Max Lucado Daily: A SHAKY WORLD
It’s a shaky world out there. Could you use some unshakable hope? We live in a day of despair. The suicide rate in America has increased 24 percent since 1999. How do we explain the increase? We’ve never been more educated. We’re saturated with entertainment and recreation. Yet more people than ever are orchestrating their own deaths. How could this be? Among the answers must be that people are dying for lack of hope. Secularism reduces the world to a few decades between birth and hearse.
Many believe this world is as good as it gets, but people of the Promise have an advantage. They are like Abraham who didn’t ask skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong” (Romans 4:20). Because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 11
So love God, your God;
guard well his rules and regulations;
obey his commandments for the rest of time.
2-7 Today it’s very clear that it isn’t your children who are front and center here: They weren’t in on what God did, didn’t see the acts, didn’t experience the discipline, didn’t marvel at his greatness, the way he displayed his power in the miracle-signs and deeds that he let loose in Egypt on Pharaoh king of Egypt and all his land, the way he took care of the Egyptian army, its horses and chariots, burying them in the waters of the Red Sea as they pursued you. God drowned them. And you’re standing here today alive. Nor was it your children who saw how God took care of you in the wilderness up until the time you arrived here, what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab son of Reuben, how the Earth opened its jaws and swallowed them with their families—their tents, and everything around them—right out of the middle of Israel. Yes, it was you—your eyes—that saw every great thing that God did.
8-9 So it’s you who are in charge of keeping the entire commandment that I command you today so that you’ll have the strength to invade and possess the land that you are crossing the river to make your own. Your obedience will give you a long life on the soil that God promised to give your ancestors and their children, a land flowing with milk and honey.
10-12 The land you are entering to take up ownership isn’t like Egypt, the land you left, where you had to plant your own seed and water it yourselves as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are about to cross the river and take for your own is a land of mountains and valleys; it drinks water that rains from the sky. It’s a land that God, your God, personally tends—he’s the gardener—he alone keeps his eye on it all year long.
13-15 From now on if you listen obediently to the commandments that I am commanding you today, love God, your God, and serve him with everything you have within you, he’ll take charge of sending the rain at the right time, both autumn and spring rains, so that you’ll be able to harvest your grain, your grapes, your olives. He’ll make sure there’s plenty of grass for your animals. You’ll have plenty to eat.
16-17 But be vigilant, lest you be seduced away and end up serving and worshiping other gods and God erupts in anger and shuts down Heaven so there’s no rain and nothing grows in the fields, and in no time at all you’re starved out—not a trace of you left on the good land that God is giving you.
18-21 Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night. Inscribe them on the doorposts and gates of your cities so that you’ll live a long time, and your children with you, on the soil that God promised to give your ancestors for as long as there is a sky over the Earth.
22-25 That’s right. If you diligently keep all this commandment that I command you to obey—love God, your God, do what he tells you, stick close to him—God on his part will drive out all these nations that stand in your way. Yes, he’ll drive out nations much bigger and stronger than you. Every square inch on which you place your foot will be yours. Your borders will stretch from the wilderness to the mountains of Lebanon, from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. No one will be able to stand in your way. Everywhere you go, God-sent fear and trembling will precede you, just as he promised.
26 I’ve brought you today to the crossroads of Blessing and Curse.
27 The Blessing: if you listen obediently to the commandments of God, your God, which I command you today.
28 The Curse: if you don’t pay attention to the commandments of God, your God, but leave the road that I command you today, following other gods of which you know nothing.
29-30 Here’s what comes next: When God, your God, brings you into the land you are going into to make your own, you are to give out the Blessing from Mount Gerizim and the Curse from Mount Ebal. After you cross the Jordan River, follow the road to the west through Canaanite settlements in the valley near Gilgal and the Oaks of Moreh.
31-32 You are crossing the Jordan River to invade and take the land that God, your God, is giving you. Be vigilant. Observe all the regulations and rules I am setting before you today.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, August 03, 2018
Read: 3 John
Greeting
1 The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth.
2 Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. 3 For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers[a] came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. 4 I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
Support and Opposition
5 Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, 6 who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. 7 For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. 8 Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.
9 I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. 10 So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.
11 Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God. 12 Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true.
Final Greetings
13 I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink. 14 I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.
15 Peace be to you. The friends greet you. Greet the friends, each by name.
Footnotes:
3 John 1:3 Or brothers and sisters. In New Testament usage, depending on the context, the plural Greek word adelphoi (translated “brothers”) may refer either to brothers or to brothers and sisters; also verses 5, 10
To My Dear Friend
By Dave Branon
The elder, to my dear friend Gaius, whom I love in the truth. 3 John 1
What the apostle John did for his friend Gaius in the first century is a dying art in the twenty-first century. John wrote him a letter.
One writer for the New York Times, Catherine Field, said, “Letter-writing is among our most ancient of arts. Think of letters and the mind falls on Paul of Tarsus,” for example. And we can add the apostle John.
In his letter to Gaius, John included hopes for good health of body and soul, an encouraging word about Gaius’s faithfulness, and a note about his love for the church. John also spoke of a problem in the church, which he promised to address individually later. And he wrote of the value of doing good things for God’s glory. All in all, it was an encouraging and challenging letter to his friend.
Digital communication may mean letter-writing on paper is fading away, but this shouldn’t stop us from encouraging others. Paul wrote letters of encouragement on parchment; we can encourage others in a variety of ways. The key is not the way we encourage others, but that we take a moment to let others know we care for them in Jesus’s name!
Think of the encouragement Gaius experienced when he opened John’s letter. Could we similarly shine God’s love on our friends with a thoughtful note or an uplifting call?
Lord, help us know how to encourage others who need a spiritual boost from us.
Encouraging words bring hope to the human spirit.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, August 03, 2018
The Compelling Purpose of God
He…said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem…" —Luke 18:31
Jerusalem, in the life of our Lord, represents the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will. Jesus said, “I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me” (John 5:30). Seeking to do “the will of the Father” was the one dominating concern throughout our Lord’s life. And whatever He encountered along the way, whether joy or sorrow, success or failure, He was never deterred from that purpose. “…He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem…” (Luke 9:51).
The greatest thing for us to remember is that we go up to Jerusalem to fulfill God’s purpose, not our own. In the natural life our ambitions are our own, but in the Christian life we have no goals of our own. We talk so much today about our decisions for Christ, our determination to be Christians, and our decisions for this and that, but in the New Testament the only aspect that is brought out is the compelling purpose of God. “You did not choose Me, but I chose you…” (John 15:16).
We are not taken into a conscious agreement with God’s purpose— we are taken into God’s purpose with no awareness of it at all. We have no idea what God’s goal may be; as we continue, His purpose becomes even more and more vague. God’s aim appears to have missed the mark, because we are too nearsighted to see the target at which He is aiming. At the beginning of the Christian life, we have our own ideas as to what God’s purpose is. We say, “God means for me to go over there,” and, “God has called me to do this special work.” We do what we think is right, and yet the compelling purpose of God remains upon us. The work we do is of no account when compared with the compelling purpose of God. It is simply the scaffolding surrounding His work and His plan. “He took the twelve aside…” (Luke 18:31). God takes us aside all the time. We have not yet understood all there is to know of the compelling purpose of God.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself. The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest. Disciples Indeed, 395 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, August 03, 2018
Spiritual Tear Gas - #8235
Okay, I'm sort of a news junkie, and I really like to watch a national news cast sometime before the day is over. But there are some words I cringe at when I hear them in the news, like "hostage". I mean, soon as you hear that word "hostage" you know that there is a potential life or death standoff going on between some angry desperate assailant and the officers. The law enforcement people are trying to save the hostages that he's holding. You know, recently I talked with a police officer friend of mine, and I asked him how they handle those dangerous rescues. He said, "First you want to use something like tear gas, or fatigue, or a marksman. Then what you've got to do is to immobilize the hostage taker."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritual Tear Gas."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 12:29, and Jesus is describing the ultimate rescue operation. "How can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house."
Now first of all, Satan's the strong man in the context here. When Jesus talks about Satan's possessions, I believe He's talking about people that he thinks he has. People who don't know Christ, who belong to the enemy because they've never been rescued by the Lord Jesus. And when you carry off Satan's possessions that should never have belonged to him, you are literally bringing those people to a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:13 describes it this way, it talks about the fact that we have been rescued from the Kingdom of Darkness. God has placed us in the Kingdom of His dear Son. You see, evangelism is really a rescue operation.
Now Jesus describes the mission further in these words in Luke 11:21-22. "When a strong man" there's the devil again, "fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe." O.K. now Satan is fighting to hang on to the people that you know who are without Christ. But it goes on to say, "But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder."
See, our Lord wants us to see these people who we work with, or go to school with, or that we live near, or we recreate with. See, they're prisoners of the Prince of Darkness. And if we see what Jesus sees, that's what we'll see. He's trying desperately to hang on to them until the day they die so he can have them forever. But Jesus wants us also to see the life-or-death mission that we each have to rescue them by introducing them to the Savior. But often in our efforts to reach people for Christ we miss an essential first step. Just like the police in a hostage situation, we have to immobilize the assailant before we go running in to rescue his hostages. Like Jesus said we have to tie his hands. We need to tie up Satan first.
Now no program can do that, no plan, no organization, no work. You can only tie Satan's hands through prayer. Any rescue effort that is not preceded with a strong enemy neutralizing time of prayer is likely to fail. We need to spend fervent time with the One described here as "someone stronger." Oh, I love that! We need to pray by the Name and the Blood of Jesus that the enemies efforts to blind, to distract, to confuse, and hold his prisoners will be totally overcome by Jesus. That kind of prayer is the spiritual tear gas that renders the devil powerless.
My police friend said that the bottom line whenever an assailant is holding hostages is this, "Never let him be in charge." Well, especially when that hostage taker is the devil himself. On our knees, unleashing the overcoming power of a resurrected Jesus we can make sure that our enemy is not in charge.
Friday, August 3, 2018
Thursday, August 2, 2018
I have stepped out of the boat of my chaos "with no shore, no success"...
"If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me. God is not working toward a particular finish— His purpose is the process itself. What He desires for me is that I see “Him walking on the sea” with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see “Him walking on the sea” (Mark 6:49). It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God".- Oswald Chambers July 28th....
Luke 4:31-44, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: THE DEPENDABILITY OF GOD
From the first chapter of Scripture, the Bible makes a case for the dependability of God. Without exception when God spoke, something wonderful happened. By divine fiat there was light, land, beaches, and creatures. God consulted no advisers. He needed no assistance. “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:9).
The same power is seen in Jesus. He is unchanging. He’s never caught off guard by the unexpected. “God never changes or casts a shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
God is strong. He does not overpromise and under deliver. “God is able to do whatever he promises” (Romans 4:21). “It is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). God will keep his promises. It must happen because of who God is! And because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Luke 4:31-44
He went down to Capernaum, a village in Galilee. He was teaching the people on the Sabbath. They were surprised and impressed—his teaching was so forthright, so confident, so authoritative, not the quibbling and quoting they were used to.
33-34 In the meeting place that day there was a man demonically disturbed. He screamed, “Ho! What business do you have here with us, Jesus? Nazarene! I know what you’re up to. You’re the Holy One of God and you’ve come to destroy us!”
35 Jesus shut him up: “Quiet! Get out of him!” The demonic spirit threw the man down in front of them all and left. The demon didn’t hurt him.
36-37 That set everyone back on their heels, whispering and wondering, “What’s going on here? Someone whose words make things happen? Someone who orders demonic spirits to get out and they go?” Jesus was the talk of the town.
He Healed Them All
38-39 He left the meeting place and went to Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was running a high fever and they asked him to do something for her. He stood over her, told the fever to leave—and it left. Before they knew it, she was up getting dinner for them.
40-41 When the sun went down, everyone who had anyone sick with some ailment or other brought them to him. One by one he placed his hands on them and healed them. Demons left in droves, screaming, “Son of God! You’re the Son of God!” But he shut them up, refusing to let them speak because they knew too much, knew him to be the Messiah.
42-44 He left the next day for open country. But the crowds went looking and, when they found him, clung to him so he couldn’t go on. He told them, “Don’t you realize that there are yet other villages where I have to tell the Message of God’s kingdom, that this is the work God sent me to do?” Meanwhile he continued preaching in the meeting places of Galilee.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, August 02, 2018
Read: Psalm 107:1–16, 35–36
Book Five
Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble[a]
3 and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
4 Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to a city to dwell in;
5 hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
7 He led them by a straight way
till they reached a city to dwell in.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
9 For he satisfies the longing soul,
and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
10 Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.
Footnotes:
Psalm 107:2 Or from the hand of the foe
Psalm 107:35-36 English Standard Version (ESV)
35 He turns a desert into pools of water,
a parched land into springs of water.
36 And there he lets the hungry dwell,
and they establish a city to live in;
INSIGHT
Following Christ gives us a hope that is both present and future. Paul said, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). This present/future hope—rooted in Jesus’s resurrection—reminds us that whether today is good or bad, we have confidence in Him for a better day to come. - Bill Crowder
Healing Flood
By Monica Brands
He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs. Psalm 107:35
I’ve always loved a good thunderstorm. As kids, whenever a storm was truly incredible—with booming thunder and buckets of heavy rain pounding down—my siblings and I would make a mad dash around the outside of our house, slipping and sliding along the way. When it was time to go back inside, we were soaked to the bone.
It was an exhilarating taste—for just a few minutes—of being immersed in something so powerful we couldn’t quite tell whether we were having fun or terrified.
This picture comes to mind when, as in Psalm 107, Scripture compares God’s restoration to a barren wilderness transformed into “pools of water” (v. 35). Because the kind of storm that transforms a desert into an oasis isn’t a gentle shower—it’s a downpour, flooding every crack of parched ground with new life.
And isn’t that the kind of restoration we long for? When our stories feel like tales of aimless wandering because we are “hungry and thirsty”—starving—for healing that never seems to arrive (vv. 4–5), we need more than a bit of hope. And when deep-rooted patterns of sin leave us trapped “in utter darkness” (vv. 10–11), our hearts need more than a little change.
That’s exactly the kind of transformation our God can bring (v. 20). It’s never too late to bring our fears and shame to the One who’s more than able to break our chains and flood our darkness with His light (vv. 13–14).
Father, help us turn to You with our burdens, trusting Your love and power to write a new story of healing and transformation.
God’s power transforms.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, August 02, 2018
The Teaching of Adversity
In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. —John 16:33
The typical view of the Christian life is that it means being delivered from all adversity. But it actually means being delivered in adversity, which is something very different. “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling…” (Psalm 91:1,10)— the place where you are at one with God.
If you are a child of God, you will certainly encounter adversities, but Jesus says you should not be surprised when they come. “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” He is saying, “There is nothing for you to fear.” The same people who refused to talk about their adversities before they were saved often complain and worry after being born again because they have the wrong idea of what it means to live the life of a saint.
