Her virgins are sad. How bitter her fate.
5 Her enemies have become her masters. Her foes are living it up
because God laid her low, punishing her repeated rebellions.
Her children, prisoners of the enemy, trudge into exile.
6 All beauty has drained from Daughter Zion’s face.
Her princes are like deer famished for food,
chased to exhaustion by hunters.
7 Jerusalem remembers the day she lost everything,
when her people fell into enemy hands, and not a soul there to help.
Enemies looked on and laughed, laughed at her helpless silence.
8 Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world, is an outcast.
All who admired her despise her now that they see beneath the surface.
Miserable, she groans and turns away in shame.
9 She played fast and loose with life, she never considered tomorrow,
and now she’s crashed royally, with no one to hold her hand:
“Look at my pain, O God! And how the enemy cruelly struts.”
10 The enemy reached out to take all her favorite things. She watched
as pagans barged into her Sanctuary, those very people for whom
you posted orders: keep out: this assembly off-limits.
11 All the people groaned, so desperate for food, so desperate to stay alive
that they bartered their favorite things for a bit of breakfast:
“O God, look at me! Worthless, cheap, abject!
12 “And you passersby, look at me! Have you ever seen anything like this?
Ever seen pain like my pain, seen what he did to me,
what God did to me in his rage?
13 “He struck me with lightning, skewered me from head to foot,
then he set traps all around so I could hardly move.
He left me with nothing—left me sick, and sick of living.
14 “He wove my sins into a rope
and harnessed me to captivity’s yoke.
I’m goaded by cruel taskmasters.
15 “The Master piled up my best soldiers in a heap,
then called in thugs to break their fine young necks.
The Master crushed the life out of fair virgin Judah.
16 “For all this I weep, weep buckets of tears,
and not a soul within miles around cares for my soul.
My children are wasted, my enemy got his way.”
17 Zion reached out for help, but no one helped.
God ordered Jacob’s enemies to surround him,
and now no one wants anything to do with Jerusalem.
18 “God has right on his side. I’m the one who did wrong.
Listen everybody! Look at what I’m going through!
My fair young women, my fine young men, all herded into exile!
19 “I called to my friends; they betrayed me.
My priests and my leaders only looked after themselves,
trying but failing to save their own skins.
20 “O God, look at the trouble I’m in! My stomach in knots,
my heart wrecked by a life of rebellion.
Massacres in the streets, starvation in the houses.
21 “Oh, listen to my groans. No one listens, no one cares.
When my enemies heard of the trouble you gave me, they cheered.
Bring on Judgment Day! Let them get what I got!
22 “Take a good look at their evil ways and give it to them!
Give them what you gave me for my sins.
Groaning in pain, body and soul, I’ve had all I can take.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, March 17, 2017
Read: Genesis 13:1–18
1-2 So Abram left Egypt and went back to the Negev, he and his wife and everything he owned, and Lot still with him. By now Abram was very rich, loaded with cattle and silver and gold.
3-4 He moved on from the Negev, camping along the way, to Bethel, the place he had first set up his tent between Bethel and Ai and built his first altar. Abram prayed there to God.
5-7 Lot, who was traveling with Abram, was also rich in sheep and cattle and tents. But the land couldn’t support both of them; they had too many possessions. They couldn’t both live there—quarrels broke out between Abram’s shepherds and Lot’s shepherds. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living on the land at the time.
8-9 Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have fighting between us, between your shepherds and my shepherds. After all, we’re family. Look around. Isn’t there plenty of land out there? Let’s separate. If you go left, I’ll go right; if you go right, I’ll go left.”
10-11 Lot looked. He saw the whole plain of the Jordan spread out, well watered (this was before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah), like God’s garden, like Egypt, and stretching all the way to Zoar. Lot took the whole plain of the Jordan. Lot set out to the east.
11-12 That’s how they came to part company, uncle and nephew. Abram settled in Canaan; Lot settled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent near Sodom.
13 The people of Sodom were evil—flagrant sinners against God.
14-17 After Lot separated from him, God said to Abram, “Open your eyes, look around. Look north, south, east, and west. Everything you see, the whole land spread out before you, I will give to you and your children forever. I’ll make your descendants like dust—counting your descendants will be as impossible as counting the dust of the Earth. So—on your feet, get moving! Walk through the country, its length and breadth; I’m giving it all to you.”
18 Abram moved his tent. He went and settled by the Oaks of Mamre in Hebron. There he built an altar to God.
After You
By David McCasland
Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left. Genesis 13:9
In some cultures a younger person is expected to permit his elder to enter a room first. In others, the most important or highest ranking individual enters first. No matter what our traditions, there are times when we find it difficult to allow someone to choose first on important matters, especially when that privilege rightfully belongs to us.
Abram (later called Abraham) and his nephew Lot had so many flocks, herds, and tents that the land could not support both of them as they traveled together. To avoid conflict, Abram suggested they part company and generously gave Lot first choice of the land. His nephew took the fertile Jordan Valley, leaving Abram with the less desirable land.
God always gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him. —Jim Elliot
Abram did not insist on his rights as the elder in this situation but trusted his future to God. “So Abram said to Lot, ‘Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me . . . . Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left’ ” (Gen. 13:8–9). Lot’s choice eventually led to dire consequences for his entire family (see Gen. 19).
Today, as we face choices of many kinds, we can trust our Father to guide us in His way. He has promised to care for us. He will always give us what we need.
Father, Your unfailing love and faithfulness guide us in every choice we make. May our lives speak well of You and honor You today.
God always gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him. Jim Elliot
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, March 17, 2017
The Servant’s Primary Goal
We make it our aim…to be well pleasing to Him. —2 Corinthians 5:9
“We make it our aim….” It requires a conscious decision and effort to keep our primary goal constantly in front of us. It means holding ourselves to the highest priority year in and year out; not making our first priority to win souls, or to establish churches, or to have revivals, but seeking only “to be well pleasing to Him.” It is not a lack of spiritual experience that leads to failure, but a lack of working to keep our eyes focused and on the right goal. At least once a week examine yourself before God to see if your life is measuring up to the standard He has for you. Paul was like a musician who gives no thought to audience approval, if he can only catch a look of approval from his Conductor.
Any goal we have that diverts us even to the slightest degree from the central goal of being “approved to God” (2 Timothy 2:15) may result in our rejection from further service for Him. When you discern where the goal leads, you will understand why it is so necessary to keep “looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2). Paul spoke of the importance of controlling his own body so that it would not take him in the wrong direction. He said, “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest…I myself should become disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27).
I must learn to relate everything to the primary goal, maintaining it without interruption. My worth to God publicly is measured by what I really am in my private life. Is my primary goal in life to please Him and to be acceptable to Him, or is it something less, no matter how lofty it may sound?
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them. Workmen of God, 1341 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, March 17, 2017
Family Infections - #7875
I don't get sick very often, but that one year I did pick up the special flu bug of the year. Which, of course, meant my wife soon followed suit. We believed in sharing everything. Then our friend, Janice, got a similar flu – sick for four or five days. Then her husband got it – sick for four or five days. Then their lucky daughter took her turn – sick for four or five days. Their teenage son was the only one who didn't get it. His mom said he was the one walking around the house with a can of Lysol all the time! You can almost count on it – when one person is infected with a germ, it's probably going to end up infecting the people closest to them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Family Infections."
Every family has them – those germs that get passed around the family. And they're not all the kind you go to a doctor for. The most virulent, most damaging family infections of all come from moral germs, spiritual germs, some of which have infected generations or are in the process right now of being passed on to yet another generation.
One writer tells about his friend, George, and the angry explosions he had with his wife – angry words which unfortunately his little son could sometimes hear down the hall in his room. There was one particularly bitter argument where George yelled to his wife, "I don't need you. I don't want you, and I can't stand you!" A few weeks later, George was awakened by sounds down the hall from his bedroom. They were coming from his little boy's room. George tiptoed down there and he stood and listened in horror as his son was angrily telling a stuffed animal of his, "I don't need you. I don't want you. I can't stand you!"
That's how the family diseases are transmitted from one generation to the next. There are those weaknesses that scarred our parents' lives, probably their parents' lives, and who knows how many other generations! Tragically, we tend to carry that baggage into our lives and then infect another generation with them. We seem to be unable to stop the things in us that hurt most the people we love most: that anger, that selfishness, the criticism, the abuse, the addictions, the negativity.