God does not give us overcoming life— He gives us life as we overcome. The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength. Are you asking God to give you life, liberty, and joy? He cannot, unless you are willing to accept the strain. And once you face the strain, you will immediately get the strength. Overcome your own timidity and take the first step. Then God will give you nourishment— “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life…” (Revelation 2:7). If you completely give of yourself physically, you become exhausted. But when you give of yourself spiritually, you get more strength. God never gives us strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the moment. Our temptation is to face adversities from the standpoint of our own common sense. But a saint can “be of good cheer” even when seemingly defeated by adversities, because victory is absurdly impossible to everyone, except God.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The Bible is a relation of facts, the truth of which must be tested. Life may go on all right for a while, when suddenly a bereavement comes, or some crisis; unrequited love or a new love, a disaster, a business collapse, or a shocking sin, and we turn up our Bibles again and God’s word comes straight home, and we say, “Why, I never saw that there before.” Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, August 02, 2018
No Way There's No Way - #8234
Driving is never more exciting than it is during a major snow storm. In fact it is so exciting, you ought to avoid it. Sometimes you just can't. I was scheduled to speak at this retreat in the Poconos Mountains one January weekend and a major snow storm moved in right on the Friday when everyone was supposed to be traveling to Pennsylvania from New Jersey. So I waited all day for the call, I was sure it was going to come. "Sorry, it's been cancelled." Oh, I got the call; yeah, they were still going. And by that time it was dark, it was snowing very impressively and I got on the Interstate. I traveled at a very reduced speed and it looked almost impossible to make it until I spotted my friend up ahead. Well, my friend the snow plow. He was clearing a lane as he went. So I just fell in right behind Mr. Snow plow and followed him through the storm all the way to the Pennsylvania line. Oh, that works!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Way There's No Way."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Isaiah 43, verse 16. Here's what God says, "This is what the Lord says--He who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters" Verse 18, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." Now God is described here as "He who made a way." That's an exciting view of our Heavenly Father. He is the Way Maker when there's no way. Like when the Jews were on the bank of the Red Sea, every sense said, "It's over, no way."
There's been in recent years kind of a popular phrase, you know, people go, "No way" and somebody will go "Way". In other words, that's short for, "You're wrong. There is a way." Well right now you might be facing a seemingly impossible situation and you're shaking your head like the Jews at the Red Sea and you're saying "No way". Then there's this unexpected whisper from God's heart to yours, "Way". He usually doesn't tell you what the way will be or when it will be. He's just trying to assure you that He will make a way through mighty waters that seem overwhelming, unmovable, and through the desert, a place where you're like, "I don't see any resources here."
Now, if you've committed yourself to Jesus as your Savior, you belong to a way-making God. What does that mean? Well, you can't judge the outcome by how bad the situation is. Your Father can overrule that. You can't judge by how impossible it seems to be. It's only impossible by earth's standards.
But your God doesn't have impossible in His vocabulary. You can't judge by how late it is. You say, "Man, listen, there's not enough time for an answer now." Really? Well, God could do in an hour what men couldn't pull off in 50 years. So stand with Job on this conviction. It's in Job 42:2, "I know that you can do all things, Lord, no plan of yours can be thwarted." It's time to say, "Amen" right there.
One treacherous snowy night I looked ahead at a road that seemed impossible until I saw someone going ahead of me who could clear that road. One fearful day God's ancient people stood on the banks of the Red Sea trapped before the attacking armies of Egypt until they saw someone who could part a sea and bury an army and that very same God, the way-making God, is out in front of you.
From the first chapter of Scripture, the Bible makes a case for the dependability of God. Without exception when God spoke, something wonderful happened. By divine fiat there was light, land, beaches, and creatures. God consulted no advisers. He needed no assistance. “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:9).
The same power is seen in Jesus. He is unchanging. He’s never caught off guard by the unexpected. “God never changes or casts a shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
God is strong. He does not overpromise and under deliver. “God is able to do whatever he promises” (Romans 4:21). “It is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). God will keep his promises. It must happen because of who God is! And because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Luke 4:31-44
He went down to Capernaum, a village in Galilee. He was teaching the people on the Sabbath. They were surprised and impressed—his teaching was so forthright, so confident, so authoritative, not the quibbling and quoting they were used to.
33-34 In the meeting place that day there was a man demonically disturbed. He screamed, “Ho! What business do you have here with us, Jesus? Nazarene! I know what you’re up to. You’re the Holy One of God and you’ve come to destroy us!”
35 Jesus shut him up: “Quiet! Get out of him!” The demonic spirit threw the man down in front of them all and left. The demon didn’t hurt him.
36-37 That set everyone back on their heels, whispering and wondering, “What’s going on here? Someone whose words make things happen? Someone who orders demonic spirits to get out and they go?” Jesus was the talk of the town.
He Healed Them All
38-39 He left the meeting place and went to Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was running a high fever and they asked him to do something for her. He stood over her, told the fever to leave—and it left. Before they knew it, she was up getting dinner for them.
40-41 When the sun went down, everyone who had anyone sick with some ailment or other brought them to him. One by one he placed his hands on them and healed them. Demons left in droves, screaming, “Son of God! You’re the Son of God!” But he shut them up, refusing to let them speak because they knew too much, knew him to be the Messiah.
42-44 He left the next day for open country. But the crowds went looking and, when they found him, clung to him so he couldn’t go on. He told them, “Don’t you realize that there are yet other villages where I have to tell the Message of God’s kingdom, that this is the work God sent me to do?” Meanwhile he continued preaching in the meeting places of Galilee.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, August 02, 2018
Read: Psalm 107:1–16, 35–36
Book Five
Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble[a]
3 and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
4 Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to a city to dwell in;
5 hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
7 He led them by a straight way
till they reached a city to dwell in.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
9 For he satisfies the longing soul,
and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
10 Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.
Footnotes:
Psalm 107:2 Or from the hand of the foe
Psalm 107:35-36 English Standard Version (ESV)
35 He turns a desert into pools of water,
a parched land into springs of water.
36 And there he lets the hungry dwell,
and they establish a city to live in;
INSIGHT
Following Christ gives us a hope that is both present and future. Paul said, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). This present/future hope—rooted in Jesus’s resurrection—reminds us that whether today is good or bad, we have confidence in Him for a better day to come. - Bill Crowder
Healing Flood
By Monica Brands
He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs. Psalm 107:35
I’ve always loved a good thunderstorm. As kids, whenever a storm was truly incredible—with booming thunder and buckets of heavy rain pounding down—my siblings and I would make a mad dash around the outside of our house, slipping and sliding along the way. When it was time to go back inside, we were soaked to the bone.
It was an exhilarating taste—for just a few minutes—of being immersed in something so powerful we couldn’t quite tell whether we were having fun or terrified.
This picture comes to mind when, as in Psalm 107, Scripture compares God’s restoration to a barren wilderness transformed into “pools of water” (v. 35). Because the kind of storm that transforms a desert into an oasis isn’t a gentle shower—it’s a downpour, flooding every crack of parched ground with new life.
And isn’t that the kind of restoration we long for? When our stories feel like tales of aimless wandering because we are “hungry and thirsty”—starving—for healing that never seems to arrive (vv. 4–5), we need more than a bit of hope. And when deep-rooted patterns of sin leave us trapped “in utter darkness” (vv. 10–11), our hearts need more than a little change.
That’s exactly the kind of transformation our God can bring (v. 20). It’s never too late to bring our fears and shame to the One who’s more than able to break our chains and flood our darkness with His light (vv. 13–14).
Father, help us turn to You with our burdens, trusting Your love and power to write a new story of healing and transformation.
God’s power transforms.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, August 02, 2018
The Teaching of Adversity
In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. —John 16:33
The typical view of the Christian life is that it means being delivered from all adversity. But it actually means being delivered in adversity, which is something very different. “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling…” (Psalm 91:1,10)— the place where you are at one with God.
If you are a child of God, you will certainly encounter adversities, but Jesus says you should not be surprised when they come. “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” He is saying, “There is nothing for you to fear.” The same people who refused to talk about their adversities before they were saved often complain and worry after being born again because they have the wrong idea of what it means to live the life of a saint.
God does not give us overcoming life— He gives us life as we overcome. The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength. Are you asking God to give you life, liberty, and joy? He cannot, unless you are willing to accept the strain. And once you face the strain, you will immediately get the strength. Overcome your own timidity and take the first step. Then God will give you nourishment— “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life…” (Revelation 2:7). If you completely give of yourself physically, you become exhausted. But when you give of yourself spiritually, you get more strength. God never gives us strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the moment. Our temptation is to face adversities from the standpoint of our own common sense. But a saint can “be of good cheer” even when seemingly defeated by adversities, because victory is absurdly impossible to everyone, except God.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The Bible is a relation of facts, the truth of which must be tested. Life may go on all right for a while, when suddenly a bereavement comes, or some crisis; unrequited love or a new love, a disaster, a business collapse, or a shocking sin, and we turn up our Bibles again and God’s word comes straight home, and we say, “Why, I never saw that there before.” Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, August 02, 2018
No Way There's No Way - #8234
Driving is never more exciting than it is during a major snow storm. In fact it is so exciting, you ought to avoid it. Sometimes you just can't. I was scheduled to speak at this retreat in the Poconos Mountains one January weekend and a major snow storm moved in right on the Friday when everyone was supposed to be traveling to Pennsylvania from New Jersey. So I waited all day for the call, I was sure it was going to come. "Sorry, it's been cancelled." Oh, I got the call; yeah, they were still going. And by that time it was dark, it was snowing very impressively and I got on the Interstate. I traveled at a very reduced speed and it looked almost impossible to make it until I spotted my friend up ahead. Well, my friend the snow plow. He was clearing a lane as he went. So I just fell in right behind Mr. Snow plow and followed him through the storm all the way to the Pennsylvania line. Oh, that works!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Way There's No Way."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Isaiah 43, verse 16. Here's what God says, "This is what the Lord says--He who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters" Verse 18, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." Now God is described here as "He who made a way." That's an exciting view of our Heavenly Father. He is the Way Maker when there's no way. Like when the Jews were on the bank of the Red Sea, every sense said, "It's over, no way."
There's been in recent years kind of a popular phrase, you know, people go, "No way" and somebody will go "Way". In other words, that's short for, "You're wrong. There is a way." Well right now you might be facing a seemingly impossible situation and you're shaking your head like the Jews at the Red Sea and you're saying "No way". Then there's this unexpected whisper from God's heart to yours, "Way". He usually doesn't tell you what the way will be or when it will be. He's just trying to assure you that He will make a way through mighty waters that seem overwhelming, unmovable, and through the desert, a place where you're like, "I don't see any resources here."
Now, if you've committed yourself to Jesus as your Savior, you belong to a way-making God. What does that mean? Well, you can't judge the outcome by how bad the situation is. Your Father can overrule that. You can't judge by how impossible it seems to be. It's only impossible by earth's standards.
But your God doesn't have impossible in His vocabulary. You can't judge by how late it is. You say, "Man, listen, there's not enough time for an answer now." Really? Well, God could do in an hour what men couldn't pull off in 50 years. So stand with Job on this conviction. It's in Job 42:2, "I know that you can do all things, Lord, no plan of yours can be thwarted." It's time to say, "Amen" right there.
One treacherous snowy night I looked ahead at a road that seemed impossible until I saw someone going ahead of me who could clear that road. One fearful day God's ancient people stood on the banks of the Red Sea trapped before the attacking armies of Egypt until they saw someone who could part a sea and bury an army and that very same God, the way-making God, is out in front of you.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Luke 4:1-30, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: HEIRS OF THE PROMISE
Heroes in the Bible came from all walks of life—rulers, servants, teachers, doctors—male, female, single, and married. Yet one common denominator united them. They built their lives on the promises of God. Noah believed in rain before rain was a word. Joshua led two million people into enemy territory. One writer went so far as to call such saints “heirs of the promise” (Hebrews 6:17).
As God prepared the Israelites to face a new land, he made a promise to them, “Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you” (Exodus 34:10). God’s promises are unbreakable. Our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Luke 4:1-30
Tested by the Devil
Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by the Devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when the time was up he was hungry.
3 The Devil, playing on his hunger, gave the first test: “Since you’re God’s Son, command this stone to turn into a loaf of bread.”
4 Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: “It takes more than bread to really live.”
5-7 For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. Then the Devil said, “They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.”
8 Jesus refused, again backing his refusal with Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness.”
9-11 For the third test the Devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top of the Temple. He said, “If you are God’s Son, jump. It’s written, isn’t it, that ‘he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; they will catch you; you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone’?”
12 “Yes,” said Jesus, “and it’s also written, ‘Don’t you dare tempt the Lord your God.’”
13 That completed the testing. The Devil retreated temporarily, lying in wait for another opportunity.
To Set the Burdened Free
14-15 Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit. News that he was back spread through the countryside. He taught in their meeting places to everyone’s acclaim and pleasure.
16-21 He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”
22 All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was a youngster?”
23-27 He answered, “I suppose you’re going to quote the proverb, ‘Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”
28-30 That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Read: Psalm 145:8–21
The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 The Lord is good to all,
and his mercy is over all that he has made.
10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,
and all your saints shall bless you!
11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
and tell of your power,
12 to make known to the children of man your[a] mighty deeds,
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures throughout all generations.
[The Lord is faithful in all his words
and kind in all his works.][b]
14 The Lord upholds all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.
15 The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
16 You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and kind in all his works.
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.
19 He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;
he also hears their cry and saves them.
20 The Lord preserves all who love him,
but all the wicked he will destroy.
21 My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord,
and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
Footnotes:
Psalm 145:12 Hebrew his; also next line
Psalm 145:13 These two lines are supplied by one Hebrew manuscript, Septuagint, Syriac (compare Dead Sea Scroll)
INSIGHT
The book of Psalms, also referred to as the Hebrew Hymnbook, is a collection of 150 songs that were sung by God’s people at various times as part of their worship. Psalm 145 is the last psalm in the final collection of songs penned by David (Psalms 138–145). David proclaims God as the Sovereign King (vv. 1–3, 10–13), exalting His glorious majesty (v. 5) and generous benevolence (v. 7) to all His creation. God’s greatness and goodness is manifested in His mighty acts, wonderful and awesome works, and great deeds (vv. 4–6).
How have you experienced God’s enduring love?
For more about the Psalms, check out our free online course at christianuniversity.org/OT222. - K. T. Sim
Love Without Limits
By David C. McCasland
The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. Psalm 145:9
A wise friend advised me to avoid using the words “you always” or “you never” in an argument—especially with my family. How easy it is to criticize others around us and to feel unloving toward those we love. But there is never any variation in God’s enduring love for us all.
Psalm 145 overflows with the word all. “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made” (v. 9). “The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down” (vv. 13–14). “The Lord watches over all who love him” (v. 20).
A dozen times in this psalm we are reminded that God’s love is without limit and favoritism. And the New Testament reveals that the greatest expression of it is seen in Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Psalm 145 declares that “the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them” (vv. 18–19).
God’s love for us always endures, and it never fails!
Father in heaven, we are awed by Your love for us that never changes, never fails, and never ends. We praise You for demonstrating Your limitless love for us through Jesus our Savior and Lord.
There is never any variation in God’s enduring love for us all.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Learning About His Ways
When Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples…He departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities. —Matthew 11:1
He comes where He commands us to leave. If you stayed home when God told you to go because you were so concerned about your own people there, then you actually robbed them of the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself. When you obeyed and left all the consequences to God, the Lord went into your city to teach, but as long as you were disobedient, you blocked His way. Watch where you begin to debate with Him and put what you call your duty into competition with His commands. If you say, “I know that He told me to go, but my duty is here,” it simply means that you do not believe that Jesus means what He says.
He teaches where He instructs us not to teach. “Master…let us make three tabernacles…” (Luke 9:33).