But there's wonderful news about our family infections in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:18-19. Listen. God says, "You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, with the precious blood of Christ." Translation: there is a connection between my hurtful weakness and what Jesus Christ did when He died on the cross. If I open myself up to the love and the power of Jesus Christ, the disease can stop in this generation! I can be in the Bible's word "redeemed" from it.
The central disease we all have that poisons our closest relationships is the disease of me – a disease the Bible calls sin. That's just a life you run instead of God running it, and it can only be conquered by the One who died to pay the death penalty for all our sinning, and that's Jesus. When you put your total trust in Him to be your "Savior" from all your sin, He enters your life. He unleashes His power which raised Him from the dead to start changing you from the inside out.
The Bible says, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has gone. A new life has begun." If you're ready to finally be forgiven, if you're ready to finally be free, then you're ready to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ.
What you do is you say to Him, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hope on you because you died for me. I am yours beginning today." That's a new beginning for you and for your family. I'd love to share with you more how you can be sure you belong to Him and what this relationship can do for you at our website. And I want to encourage you to go there today – ANewStory.com.
The spiritual infections in your family; haven't they done enough damage? And the Man who died for you is willing to begin His miracle healing of your past, your present, and your future. Think what it could mean to you and to those you love, "It stops here – in this generation! Because Jesus is running things now!"
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Hebrews 11:20-40, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: THE POWER OF A GODLY TOUCH
Oh the power of a godly touch. Have you known it? The doctor who treated you, or the teacher who dried your tears? Haven’t we known the power of a godly touch? Can’t we offer the same? Perhaps you already do. You can use your hands to pray over the sick and minister to the weak. If you aren’t touching them personally, your hands are writing notes, making calls, or baking pies. And you have learned the power of a godly touch.
But others of us forget how significant one touch can be. Or we fear saying the wrong thing, so we say nothing at all. Aren’t we glad Jesus didn’t make the same mistake? Keep in mind the perspective of the lepers in the world. They aren’t picky or finicky. They’re just lonely—yearning for a godly touch. Jesus touched the untouchables of the world. Will you do the same?
From Just Like Jesus
Hebrews 11:20-40
By an act of faith, Isaac reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau.
21 By an act of faith, Jacob on his deathbed blessed each of Joseph’s sons in turn, blessing them with God’s blessing, not his own—as he bowed worshipfully upon his staff.
22 By an act of faith, Joseph, while dying, prophesied the exodus of Israel, and made arrangements for his own burial.
23 By an act of faith, Moses’ parents hid him away for three months after his birth. They saw the child’s beauty, and they braved the king’s decree.
24-28 By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage. He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going. By an act of faith, he kept the Passover Feast and sprinkled Passover blood on each house so that the destroyer of the firstborn wouldn’t touch them.
29 By an act of faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians tried it and drowned.
30 By faith, the Israelites marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days, and the walls fell flat.
31 By an act of faith, Rahab, the Jericho harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God.
32-38 I could go on and on, but I’ve run out of time. There are so many more—Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. . . . Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves. They were protected from lions, fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies. Women received their loved ones back from the dead. There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection. Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons. We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless—the world didn’t deserve them!—making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.
39-40 Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Read: Isaiah 40:9–17
Climb a high mountain, Zion.
You’re the preacher of good news.
Raise your voice. Make it good and loud, Jerusalem.
You’re the preacher of good news.
Speak loud and clear. Don’t be timid!
Tell the cities of Judah,
“Look! Your God!”
Look at him! God, the Master, comes in power,
ready to go into action.
He is going to pay back his enemies
and reward those who have loved him.
Like a shepherd, he will care for his flock,
gathering the lambs in his arms,
Hugging them as he carries them,
leading the nursing ewes to good pasture.
The Creator of All You Can See or Imagine
12-17 Who has scooped up the ocean
in his two hands,
or measured the sky between his thumb and little finger,
Who has put all the earth’s dirt in one of his baskets,
weighed each mountain and hill?
Who could ever have told God what to do
or taught him his business?
What expert would he have gone to for advice,
what school would he attend to learn justice?
What god do you suppose might have taught him what he knows,
showed him how things work?
Why, the nations are but a drop in a bucket,
a mere smudge on a window.
Watch him sweep up the islands
like so much dust off the floor!
There aren’t enough trees in Lebanon
nor enough animals in those vast forests
to furnish adequate fuel and offerings for his worship.
All the nations add up to simply nothing before him—
less than nothing is more like it. A minus.
INSIGHT:
The truth of God’s intimate care for us is grounded in God’s self-revelation, the Bible. In the Discovery Series booklet How Can I Know God through His Book? David Egner writes, “Although the Bible was written by men like Moses and Luke and Paul, it is the self-revelation of God. He is the Author behind the authors. And what He says reflects who He is. To know God we have to read His book; . . . to see Him on every page, above every event, in every place and circumstance, and overseeing the choice of every person who makes his way into the sacred pages of biblical history.”
Spilling Through My Fingers
By Kirsten Holmberg
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand . . . ? Isaiah 40:12
After I clumsily knocked over my glass on the restaurant counter, the spilled beverage began to cascade over the edge and onto the floor. Out of sheer embarrassment, I tried to catch the waterfall with cupped hands. My efforts were largely unsuccessful; most of my beverage rushed through my fingers. In the end, my upturned palms held little more than a meager tablespoon each, while my feet stood in puddles.
My life feels similar on many days. I find myself scrambling to solve problems, oversee details, and control circumstances. No matter how hard I try, my feeble hands are incapable of managing all the pieces and parts. Something invariably slips through my fingers and pools on the floor at my feet, leaving me feeling overwhelmed. No amount of contorting my hands or squeezing my fingers more tightly together makes me able to handle it all.
Help me, Lord, to trust my needs and concerns into Your perfect care.
Yet God can. Isaiah tells us that God can measure the globe’s waters—all the oceans and rivers and rain—in the hollow of His hands (40:12). Only His hands are large enough to hold them all. We needn’t try to hold more than the tablespoon He’s designed our hands to carry. When we feel overwhelmed, we can entrust our cares and concerns into His capable hands.
Help me, Lord, to stop trying to hold everything in my hands, but instead to trust my needs and concerns into Your perfect care.
Our Daily Bread welcomes writer Kirsten Holmberg! Meet Kirsten and all our authors at odb.org/all-authors.
We can trust God to handle the things that overwhelm us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, March 16, 2017
The Master Will Judge
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ… —2 Corinthians 5:10
Paul says that we must all, preachers and other people alike, “appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” But if you will learn here and now to live under the scrutiny of Christ’s pure light, your final judgment will bring you only delight in seeing the work God has done in you. Live constantly reminding yourself of the judgment seat of Christ, and walk in the knowledge of the holiness He has given you. Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One carnal judgment of another person only serves the purposes of hell in you. Bring it immediately into the light and confess, “Oh, Lord, I have been guilty there.” If you don’t, your heart will become hardened through and through. One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It is not only God who punishes for sin, but sin establishes itself in the sinner and takes its toll. No struggling or praying will enable you to stop doing certain things, and the penalty of sin is that you gradually get used to it, until you finally come to the place where you no longer even realize that it is sin. No power, except the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, can change or prevent the inherent consequences of sin.
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light…” (1 John 1:7). For many of us, walking in the light means walking according to the standard we have set up for another person. The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.
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
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Leaving Love Behind - #7874
My wife was just a little girl when she first met Bob Henley. He was one of those older men you look up at and look up to at church. She had a visit to her childhood church some years ago, and she asked about Mr. Henley. They said, "He's 92 years old - and that he would be there the next week." My wife made it a point to attend church there the following week and to reconnect with this memory from her past. As they were talking, Mr. Henley said, "You probably don't remember this (and she didn't), but one day after church you came up to me and you grabbed this finger. You were only about this high (about the altitude of a 4-year old). But you grabbed my finger and you said, ‘Mr. Henley, I love you.'" Now why would he remember that little¬ childlike expression into the 9th decade of his life? He said, "You don't know this, but I was raised an orphan. That morning was the first time in my life anyone ever said 'I love you' to me.'" Wow!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Leaving Love Behind."
All those years without anyone ever telling him they loved him. And the power of someone finally letting him know he was loved.
We're surrounded by people who don't know they're loved...or who have not been told nearly enough. It's a lonely world of self-focused people. Consequently, you can almost assume that some of the people you know are love-starved. And a lot of the mistakes they are making is because they're looking for love in all the wrong places. Can you see that need behind their deeds?