Are we playing the part of an amateur providence, trying to play God’s role in the lives of others? Are we so noisy in our instruction of other people that God cannot get near them? We must learn to keep our mouths shut and our spirits alert. God wants to instruct us regarding His Son, and He wants to turn our times of prayer into mounts of transfiguration. When we become certain that God is going to work in a particular way, He will never work in that way again.
He works where He sends us to wait. “…tarry…until…” (Luke 24:49). “Wait on the Lord” and He will work (Psalm 37:34). But don’t wait sulking spiritually and feeling sorry for yourself, just because you can’t see one inch in front of you! Are we detached enough from our own spiritual fits of emotion to “wait patiently for Him”? (Psalm 37:7). Waiting is not sitting with folded hands doing nothing, but it is learning to do what we are told.
These are some of the facets of His ways that we rarely recognize.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Love that Will Not Let You Go - #8233
I just don't understand why this beautiful girl at college didn't have love at first sight. I mean, when she met me, you know? I mean, it wasn't even love at second sight, or tenth sight. We met at college, and it wasn't as if she was holed up in her room studying all the time. She was very active socially-especially in dating some of the most sought-after guys on campus. I knew getting her wasn't going to be easy. So I carefully planned my comings and goings so I would be places that I thought she would be. Don't you dare call it stalking - no. I thought about things I could say that might impress her, and I ultimately let her know that I had more than a casual friendship in my mind. There were challenges, but there was no way I was going to lose this girl. I loved her, I relentlessly pursued her, and I got her! And what a wonderful life it's been together!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Love that Will Not Let You Go."
I have loved someone enough to pursue her with everything I had. There's someone who loves you like that whether or not you know it. In fact, He's been pursuing you for years, determined to give you every chance to begin a personal relationship with Him. And while you've been giving yourself to other pursuits, He's just been relentlessly pursuing you. But one day your time to experience His love will run out. So He's pursuing you one more time today.
I'm talking about Jesus Christ. In our word for today from the Word of God, there's a memorable picture of where you are spiritually and where Jesus is in relation to you. The Bible describes our spiritual condition this way: "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). That's hard to argue with. When you look at what the Bible says about how we're supposed to live and then you compare your life to God's 100% holy standard, there's no doubt we're His lost sheep-lost because we've gotten away from Him.
Now here's that beautiful picture from Luke 15, beginning with verse 4: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.'" There it is-Jesus' loving pursuit of one person that He does not want to lose-Jesus' loving pursuit of you.
In the words of the Bible, "God is not willing that one should perish." You could put your name there. "God is not willing that (There's your name.) should perish." That "perish" refers to the death penalty, the eternal separation from God that's our destiny because of our sin. But Jesus stepped in and He went to the cross to absorb all the guilt and all the hell of all the wrong things you and I have ever done, and then He came back from the grave so He could give you eternal life. He died so you don't have to. He pursued you all the way to a cross, and today He's still pursuing you right to the place where you are right now. That tug you might be feeling inside-that's Him drawing you to Him. And you have to come when He's drawing you.
He's preserved your life so you wouldn't die without Him. He's brought people into your life so you could find out about Him. He's brought things into your life that would show you how much you need someone beyond yourself; how much you need Him. And now you have this one guaranteed opportunity to open up to the love that you were made for. Your relationship with Him begins the moment you give yourself to this Man who gave His life for you.
You can tell Him right where you are, "Jesus, I believe when you died on that cross you were paying for my sin. And I believe you're alive, and I want you to live in me. Right now, Jesus, beginning now I pin all my hopes on you. I'm yours." Boy, if that's where you're at and you finally want to experience His love for yourself, go to our website It's there for you to help you be sure you belong to Jesus Christ as of this day. That website is ANewStory.com.
Today the awesome love of Jesus Christ is still within your reach. He's come so far to find you. Don't miss Him.
Heroes in the Bible came from all walks of life—rulers, servants, teachers, doctors—male, female, single, and married. Yet one common denominator united them. They built their lives on the promises of God. Noah believed in rain before rain was a word. Joshua led two million people into enemy territory. One writer went so far as to call such saints “heirs of the promise” (Hebrews 6:17).
As God prepared the Israelites to face a new land, he made a promise to them, “Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you” (Exodus 34:10). God’s promises are unbreakable. Our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Luke 4:1-30
Tested by the Devil
Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by the Devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when the time was up he was hungry.
3 The Devil, playing on his hunger, gave the first test: “Since you’re God’s Son, command this stone to turn into a loaf of bread.”
4 Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: “It takes more than bread to really live.”
5-7 For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. Then the Devil said, “They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.”
8 Jesus refused, again backing his refusal with Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness.”
9-11 For the third test the Devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top of the Temple. He said, “If you are God’s Son, jump. It’s written, isn’t it, that ‘he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; they will catch you; you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone’?”
12 “Yes,” said Jesus, “and it’s also written, ‘Don’t you dare tempt the Lord your God.’”
13 That completed the testing. The Devil retreated temporarily, lying in wait for another opportunity.
To Set the Burdened Free
14-15 Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit. News that he was back spread through the countryside. He taught in their meeting places to everyone’s acclaim and pleasure.
16-21 He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”
22 All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was a youngster?”
23-27 He answered, “I suppose you’re going to quote the proverb, ‘Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”
28-30 That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Read: Psalm 145:8–21
The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 The Lord is good to all,
and his mercy is over all that he has made.
10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,
and all your saints shall bless you!
11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
and tell of your power,
12 to make known to the children of man your[a] mighty deeds,
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures throughout all generations.
[The Lord is faithful in all his words
and kind in all his works.][b]
14 The Lord upholds all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.
15 The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
16 You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and kind in all his works.
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.
19 He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;
he also hears their cry and saves them.
20 The Lord preserves all who love him,
but all the wicked he will destroy.
21 My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord,
and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
Footnotes:
Psalm 145:12 Hebrew his; also next line
Psalm 145:13 These two lines are supplied by one Hebrew manuscript, Septuagint, Syriac (compare Dead Sea Scroll)
INSIGHT
The book of Psalms, also referred to as the Hebrew Hymnbook, is a collection of 150 songs that were sung by God’s people at various times as part of their worship. Psalm 145 is the last psalm in the final collection of songs penned by David (Psalms 138–145). David proclaims God as the Sovereign King (vv. 1–3, 10–13), exalting His glorious majesty (v. 5) and generous benevolence (v. 7) to all His creation. God’s greatness and goodness is manifested in His mighty acts, wonderful and awesome works, and great deeds (vv. 4–6).
How have you experienced God’s enduring love?
For more about the Psalms, check out our free online course at christianuniversity.org/OT222. - K. T. Sim
Love Without Limits
By David C. McCasland
The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. Psalm 145:9
A wise friend advised me to avoid using the words “you always” or “you never” in an argument—especially with my family. How easy it is to criticize others around us and to feel unloving toward those we love. But there is never any variation in God’s enduring love for us all.
Psalm 145 overflows with the word all. “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made” (v. 9). “The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down” (vv. 13–14). “The Lord watches over all who love him” (v. 20).
A dozen times in this psalm we are reminded that God’s love is without limit and favoritism. And the New Testament reveals that the greatest expression of it is seen in Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Psalm 145 declares that “the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them” (vv. 18–19).
God’s love for us always endures, and it never fails!
Father in heaven, we are awed by Your love for us that never changes, never fails, and never ends. We praise You for demonstrating Your limitless love for us through Jesus our Savior and Lord.
There is never any variation in God’s enduring love for us all.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Learning About His Ways
When Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples…He departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities. —Matthew 11:1
He comes where He commands us to leave. If you stayed home when God told you to go because you were so concerned about your own people there, then you actually robbed them of the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself. When you obeyed and left all the consequences to God, the Lord went into your city to teach, but as long as you were disobedient, you blocked His way. Watch where you begin to debate with Him and put what you call your duty into competition with His commands. If you say, “I know that He told me to go, but my duty is here,” it simply means that you do not believe that Jesus means what He says.
He teaches where He instructs us not to teach. “Master…let us make three tabernacles…” (Luke 9:33).
Are we playing the part of an amateur providence, trying to play God’s role in the lives of others? Are we so noisy in our instruction of other people that God cannot get near them? We must learn to keep our mouths shut and our spirits alert. God wants to instruct us regarding His Son, and He wants to turn our times of prayer into mounts of transfiguration. When we become certain that God is going to work in a particular way, He will never work in that way again.
He works where He sends us to wait. “…tarry…until…” (Luke 24:49). “Wait on the Lord” and He will work (Psalm 37:34). But don’t wait sulking spiritually and feeling sorry for yourself, just because you can’t see one inch in front of you! Are we detached enough from our own spiritual fits of emotion to “wait patiently for Him”? (Psalm 37:7). Waiting is not sitting with folded hands doing nothing, but it is learning to do what we are told.
These are some of the facets of His ways that we rarely recognize.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Love that Will Not Let You Go - #8233
I just don't understand why this beautiful girl at college didn't have love at first sight. I mean, when she met me, you know? I mean, it wasn't even love at second sight, or tenth sight. We met at college, and it wasn't as if she was holed up in her room studying all the time. She was very active socially-especially in dating some of the most sought-after guys on campus. I knew getting her wasn't going to be easy. So I carefully planned my comings and goings so I would be places that I thought she would be. Don't you dare call it stalking - no. I thought about things I could say that might impress her, and I ultimately let her know that I had more than a casual friendship in my mind. There were challenges, but there was no way I was going to lose this girl. I loved her, I relentlessly pursued her, and I got her! And what a wonderful life it's been together!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Love that Will Not Let You Go."
I have loved someone enough to pursue her with everything I had. There's someone who loves you like that whether or not you know it. In fact, He's been pursuing you for years, determined to give you every chance to begin a personal relationship with Him. And while you've been giving yourself to other pursuits, He's just been relentlessly pursuing you. But one day your time to experience His love will run out. So He's pursuing you one more time today.
I'm talking about Jesus Christ. In our word for today from the Word of God, there's a memorable picture of where you are spiritually and where Jesus is in relation to you. The Bible describes our spiritual condition this way: "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). That's hard to argue with. When you look at what the Bible says about how we're supposed to live and then you compare your life to God's 100% holy standard, there's no doubt we're His lost sheep-lost because we've gotten away from Him.
Now here's that beautiful picture from Luke 15, beginning with verse 4: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.'" There it is-Jesus' loving pursuit of one person that He does not want to lose-Jesus' loving pursuit of you.
In the words of the Bible, "God is not willing that one should perish." You could put your name there. "God is not willing that (There's your name.) should perish." That "perish" refers to the death penalty, the eternal separation from God that's our destiny because of our sin. But Jesus stepped in and He went to the cross to absorb all the guilt and all the hell of all the wrong things you and I have ever done, and then He came back from the grave so He could give you eternal life. He died so you don't have to. He pursued you all the way to a cross, and today He's still pursuing you right to the place where you are right now. That tug you might be feeling inside-that's Him drawing you to Him. And you have to come when He's drawing you.
He's preserved your life so you wouldn't die without Him. He's brought people into your life so you could find out about Him. He's brought things into your life that would show you how much you need someone beyond yourself; how much you need Him. And now you have this one guaranteed opportunity to open up to the love that you were made for. Your relationship with Him begins the moment you give yourself to this Man who gave His life for you.
You can tell Him right where you are, "Jesus, I believe when you died on that cross you were paying for my sin. And I believe you're alive, and I want you to live in me. Right now, Jesus, beginning now I pin all my hopes on you. I'm yours." Boy, if that's where you're at and you finally want to experience His love for yourself, go to our website It's there for you to help you be sure you belong to Jesus Christ as of this day. That website is ANewStory.com.
Today the awesome love of Jesus Christ is still within your reach. He's come so far to find you. Don't miss Him.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Deuteronomy 10, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: LOVE THE OVERLOOKED
May I urge you to love the overlooked? When you talk to the lonely student or befriend the weary mom, you love Jesus. He dresses in the garb of the overlooked and ignored. “Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me,” Jesus said (Matthew 25:40).
You can do that. Don’t so focus on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done. Everyday do something you don’t want to do. Pick up someone else’s trash. Call the long-winded relative. Don’t be too big to do something small. 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, “Throw yourself into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.” A good action brings God’s attention. He notices the actions of his servants. He sent his Son to be one!
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Deuteronomy 10
God responded. He said, “Shape two slabs of stone similar to the first ones. Climb the mountain and meet me. Also make yourself a wooden chest. I will engrave the stone slabs with the words that were on the first ones, the ones you smashed. Then you will put them in the Chest.”
3-5 So I made a chest out of acacia wood, shaped two slabs of stone, just like the first ones, and climbed the mountain with the two slabs in my arms. He engraved the stone slabs the same as he had the first ones, the Ten Words that he addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly. Then God gave them to me. I turned around and came down the mountain. I put the stone slabs in the Chest that I made and they’ve been there ever since, just as God commanded me.
6-7 The People of Israel went from the wells of the Jaakanites to Moserah. Aaron died there and was buried. His son Eleazar succeeded him as priest. From there they went to Gudgodah, and then to Jotbathah, a land of streams of water.
8-9 That’s when God set apart the tribe of Levi to carry God’s Covenant Chest, to be on duty in the Presence of God, to serve him, and to bless in his name, as they continue to do today. And that’s why Levites don’t have a piece of inherited land as their kinsmen do. God is their inheritance, as God, your God, promised them.
10 I stayed there on the mountain forty days and nights, just as I did the first time. And God listened to me, just as he did the first time: God decided not to destroy you.
11 God told me, “Now get going. Lead your people as they resume the journey to take possession of the land that I promised their ancestors that I’d give to them.”
12-13 So now Israel, what do you think God expects from you? Just this: Live in his presence in holy reverence, follow the road he sets out for you, love him, serve God, your God, with everything you have in you, obey the commandments and regulations of God that I’m commanding you today—live a good life.
14-18 Look around you: Everything you see is God’s—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that’s you!—out of all the other peoples. That’s where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he’s the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn’t play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.
19-21 You must treat foreigners with the same loving care—
remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Reverently respect God, your God, serve him, hold tight to him,
back up your promises with the authority of his name.
He’s your praise! He’s your God!
He did all these tremendous, these staggering things
that you saw with your own eyes.
22 When your ancestors entered Egypt, they numbered a mere seventy souls. And now look at you—you look more like the stars in the night skies in number. And your God did it.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Read: Luke 15:1–7
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
INSIGHT
The parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:1–7) is the first in a series of parables about lost things. It’s followed by the parable of the lost coin (vv. 8–10) and the parable of the lost son, better known as the prodigal son (vv. 11–32).
Although each of the parables is about something lost, there’s also something in each that isn’t lost—the sheep safe in the pen, the remaining coins, and the elder son at home. Yet the shepherd, the woman, and the father are not content with what they have; their concern is for that which is lost.
Is someone in your life lost and waiting to be found by the Savior? Whom can you trust to God’s loving and searching ways? - J.R. Hudberg
Sinners Like Us
By David H. Roper
This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Luke 15:2
I have a friend—her name is Edith—who told me about the day she decided to follow Jesus.
Edith cared nothing for religion. But one Sunday morning she walked into a church near her apartment looking for something to satisfy her discontented soul. The text that day was Luke 15:1–2, which the pastor read from the King James Version: “Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”
That’s what it said, but this is what Edith heard: “This man receives sinners and Edith with them.” She sat straight up in her pew! Eventually she realized her mistake, but the thought that Jesus welcomed sinners—and that included Edith—stayed with her. That afternoon she decided to “draw near” to Jesus and listen to Him. She began to read the Gospels, and soon she decided to put her faith in Him and follow Him.
The religious folks of Jesus’s day were scandalized by the fact that He ate and drank with sinful, awful people. Their rules prohibited them from associating with such folk. Jesus paid no attention to their made-up rules. He welcomed the down-and-out and gathered them to Him, no matter how far gone they were.
It’s still true, you know: Jesus receives sinners and (your name).
Heavenly Father, we can’t thank You enough for the radical love of Your Son, who drew all of us outcasts and moral failures to Him, and made the way for us to come to You in joy and boldness.
God pursues us in our restlessness, receives us in our sinfulness, holds us in our brokenness. Scotty Smith
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Becoming Entirely His
Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. —James 1:4
Many of us appear to be all right in general, but there are still some areas in which we are careless and lazy; it is not a matter of sin, but the remnants of our carnal life that tend to make us careless. Carelessness is an insult to the Holy Spirit. We should have no carelessness about us either in the way we worship God, or even in the way we eat and drink.
Not only must our relationship to God be right, but the outward expression of that relationship must also be right. Ultimately, God will allow nothing to escape; every detail of our lives is under His scrutiny. God will bring us back in countless ways to the same point over and over again. And He never tires of bringing us back to that one point until we learn the lesson, because His purpose is to produce the finished product. It may be a problem arising from our impulsive nature, but again and again, with the most persistent patience, God has brought us back to that one particular point. Or the problem may be our idle and wandering thinking, or our independent nature and self-interest. Through this process, God is trying to impress upon us the one thing that is not entirely right in our lives.
We have been having a wonderful time in our studies over the revealed truth of God’s redemption, and our hearts are perfect toward Him. And His wonderful work in us makes us know that overall we are right with Him. “Let patience have its perfect work….” The Holy Spirit speaking through James said, “Now let your patience become a finished product.” Beware of becoming careless over the small details of life and saying, “Oh, that will have to do for now.” Whatever it may be, God will point it out with persistence until we become entirely His.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great word of Jesus to His disciples is Abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on His word; trust entirely to Him and watch that when He brings us to the venture, we take it. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1459 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Hurried, Worried, and Blurry - #8232
The Lord's been good to our ministry and given us vehicles when we needed them through His people. It's been a wonderful thing. And I remember years ago, He provided our ministry with a used car. It was the easiest car to drive we've ever had up to that time. The windows were interesting. Looking out the windshield, everything looks clear. Looking out the side windows; that was another story. They were tinted for privacy. But over the years and the miles and all the heat, the tinting had started to create ripples in the glass. So everything you looked at through those windows just didn't look quite right. It's was blurred, it was distorted, it was dark.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hurried, Worried, and Blurry."
The view isn't right, you know, when you're looking through a window that's dark or blurred. And sadly, a lot of us are looking at life through a window like that too much of the time. You know, it doesn't have to be that way. In the way He created us, God has provided something that can keep your view clear most of the time and help you actually avoid the mistakes we make because we're looking at things through a dirty window or a distorted window. One reason a lot of us are way more stressed than we need to be is that we neglect this vision-clearing gift from God.
It's clear that God built the need for it right into our creation when you go back 3,000 years to what He said in Leviticus 23:13, our word for today from the Word of God. "There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest ... you are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the Lord."
Okay, so God designed us to work six days a week - not seven - and to focus on worship and rest one day out of seven. Like a car, we can't be all accelerator and no brakes or we're going to be out of control; we're going to crash. The Sabbath principle is the brakes that our creator has built into our lives to keep that from happening. And we can't continue to defy our created order and end up in good shape.
Unfortunately, our society, our careers, our churches, even our own drivenness often push us to keep driving all the time - all accelerator, no brakes. God even included the Sabbath requirement in His Ten Commandments. He's serious about it. This isn't about legalism. It's about respecting our creator and living as we were created to live. It's about personal sanity!
You might be experiencing right now what neglecting your Sabbaths does to the window through which you look at life. Prolonged stretches without timeouts start to distort your judgment; they cause you to make mistakes, to be more vulnerable to temptation and choices you'll regret. When you don't stop regularly to rest, your creativity starts to dry up, your sensitivity starts to turn to hardness, you're meaner, you're more short-tempered, you're more negative, more cutting. People look worse than they are, problems look bigger than they are, and God seems farther than He is.
You make some of your biggest mistakes when you're fatigued, and one major reason you're fatigued may be that you've simply blown by one Sabbath rest after another. Your Sabbaths are pretty consistently delayed, or abbreviated, or canceled. And you, and probably people around you, are suffering unnecessarily for it.
In Exodus 31:13, God says, "You must observe my Sabbaths ... so you may know that I am the Lord." When you tithe your money, you are acknowledging that, as Lord of your finances, God can do more in your life with your obedient 90% than your disobedient 100% that you want to keep. When you take the Sabbath timeouts God has commanded, you're acknowledging His Lordship over your time; that He will enable you to do more in six days than you can do in seven days when you're dishonoring His Sabbath rest.
Your outlook may be getting increasingly blurred, dark, and distorted. You've probably not been stopping for the window cleaning that God does only when you have stopped to rest. You need to get your Sabbaths, so God doesn't one day have to violently throw on your brakes. Then your Sabbaths will come and get you.
May I urge you to love the overlooked? When you talk to the lonely student or befriend the weary mom, you love Jesus. He dresses in the garb of the overlooked and ignored. “Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me,” Jesus said (Matthew 25:40).
You can do that. Don’t so focus on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done. Everyday do something you don’t want to do. Pick up someone else’s trash. Call the long-winded relative. Don’t be too big to do something small. 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, “Throw yourself into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.” A good action brings God’s attention. He notices the actions of his servants. He sent his Son to be one!
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Deuteronomy 10
God responded. He said, “Shape two slabs of stone similar to the first ones. Climb the mountain and meet me. Also make yourself a wooden chest. I will engrave the stone slabs with the words that were on the first ones, the ones you smashed. Then you will put them in the Chest.”
3-5 So I made a chest out of acacia wood, shaped two slabs of stone, just like the first ones, and climbed the mountain with the two slabs in my arms. He engraved the stone slabs the same as he had the first ones, the Ten Words that he addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly. Then God gave them to me. I turned around and came down the mountain. I put the stone slabs in the Chest that I made and they’ve been there ever since, just as God commanded me.
6-7 The People of Israel went from the wells of the Jaakanites to Moserah. Aaron died there and was buried. His son Eleazar succeeded him as priest. From there they went to Gudgodah, and then to Jotbathah, a land of streams of water.
8-9 That’s when God set apart the tribe of Levi to carry God’s Covenant Chest, to be on duty in the Presence of God, to serve him, and to bless in his name, as they continue to do today. And that’s why Levites don’t have a piece of inherited land as their kinsmen do. God is their inheritance, as God, your God, promised them.
10 I stayed there on the mountain forty days and nights, just as I did the first time. And God listened to me, just as he did the first time: God decided not to destroy you.
11 God told me, “Now get going. Lead your people as they resume the journey to take possession of the land that I promised their ancestors that I’d give to them.”
12-13 So now Israel, what do you think God expects from you? Just this: Live in his presence in holy reverence, follow the road he sets out for you, love him, serve God, your God, with everything you have in you, obey the commandments and regulations of God that I’m commanding you today—live a good life.
14-18 Look around you: Everything you see is God’s—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that’s you!—out of all the other peoples. That’s where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he’s the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn’t play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.
19-21 You must treat foreigners with the same loving care—
remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Reverently respect God, your God, serve him, hold tight to him,
back up your promises with the authority of his name.
He’s your praise! He’s your God!
He did all these tremendous, these staggering things
that you saw with your own eyes.
22 When your ancestors entered Egypt, they numbered a mere seventy souls. And now look at you—you look more like the stars in the night skies in number. And your God did it.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Read: Luke 15:1–7
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
INSIGHT
The parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:1–7) is the first in a series of parables about lost things. It’s followed by the parable of the lost coin (vv. 8–10) and the parable of the lost son, better known as the prodigal son (vv. 11–32).
Although each of the parables is about something lost, there’s also something in each that isn’t lost—the sheep safe in the pen, the remaining coins, and the elder son at home. Yet the shepherd, the woman, and the father are not content with what they have; their concern is for that which is lost.
Is someone in your life lost and waiting to be found by the Savior? Whom can you trust to God’s loving and searching ways? - J.R. Hudberg
Sinners Like Us
By David H. Roper
This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Luke 15:2
I have a friend—her name is Edith—who told me about the day she decided to follow Jesus.
Edith cared nothing for religion. But one Sunday morning she walked into a church near her apartment looking for something to satisfy her discontented soul. The text that day was Luke 15:1–2, which the pastor read from the King James Version: “Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”
That’s what it said, but this is what Edith heard: “This man receives sinners and Edith with them.” She sat straight up in her pew! Eventually she realized her mistake, but the thought that Jesus welcomed sinners—and that included Edith—stayed with her. That afternoon she decided to “draw near” to Jesus and listen to Him. She began to read the Gospels, and soon she decided to put her faith in Him and follow Him.
The religious folks of Jesus’s day were scandalized by the fact that He ate and drank with sinful, awful people. Their rules prohibited them from associating with such folk. Jesus paid no attention to their made-up rules. He welcomed the down-and-out and gathered them to Him, no matter how far gone they were.
It’s still true, you know: Jesus receives sinners and (your name).
Heavenly Father, we can’t thank You enough for the radical love of Your Son, who drew all of us outcasts and moral failures to Him, and made the way for us to come to You in joy and boldness.
God pursues us in our restlessness, receives us in our sinfulness, holds us in our brokenness. Scotty Smith
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Becoming Entirely His
Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. —James 1:4
Many of us appear to be all right in general, but there are still some areas in which we are careless and lazy; it is not a matter of sin, but the remnants of our carnal life that tend to make us careless. Carelessness is an insult to the Holy Spirit. We should have no carelessness about us either in the way we worship God, or even in the way we eat and drink.
Not only must our relationship to God be right, but the outward expression of that relationship must also be right. Ultimately, God will allow nothing to escape; every detail of our lives is under His scrutiny. God will bring us back in countless ways to the same point over and over again. And He never tires of bringing us back to that one point until we learn the lesson, because His purpose is to produce the finished product. It may be a problem arising from our impulsive nature, but again and again, with the most persistent patience, God has brought us back to that one particular point. Or the problem may be our idle and wandering thinking, or our independent nature and self-interest. Through this process, God is trying to impress upon us the one thing that is not entirely right in our lives.
We have been having a wonderful time in our studies over the revealed truth of God’s redemption, and our hearts are perfect toward Him. And His wonderful work in us makes us know that overall we are right with Him. “Let patience have its perfect work….” The Holy Spirit speaking through James said, “Now let your patience become a finished product.” Beware of becoming careless over the small details of life and saying, “Oh, that will have to do for now.” Whatever it may be, God will point it out with persistence until we become entirely His.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great word of Jesus to His disciples is Abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on His word; trust entirely to Him and watch that when He brings us to the venture, we take it. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1459 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Hurried, Worried, and Blurry - #8232
The Lord's been good to our ministry and given us vehicles when we needed them through His people. It's been a wonderful thing. And I remember years ago, He provided our ministry with a used car. It was the easiest car to drive we've ever had up to that time. The windows were interesting. Looking out the windshield, everything looks clear. Looking out the side windows; that was another story. They were tinted for privacy. But over the years and the miles and all the heat, the tinting had started to create ripples in the glass. So everything you looked at through those windows just didn't look quite right. It's was blurred, it was distorted, it was dark.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hurried, Worried, and Blurry."
The view isn't right, you know, when you're looking through a window that's dark or blurred. And sadly, a lot of us are looking at life through a window like that too much of the time. You know, it doesn't have to be that way. In the way He created us, God has provided something that can keep your view clear most of the time and help you actually avoid the mistakes we make because we're looking at things through a dirty window or a distorted window. One reason a lot of us are way more stressed than we need to be is that we neglect this vision-clearing gift from God.
It's clear that God built the need for it right into our creation when you go back 3,000 years to what He said in Leviticus 23:13, our word for today from the Word of God. "There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest ... you are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the Lord."
Okay, so God designed us to work six days a week - not seven - and to focus on worship and rest one day out of seven. Like a car, we can't be all accelerator and no brakes or we're going to be out of control; we're going to crash. The Sabbath principle is the brakes that our creator has built into our lives to keep that from happening. And we can't continue to defy our created order and end up in good shape.
Unfortunately, our society, our careers, our churches, even our own drivenness often push us to keep driving all the time - all accelerator, no brakes. God even included the Sabbath requirement in His Ten Commandments. He's serious about it. This isn't about legalism. It's about respecting our creator and living as we were created to live. It's about personal sanity!
You might be experiencing right now what neglecting your Sabbaths does to the window through which you look at life. Prolonged stretches without timeouts start to distort your judgment; they cause you to make mistakes, to be more vulnerable to temptation and choices you'll regret. When you don't stop regularly to rest, your creativity starts to dry up, your sensitivity starts to turn to hardness, you're meaner, you're more short-tempered, you're more negative, more cutting. People look worse than they are, problems look bigger than they are, and God seems farther than He is.
You make some of your biggest mistakes when you're fatigued, and one major reason you're fatigued may be that you've simply blown by one Sabbath rest after another. Your Sabbaths are pretty consistently delayed, or abbreviated, or canceled. And you, and probably people around you, are suffering unnecessarily for it.
In Exodus 31:13, God says, "You must observe my Sabbaths ... so you may know that I am the Lord." When you tithe your money, you are acknowledging that, as Lord of your finances, God can do more in your life with your obedient 90% than your disobedient 100% that you want to keep. When you take the Sabbath timeouts God has commanded, you're acknowledging His Lordship over your time; that He will enable you to do more in six days than you can do in seven days when you're dishonoring His Sabbath rest.
Your outlook may be getting increasingly blurred, dark, and distorted. You've probably not been stopping for the window cleaning that God does only when you have stopped to rest. You need to get your Sabbaths, so God doesn't one day have to violently throw on your brakes. Then your Sabbaths will come and get you.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Deuteronomy 9, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: JESUS WAS A HUMBLE SERVANT
Jesus’ self-assigned purpose statement reads: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
As you celebrate your unique design, be careful. Don’t be so focused on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done. You know a 3:00 am diaper change fits in very few sweet spots, but the world needs servants. People like Jesus, who “did not come to be served, but to serve.” He selected prayer over sleep and unpredictable apostles over obedient angels. Jesus picked the people. When they feared the storm, he stilled it. When they had no wine for the wedding or food for the multitude, he made both. Let’s follow his example and put on the apron of humility, to serve one another (1 Peter 5:5).
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Deuteronomy 9
Attention, Israel! This very day you are crossing the Jordan to enter the land and dispossess nations that are much bigger and stronger than you are. You’re going to find huge cities with sky-high fortress-walls and gigantic people, descendants of the Anakites—you’ve heard all about them; you’ve heard the saying, “No one can stand up to an Anakite.”
3 Today know this: God, your God, is crossing the river ahead of you—he’s a consuming fire. He will destroy the nations, he will put them under your power. You will dispossess them and very quickly wipe them out, just as God promised you would.