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians 5:1. It becomes a summons to action for us in our love-starved world. Here's what it says, "Be imitators· of God, therefore, as dearly loved children...and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Did you get that..."live a life of love"? Here that love is illustrated with the love of Jesus for us; love that is willing to "give yourself up"...to sacrifice; to go out of your way to put someone else first.
I wonder how much of an answer you are to the deep love deficit that people around you are feeling. It isn't enough that you love them. You have to let them know you love them. A lot of children aren't feeling secure in their parents' love, not because mom and dad don't love them, but because they don't express their love in ways that the child can feel.
Like that man at Karen's church, people need to be told they're loved. They need someone who makes them feel important by just patiently listening to them. You say "I love you" when you show up at the funeral, at the hospital, when you celebrate their special moments with them. You say, "I love you" when you drop what you're doing to be with that person. You say "I love you" when you hang in there with them when they're aggravating, frustrating, obnoxious, unlovable. When they're the least lovable, they need your love the most.
For some of us, this expressive love doesn't come naturally because we were raised in an undemonstrative family...we've been conditioned to not let our feelings show. But that emotional paralysis cripples you and it deprives the people around you of knowing how you care for them. God's in the business of liberating people emotionally who say, "Lord please unleash Your love... Your love through me."
It's important to look around the circle of people in your life and ask, "Does he...does she feel loved by me?" We're called by God to live a life of love. For, as my wife was reminded by a man in his 90s, your simple, honest expression of love may be one of the first that person has had in a long time, and it is something they will never forget.
Oh the power of a godly touch. Have you known it? The doctor who treated you, or the teacher who dried your tears? Haven’t we known the power of a godly touch? Can’t we offer the same? Perhaps you already do. You can use your hands to pray over the sick and minister to the weak. If you aren’t touching them personally, your hands are writing notes, making calls, or baking pies. And you have learned the power of a godly touch.
But others of us forget how significant one touch can be. Or we fear saying the wrong thing, so we say nothing at all. Aren’t we glad Jesus didn’t make the same mistake? Keep in mind the perspective of the lepers in the world. They aren’t picky or finicky. They’re just lonely—yearning for a godly touch. Jesus touched the untouchables of the world. Will you do the same?
From Just Like Jesus
Hebrews 11:20-40
By an act of faith, Isaac reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau.
21 By an act of faith, Jacob on his deathbed blessed each of Joseph’s sons in turn, blessing them with God’s blessing, not his own—as he bowed worshipfully upon his staff.
22 By an act of faith, Joseph, while dying, prophesied the exodus of Israel, and made arrangements for his own burial.
23 By an act of faith, Moses’ parents hid him away for three months after his birth. They saw the child’s beauty, and they braved the king’s decree.
24-28 By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage. He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going. By an act of faith, he kept the Passover Feast and sprinkled Passover blood on each house so that the destroyer of the firstborn wouldn’t touch them.
29 By an act of faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians tried it and drowned.
30 By faith, the Israelites marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days, and the walls fell flat.
31 By an act of faith, Rahab, the Jericho harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God.
32-38 I could go on and on, but I’ve run out of time. There are so many more—Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. . . . Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves. They were protected from lions, fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies. Women received their loved ones back from the dead. There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection. Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons. We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless—the world didn’t deserve them!—making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.
39-40 Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Read: Isaiah 40:9–17
Climb a high mountain, Zion.
You’re the preacher of good news.
Raise your voice. Make it good and loud, Jerusalem.
You’re the preacher of good news.
Speak loud and clear. Don’t be timid!
Tell the cities of Judah,
“Look! Your God!”
Look at him! God, the Master, comes in power,
ready to go into action.
He is going to pay back his enemies
and reward those who have loved him.
Like a shepherd, he will care for his flock,
gathering the lambs in his arms,
Hugging them as he carries them,
leading the nursing ewes to good pasture.
The Creator of All You Can See or Imagine
12-17 Who has scooped up the ocean
in his two hands,
or measured the sky between his thumb and little finger,
Who has put all the earth’s dirt in one of his baskets,
weighed each mountain and hill?
Who could ever have told God what to do
or taught him his business?
What expert would he have gone to for advice,
what school would he attend to learn justice?
What god do you suppose might have taught him what he knows,
showed him how things work?
Why, the nations are but a drop in a bucket,
a mere smudge on a window.
Watch him sweep up the islands
like so much dust off the floor!
There aren’t enough trees in Lebanon
nor enough animals in those vast forests
to furnish adequate fuel and offerings for his worship.
All the nations add up to simply nothing before him—
less than nothing is more like it. A minus.
INSIGHT:
The truth of God’s intimate care for us is grounded in God’s self-revelation, the Bible. In the Discovery Series booklet How Can I Know God through His Book? David Egner writes, “Although the Bible was written by men like Moses and Luke and Paul, it is the self-revelation of God. He is the Author behind the authors. And what He says reflects who He is. To know God we have to read His book; . . . to see Him on every page, above every event, in every place and circumstance, and overseeing the choice of every person who makes his way into the sacred pages of biblical history.”
Spilling Through My Fingers
By Kirsten Holmberg
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand . . . ? Isaiah 40:12
After I clumsily knocked over my glass on the restaurant counter, the spilled beverage began to cascade over the edge and onto the floor. Out of sheer embarrassment, I tried to catch the waterfall with cupped hands. My efforts were largely unsuccessful; most of my beverage rushed through my fingers. In the end, my upturned palms held little more than a meager tablespoon each, while my feet stood in puddles.
My life feels similar on many days. I find myself scrambling to solve problems, oversee details, and control circumstances. No matter how hard I try, my feeble hands are incapable of managing all the pieces and parts. Something invariably slips through my fingers and pools on the floor at my feet, leaving me feeling overwhelmed. No amount of contorting my hands or squeezing my fingers more tightly together makes me able to handle it all.
Help me, Lord, to trust my needs and concerns into Your perfect care.
Yet God can. Isaiah tells us that God can measure the globe’s waters—all the oceans and rivers and rain—in the hollow of His hands (40:12). Only His hands are large enough to hold them all. We needn’t try to hold more than the tablespoon He’s designed our hands to carry. When we feel overwhelmed, we can entrust our cares and concerns into His capable hands.
Help me, Lord, to stop trying to hold everything in my hands, but instead to trust my needs and concerns into Your perfect care.
Our Daily Bread welcomes writer Kirsten Holmberg! Meet Kirsten and all our authors at odb.org/all-authors.
We can trust God to handle the things that overwhelm us.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, March 16, 2017
The Master Will Judge
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ… —2 Corinthians 5:10
Paul says that we must all, preachers and other people alike, “appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” But if you will learn here and now to live under the scrutiny of Christ’s pure light, your final judgment will bring you only delight in seeing the work God has done in you. Live constantly reminding yourself of the judgment seat of Christ, and walk in the knowledge of the holiness He has given you. Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. One carnal judgment of another person only serves the purposes of hell in you. Bring it immediately into the light and confess, “Oh, Lord, I have been guilty there.” If you don’t, your heart will become hardened through and through. One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It is not only God who punishes for sin, but sin establishes itself in the sinner and takes its toll. No struggling or praying will enable you to stop doing certain things, and the penalty of sin is that you gradually get used to it, until you finally come to the place where you no longer even realize that it is sin. No power, except the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, can change or prevent the inherent consequences of sin.
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light…” (1 John 1:7). For many of us, walking in the light means walking according to the standard we have set up for another person. The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.
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
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Leaving Love Behind - #7874
My wife was just a little girl when she first met Bob Henley. He was one of those older men you look up at and look up to at church. She had a visit to her childhood church some years ago, and she asked about Mr. Henley. They said, "He's 92 years old - and that he would be there the next week." My wife made it a point to attend church there the following week and to reconnect with this memory from her past. As they were talking, Mr. Henley said, "You probably don't remember this (and she didn't), but one day after church you came up to me and you grabbed this finger. You were only about this high (about the altitude of a 4-year old). But you grabbed my finger and you said, ‘Mr. Henley, I love you.'" Now why would he remember that little¬ childlike expression into the 9th decade of his life? He said, "You don't know this, but I was raised an orphan. That morning was the first time in my life anyone ever said 'I love you' to me.'" Wow!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Leaving Love Behind."
All those years without anyone ever telling him they loved him. And the power of someone finally letting him know he was loved.
We're surrounded by people who don't know they're loved...or who have not been told nearly enough. It's a lonely world of self-focused people. Consequently, you can almost assume that some of the people you know are love-starved. And a lot of the mistakes they are making is because they're looking for love in all the wrong places. Can you see that need behind their deeds?