4-5 But when God pushes them out ahead of you, don’t start thinking to yourselves, “It’s because of all the good I’ve done that God has brought me in here to dispossess these nations.” Actually it’s because of all the evil these nations have done. No, it’s nothing good that you’ve done, no record for decency that you’ve built up, that got you here; it’s because of the vile wickedness of these nations that God, your God, is dispossessing them before you so that he can keep his promised word to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6-10 Know this and don’t ever forget it: It’s not because of any good that you’ve done that God is giving you this good land to own. Anything but! You’re stubborn as mules. Keep in mind and don’t ever forget how angry you made God, your God, in the wilderness. You’ve kicked and screamed against God from the day you left Egypt until you got to this place, rebels all the way. You made God angry at Horeb, made him so angry that he wanted to destroy you. When I climbed the mountain to receive the slabs of stone, the tablets of the covenant that God made with you, I stayed there on the mountain forty days and nights: I ate no food; I drank no water. Then God gave me the two slabs of stone, engraved with the finger of God. They contained word for word everything that God spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.
11-12 It was at the end of the forty days and nights that God gave me the two slabs of stone, the tablets of the covenant. God said to me, “Get going, and quickly. Get down there, because your people whom you led out of Egypt have ruined everything. In almost no time at all they have left the road that I laid out for them and gone off and made for themselves a cast god.”
13-14 God said, “I look at this people and all I see are hardheaded, hardhearted rebels. Get out of my way now so I can destroy them. I’m going to wipe them off the face of the map. Then I’ll start over with you to make a nation far better and bigger than they could ever be.”
15-17 I turned around and started down the mountain—by now the mountain was blazing with fire—carrying the two tablets of the covenant in my two arms. That’s when I saw it: There you were, sinning against God, your God—you had made yourselves a cast god in the shape of a calf! So soon you had left the road that God had commanded you to walk on. I held the two stone slabs high and threw them down, smashing them to bits as you watched.
18-20 Then I prostrated myself before God, just as I had at the beginning of the forty days and nights. I ate no food; I drank no water. I did this because of you, all your sins, sinning against God, doing what is evil in God’s eyes and making him angry. I was terrified of God’s furious anger, his blazing anger. I was sure he would destroy you. But once again God listened to me. And Aaron! How furious he was with Aaron—ready to destroy him. But I prayed also for Aaron at that same time.
21 But that sin-thing that you made, that calf-god, I took and burned in the fire, pounded and ground it until it was crushed into a fine powder, then threw it into the stream that comes down the mountain.
22 And then there was Camp Taberah (Blaze), Massah (Testing-Place), and Camp Kibroth Hattaavah (Graves-of-the-Craving)—more occasions when you made God furious with you.
23-24 The most recent was when God sent you out from Kadesh Barnea, ordering you: “Go. Possess the land that I’m giving you.” And what did you do? You rebelled. Rebelled against the clear orders of God, your God. Refused to trust him. Wouldn’t obey him. You’ve been rebels against God from the first day I knew you.
25-26 When I was on my face, prostrate before God those forty days and nights after God said he would destroy you, I prayed to God for you, “My Master, God, don’t destroy your people, your inheritance whom, in your immense generosity, you redeemed, using your enormous strength to get them out of Egypt.
27-28 “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; don’t make too much of the stubbornness of this people, their evil and their sin, lest the Egyptians from whom you rescued them say, ‘God couldn’t do it; he got tired and wasn’t able to take them to the land he promised them. He ended up hating them and dumped them in the wilderness to die.’
29 “They are your people still, your inheritance whom you powerfully and sovereignly rescued.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, July 30, 2018
Read: Nehemiah 6:1–9, 15
Conspiracy Against Nehemiah
Now when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it (although up to that time I had not set up the doors in the gates), 2 Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come and let us meet together at Hakkephirim in the plain of Ono.” But they intended to do me harm. 3 And I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” 4 And they sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner. 5 In the same way Sanballat for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand. 6 In it was written, “It is reported among the nations, and Geshem[a] also says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel; that is why you are building the wall. And according to these reports you wish to become their king. 7 And you have also set up prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem, ‘There is a king in Judah.’ And now the king will hear of these reports. So now come and let us take counsel together.” 8 Then I sent to him, saying, “No such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind.” 9 For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.” But now, O God,[b] strengthen my hands.
Footnotes:
Nehemiah 6:6 Hebrew Gashmu
Nehemiah 6:9 Hebrew lacks O God
INSIGHT
What kinds of challenges have you faced? How has God helped you to overcome them?
For further study on the book of Nehemiah, see christianuniversity.org/OT220.
Overcoming Challenges
By Kirsten Holmberg
So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. Nehemiah 6:15
We gathered monthly to hold one another accountable to our individual goals. My friend Mary wanted to reupholster the seats of her dining room chairs before the year’s end. At our November meeting she wittily reported her progress from October: “It took ten months and two hours to recover my chairs.” After months of not being able to obtain the materials required, or find the quiet hours away from her demanding job and her toddler’s needs, the project took merely two hours of committed work to finish.
The Lord called Nehemiah to a far greater project: to bring restoration to Jerusalem after its walls had lain in ruin for 150 years (Nehemiah 2:3–5, 12). As he led the people in the labor, they experienced mockery, attacks, distraction, and temptation to sin (4:3, 8; 6:10–12). Yet God equipped them to stand firm—resolute in their efforts—completing a daunting task in just fifty-two days.
Overcoming such challenges requires much more than a personal desire or goal; Nehemiah was driven by an understanding that God appointed him to the task. His sense of purpose invigorated the people to follow his leadership despite incredible opposition. When God charges us with a task—whether to repair a relationship or share what He’s done in our lives—He gives us whatever skills and strength are necessary to continue in our effort to do what He’s asked, no matter what challenges come our way.
Lord, please equip me with Your strength to persevere and finish the tasks You’ve given me. May my labors bring You glory.
God equips us to overcome obstacles and complete the tasks He’s given us to do.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, July 30, 2018
The Teaching of Disillusionment
Jesus did not commit Himself to them…, for He knew what was in man. —John 2:24-25
Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life; it means being free from these deceptions. However, though no longer deceived, our experience of disillusionment may actually leave us cynical and overly critical in our judgment of others. But the disillusionment that comes from God brings us to the point where we see people as they really are, yet without any cynicism or any stinging and bitter criticism. Many of the things in life that inflict the greatest injury, grief, or pain, stem from the fact that we suffer from illusions. We are not true to one another as facts, seeing each other as we really are; we are only true to our misconceived ideas of one another. According to our thinking, everything is either delightful and good, or it is evil, malicious, and cowardly.
Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens— if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being something which he or she cannot possibly give. There is only one Being who can completely satisfy to the absolute depth of the hurting human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is so obviously uncompromising with regard to every human relationship because He knows that every relationship that is not based on faithfulness to Himself will end in disaster. Our Lord trusted no one, and never placed His faith in people, yet He was never suspicious or bitter. Our Lord’s confidence in God, and in what God’s grace could do for anyone, was so perfect that He never despaired, never giving up hope for any person. If our trust is placed in human beings, we will end up despairing of everyone.
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
Monday, July 30, 2018
A Real Master's Degree - #8231
We tend to measure life by its milestones. Take our first born child, our daughter. There have been a lot of milestones in her life. I remember looking at the films of her learning to walk. Now, that's a big milestone from a long time ago. Her first piano recital; we have pictures of that of course. Her first band concert; that was a big one. Let's see, there was her junior high graduation, then her high school graduation, her college graduation, her wedding; man, there have been a lot of things. I remember that when she graduated from college there was a sense of completion I think for all of us. She had a double major in college. She graduated with honors. She got a degree from a great school, and I wrote something on her graduation card for all the work and all the money that that degree had cost. I told her there is another degree that she needs. One that is far more important.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Real Master's Degree."
Our word for today from the Word of God from 2 Timothy 2:15 - "Study to show yourself a workman approved under God who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth." Now when our daughter's class received their degree, it was kind of exciting. Some of them held it up when they walked across that stage - "Man, I crossed that finish line." Some of them waved at people. Some of them waved their degree, and basically the school was saying, "Alright, you've done all you need to do to have this school's approval."
Now Paul was suggesting a higher degree to aim for - a real Master's Degree. It has nothing to do with going on for more college. Jim Elliot was a graduate of the same college that our daughter attended. Jim was a young man who went to the Auca Indians, the Waorani Indians, stone-age savages in the jungles of Ecuador and some people thought he wasted his life when he was martyred trying to reach them. But he actually invested his life in reaching those precious natives.
See, today many of them know the Lord. The killers are actually pastors of the Auca church. His example caused many of us to go into full-time Christian work. Jim Elliot would say he only wanted one degree in his life. Though he was a college grad, he said, "I want my A.U.G. award - Approved Unto God." Does God approve - that's what Jim said he wanted. Now the tragedy is when you sacrifice your A.U.G. - your Master's Degree - in order to get some position or recognition that men offer.
Maybe you have given your Approved unto God to get some academic achievement; -maybe you have made some compromises. Maybe you lost your Master's Degree in order to get a business position or a promotion; you paid a price that's too high. Or maybe to achieve something in ministry or the reaching of some important goal or dream, but it's cost you God's approval. Maybe you want to be acknowledged by a group of friends or colleagues or by a guy or girl, and in the process you lost your A.U.G. degree - your Master's Degree. You lost God's approval.
You've got to ask yourself, did you do it in a way that would give you Jesus' approval too? Or did it cost you His approval? Have you told the truth on your way to that goal? Have you consistently had your time with him or have you sacrificed that? Have you been caring for people, or have you been running over people to get there? Have you taken time to minister to people in need or are you just too busy for that? Have you stayed pure?
Our daughter saw the president of the college waiting as she crossed that platform that day, but I told her, "Honey, I think Jesus was waiting for you with your A.U.G. degree. He had a degree to give you that day, too." Boy, I sure hope He has one for me. The Master's Degree is the one that really matters, when you hear Him say some of the most wonderful words in the universe, "Well done."
Jesus’ self-assigned purpose statement reads: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
As you celebrate your unique design, be careful. Don’t be so focused on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done. You know a 3:00 am diaper change fits in very few sweet spots, but the world needs servants. People like Jesus, who “did not come to be served, but to serve.” He selected prayer over sleep and unpredictable apostles over obedient angels. Jesus picked the people. When they feared the storm, he stilled it. When they had no wine for the wedding or food for the multitude, he made both. Let’s follow his example and put on the apron of humility, to serve one another (1 Peter 5:5).
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Deuteronomy 9
Attention, Israel! This very day you are crossing the Jordan to enter the land and dispossess nations that are much bigger and stronger than you are. You’re going to find huge cities with sky-high fortress-walls and gigantic people, descendants of the Anakites—you’ve heard all about them; you’ve heard the saying, “No one can stand up to an Anakite.”
3 Today know this: God, your God, is crossing the river ahead of you—he’s a consuming fire. He will destroy the nations, he will put them under your power. You will dispossess them and very quickly wipe them out, just as God promised you would.
4-5 But when God pushes them out ahead of you, don’t start thinking to yourselves, “It’s because of all the good I’ve done that God has brought me in here to dispossess these nations.” Actually it’s because of all the evil these nations have done. No, it’s nothing good that you’ve done, no record for decency that you’ve built up, that got you here; it’s because of the vile wickedness of these nations that God, your God, is dispossessing them before you so that he can keep his promised word to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6-10 Know this and don’t ever forget it: It’s not because of any good that you’ve done that God is giving you this good land to own. Anything but! You’re stubborn as mules. Keep in mind and don’t ever forget how angry you made God, your God, in the wilderness. You’ve kicked and screamed against God from the day you left Egypt until you got to this place, rebels all the way. You made God angry at Horeb, made him so angry that he wanted to destroy you. When I climbed the mountain to receive the slabs of stone, the tablets of the covenant that God made with you, I stayed there on the mountain forty days and nights: I ate no food; I drank no water. Then God gave me the two slabs of stone, engraved with the finger of God. They contained word for word everything that God spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.
11-12 It was at the end of the forty days and nights that God gave me the two slabs of stone, the tablets of the covenant. God said to me, “Get going, and quickly. Get down there, because your people whom you led out of Egypt have ruined everything. In almost no time at all they have left the road that I laid out for them and gone off and made for themselves a cast god.”
13-14 God said, “I look at this people and all I see are hardheaded, hardhearted rebels. Get out of my way now so I can destroy them. I’m going to wipe them off the face of the map. Then I’ll start over with you to make a nation far better and bigger than they could ever be.”
15-17 I turned around and started down the mountain—by now the mountain was blazing with fire—carrying the two tablets of the covenant in my two arms. That’s when I saw it: There you were, sinning against God, your God—you had made yourselves a cast god in the shape of a calf! So soon you had left the road that God had commanded you to walk on. I held the two stone slabs high and threw them down, smashing them to bits as you watched.
18-20 Then I prostrated myself before God, just as I had at the beginning of the forty days and nights. I ate no food; I drank no water. I did this because of you, all your sins, sinning against God, doing what is evil in God’s eyes and making him angry. I was terrified of God’s furious anger, his blazing anger. I was sure he would destroy you. But once again God listened to me. And Aaron! How furious he was with Aaron—ready to destroy him. But I prayed also for Aaron at that same time.
21 But that sin-thing that you made, that calf-god, I took and burned in the fire, pounded and ground it until it was crushed into a fine powder, then threw it into the stream that comes down the mountain.
22 And then there was Camp Taberah (Blaze), Massah (Testing-Place), and Camp Kibroth Hattaavah (Graves-of-the-Craving)—more occasions when you made God furious with you.
23-24 The most recent was when God sent you out from Kadesh Barnea, ordering you: “Go. Possess the land that I’m giving you.” And what did you do? You rebelled. Rebelled against the clear orders of God, your God. Refused to trust him. Wouldn’t obey him. You’ve been rebels against God from the first day I knew you.
25-26 When I was on my face, prostrate before God those forty days and nights after God said he would destroy you, I prayed to God for you, “My Master, God, don’t destroy your people, your inheritance whom, in your immense generosity, you redeemed, using your enormous strength to get them out of Egypt.
27-28 “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; don’t make too much of the stubbornness of this people, their evil and their sin, lest the Egyptians from whom you rescued them say, ‘God couldn’t do it; he got tired and wasn’t able to take them to the land he promised them. He ended up hating them and dumped them in the wilderness to die.’
29 “They are your people still, your inheritance whom you powerfully and sovereignly rescued.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, July 30, 2018
Read: Nehemiah 6:1–9, 15
Conspiracy Against Nehemiah
Now when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it (although up to that time I had not set up the doors in the gates), 2 Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come and let us meet together at Hakkephirim in the plain of Ono.” But they intended to do me harm. 3 And I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” 4 And they sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner. 5 In the same way Sanballat for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand. 6 In it was written, “It is reported among the nations, and Geshem[a] also says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel; that is why you are building the wall. And according to these reports you wish to become their king. 7 And you have also set up prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem, ‘There is a king in Judah.’ And now the king will hear of these reports. So now come and let us take counsel together.” 8 Then I sent to him, saying, “No such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind.” 9 For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.” But now, O God,[b] strengthen my hands.
Footnotes:
Nehemiah 6:6 Hebrew Gashmu
Nehemiah 6:9 Hebrew lacks O God
INSIGHT
What kinds of challenges have you faced? How has God helped you to overcome them?
For further study on the book of Nehemiah, see christianuniversity.org/OT220.
Overcoming Challenges
By Kirsten Holmberg
So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. Nehemiah 6:15
We gathered monthly to hold one another accountable to our individual goals. My friend Mary wanted to reupholster the seats of her dining room chairs before the year’s end. At our November meeting she wittily reported her progress from October: “It took ten months and two hours to recover my chairs.” After months of not being able to obtain the materials required, or find the quiet hours away from her demanding job and her toddler’s needs, the project took merely two hours of committed work to finish.
The Lord called Nehemiah to a far greater project: to bring restoration to Jerusalem after its walls had lain in ruin for 150 years (Nehemiah 2:3–5, 12). As he led the people in the labor, they experienced mockery, attacks, distraction, and temptation to sin (4:3, 8; 6:10–12). Yet God equipped them to stand firm—resolute in their efforts—completing a daunting task in just fifty-two days.
Overcoming such challenges requires much more than a personal desire or goal; Nehemiah was driven by an understanding that God appointed him to the task. His sense of purpose invigorated the people to follow his leadership despite incredible opposition. When God charges us with a task—whether to repair a relationship or share what He’s done in our lives—He gives us whatever skills and strength are necessary to continue in our effort to do what He’s asked, no matter what challenges come our way.
Lord, please equip me with Your strength to persevere and finish the tasks You’ve given me. May my labors bring You glory.
God equips us to overcome obstacles and complete the tasks He’s given us to do.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, July 30, 2018
The Teaching of Disillusionment
Jesus did not commit Himself to them…, for He knew what was in man. —John 2:24-25
Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life; it means being free from these deceptions. However, though no longer deceived, our experience of disillusionment may actually leave us cynical and overly critical in our judgment of others. But the disillusionment that comes from God brings us to the point where we see people as they really are, yet without any cynicism or any stinging and bitter criticism. Many of the things in life that inflict the greatest injury, grief, or pain, stem from the fact that we suffer from illusions. We are not true to one another as facts, seeing each other as we really are; we are only true to our misconceived ideas of one another. According to our thinking, everything is either delightful and good, or it is evil, malicious, and cowardly.
Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens— if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being something which he or she cannot possibly give. There is only one Being who can completely satisfy to the absolute depth of the hurting human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is so obviously uncompromising with regard to every human relationship because He knows that every relationship that is not based on faithfulness to Himself will end in disaster. Our Lord trusted no one, and never placed His faith in people, yet He was never suspicious or bitter. Our Lord’s confidence in God, and in what God’s grace could do for anyone, was so perfect that He never despaired, never giving up hope for any person. If our trust is placed in human beings, we will end up despairing of everyone.
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
Monday, July 30, 2018
A Real Master's Degree - #8231
We tend to measure life by its milestones. Take our first born child, our daughter. There have been a lot of milestones in her life. I remember looking at the films of her learning to walk. Now, that's a big milestone from a long time ago. Her first piano recital; we have pictures of that of course. Her first band concert; that was a big one. Let's see, there was her junior high graduation, then her high school graduation, her college graduation, her wedding; man, there have been a lot of things. I remember that when she graduated from college there was a sense of completion I think for all of us. She had a double major in college. She graduated with honors. She got a degree from a great school, and I wrote something on her graduation card for all the work and all the money that that degree had cost. I told her there is another degree that she needs. One that is far more important.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Real Master's Degree."
Our word for today from the Word of God from 2 Timothy 2:15 - "Study to show yourself a workman approved under God who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth." Now when our daughter's class received their degree, it was kind of exciting. Some of them held it up when they walked across that stage - "Man, I crossed that finish line." Some of them waved at people. Some of them waved their degree, and basically the school was saying, "Alright, you've done all you need to do to have this school's approval."
Now Paul was suggesting a higher degree to aim for - a real Master's Degree. It has nothing to do with going on for more college. Jim Elliot was a graduate of the same college that our daughter attended. Jim was a young man who went to the Auca Indians, the Waorani Indians, stone-age savages in the jungles of Ecuador and some people thought he wasted his life when he was martyred trying to reach them. But he actually invested his life in reaching those precious natives.
See, today many of them know the Lord. The killers are actually pastors of the Auca church. His example caused many of us to go into full-time Christian work. Jim Elliot would say he only wanted one degree in his life. Though he was a college grad, he said, "I want my A.U.G. award - Approved Unto God." Does God approve - that's what Jim said he wanted. Now the tragedy is when you sacrifice your A.U.G. - your Master's Degree - in order to get some position or recognition that men offer.
Maybe you have given your Approved unto God to get some academic achievement; -maybe you have made some compromises. Maybe you lost your Master's Degree in order to get a business position or a promotion; you paid a price that's too high. Or maybe to achieve something in ministry or the reaching of some important goal or dream, but it's cost you God's approval. Maybe you want to be acknowledged by a group of friends or colleagues or by a guy or girl, and in the process you lost your A.U.G. degree - your Master's Degree. You lost God's approval.
You've got to ask yourself, did you do it in a way that would give you Jesus' approval too? Or did it cost you His approval? Have you told the truth on your way to that goal? Have you consistently had your time with him or have you sacrificed that? Have you been caring for people, or have you been running over people to get there? Have you taken time to minister to people in need or are you just too busy for that? Have you stayed pure?
Our daughter saw the president of the college waiting as she crossed that platform that day, but I told her, "Honey, I think Jesus was waiting for you with your A.U.G. degree. He had a degree to give you that day, too." Boy, I sure hope He has one for me. The Master's Degree is the one that really matters, when you hear Him say some of the most wonderful words in the universe, "Well done."
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Deuteronomy 8, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Too Close to Where You Got In
I like the story of the little boy who fell out of bed. When his mom asked him what happened, he answered, "I don't know. I guess I stayed too close to where I got in."
Easy to do the same with our faith. It's tempting just to stay where we got in and never move. How does your prayer life today compare with then? How about your giving? And Bible study? Can you tell you've grown?
2 Peter 3:18 says, "but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
If a child ceased to develop, the parent would be concerned, right? Doctors would be called and tests would be run. If you're the same Christian you were a few months ago, be careful. You might be wise to get a check up. Not on your body, but on your heart. Not a physical…but a spiritual.
From When God Whispers Your Name
Deuteronomy 8
Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.
6-9 So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
10 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,
the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness,
those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I’m on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You’ll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn’t obey the Voice of God, your God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Read: Luke 24:13–32
On the Road to Emmaus
13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem, 14 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. 22 Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, 23 and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” 25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, 29 but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
Footnotes:
Luke 24:13 Greek sixty stadia; a stadion was about 607 feet or 185 meters
Hope in Grief
By Amy Boucher Pye
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. Luke 24:31
When I was nineteen, one of my close friends was killed in a car accident. In the following weeks and months, I walked each day in a tunnel of grief. The pain of losing someone so young and wonderful clouded my vision, and at times I even felt unaware of what was going on around me. I felt so blinded by pain and grief that I simply could not see God.
In Luke 24, two disciples, confused and brokenhearted after Jesus’s death, didn’t realize they were walking with their resurrected Teacher Himself, even as He explained from Scripture why the promised Savior had to die and rise again. Only when He took bread and broke it was it revealed that this was Jesus (vv. 30–31). Although the followers of Jesus had faced death in all its horror when Jesus died, through His resurrection from the dead God showed them how to hope again.
Like those disciples, we might feel weighed down with confusion or grief. But we can find hope and comfort in the reality that Jesus is alive and at work in the world—and in us. Although we still face heartache and pain, we can welcome Christ to walk with us in our tunnel of grief. As the Light of the world (John 8:12), He can bring rays of hope to brighten our fog.
Lord God, thank You for being the light in the darkness. Bring hope when I’m sad and confused, and help me to see Your glory.
Though we grieve, we have hope in Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Do You See Jesus in Your Clouds?
Behold, He is coming with clouds… —Revelation 1:7
In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. “The clouds are the dust of His feet” (Nahum 1:3). They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds— He does not come in clear-shining brightness.
It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in using the cloud is to simplify our beliefs until our relationship with Him is exactly like that of a child— a relationship simply between God and our own souls, and where other people are but shadows. Until other people become shadows to us, clouds and darkness will be ours every once in a while. Is our relationship with God becoming more simple than it has ever been?
There is a connection between the strange providential circumstances allowed by God and what we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in the light of our knowledge of God. Until we can come face to face with the deepest, darkest fact of life without damaging our view of God’s character, we do not yet know Him.
“…they were fearful as they entered the cloud” (Luke 9:34). Is there anyone except Jesus in your cloud? If so, it will only get darker until you get to the place where there is “no one anymore, but only Jesus …” (Mark 9:8; also see Mark 2:7).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself. The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest.
Disciples Indeed
I like the story of the little boy who fell out of bed. When his mom asked him what happened, he answered, "I don't know. I guess I stayed too close to where I got in."
Easy to do the same with our faith. It's tempting just to stay where we got in and never move. How does your prayer life today compare with then? How about your giving? And Bible study? Can you tell you've grown?
2 Peter 3:18 says, "but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
If a child ceased to develop, the parent would be concerned, right? Doctors would be called and tests would be run. If you're the same Christian you were a few months ago, be careful. You might be wise to get a check up. Not on your body, but on your heart. Not a physical…but a spiritual.
From When God Whispers Your Name
Deuteronomy 8
Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.
6-9 So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
10 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,
the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness,
those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I’m on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You’ll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn’t obey the Voice of God, your God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Read: Luke 24:13–32
On the Road to Emmaus
13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem, 14 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. 22 Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, 23 and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” 25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, 29 but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
Footnotes:
Luke 24:13 Greek sixty stadia; a stadion was about 607 feet or 185 meters
Hope in Grief
By Amy Boucher Pye
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. Luke 24:31
When I was nineteen, one of my close friends was killed in a car accident. In the following weeks and months, I walked each day in a tunnel of grief. The pain of losing someone so young and wonderful clouded my vision, and at times I even felt unaware of what was going on around me. I felt so blinded by pain and grief that I simply could not see God.
In Luke 24, two disciples, confused and brokenhearted after Jesus’s death, didn’t realize they were walking with their resurrected Teacher Himself, even as He explained from Scripture why the promised Savior had to die and rise again. Only when He took bread and broke it was it revealed that this was Jesus (vv. 30–31). Although the followers of Jesus had faced death in all its horror when Jesus died, through His resurrection from the dead God showed them how to hope again.
Like those disciples, we might feel weighed down with confusion or grief. But we can find hope and comfort in the reality that Jesus is alive and at work in the world—and in us. Although we still face heartache and pain, we can welcome Christ to walk with us in our tunnel of grief. As the Light of the world (John 8:12), He can bring rays of hope to brighten our fog.
Lord God, thank You for being the light in the darkness. Bring hope when I’m sad and confused, and help me to see Your glory.
Though we grieve, we have hope in Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Do You See Jesus in Your Clouds?
Behold, He is coming with clouds… —Revelation 1:7
In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. “The clouds are the dust of His feet” (Nahum 1:3). They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds— He does not come in clear-shining brightness.
It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in using the cloud is to simplify our beliefs until our relationship with Him is exactly like that of a child— a relationship simply between God and our own souls, and where other people are but shadows. Until other people become shadows to us, clouds and darkness will be ours every once in a while. Is our relationship with God becoming more simple than it has ever been?
There is a connection between the strange providential circumstances allowed by God and what we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in the light of our knowledge of God. Until we can come face to face with the deepest, darkest fact of life without damaging our view of God’s character, we do not yet know Him.
“…they were fearful as they entered the cloud” (Luke 9:34). Is there anyone except Jesus in your cloud? If so, it will only get darker until you get to the place where there is “no one anymore, but only Jesus …” (Mark 9:8; also see Mark 2:7).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself. The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest.
Disciples Indeed
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Luke 3, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Our Problem is Sin
Our problem is sin. Not finances. Not budgets. Not overcrowded prisons. Our problem is sin. We are in rebellion against our Creator. We’re cut off from the source of life. A new president or policy won’t fix that. It can only be solved by God. That is why the Bible uses drastic terms like conversion, repentance, and lost and found. Society may renovate, but only God re-creates.
Ask yourself three questions:
1. Is there any unconfessed sin in my life? Confession is telling God you did the thing He saw you do.
2. Are there any unresolved conflicts in my world? Go and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.
3. Are there any un-surrendered worries in my life? Worry is a noose on the neck and a distraction of the mind.
Sometimes the problem’s out there. More often, it’s in here..in us!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Luke 3
A Baptism of Life-Change
In the fifteenth year of the rule of Caesar Tiberius—it was while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea; Herod, ruler of Galilee; his brother Philip, ruler of Iturea and Trachonitis; Lysanias, ruler of Abilene; during the Chief-Priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas—John, Zachariah’s son, out in the desert at the time, received a message from God. He went all through the country around the Jordan River preaching a baptism of life-change leading to forgiveness of sins, as described in the words of Isaiah the prophet:
Thunder in the desert!
“Prepare God’s arrival!
Make the road smooth and straight!
Every ditch will be filled in,
Every bump smoothed out,
The detours straightened out,
All the ruts paved over.
Everyone will be there to see
The parade of God’s salvation.”
7-9 When crowds of people came out for baptism because it was the popular thing to do, John exploded: “Brood of snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God’s judgment? It’s your life that must change, not your skin. And don’t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as ‘father.’ Being a child of Abraham is neither here nor there—children of Abraham are a dime a dozen. God can make children from stones if he wants. What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”
10 The crowd asked him, “Then what are we supposed to do?”
11 “If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.”
12 Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher, what should we do?”
13 He told them, “No more extortion—collect only what is required by law.”
14 Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
He told them, “No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content with your rations.”
15 The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”
16-17 But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
18-20 There was a lot more of this—words that gave strength to the people, words that put heart in them. The Message! But Herod, the ruler, stung by John’s rebuke in the matter of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, capped his long string of evil deeds with this outrage: He put John in jail.
21-22 After all the people were baptized, Jesus was baptized. As he was praying, the sky opened up and the Holy Spirit, like a dove descending, came down on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
Son of Adam, Son of God
23-38 When Jesus entered public life he was about thirty years old, the son (in public perception) of Joseph, who was—
son of Heli,
son of Matthat,
son of Levi,
son of Melki,
son of Jannai,
son of Joseph,
son of Mattathias,
son of Amos,
son of Nahum,
son of Esli,
son of Naggai,
son of Maath,
son of Mattathias,
son of Semein,
son of Josech,
son of Joda,
son of Joanan,
son of Rhesa,
son of Zerubbabel,
son of Shealtiel,
son of Neri,
son of Melchi,
son of Addi,
son of Cosam,
son of Elmadam,
son of Er,
son of Joshua,
son of Eliezer,
son of Jorim,
son of Matthat,
son of Levi,
son of Simeon,
son of Judah,
son of Joseph,
son of Jonam,
son of Eliakim,
son of Melea,
son of Menna,
son of Mattatha,
son of Nathan,
son of David,
son of Jesse,
son of Obed,
son of Boaz,
son of Salmon,
son of Nahshon,
son of Amminadab,
son of Admin,
son of Arni,
son of Hezron,
son of Perez,
son of Judah,
son of Jacob,
son of Isaac,
son of Abraham,
son of Terah,
son of Nahor,
son of Serug,
son of Reu,
son of Peleg,
son of Eber,
son of Shelah,
son of Kenan,
son of Arphaxad,
son of Shem,
son of Noah,
son of Lamech,
son of Methuselah,
son of Enoch,
son of Jared,
son of Mahalaleel,
son of Kenan,
son of Enos,
son of Seth,
son of Adam,
son of God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Read: Matthew 7:7–11
Ask, and It Will Be Given
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
INSIGHT
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) focuses on the attitudes and actions that are to characterize “citizens” who live under God’s rule. Yet an even more intimate relationship comes into play in the sermon. A common thread that runs through the chapters is a “family focus” or, more specifically, a “Father focus.” In Matthew 5:9 Jesus declared, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (emphasis added). And when followers of Christ display heaven’s light by the way they live, the “Father in heaven” gets the credit (v. 16). Showing love for one’s enemies also demonstrates kinship with our heavenly Father (vv. 43–48).