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians 5:1. It becomes a summons to action for us in our love-starved world. Here's what it says, "Be imitators· of God, therefore, as dearly loved children...and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Did you get that..."live a life of love"? Here that love is illustrated with the love of Jesus for us; love that is willing to "give yourself up"...to sacrifice; to go out of your way to put someone else first.
I wonder how much of an answer you are to the deep love deficit that people around you are feeling. It isn't enough that you love them. You have to let them know you love them. A lot of children aren't feeling secure in their parents' love, not because mom and dad don't love them, but because they don't express their love in ways that the child can feel.
Like that man at Karen's church, people need to be told they're loved. They need someone who makes them feel important by just patiently listening to them. You say "I love you" when you show up at the funeral, at the hospital, when you celebrate their special moments with them. You say, "I love you" when you drop what you're doing to be with that person. You say "I love you" when you hang in there with them when they're aggravating, frustrating, obnoxious, unlovable. When they're the least lovable, they need your love the most.
For some of us, this expressive love doesn't come naturally because we were raised in an undemonstrative family...we've been conditioned to not let our feelings show. But that emotional paralysis cripples you and it deprives the people around you of knowing how you care for them. God's in the business of liberating people emotionally who say, "Lord please unleash Your love... Your love through me."
It's important to look around the circle of people in your life and ask, "Does he...does she feel loved by me?" We're called by God to live a life of love. For, as my wife was reminded by a man in his 90s, your simple, honest expression of love may be one of the first that person has had in a long time, and it is something they will never forget.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Jeremiah 44, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: AS AN EXAMPLE
Our Savior kneels down and gazes upon the darkest acts of our lives. But rather than recoil in horror, he reaches out in kindness and from the basin of his grace, he scoops a palm full of mercy and washes away our sin. Jesus said, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash each other’s feet. I did this as an example so that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:14-15).
Those in the circle of Christ had no doubt of his love; those in our circles should have no doubts about ours. More often than not, if the one in the right volunteers to wash the feet of the one in the wrong, both parties end up on their knees. Please understand. Relationships don’t thrive because the guilty are punished, but because the innocent are merciful.
From Just Like Jesus
Jeremiah 44
The Same Fate Will Fall upon All
1-6 The Message that Jeremiah received for all the Judeans who lived in the land of Egypt, who had their homes in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Noph, and the land of Pathros: “This is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘You saw with your own eyes the terrible doom that I brought down on Jerusalem and the Judean cities. Look at what’s left: ghost towns of rubble and smoking ruins, and all because they took up with evil ways, making me angry by going off to offer sacrifices and worship the latest in gods—no-gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors knew the first thing about. Morning after morning and long into the night I kept after you, sending you all those prophets, my servants, begging you, “Please, please—don’t do this, don’t fool around in this loathsome gutter of gods that I hate with a passion.” But do you think anyone paid the least bit of attention or repented of evil or quit offering sacrifices to the no-gods? Not one. So I let loose with my anger, a firestorm of wrath in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, and left them in ruins and wasted. And they’re still in ruins and wasted.’
7-8 “This is the Message of God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel: ‘So why are you ruining your lives by amputating yourselves—man, woman, child, and baby—from the life of Judah, leaving yourselves isolated, unconnected? And why do you deliberately make me angry by what you do, offering sacrifices to these no-gods in the land of Egypt where you’ve come to live? You’ll only destroy yourselves and make yourselves an example used in curses and an object of ridicule among all the nations of the earth.
9-11 “‘Have you so soon forgotten the evil lives of your ancestors, the evil lives of the kings of Judah and their wives, to say nothing of your own evil lives, you and your wives, the evil you flaunted in the land of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem? And to this day, there’s not a trace of remorse, not a sign of reverence, nobody caring about living by what I tell them or following my instructions that I’ve set out so plainly before you and your parents! So this is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies decrees:
11-14 “‘Watch out! I’ve decided to bring doom on you and get rid of everyone connected with Judah. I’m going to take what’s left of Judah, those who have decided to go to Egypt and live there, and finish them off. In Egypt they will either be killed or starve to death. The same fate will fall upon both the obscure and the important. Regardless of their status, they will either be killed or starve. You’ll end up cursed, reviled, ridiculed, and mocked. I’ll give those who are in Egypt the same medicine I gave those in Jerusalem: massacre, starvation, and disease. None of those who managed to get out of Judah alive and get away to Egypt are going to make it back to the Judah for which they’re so homesick. None will make it back, except maybe a few fugitives.’”
Making Goddess Cookies
15-18 The men who knew that their wives had been burning sacrifices to the no-gods, joined by a large crowd of women, along with virtually everyone living in Pathros of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: “We’re having nothing to do with what you tell us is God’s Message. We’re going to go right on offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, keeping up the traditions set by our ancestors, our kings and government leaders in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem in the good old days. We had a good life then—lots of food, rising standard of living, and no bad luck. But the moment we quit sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out offerings to her, everything fell apart. We’ve had nothing but massacres and starvation ever since.”
19 And then the women chimed in: “Yes! Absolutely! We’re going to keep at it, offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out offerings to her. Aren’t our husbands behind us? They like it that we make goddess cookies and pour out our offerings to her.”
20-23 Then Jeremiah spoke up, confronting the men and the women, all the people who had answered so insolently. He said, “The sacrifices that you and your parents, your kings, your government officials, and the common people of the land offered up in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem—don’t you think God noticed? He noticed, all right. And he got fed up. Finally, he couldn’t take your evil behavior and your disgusting acts any longer. Your land became a wasteland, a death valley, a horror story, a ghost town. And it continues to be just that. This doom has come upon you because you kept offering all those sacrifices, and you sinned against God! You refused to listen to him, wouldn’t live the way he directed, ignored the covenant conditions.”
24-25 Jeremiah kept going, but now zeroed in on the women: “Listen, all you who are from Judah and living in Egypt—please, listen to God’s Word. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘You women! You said it and then you did it. You said, “We’re going to keep the vows we made to sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out offerings to her, and nobody’s going to stop us!”’
25-27 “Well, go ahead. Keep your vows. Do it up big. But also listen to what God has to say about it, all you who are from Judah but live in Egypt: ‘I swear by my great name, backed by everything I am—this is God speaking!—that never again shall my name be used in vows, such as “As sure as the Master, God, lives!” by anyone in the whole country of Egypt. I’ve targeted each one of you for doom. The good is gone for good.
27-28 “‘All the Judeans in Egypt will die off by massacre or starvation until they’re wiped out. The few who get out of Egypt alive and back to Judah will be very few, hardly worth counting. Then that ragtag bunch that left Judah to live in Egypt will know who had the last word.
29-30 “‘And this will be the evidence: I will bring punishment right here, and by this you’ll know that the decrees of doom against you are the real thing. Watch for this sign of doom: I will give Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt over to his enemies, those who are out to kill him, exactly as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah to his enemy Nebuchadnezzar, who was after him.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Read: 2 Timothy 1:1–5
I, Paul, am on special assignment for Christ, carrying out God’s plan laid out in the Message of Life by Jesus. I write this to you, Timothy, the son I love so much. All the best from our God and Christ be yours!
To Be Bold with God’s Gifts
3-4 Every time I say your name in prayer—which is practically all the time—I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion.
5-7 That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
INSIGHT:
Paul’s second letter to Timothy is one of his most personal epistles. Chapter 1 is marked by the apostle’s fatherly challenges to Timothy about courageously using the giftedness God has invested in him. In chapter 2, Paul again encourages his young son in the faith to stand firm and grow in a mature walk with Christ. Chapter 3 provides a warning about the difficulties of the days ahead and a call to hold tight to the teachings he has received. In the closing chapter, Paul acknowledges that he wants Timothy to show the same faithfulness to the gospel that he himself has sought to exhibit. Paul shares the disappointment and hurt he has suffered at the hands of some people, but he has been faithful in passing along the faith to others, just as Eunice and Lois had invested in young Timothy. The result was that their son and grandson had become like a son to Paul.
A Good Inheritance
By Keila Ochoa
I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice. 2 Timothy 1:5
Grandpa and Grandma Harris didn’t have a lot of money, yet they managed to make each Christmas memorable for my cousins and me. There was always plenty of food, fun, and love. And from an early age we learned that it was Christ who made this celebration possible.
We want to leave the same legacy to our children. When we got together last December to share Christmas with family, we realized this wonderful tradition had started with Grandpa and Grandma. They couldn’t leave us a monetary inheritance, but they were careful to plant the seeds of love, respect, and faith so that we—their children’s children—might imitate their example.