Those who engage in holy habits (6:4, 6, 18), including prayer, do so with the knowledge that the primary audience is their Father in heaven. The King who rules over all is “our Father” and cares enough to hear our prayers for all our needs. Thus, we can confidently address Him, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (v. 9).
When you pray this week, reflect on the fact that you are praying to the One Scripture calls our heavenly Father. - Arthur Jackson
Bees and Snakes
By Adam Holz
If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:11
Some problems have Daddy’s name written all over them. For instance, my kids recently discovered bees had moved into a crack in our concrete front porch. So, armed with bug spray, I went out to do battle.
I got stung. Five times.
I don’t like being stung by insects. But better me than my kids or wife. Taking care of my family’s well-being is at the top of my job description after all. My children recognized a need, and they asked me to address it. They trusted me to protect them from something they feared.
In Matthew 7, Jesus teaches that we too should bring our needs to God (v. 7), trusting Him with our requests. To illustrate, Jesus gives a case study in character: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (vv. 9–10). For loving parents, the answer is obvious. But Jesus answers anyway, challenging us not to lose faith in our Father’s generous goodness: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (v. 11).
I can’t imagine loving my kids more. But Jesus assures us that even the best earthly father’s love is eclipsed by God’s love for us.
Father, thank You for loving us so much more than even the best father here ever could. Help us to do as Jesus said with everything that’s on our hearts; to ask, seek, and knock in our relationship with You.
We can rely on our Father for everything we need.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, July 28, 2018
God’s Purpose or Mine?
He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side… —Mark 6:45
We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success. We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us. In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or a desired goal, but He is not. The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way. What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.
What is my vision of God’s purpose for me? Whatever it may be, His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me. God is not working toward a particular finish— His purpose is the process itself. What He desires for me is that I see “Him walking on the sea” with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see “Him walking on the sea” (Mark 6:49). It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God.
God’s training is for now, not later. His purpose is for this very minute, not for sometime in the future. We have nothing to do with what will follow our obedience, and we are wrong to concern ourselves with it. What people call preparation, God sees as the goal itself.
God’s purpose is to enable me to see that He can walk on the storms of my life right now. If we have a further goal in mind, we are not paying enough attention to the present time. However, if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation. What God looks at is what we are in the dark—the imaginations of our minds; the thoughts of our heart; the habits of our bodies; these are the things that mark us in God’s sight. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 669 L
Our problem is sin. Not finances. Not budgets. Not overcrowded prisons. Our problem is sin. We are in rebellion against our Creator. We’re cut off from the source of life. A new president or policy won’t fix that. It can only be solved by God. That is why the Bible uses drastic terms like conversion, repentance, and lost and found. Society may renovate, but only God re-creates.
Ask yourself three questions:
1. Is there any unconfessed sin in my life? Confession is telling God you did the thing He saw you do.
2. Are there any unresolved conflicts in my world? Go and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.
3. Are there any un-surrendered worries in my life? Worry is a noose on the neck and a distraction of the mind.
Sometimes the problem’s out there. More often, it’s in here..in us!
From When God Whispers Your Name
Luke 3
A Baptism of Life-Change
In the fifteenth year of the rule of Caesar Tiberius—it was while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea; Herod, ruler of Galilee; his brother Philip, ruler of Iturea and Trachonitis; Lysanias, ruler of Abilene; during the Chief-Priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas—John, Zachariah’s son, out in the desert at the time, received a message from God. He went all through the country around the Jordan River preaching a baptism of life-change leading to forgiveness of sins, as described in the words of Isaiah the prophet:
Thunder in the desert!
“Prepare God’s arrival!
Make the road smooth and straight!
Every ditch will be filled in,
Every bump smoothed out,
The detours straightened out,
All the ruts paved over.
Everyone will be there to see
The parade of God’s salvation.”
7-9 When crowds of people came out for baptism because it was the popular thing to do, John exploded: “Brood of snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God’s judgment? It’s your life that must change, not your skin. And don’t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as ‘father.’ Being a child of Abraham is neither here nor there—children of Abraham are a dime a dozen. God can make children from stones if he wants. What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”
10 The crowd asked him, “Then what are we supposed to do?”
11 “If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.”
12 Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher, what should we do?”
13 He told them, “No more extortion—collect only what is required by law.”
14 Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
He told them, “No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content with your rations.”
15 The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”
16-17 But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
18-20 There was a lot more of this—words that gave strength to the people, words that put heart in them. The Message! But Herod, the ruler, stung by John’s rebuke in the matter of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, capped his long string of evil deeds with this outrage: He put John in jail.
21-22 After all the people were baptized, Jesus was baptized. As he was praying, the sky opened up and the Holy Spirit, like a dove descending, came down on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
Son of Adam, Son of God
23-38 When Jesus entered public life he was about thirty years old, the son (in public perception) of Joseph, who was—
son of Heli,
son of Matthat,
son of Levi,
son of Melki,
son of Jannai,
son of Joseph,
son of Mattathias,
son of Amos,
son of Nahum,
son of Esli,
son of Naggai,
son of Maath,
son of Mattathias,
son of Semein,
son of Josech,
son of Joda,
son of Joanan,
son of Rhesa,
son of Zerubbabel,
son of Shealtiel,
son of Neri,
son of Melchi,
son of Addi,
son of Cosam,
son of Elmadam,
son of Er,
son of Joshua,
son of Eliezer,
son of Jorim,
son of Matthat,
son of Levi,
son of Simeon,
son of Judah,
son of Joseph,
son of Jonam,
son of Eliakim,
son of Melea,
son of Menna,
son of Mattatha,
son of Nathan,
son of David,
son of Jesse,
son of Obed,
son of Boaz,
son of Salmon,
son of Nahshon,
son of Amminadab,
son of Admin,
son of Arni,
son of Hezron,
son of Perez,
son of Judah,
son of Jacob,
son of Isaac,
son of Abraham,
son of Terah,
son of Nahor,
son of Serug,
son of Reu,
son of Peleg,
son of Eber,
son of Shelah,
son of Kenan,
son of Arphaxad,
son of Shem,
son of Noah,
son of Lamech,
son of Methuselah,
son of Enoch,
son of Jared,
son of Mahalaleel,
son of Kenan,
son of Enos,
son of Seth,
son of Adam,
son of God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Read: Matthew 7:7–11
Ask, and It Will Be Given
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
INSIGHT
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) focuses on the attitudes and actions that are to characterize “citizens” who live under God’s rule. Yet an even more intimate relationship comes into play in the sermon. A common thread that runs through the chapters is a “family focus” or, more specifically, a “Father focus.” In Matthew 5:9 Jesus declared, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (emphasis added). And when followers of Christ display heaven’s light by the way they live, the “Father in heaven” gets the credit (v. 16). Showing love for one’s enemies also demonstrates kinship with our heavenly Father (vv. 43–48).
Those who engage in holy habits (6:4, 6, 18), including prayer, do so with the knowledge that the primary audience is their Father in heaven. The King who rules over all is “our Father” and cares enough to hear our prayers for all our needs. Thus, we can confidently address Him, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (v. 9).
When you pray this week, reflect on the fact that you are praying to the One Scripture calls our heavenly Father. - Arthur Jackson
Bees and Snakes
By Adam Holz
If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:11
Some problems have Daddy’s name written all over them. For instance, my kids recently discovered bees had moved into a crack in our concrete front porch. So, armed with bug spray, I went out to do battle.
I got stung. Five times.
I don’t like being stung by insects. But better me than my kids or wife. Taking care of my family’s well-being is at the top of my job description after all. My children recognized a need, and they asked me to address it. They trusted me to protect them from something they feared.
In Matthew 7, Jesus teaches that we too should bring our needs to God (v. 7), trusting Him with our requests. To illustrate, Jesus gives a case study in character: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (vv. 9–10). For loving parents, the answer is obvious. But Jesus answers anyway, challenging us not to lose faith in our Father’s generous goodness: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (v. 11).
I can’t imagine loving my kids more. But Jesus assures us that even the best earthly father’s love is eclipsed by God’s love for us.
Father, thank You for loving us so much more than even the best father here ever could. Help us to do as Jesus said with everything that’s on our hearts; to ask, seek, and knock in our relationship with You.
We can rely on our Father for everything we need.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, July 28, 2018
God’s Purpose or Mine?
He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side… —Mark 6:45
We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success. We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us. In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or a desired goal, but He is not. The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way. What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.
What is my vision of God’s purpose for me? Whatever it may be, His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me. God is not working toward a particular finish— His purpose is the process itself. What He desires for me is that I see “Him walking on the sea” with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see “Him walking on the sea” (Mark 6:49). It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God.
God’s training is for now, not later. His purpose is for this very minute, not for sometime in the future. We have nothing to do with what will follow our obedience, and we are wrong to concern ourselves with it. What people call preparation, God sees as the goal itself.
God’s purpose is to enable me to see that He can walk on the storms of my life right now. If we have a further goal in mind, we are not paying enough attention to the present time. However, if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation. What God looks at is what we are in the dark—the imaginations of our minds; the thoughts of our heart; the habits of our bodies; these are the things that mark us in God’s sight. The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 669 L
Friday, July 27, 2018
Deuteronomy 7, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: PREPARE THE SOIL AND SOW THE SEED
Who has a greater chance of helping our children live in their sweet spots than we do? But will we? God’s Word urges us to do so. Listen closely to this reminder, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
Don’t interpret this verse to mean, If I fill them with Scripture and Bible lessons, they may rebel but eventually they’ll return. The proverb makes no such promise. Godly parents can prepare the soil and sow the seed, but God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6). Show them the path? Yes. Force them to take it? No. To train up means to awaken thirst—to develop thirst. One translation (ASB) margins this verse with the phrase according to his way. So, the greatest gift you can give your children is not your riches, but revealing to them their own.
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Deuteronomy 7
When God, your God, brings you into the country that you are about to enter and take over, he will clear out the superpowers that were there before you: the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Those seven nations are all bigger and stronger than you are. God, your God, will turn them over to you and you will conquer them. You must completely destroy them, offering them up as a holy destruction to God.
Don’t make a treaty with them.
Don’t let them off in any way.
3-4 Don’t marry them: Don’t give your daughters to their sons and don’t take their daughters for your sons—before you know it they’d involve you in worshiping their gods, and God would explode in anger, putting a quick end to you.
5 Here’s what you are to do:
Tear apart their altars stone by stone,
smash their phallic pillars,
chop down their sex-and-religion Asherah groves,
set fire to their carved god-images.
6 Do this because you are a people set apart as holy to God, your God. God, your God, chose you out of all the people on Earth for himself as a cherished, personal treasure.
7-10 God wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t choose you because you were big and important—the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. He did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise he made to your ancestors. God stepped in and mightily bought you back out of that world of slavery, freed you from the iron grip of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know this: God, your God, is God indeed, a God you can depend upon. He keeps his covenant of loyal love with those who love him and observe his commandments for a thousand generations. But he also pays back those who hate him, pays them the wages of death; he isn’t slow to pay them off—those who hate him, he pays right on time.
11 So keep the command and the rules and regulations that I command you today. Do them.
12-13 And this is what will happen: When you, on your part, will obey these directives, keeping and following them, God, on his part, will keep the covenant of loyal love that he made with your ancestors:
He will love you,
he will bless you,
he will increase you.
13-15 He will bless the babies from your womb and the harvest of grain, new wine, and oil from your fields; he’ll bless the calves from your herds and lambs from your flocks in the country he promised your ancestors that he’d give you. You’ll be blessed beyond all other peoples: no sterility or barrenness in you or your animals. God will get rid of all sickness. And all the evil afflictions you experienced in Egypt he’ll put not on you but on those who hate you.
16 You’ll make mincemeat of all the peoples that God, your God, hands over to you. Don’t feel sorry for them. And don’t worship their gods—they’ll trap you for sure.
17-19 You’re going to think to yourselves, “Oh! We’re outnumbered ten to one by these nations! We’ll never even make a dent in them!” But I’m telling you, Don’t be afraid. Remember, yes, remember in detail what God, your God, did to Pharaoh and all Egypt. Remember the great contests to which you were eyewitnesses: the miracle-signs, the wonders, God’s mighty hand as he stretched out his arm and took you out of there. God, your God, is going to do the same thing to these people you’re now so afraid of.
20 And to top it off, the Hornet. God will unleash the Hornet on them until every survivor-in-hiding is dead.
21-24 So don’t be intimidated by them. God, your God, is among you—God majestic, God awesome. God, your God, will get rid of these nations, bit by bit. You won’t be permitted to wipe them out all at once lest the wild animals take over and overwhelm you. But God, your God, will move them out of your way—he’ll throw them into a huge panic until there’s nothing left of them. He’ll turn their kings over to you and you’ll remove all trace of them under Heaven. Not one person will be able to stand up to you; you’ll put an end to them all.
25-26 Make sure you set fire to their carved gods. Don’t get greedy for the veneer of silver and gold on them and take it for yourselves—you’ll get trapped by it for sure. God hates it; it’s an abomination to God, your God. And don’t dare bring one of these abominations home or you’ll end up just like it, burned up as a holy destruction. No: It is forbidden! Hate it. Abominate it. Destroy it and preserve God’s holiness.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, July 27, 2018
Read: 2 Corinthians 9:6–15
The Cheerful Giver
6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully[a] will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency[b] in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 9 As it is written,
“He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.”
10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. 13 By their approval of this service, they[c] will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!
Footnotes:
2 Corinthians 9:6 Greek with blessings; twice in this verse
2 Corinthians 9:8 Or all contentment
2 Corinthians 9:13 Or you
INSIGHT
Paul reminds us that God provides for us so we can bless others (2 Corinthians 9:6–8). He quotes Psalm 112:9 to encourage generosity: “[The righteous] share freely and give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will be remembered forever” (nlt).
In what ways can you practice cheerful, generous giving this week? - K. T. Sim
Lavish Expressions of Love
By Xochitl Dixon
You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. 2 Corinthians 9:11
On our wedding anniversary, my husband, Alan, gives me a large bouquet of fresh flowers. When he lost his job during a corporate restructure, I didn’t expect this extravagant display of devotion to continue. But on our nineteenth anniversary, the color-splashed blossoms greeted me from their spot on our dining room table. Because he valued continuing this annual tradition, Alan saved some money each month to ensure he’d have enough for this personal show of affection.
My husband’s careful planning exhibited exuberant generosity, similar to what Paul encouraged when he addressed the Corinthian believers. The apostle complimented the church for their intentional and enthusiastic offerings (2 Corinthians 9:2, 5), reminding them that God delights in generous and cheerful givers (vv. 6–7). After all, no one gives more than our loving Provider, who’s always ready to supply all we need (vv. 8–10).
We can be generous in all kinds of giving, caring for one another because the Lord meets all of our material, emotional, and spiritual needs (v. 11). As we give, we can express our gratitude for all God has given us. We can even motivate others to praise the Lord and give from all God has given them (vv. 12–13). Openhanded giving, a lavish expression of love and gratitude, can demonstrate our confidence in God’s provision for all His people.
Lord, please help us trust Your abundant love and generosity, so we can give to others as You so faithfully give to us.
Generous giving displays courageous confidence in God’s loving and faithful provision.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 27, 2018
The Way to Knowledge
If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine… —John 7:17
The golden rule to follow to obtain spiritual understanding is not one of intellectual pursuit, but one of obedience. If a person wants scientific knowledge, then intellectual curiosity must be his guide. But if he desires knowledge and insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, he can only obtain it through obedience. If spiritual things seem dark and hidden to me, then I can be sure that there is a point of disobedience somewhere in my life. Intellectual darkness is the result of ignorance, but spiritual darkness is the result of something that I do not intend to obey.
No one ever receives a word from God without instantly being put to the test regarding it. We disobey and then wonder why we are not growing spiritually. Jesus said, “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). He is saying, in essence, “Don’t say another word to me; first be obedient by making things right.” The teachings of Jesus hit us where we live. We cannot stand as impostors before Him for even one second. He instructs us down to the very last detail. The Spirit of God uncovers our spirit of self-vindication and makes us sensitive to things that we have never even thought of before.
When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don’t try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually. As Jesus said, “First…go….” Even at the risk of being thought of as fanatical, you must obey what God tells you.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, July 27, 2018
Overlooked Treasure - #8230
Our son and daughter-in-law own a little piece of rhodochrosite since a recent western vacation. (I think I'm saying that right.) And with the stone came the story. Their host told them about the men who were in search of gold who didn't care much about this rock they found on their way to the gold. Initially, they just tossed it aside. But they noticed that embedded in the granite was an attractive rose-colored stone. As they refined it, the rare and rich, almost ruby-like color of that stone revealed its beauty. There was a time when it was just used for making driveways or even just discarded. But today a relatively few ounces are worth thousands of dollars.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Overlooked Treasure."
That's what rhodochrosite was. Nobody realized what it was really worth, so they just threw it aside. You know, there are lots of people like that. No one realizes how much they're really worth. Even they don't realize it. So they're overlooked, undervalued, cast aside. Sometimes, we even throw ourselves away because we don't realizing the treasure we are.
That might be hard for you to believe if you've had friends who ultimately treated you like you weren't worth much, if you've had an employer who didn't value you, if you've been overlooked and marginalized much of your life, if someone you love has turned on you or treated you badly, if someone you trusted betrayed that trust. In a self-centered and often cruel world, it's easy to begin to believe that you aren't really worth all that much. You've been unnoticed and unappreciated so many times.
But not by the One who really matters. You can see Him in action in our word for today from the Word of God in Luke chapter 8, beginning with verse 46. It's part of the story of a woman in desperate need of healing from a 12-year hemorrhaging condition. She was out of doctors to see; she was out of money to pay them. So she desperately pushed through a throng that was crowding around Jesus and, in an act of simple faith, she touched the hem of His robe to be healed. Suddenly, Jesus stopped and asked, "Who touched Me?" Well, His disciples pointed out the obvious: in a crowd that big, hundreds of people had touched Him.
The Bible continues: "But Jesus said, 'Someone touched Me; I know that power has gone out from Me.' Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at His feet. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.'" I love those words, "She could not go unnoticed." Neither can you. Not to Jesus. He knows all about you. You may have felt lost in the crowd your whole life. But to Jesus, you are His unique, one-of-a-kind creation; someone He thinks was worth dying for. In the words of Revelation 1:5, "He loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood."
The sins of our life are the ultimate cause of our feelings of worthlessness. We've defied God. We've defied the way He wants us to live, so we're away from the One who gave us our worth in the first place. It literally took Jesus paying your spiritual death penalty to make it possible for you to find the God that you've needed all these years. He made you. He paid for you with His life. Whatever others may have thought you're worth, you are priceless to Him.
You don't need to live one more day away from this love that you were made for. Jesus has come to where you are today, right now, to stir up your heart, to draw you to Him; to give you this chance to have every sin forgiven and the wall between you and your God who loves you removed, and your heart finally filled with the love it was made for.
Jesus becomes your Savior when you tell Him, "Lord, I abandon the rule of my own life that's kept me from You and earned me a death penalty. I'm putting all my trust in you, Jesus-your death on the cross to pay for my sins."
Boy, don't you want this? Don't you want this love for you to experience for yourself? If you have questions and you want to know more about how to have this relationship, to be sure you have, go to ANewStory.com.
When God sees you, He sees a treasure He made with His own hands and that He paid for with the blood of His own Son.
Who has a greater chance of helping our children live in their sweet spots than we do? But will we? God’s Word urges us to do so. Listen closely to this reminder, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
Don’t interpret this verse to mean, If I fill them with Scripture and Bible lessons, they may rebel but eventually they’ll return. The proverb makes no such promise. Godly parents can prepare the soil and sow the seed, but God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6). Show them the path? Yes. Force them to take it? No. To train up means to awaken thirst—to develop thirst. One translation (ASB) margins this verse with the phrase according to his way. So, the greatest gift you can give your children is not your riches, but revealing to them their own.
Read more Cure for the Common Life
Deuteronomy 7
When God, your God, brings you into the country that you are about to enter and take over, he will clear out the superpowers that were there before you: the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Those seven nations are all bigger and stronger than you are. God, your God, will turn them over to you and you will conquer them. You must completely destroy them, offering them up as a holy destruction to God.
Don’t make a treaty with them.
Don’t let them off in any way.
3-4 Don’t marry them: Don’t give your daughters to their sons and don’t take their daughters for your sons—before you know it they’d involve you in worshiping their gods, and God would explode in anger, putting a quick end to you.
5 Here’s what you are to do:
Tear apart their altars stone by stone,
smash their phallic pillars,
chop down their sex-and-religion Asherah groves,
set fire to their carved god-images.
6 Do this because you are a people set apart as holy to God, your God. God, your God, chose you out of all the people on Earth for himself as a cherished, personal treasure.
7-10 God wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t choose you because you were big and important—the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. He did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise he made to your ancestors. God stepped in and mightily bought you back out of that world of slavery, freed you from the iron grip of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know this: God, your God, is God indeed, a God you can depend upon. He keeps his covenant of loyal love with those who love him and observe his commandments for a thousand generations. But he also pays back those who hate him, pays them the wages of death; he isn’t slow to pay them off—those who hate him, he pays right on time.
11 So keep the command and the rules and regulations that I command you today. Do them.
12-13 And this is what will happen: When you, on your part, will obey these directives, keeping and following them, God, on his part, will keep the covenant of loyal love that he made with your ancestors:
He will love you,
he will bless you,
he will increase you.
13-15 He will bless the babies from your womb and the harvest of grain, new wine, and oil from your fields; he’ll bless the calves from your herds and lambs from your flocks in the country he promised your ancestors that he’d give you. You’ll be blessed beyond all other peoples: no sterility or barrenness in you or your animals. God will get rid of all sickness. And all the evil afflictions you experienced in Egypt he’ll put not on you but on those who hate you.
16 You’ll make mincemeat of all the peoples that God, your God, hands over to you. Don’t feel sorry for them. And don’t worship their gods—they’ll trap you for sure.
17-19 You’re going to think to yourselves, “Oh! We’re outnumbered ten to one by these nations! We’ll never even make a dent in them!” But I’m telling you, Don’t be afraid. Remember, yes, remember in detail what God, your God, did to Pharaoh and all Egypt. Remember the great contests to which you were eyewitnesses: the miracle-signs, the wonders, God’s mighty hand as he stretched out his arm and took you out of there. God, your God, is going to do the same thing to these people you’re now so afraid of.
20 And to top it off, the Hornet. God will unleash the Hornet on them until every survivor-in-hiding is dead.
21-24 So don’t be intimidated by them. God, your God, is among you—God majestic, God awesome. God, your God, will get rid of these nations, bit by bit. You won’t be permitted to wipe them out all at once lest the wild animals take over and overwhelm you. But God, your God, will move them out of your way—he’ll throw them into a huge panic until there’s nothing left of them. He’ll turn their kings over to you and you’ll remove all trace of them under Heaven. Not one person will be able to stand up to you; you’ll put an end to them all.
25-26 Make sure you set fire to their carved gods. Don’t get greedy for the veneer of silver and gold on them and take it for yourselves—you’ll get trapped by it for sure. God hates it; it’s an abomination to God, your God. And don’t dare bring one of these abominations home or you’ll end up just like it, burned up as a holy destruction. No: It is forbidden! Hate it. Abominate it. Destroy it and preserve God’s holiness.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, July 27, 2018
Read: 2 Corinthians 9:6–15
The Cheerful Giver
6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully[a] will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency[b] in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 9 As it is written,
“He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.”
10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. 13 By their approval of this service, they[c] will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!
Footnotes:
2 Corinthians 9:6 Greek with blessings; twice in this verse
2 Corinthians 9:8 Or all contentment
2 Corinthians 9:13 Or you
INSIGHT
Paul reminds us that God provides for us so we can bless others (2 Corinthians 9:6–8). He quotes Psalm 112:9 to encourage generosity: “[The righteous] share freely and give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will be remembered forever” (nlt).
In what ways can you practice cheerful, generous giving this week? - K. T. Sim
Lavish Expressions of Love
By Xochitl Dixon
You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. 2 Corinthians 9:11
On our wedding anniversary, my husband, Alan, gives me a large bouquet of fresh flowers. When he lost his job during a corporate restructure, I didn’t expect this extravagant display of devotion to continue. But on our nineteenth anniversary, the color-splashed blossoms greeted me from their spot on our dining room table. Because he valued continuing this annual tradition, Alan saved some money each month to ensure he’d have enough for this personal show of affection.
My husband’s careful planning exhibited exuberant generosity, similar to what Paul encouraged when he addressed the Corinthian believers. The apostle complimented the church for their intentional and enthusiastic offerings (2 Corinthians 9:2, 5), reminding them that God delights in generous and cheerful givers (vv. 6–7). After all, no one gives more than our loving Provider, who’s always ready to supply all we need (vv. 8–10).
We can be generous in all kinds of giving, caring for one another because the Lord meets all of our material, emotional, and spiritual needs (v. 11). As we give, we can express our gratitude for all God has given us. We can even motivate others to praise the Lord and give from all God has given them (vv. 12–13). Openhanded giving, a lavish expression of love and gratitude, can demonstrate our confidence in God’s provision for all His people.
Lord, please help us trust Your abundant love and generosity, so we can give to others as You so faithfully give to us.
Generous giving displays courageous confidence in God’s loving and faithful provision.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 27, 2018
The Way to Knowledge
If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine… —John 7:17
The golden rule to follow to obtain spiritual understanding is not one of intellectual pursuit, but one of obedience. If a person wants scientific knowledge, then intellectual curiosity must be his guide. But if he desires knowledge and insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, he can only obtain it through obedience. If spiritual things seem dark and hidden to me, then I can be sure that there is a point of disobedience somewhere in my life. Intellectual darkness is the result of ignorance, but spiritual darkness is the result of something that I do not intend to obey.
No one ever receives a word from God without instantly being put to the test regarding it. We disobey and then wonder why we are not growing spiritually. Jesus said, “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). He is saying, in essence, “Don’t say another word to me; first be obedient by making things right.” The teachings of Jesus hit us where we live. We cannot stand as impostors before Him for even one second. He instructs us down to the very last detail. The Spirit of God uncovers our spirit of self-vindication and makes us sensitive to things that we have never even thought of before.
When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don’t try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually. As Jesus said, “First…go….” Even at the risk of being thought of as fanatical, you must obey what God tells you.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, July 27, 2018
Overlooked Treasure - #8230
Our son and daughter-in-law own a little piece of rhodochrosite since a recent western vacation. (I think I'm saying that right.) And with the stone came the story. Their host told them about the men who were in search of gold who didn't care much about this rock they found on their way to the gold. Initially, they just tossed it aside. But they noticed that embedded in the granite was an attractive rose-colored stone. As they refined it, the rare and rich, almost ruby-like color of that stone revealed its beauty. There was a time when it was just used for making driveways or even just discarded. But today a relatively few ounces are worth thousands of dollars.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Overlooked Treasure."
That's what rhodochrosite was. Nobody realized what it was really worth, so they just threw it aside. You know, there are lots of people like that. No one realizes how much they're really worth. Even they don't realize it. So they're overlooked, undervalued, cast aside. Sometimes, we even throw ourselves away because we don't realizing the treasure we are.
That might be hard for you to believe if you've had friends who ultimately treated you like you weren't worth much, if you've had an employer who didn't value you, if you've been overlooked and marginalized much of your life, if someone you love has turned on you or treated you badly, if someone you trusted betrayed that trust. In a self-centered and often cruel world, it's easy to begin to believe that you aren't really worth all that much. You've been unnoticed and unappreciated so many times.
But not by the One who really matters. You can see Him in action in our word for today from the Word of God in Luke chapter 8, beginning with verse 46. It's part of the story of a woman in desperate need of healing from a 12-year hemorrhaging condition. She was out of doctors to see; she was out of money to pay them. So she desperately pushed through a throng that was crowding around Jesus and, in an act of simple faith, she touched the hem of His robe to be healed. Suddenly, Jesus stopped and asked, "Who touched Me?" Well, His disciples pointed out the obvious: in a crowd that big, hundreds of people had touched Him.
The Bible continues: "But Jesus said, 'Someone touched Me; I know that power has gone out from Me.' Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at His feet. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.'" I love those words, "She could not go unnoticed." Neither can you. Not to Jesus. He knows all about you. You may have felt lost in the crowd your whole life. But to Jesus, you are His unique, one-of-a-kind creation; someone He thinks was worth dying for. In the words of Revelation 1:5, "He loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood."
The sins of our life are the ultimate cause of our feelings of worthlessness. We've defied God. We've defied the way He wants us to live, so we're away from the One who gave us our worth in the first place. It literally took Jesus paying your spiritual death penalty to make it possible for you to find the God that you've needed all these years. He made you. He paid for you with His life. Whatever others may have thought you're worth, you are priceless to Him.
You don't need to live one more day away from this love that you were made for. Jesus has come to where you are today, right now, to stir up your heart, to draw you to Him; to give you this chance to have every sin forgiven and the wall between you and your God who loves you removed, and your heart finally filled with the love it was made for.
Jesus becomes your Savior when you tell Him, "Lord, I abandon the rule of my own life that's kept me from You and earned me a death penalty. I'm putting all my trust in you, Jesus-your death on the cross to pay for my sins."
Boy, don't you want this? Don't you want this love for you to experience for yourself? If you have questions and you want to know more about how to have this relationship, to be sure you have, go to ANewStory.com.
When God sees you, He sees a treasure He made with His own hands and that He paid for with the blood of His own Son.
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