If someone has left you a godly inheritance, invest it in others.
In the Bible we read about grandma Lois and mom Eunice, who shared with Timothy genuine faith (2 Tim. 1:5). Their influence prepared this man to share the good news with many others.
We can prepare a spiritual inheritance for those whose lives we influence by living in close communion with God. In practical ways, we make His love a reality to others when we give them our undivided attention, show interest in what they think and do, and share life with them. We might even invite them to share in our celebrations! When our lives reflect the reality of God’s love, we leave a lasting legacy for others.
Father, may I leave a good spiritual inheritance to my family as You use me to show Your everlasting love.
If someone has left you a godly inheritance, invest it in others.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
The Discipline of Dismay
As they followed they were afraid. —Mark 10:32
At the beginning of our life with Jesus Christ, we were sure we knew all there was to know about following Him. It was a delight to forsake everything else and to throw ourselves before Him in a fearless statement of love. But now we are not quite so sure. Jesus is far ahead of us and is beginning to seem different and unfamiliar— “Jesus was going before them; and they were amazed” (Mark 10:32).
There is an aspect of Jesus that chills even a disciple’s heart to its depth and makes his entire spiritual life gasp for air. This unusual Person with His face set “like a flint” (Isaiah 50:7) is walking with great determination ahead of me, and He strikes terror right through me. He no longer seems to be my Counselor and Friend and has a point of view about which I know nothing. All I can do is stand and stare at Him in amazement. At first I was confident that I understood Him, but now I am not so sure. I begin to realize that there is a distance between Jesus and me and I can no longer be intimate with Him. I have no idea where He is going, and the goal has become strangely distant.
Jesus Christ had to understand fully every sin and sorrow that human beings could experience, and that is what makes Him seem unfamiliar. When we see this aspect of Him, we realize we really don’t know Him. We don’t recognize even one characteristic of His life, and we don’t know how to begin to follow Him. He is far ahead of us, a Leader who seems totally unfamiliar, and we have no friendship with Him.
The discipline of dismay is an essential lesson which a disciple must learn. The danger is that we tend to look back on our times of obedience and on our past sacrifices to God in an effort to keep our enthusiasm for Him strong (see Isaiah 50:10-11). But when the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come the ability to follow Jesus truly, which brings inexpressibly wonderful joy.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The message of the prophets is that although they have forsaken God, it has not altered God. The Apostle Paul emphasizes the same truth, that God remains God even when we are unfaithful (see 2 Timothy 2:13). Never interpret God as changing with our changes. He never does; there is no variableness in Him. Notes on Ezekiel, 1477 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Spring Is Never Sudden - #7873
First, the forsythia exploded-those little yellow flowers that announce to our area where we were living that spring was finally springing. Then the dogwood explosion detonated. It was really hard to be in a bad mood when those beautiful pink and white blossoms suddenly appeared everywhere. Happens probably where you live too, maybe just at different times. Actually, the word "suddenly" needs a little work. The coming of the forsythia and the dogwood, and all the other stars of the Spring Extravaganza; they've been getting ready to happen for a long time. We couldn't see it, but there's been this invisible process of nourishing and growth, and those nubby little buds start to peek out. And then, one day you start down the street and it's blazing with color that wasn't even there the day before. But sudden? Not really.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spring Is Never Sudden."
You might be waiting for spring in some part of your life right now. But things right now still appear to be pretty brown and lifeless.
Well, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Mark 4:26-29. You might need that today. It's an important description of the processes of God; processes that are probably at work right now in those very areas of your life that seem like they will never see spring. Here's what God says, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain; first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."
Okay, here's how God operates: First, there's the seed of what He wants to do, placed in the ground by faith. And then, as far as we can see, nothing is happening. Just ask any farmer you know. But there is, in fact, invisible growth going on the whole time. It would be a very damaging mistake to keep digging up that seed wouldn't it. You know, "I got to see if anything is happening here." You're going to ruin it that way. The invisible growing time is then followed by some first signs of life. And ultimately, the long-awaited crop appears...but not really suddenly. Just like those beautiful flowers of spring.
Often when God is answering our prayer or preparing a great work, it looks for a long time as if nothing is happening. You might need to remember that right now. Think about what you've worked so hard for, prayed so hard for, and there's little or no visible result. A family member or friend you've tried to reach; or who's spiritually wandering. Maybe it's a medical or financial or spiritual breakthrough you need, or just a long-standing need of some other kind in your life. Some days it looks as if the prayer, the cry, the dream of your heart will never happen. And you feel like asking, as Mary and Martha must have asked when Jesus did not arrive in time to heal their dying brother Lazarus, "Where are You, Lord?" He would answer quietly and invisibly, "I'm preparing the answer." By the way, Mary and Martha got more than they could have ever dreamed. They didn't get a healing-they got a resurrection!
So, don't give up now, don't panic, don't try to figure out your own solution, don't push too hard or don't keep digging up the seed. Slowly, but surely, the processes of God will blossom and you will reap what you have sown. Just remain faithful in the part He's asked you to play.
Just because you can't see God working doesn't mean He isn't working. Just think of all those spectacular spring blossoms. They were a long time in coming, but they came. And so will your spring.
Our Savior kneels down and gazes upon the darkest acts of our lives. But rather than recoil in horror, he reaches out in kindness and from the basin of his grace, he scoops a palm full of mercy and washes away our sin. Jesus said, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash each other’s feet. I did this as an example so that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:14-15).
Those in the circle of Christ had no doubt of his love; those in our circles should have no doubts about ours. More often than not, if the one in the right volunteers to wash the feet of the one in the wrong, both parties end up on their knees. Please understand. Relationships don’t thrive because the guilty are punished, but because the innocent are merciful.
From Just Like Jesus
Jeremiah 44
The Same Fate Will Fall upon All
1-6 The Message that Jeremiah received for all the Judeans who lived in the land of Egypt, who had their homes in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Noph, and the land of Pathros: “This is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘You saw with your own eyes the terrible doom that I brought down on Jerusalem and the Judean cities. Look at what’s left: ghost towns of rubble and smoking ruins, and all because they took up with evil ways, making me angry by going off to offer sacrifices and worship the latest in gods—no-gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors knew the first thing about. Morning after morning and long into the night I kept after you, sending you all those prophets, my servants, begging you, “Please, please—don’t do this, don’t fool around in this loathsome gutter of gods that I hate with a passion.” But do you think anyone paid the least bit of attention or repented of evil or quit offering sacrifices to the no-gods? Not one. So I let loose with my anger, a firestorm of wrath in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, and left them in ruins and wasted. And they’re still in ruins and wasted.’
7-8 “This is the Message of God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel: ‘So why are you ruining your lives by amputating yourselves—man, woman, child, and baby—from the life of Judah, leaving yourselves isolated, unconnected? And why do you deliberately make me angry by what you do, offering sacrifices to these no-gods in the land of Egypt where you’ve come to live? You’ll only destroy yourselves and make yourselves an example used in curses and an object of ridicule among all the nations of the earth.
9-11 “‘Have you so soon forgotten the evil lives of your ancestors, the evil lives of the kings of Judah and their wives, to say nothing of your own evil lives, you and your wives, the evil you flaunted in the land of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem? And to this day, there’s not a trace of remorse, not a sign of reverence, nobody caring about living by what I tell them or following my instructions that I’ve set out so plainly before you and your parents! So this is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies decrees:
11-14 “‘Watch out! I’ve decided to bring doom on you and get rid of everyone connected with Judah. I’m going to take what’s left of Judah, those who have decided to go to Egypt and live there, and finish them off. In Egypt they will either be killed or starve to death. The same fate will fall upon both the obscure and the important. Regardless of their status, they will either be killed or starve. You’ll end up cursed, reviled, ridiculed, and mocked. I’ll give those who are in Egypt the same medicine I gave those in Jerusalem: massacre, starvation, and disease. None of those who managed to get out of Judah alive and get away to Egypt are going to make it back to the Judah for which they’re so homesick. None will make it back, except maybe a few fugitives.’”
Making Goddess Cookies
15-18 The men who knew that their wives had been burning sacrifices to the no-gods, joined by a large crowd of women, along with virtually everyone living in Pathros of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: “We’re having nothing to do with what you tell us is God’s Message. We’re going to go right on offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, keeping up the traditions set by our ancestors, our kings and government leaders in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem in the good old days. We had a good life then—lots of food, rising standard of living, and no bad luck. But the moment we quit sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out offerings to her, everything fell apart. We’ve had nothing but massacres and starvation ever since.”
19 And then the women chimed in: “Yes! Absolutely! We’re going to keep at it, offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out offerings to her. Aren’t our husbands behind us? They like it that we make goddess cookies and pour out our offerings to her.”
20-23 Then Jeremiah spoke up, confronting the men and the women, all the people who had answered so insolently. He said, “The sacrifices that you and your parents, your kings, your government officials, and the common people of the land offered up in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem—don’t you think God noticed? He noticed, all right. And he got fed up. Finally, he couldn’t take your evil behavior and your disgusting acts any longer. Your land became a wasteland, a death valley, a horror story, a ghost town. And it continues to be just that. This doom has come upon you because you kept offering all those sacrifices, and you sinned against God! You refused to listen to him, wouldn’t live the way he directed, ignored the covenant conditions.”
24-25 Jeremiah kept going, but now zeroed in on the women: “Listen, all you who are from Judah and living in Egypt—please, listen to God’s Word. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘You women! You said it and then you did it. You said, “We’re going to keep the vows we made to sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out offerings to her, and nobody’s going to stop us!”’
25-27 “Well, go ahead. Keep your vows. Do it up big. But also listen to what God has to say about it, all you who are from Judah but live in Egypt: ‘I swear by my great name, backed by everything I am—this is God speaking!—that never again shall my name be used in vows, such as “As sure as the Master, God, lives!” by anyone in the whole country of Egypt. I’ve targeted each one of you for doom. The good is gone for good.
27-28 “‘All the Judeans in Egypt will die off by massacre or starvation until they’re wiped out. The few who get out of Egypt alive and back to Judah will be very few, hardly worth counting. Then that ragtag bunch that left Judah to live in Egypt will know who had the last word.
29-30 “‘And this will be the evidence: I will bring punishment right here, and by this you’ll know that the decrees of doom against you are the real thing. Watch for this sign of doom: I will give Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt over to his enemies, those who are out to kill him, exactly as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah to his enemy Nebuchadnezzar, who was after him.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Read: 2 Timothy 1:1–5
I, Paul, am on special assignment for Christ, carrying out God’s plan laid out in the Message of Life by Jesus. I write this to you, Timothy, the son I love so much. All the best from our God and Christ be yours!
To Be Bold with God’s Gifts
3-4 Every time I say your name in prayer—which is practically all the time—I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion.
5-7 That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
INSIGHT:
Paul’s second letter to Timothy is one of his most personal epistles. Chapter 1 is marked by the apostle’s fatherly challenges to Timothy about courageously using the giftedness God has invested in him. In chapter 2, Paul again encourages his young son in the faith to stand firm and grow in a mature walk with Christ. Chapter 3 provides a warning about the difficulties of the days ahead and a call to hold tight to the teachings he has received. In the closing chapter, Paul acknowledges that he wants Timothy to show the same faithfulness to the gospel that he himself has sought to exhibit. Paul shares the disappointment and hurt he has suffered at the hands of some people, but he has been faithful in passing along the faith to others, just as Eunice and Lois had invested in young Timothy. The result was that their son and grandson had become like a son to Paul.
A Good Inheritance
By Keila Ochoa
I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice. 2 Timothy 1:5
Grandpa and Grandma Harris didn’t have a lot of money, yet they managed to make each Christmas memorable for my cousins and me. There was always plenty of food, fun, and love. And from an early age we learned that it was Christ who made this celebration possible.
We want to leave the same legacy to our children. When we got together last December to share Christmas with family, we realized this wonderful tradition had started with Grandpa and Grandma. They couldn’t leave us a monetary inheritance, but they were careful to plant the seeds of love, respect, and faith so that we—their children’s children—might imitate their example.
If someone has left you a godly inheritance, invest it in others.
In the Bible we read about grandma Lois and mom Eunice, who shared with Timothy genuine faith (2 Tim. 1:5). Their influence prepared this man to share the good news with many others.
We can prepare a spiritual inheritance for those whose lives we influence by living in close communion with God. In practical ways, we make His love a reality to others when we give them our undivided attention, show interest in what they think and do, and share life with them. We might even invite them to share in our celebrations! When our lives reflect the reality of God’s love, we leave a lasting legacy for others.
Father, may I leave a good spiritual inheritance to my family as You use me to show Your everlasting love.
If someone has left you a godly inheritance, invest it in others.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
The Discipline of Dismay
As they followed they were afraid. —Mark 10:32
At the beginning of our life with Jesus Christ, we were sure we knew all there was to know about following Him. It was a delight to forsake everything else and to throw ourselves before Him in a fearless statement of love. But now we are not quite so sure. Jesus is far ahead of us and is beginning to seem different and unfamiliar— “Jesus was going before them; and they were amazed” (Mark 10:32).
There is an aspect of Jesus that chills even a disciple’s heart to its depth and makes his entire spiritual life gasp for air. This unusual Person with His face set “like a flint” (Isaiah 50:7) is walking with great determination ahead of me, and He strikes terror right through me. He no longer seems to be my Counselor and Friend and has a point of view about which I know nothing. All I can do is stand and stare at Him in amazement. At first I was confident that I understood Him, but now I am not so sure. I begin to realize that there is a distance between Jesus and me and I can no longer be intimate with Him. I have no idea where He is going, and the goal has become strangely distant.
Jesus Christ had to understand fully every sin and sorrow that human beings could experience, and that is what makes Him seem unfamiliar. When we see this aspect of Him, we realize we really don’t know Him. We don’t recognize even one characteristic of His life, and we don’t know how to begin to follow Him. He is far ahead of us, a Leader who seems totally unfamiliar, and we have no friendship with Him.
The discipline of dismay is an essential lesson which a disciple must learn. The danger is that we tend to look back on our times of obedience and on our past sacrifices to God in an effort to keep our enthusiasm for Him strong (see Isaiah 50:10-11). But when the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come the ability to follow Jesus truly, which brings inexpressibly wonderful joy.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The message of the prophets is that although they have forsaken God, it has not altered God. The Apostle Paul emphasizes the same truth, that God remains God even when we are unfaithful (see 2 Timothy 2:13). Never interpret God as changing with our changes. He never does; there is no variableness in Him. Notes on Ezekiel, 1477 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Spring Is Never Sudden - #7873
First, the forsythia exploded-those little yellow flowers that announce to our area where we were living that spring was finally springing. Then the dogwood explosion detonated. It was really hard to be in a bad mood when those beautiful pink and white blossoms suddenly appeared everywhere. Happens probably where you live too, maybe just at different times. Actually, the word "suddenly" needs a little work. The coming of the forsythia and the dogwood, and all the other stars of the Spring Extravaganza; they've been getting ready to happen for a long time. We couldn't see it, but there's been this invisible process of nourishing and growth, and those nubby little buds start to peek out. And then, one day you start down the street and it's blazing with color that wasn't even there the day before. But sudden? Not really.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spring Is Never Sudden."
You might be waiting for spring in some part of your life right now. But things right now still appear to be pretty brown and lifeless.
Well, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Mark 4:26-29. You might need that today. It's an important description of the processes of God; processes that are probably at work right now in those very areas of your life that seem like they will never see spring. Here's what God says, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain; first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."
Okay, here's how God operates: First, there's the seed of what He wants to do, placed in the ground by faith. And then, as far as we can see, nothing is happening. Just ask any farmer you know. But there is, in fact, invisible growth going on the whole time. It would be a very damaging mistake to keep digging up that seed wouldn't it. You know, "I got to see if anything is happening here." You're going to ruin it that way. The invisible growing time is then followed by some first signs of life. And ultimately, the long-awaited crop appears...but not really suddenly. Just like those beautiful flowers of spring.
Often when God is answering our prayer or preparing a great work, it looks for a long time as if nothing is happening. You might need to remember that right now. Think about what you've worked so hard for, prayed so hard for, and there's little or no visible result. A family member or friend you've tried to reach; or who's spiritually wandering. Maybe it's a medical or financial or spiritual breakthrough you need, or just a long-standing need of some other kind in your life. Some days it looks as if the prayer, the cry, the dream of your heart will never happen. And you feel like asking, as Mary and Martha must have asked when Jesus did not arrive in time to heal their dying brother Lazarus, "Where are You, Lord?" He would answer quietly and invisibly, "I'm preparing the answer." By the way, Mary and Martha got more than they could have ever dreamed. They didn't get a healing-they got a resurrection!
So, don't give up now, don't panic, don't try to figure out your own solution, don't push too hard or don't keep digging up the seed. Slowly, but surely, the processes of God will blossom and you will reap what you have sown. Just remain faithful in the part He's asked you to play.
Just because you can't see God working doesn't mean He isn't working. Just think of all those spectacular spring blossoms. They were a long time in coming, but they came. And so will your spring.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Jeremiah 43 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: CHRIST LIVES IN YOU
How could we ever hope to have the heart of Jesus as the Bible promises? Ready for a surprise? If you are in Christ, you already have the heart of Christ. Paul said it succinctly in Galatians 2:20…“Christ lives in me.” And Paul explains it with these words, “Strange as it seems, we Christians actually do have within us a portion of the very thoughts and mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16 TLB).
Strange is the word! If I have the mind of Jesus, why do I still have the hang-ups of Max? God is willing to change us into the likeness of the Savior. Here’s my suggestion. Let’s imagine what it means to be just like Jesus. How did he forgive? When did he pray? Why didn’t he give up? Let’s “fix our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV). Perhaps in seeing him, we will see what we can become.
From Just Like Jesus
Jeremiah 43
Death! Exile! Slaughter!
1-3 When Jeremiah finished telling all the people the whole Message that their God had sent him to give them—all these words—Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah, backed by all the self-important men, said to Jeremiah, “Liar! Our God never sent you with this message telling us not to go to Egypt and live there. Baruch son of Neriah is behind this. He has turned you against us. He’s playing into the hands of the Babylonians so we’ll either end up being killed or taken off to exile in Babylon.”
4 Johanan son of Kareah and the army officers, and the people along with them, wouldn’t listen to God’s Message that they stay in the land of Judah and live there.
5-7 Johanan son of Kareah and the army officers gathered up everyone who was left from Judah, who had come back after being scattered all over the place—the men, women, and children, the king’s daughters, all the people that Nebuzaradan captain of the bodyguard had left in the care of Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, and last but not least, Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch son of Neriah. They entered the land of Egypt in total disobedience of God’s Message and arrived at the city of Tahpanhes.
8-9 While in Tahpanhes, God’s Word came to Jeremiah: “Pick up some large stones and cover them with mortar in the vicinity of the pavement that leads up to the building set aside for Pharaoh’s use in Tahpanhes. Make sure some of the men of Judah are watching.
10-13 “Then address them: ‘This is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies says: Be on the lookout! I’m sending for and bringing Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon—my servant, mind you!—and he’ll set up his throne on these very stones that I’ve had buried here and he’ll spread out his canopy over them. He’ll come and absolutely smash Egypt, sending each to his assigned fate: death, exile, slaughter. He’ll burn down the temples of Egypt’s gods. He’ll either burn up the gods or haul them off as booty. Like a shepherd who picks lice from his robes, he’ll pick Egypt clean. And then he’ll walk away without a hand being laid on him. He’ll shatter the sacred obelisks at Egypt’s House of the Sun and make a huge bonfire of the temples of Egypt’s gods.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Read: Psalm 139:17–24
Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
all the men and women who belittle you, God,
infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Your enemies are my enemies!
23-24 Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
INSIGHT:
There is no place where David is outside God’s protective presence and care (139:7–12). Recognizing that it was a great privilege to know such a God, David prayed a prayer of commitment, seeking to live a blameless life (vv. 23-24). Even as he asks God to “search and test” him (v. 23), he was well-assured that God already knew him through and through, for he had declared at the start of this song, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me” (v. 1). The Old Testament patriarch Job made a similar statement, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). Job’s world had been turned upside down, having lost his wealth, his family, and his health (1:14–2:7). In the midst of his trials he boldly asks, “Does [God] not see my ways and count my every step?” (31:4). Perhaps, like David and Job, you may be going through a rough patch. We can be encouraged that our God knows and cares. What is your response to the truth that God knows everything about you and His arms of love are always open?
Open Arms
By Shelly Beach |
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Psalm 139:23
The day my husband, Dan, and I began our caregiving journey with our aging parents, we linked arms and felt as if we were plunging off a cliff. We didn’t know that in the process of caregiving the hardest task we would face would be to allow our hearts to be searched and molded and to allow God to use this special time to make us like Him in new ways.
On days when I felt I was plunging toward earth in an out-of-control free-fall, God showed me my agendas, my reservations, my fears, my pride, and my selfishness. He used my broken places to show me His love and forgiveness.
When worry walks in, strength runs out. But strength returns when we run to God.
My pastor has said, “The best day is the day you see yourself for who you are—desperate without Christ. Then see yourself as He sees you—complete in Him.” This was the blessing of caregiving in my life. As I saw who God had created me to be, I turned and ran weeping into His arms. I cried out with the psalmist: “Search me, God, and know my heart” (Ps. 139:23).
This is my prayer for you—that as you see yourself in the midst of your own circumstances, you will turn and run into the open, loving, and forgiving arms of God.
Gracious Father, I recognize today my desperate need of Your love, wisdom, and grace. Search me and know me. Pour out Your grace and mercy in my life to bring healing to my heart.
When worry walks in, strength runs out. But strength returns when we run to God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Yielding
…you are that one’s slaves whom you obey… —Romans 6:16
The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.
If a child gives in to selfishness, he will find it to be the most enslaving tyranny on earth. There is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the bondage of the nature created by yielding. For example, yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust, and although you may hate yourself for having yielded, you become enslaved to that thing. (Remember what lust is— “I must have it now,” whether it is the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind.) No release or escape from it will ever come from any human power, but only through the power of redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One who can break the dominating power in your life, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. “…He has anointed Me…to proclaim liberty to the captives…” (Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1).
When you yield to something, you will soon realize the tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, “Oh, I can give up that habit whenever I like,” you will know you can’t. You will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy to sing, “He will break every fetter,” while at the same time living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of slavery in any person’s life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Little Things, Big Noise - #7872
One summer we took some time out at a quiet little house in the country. My wife was a country girl who always loved the country. I'm a city boy who has learned to love the country. We had some really special days there. And at the end of the day, we would open all the windows in our room, climb into bed, and listen to the symphony - God's Philharmonic. The crickets and tree toads and tree frogs would combine their voices in this beautiful - and loud - moonlight serenade. Didn't hear that too much on the south side of Chicago. I feel peaceful just telling you about it again. My wife caught one of those tree frogs one day and showed it to City Boy here. I almost had to look twice. I was amazed at how tiny that frog was. I don't even know if he was like as big as a nickel. But as my wife said, "He sure can make noise. One of these guys is louder than several crickets at full volume!" So that night, I fell asleep to the big sounds of those very little guys.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Little Things, Big Noise."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Deuteronomy. Here God is telling His people, the Jews, about how they will take possession of this beautiful country called the Promised Land...and how army after army will be defeated by them...how they will become a prosperous and envied nation. Of course, as God is saying this, they are just a nomadic tribe in the wilderness.
Deuteronomy 7:7, God's explanation of who this about-to-be-great people really are, "The Lord did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples...But it was because the Lord loved you." God said, "You're little. But I'm going to make some big noise through you."
Actually, that's a theme that recurs throughout the Bible. When Saul learned that he was God's choice to be the first king of Israel, he said - "But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin?" (1 Sam. 9:21). God, in essence, seems to be saying, "That's just the kind of unlikely person I love to use."
And the mighty King David. God says, "He chose David His servant and took him from the sheep pens; from tending the sheep He brought him to be the shepherd of His people." (Psalm 78:70-71). Another spiritual tree frog-a little person through whom God's going to make a lot of noise.
God's strange criteria for people He uses are talked about in 1 Corinthians 1:26. "Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many of you were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." Why does God do it this way? He says, "So that no one may boast before Him...let him who boasts boast in the Lord."
When God does mighty things through weak, inadequate, unlikely people, He gets all the glory. Those kinds of people don't block the view. Instead of people saying, "Wow, isn't she/isn't he a great person", they say, "Boy, they've got a great God."
God loves to do His biggest things through the smallest instruments. Even churches. In this age of mega-churches, we've got to remember what God said to the church in a New Testament city called Philadelphia, "See, I have placed before you an open door-that no one can shut" (Revelation 3:8). While those chapters of Revelation reveal that God was withdrawing His blessing from some churches that appeared to be strong, He was giving the great open door to a church the Bible says looked weak. He gave it to the little one.
Isn't that encouraging? The God who creates tiny tree frogs that can fill the night with their big noise loves to use the weak and the small. Which means that if you feel weak, inadequate, overwhelmed by what God may be asking you to do, you're probably His frog – I mean His person.
If God allows you to make a big noise for Him, don't ever forget this is something a big God is doing, not a little you.
How could we ever hope to have the heart of Jesus as the Bible promises? Ready for a surprise? If you are in Christ, you already have the heart of Christ. Paul said it succinctly in Galatians 2:20…“Christ lives in me.” And Paul explains it with these words, “Strange as it seems, we Christians actually do have within us a portion of the very thoughts and mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16 TLB).
Strange is the word! If I have the mind of Jesus, why do I still have the hang-ups of Max? God is willing to change us into the likeness of the Savior. Here’s my suggestion. Let’s imagine what it means to be just like Jesus. How did he forgive? When did he pray? Why didn’t he give up? Let’s “fix our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV). Perhaps in seeing him, we will see what we can become.
From Just Like Jesus
Jeremiah 43
Death! Exile! Slaughter!
1-3 When Jeremiah finished telling all the people the whole Message that their God had sent him to give them—all these words—Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah, backed by all the self-important men, said to Jeremiah, “Liar! Our God never sent you with this message telling us not to go to Egypt and live there. Baruch son of Neriah is behind this. He has turned you against us. He’s playing into the hands of the Babylonians so we’ll either end up being killed or taken off to exile in Babylon.”
4 Johanan son of Kareah and the army officers, and the people along with them, wouldn’t listen to God’s Message that they stay in the land of Judah and live there.
5-7 Johanan son of Kareah and the army officers gathered up everyone who was left from Judah, who had come back after being scattered all over the place—the men, women, and children, the king’s daughters, all the people that Nebuzaradan captain of the bodyguard had left in the care of Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, and last but not least, Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch son of Neriah. They entered the land of Egypt in total disobedience of God’s Message and arrived at the city of Tahpanhes.
8-9 While in Tahpanhes, God’s Word came to Jeremiah: “Pick up some large stones and cover them with mortar in the vicinity of the pavement that leads up to the building set aside for Pharaoh’s use in Tahpanhes. Make sure some of the men of Judah are watching.
10-13 “Then address them: ‘This is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies says: Be on the lookout! I’m sending for and bringing Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon—my servant, mind you!—and he’ll set up his throne on these very stones that I’ve had buried here and he’ll spread out his canopy over them. He’ll come and absolutely smash Egypt, sending each to his assigned fate: death, exile, slaughter. He’ll burn down the temples of Egypt’s gods. He’ll either burn up the gods or haul them off as booty. Like a shepherd who picks lice from his robes, he’ll pick Egypt clean. And then he’ll walk away without a hand being laid on him. He’ll shatter the sacred obelisks at Egypt’s House of the Sun and make a huge bonfire of the temples of Egypt’s gods.’”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Read: Psalm 139:17–24
Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
all the men and women who belittle you, God,
infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Your enemies are my enemies!
23-24 Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
INSIGHT:
There is no place where David is outside God’s protective presence and care (139:7–12). Recognizing that it was a great privilege to know such a God, David prayed a prayer of commitment, seeking to live a blameless life (vv. 23-24). Even as he asks God to “search and test” him (v. 23), he was well-assured that God already knew him through and through, for he had declared at the start of this song, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me” (v. 1). The Old Testament patriarch Job made a similar statement, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). Job’s world had been turned upside down, having lost his wealth, his family, and his health (1:14–2:7). In the midst of his trials he boldly asks, “Does [God] not see my ways and count my every step?” (31:4). Perhaps, like David and Job, you may be going through a rough patch. We can be encouraged that our God knows and cares. What is your response to the truth that God knows everything about you and His arms of love are always open?
Open Arms
By Shelly Beach |
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Psalm 139:23
The day my husband, Dan, and I began our caregiving journey with our aging parents, we linked arms and felt as if we were plunging off a cliff. We didn’t know that in the process of caregiving the hardest task we would face would be to allow our hearts to be searched and molded and to allow God to use this special time to make us like Him in new ways.
On days when I felt I was plunging toward earth in an out-of-control free-fall, God showed me my agendas, my reservations, my fears, my pride, and my selfishness. He used my broken places to show me His love and forgiveness.
When worry walks in, strength runs out. But strength returns when we run to God.
My pastor has said, “The best day is the day you see yourself for who you are—desperate without Christ. Then see yourself as He sees you—complete in Him.” This was the blessing of caregiving in my life. As I saw who God had created me to be, I turned and ran weeping into His arms. I cried out with the psalmist: “Search me, God, and know my heart” (Ps. 139:23).
This is my prayer for you—that as you see yourself in the midst of your own circumstances, you will turn and run into the open, loving, and forgiving arms of God.
Gracious Father, I recognize today my desperate need of Your love, wisdom, and grace. Search me and know me. Pour out Your grace and mercy in my life to bring healing to my heart.
When worry walks in, strength runs out. But strength returns when we run to God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Yielding
…you are that one’s slaves whom you obey… —Romans 6:16
The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.
If a child gives in to selfishness, he will find it to be the most enslaving tyranny on earth. There is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the bondage of the nature created by yielding. For example, yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust, and although you may hate yourself for having yielded, you become enslaved to that thing. (Remember what lust is— “I must have it now,” whether it is the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind.) No release or escape from it will ever come from any human power, but only through the power of redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One who can break the dominating power in your life, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. “…He has anointed Me…to proclaim liberty to the captives…” (Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1).
When you yield to something, you will soon realize the tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, “Oh, I can give up that habit whenever I like,” you will know you can’t. You will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy to sing, “He will break every fetter,” while at the same time living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of slavery in any person’s life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Little Things, Big Noise - #7872
One summer we took some time out at a quiet little house in the country. My wife was a country girl who always loved the country. I'm a city boy who has learned to love the country. We had some really special days there. And at the end of the day, we would open all the windows in our room, climb into bed, and listen to the symphony - God's Philharmonic. The crickets and tree toads and tree frogs would combine their voices in this beautiful - and loud - moonlight serenade. Didn't hear that too much on the south side of Chicago. I feel peaceful just telling you about it again. My wife caught one of those tree frogs one day and showed it to City Boy here. I almost had to look twice. I was amazed at how tiny that frog was. I don't even know if he was like as big as a nickel. But as my wife said, "He sure can make noise. One of these guys is louder than several crickets at full volume!" So that night, I fell asleep to the big sounds of those very little guys.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Little Things, Big Noise."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Deuteronomy. Here God is telling His people, the Jews, about how they will take possession of this beautiful country called the Promised Land...and how army after army will be defeated by them...how they will become a prosperous and envied nation. Of course, as God is saying this, they are just a nomadic tribe in the wilderness.
Deuteronomy 7:7, God's explanation of who this about-to-be-great people really are, "The Lord did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples...But it was because the Lord loved you." God said, "You're little. But I'm going to make some big noise through you."
Actually, that's a theme that recurs throughout the Bible. When Saul learned that he was God's choice to be the first king of Israel, he said - "But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin?" (1 Sam. 9:21). God, in essence, seems to be saying, "That's just the kind of unlikely person I love to use."
And the mighty King David. God says, "He chose David His servant and took him from the sheep pens; from tending the sheep He brought him to be the shepherd of His people." (Psalm 78:70-71). Another spiritual tree frog-a little person through whom God's going to make a lot of noise.
God's strange criteria for people He uses are talked about in 1 Corinthians 1:26. "Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many of you were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." Why does God do it this way? He says, "So that no one may boast before Him...let him who boasts boast in the Lord."
When God does mighty things through weak, inadequate, unlikely people, He gets all the glory. Those kinds of people don't block the view. Instead of people saying, "Wow, isn't she/isn't he a great person", they say, "Boy, they've got a great God."
God loves to do His biggest things through the smallest instruments. Even churches. In this age of mega-churches, we've got to remember what God said to the church in a New Testament city called Philadelphia, "See, I have placed before you an open door-that no one can shut" (Revelation 3:8). While those chapters of Revelation reveal that God was withdrawing His blessing from some churches that appeared to be strong, He was giving the great open door to a church the Bible says looked weak. He gave it to the little one.
Isn't that encouraging? The God who creates tiny tree frogs that can fill the night with their big noise loves to use the weak and the small. Which means that if you feel weak, inadequate, overwhelmed by what God may be asking you to do, you're probably His frog – I mean His person.
If God allows you to make a big noise for Him, don't ever forget this is something a big God is doing, not a little you.
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