Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Deuteronomy 26, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: FACING A WALL OF FEAR?
Perhaps standing before you is a wall of fear. Brick upon brick of anxiety and dread. Haunting you are the kings of confusion. Thanks to them, you’ve struggled with your identity and destiny. You’ve bought the lie that life has no purpose…that life has no absolutes. As a child of God, it comes down to a simple decision to believe and receive your position as an heir of God and coheir with Christ.
The Scriptures say in 1 John 4:17, “In this world we are like Jesus.” Our inheritance is every bit as abundant as that of Jesus himself. What he receives, we receive. What message are you carving on that wall of fear? What words are you writing? Choose hope, not despair. Choose life, not death. Choose God’s promises. You are a new person. Live like one! Because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 26
Once you enter the land that God, your God, is giving you as an inheritance and take it over and settle down, you are to take some of all the firstfruits of what you grow in the land that God, your God, is giving you, put them in a basket and go to the place God, your God, sets apart for you to worship him. At that time, go to the priest who is there and say, “I announce to God, your God, today that I have entered the land that God promised our ancestors that he’d give to us.” The priest will take the basket from you and place it on the Altar of God, your God. And there in the Presence of God, your God, you will recite:
5-10 A wandering Aramean was my father,
he went down to Egypt and sojourned there,
he and just a handful of his brothers at first, but soon
they became a great nation, mighty and many.
The Egyptians abused and battered us,
in a cruel and savage slavery.
We cried out to God, the God-of-Our-Fathers:
He listened to our voice, he saw
our destitution, our trouble, our cruel plight.
And God took us out of Egypt
with his strong hand and long arm, terrible and great,
with signs and miracle-wonders.
And he brought us to this place,
gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.
So here I am. I’ve brought the firstfruits
of what I’ve grown on this ground you gave me, O God.
10-11 Then place it in the Presence of God, your God. Prostrate yourselves in the Presence of God, your God. And rejoice! Celebrate all the good things that God, your God, has given you and your family; you and the Levite and the foreigner who lives with you.
12-14 Every third year, the year of the tithe, give a tenth of your produce to the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow so that they may eat their fill in your cities. And then, in the Presence of God, your God, say this:
I have brought the sacred share,
I’ve given it to the Levite, foreigner, orphan, and widow.
What you commanded, I’ve done.
I haven’t detoured around your commands,
I haven’t forgotten a single one.
I haven’t eaten from the sacred share while mourning,
I haven’t removed any of it while ritually unclean,
I haven’t used it in funeral feasts.
I have listened obediently to the Voice of God, my God,
I have lived the way you commanded me.
15 Look down from your holy house in Heaven!
Bless your people Israel and the ground you gave us,
just as you promised our ancestors you would,
this land flowing with milk and honey.
16-17 This very day God, your God, commands you to follow these rules and regulations, to live them out with everything you have in you. You’ve renewed your vows today that God is your God, that you’ll live the way he shows you; do what he tells you in the rules, regulations, and commandments; and listen obediently to him.
18-19 And today God has reaffirmed that you are dearly held treasure just as he promised, a people entrusted with keeping his commandments, a people set high above all other nations that he’s made, high in praise, fame, and honor: you’re a people holy to God, your God. That’s what he has promised.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Read: Genesis 3:1–13
The Fall
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You[a] shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,[b] she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool[c] of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”[d] 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Footnotes:
Genesis 3:1 In Hebrew you is plural in verses 1–5
Genesis 3:6 Or to give insight
Genesis 3:8 Hebrew wind
Genesis 3:9 In Hebrew you is singular in verses 9 and 11
God’s Care for Us
By Alyson Kieda
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Genesis 3:21
My young grandsons enjoy dressing themselves. Sometimes they pull their shirts on backwards and often the younger one puts his shoes on the wrong feet. I usually don’t have the heart to tell them; besides, I find their innocence endearing.
I love seeing the world through their eyes. To them, everything is an adventure, whether walking the length of a fallen tree, spying a turtle sunning itself on a log, or excitedly watching a fire truck roar by. But I know that even my little grandsons are not truly innocent. They can make up a dozen excuses about why they can’t stay in their beds at night and are quick to yank a wanted toy from the other. Yet I love them dearly.
I picture Adam and Eve, God’s first people, as being in some ways like my grandchildren. Everything they saw in the garden must have been a marvel as they walked with God. But one day they willfully disobeyed. They ate of the one tree they were forbidden to eat (Genesis 2:15–17; 3:6). And that disobedience immediately led to lies and blame-shifting (3:8–13).
Still, God loved and cared for them. He sacrificed animals in order to clothe them (v. 21)—and later He provided a way of salvation for all sinners through the sacrifice of His Son (John 3:16). He loves us that much!
Dear Lord, thank You for loving us, despite our sin, and for making a way for us to be with You forever!
For help in your spiritual growth, see this course: christianuniversity.org/spiritual-life-basics.
Jesus loves us so much He sacrificed Himself for our sins.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
“I Indeed. . . But He”
I indeed baptize you with water…but He…will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. —Matthew 3:11
Have I ever come to the point in my life where I can say, “I indeed…but He…”? Until that moment comes, I will never know what the baptism of the Holy Spirit means. I indeed am at the end, and I cannot do anything more— but He begins right there— He does the things that no one else can ever do. Am I prepared for His coming? Jesus cannot come and do His work in me as long as there is anything blocking the way, whether it is something good or bad. When He comes to me, am I prepared for Him to drag every wrong thing I have ever done into the light? That is exactly where He comes. Wherever I know I am unclean is where He will put His feet and stand, and wherever I think I am clean is where He will remove His feet and walk away.
Repentance does not cause a sense of sin— it causes a sense of inexpressible unworthiness. When I repent, I realize that I am absolutely helpless, and I know that through and through I am not worthy even to carry His sandals. Have I repented like that, or do I have a lingering thought of possibly trying to defend my actions? The reason God cannot come into my life is that I am not at the point of complete repentance.
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” John is not speaking here of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as an experience, but as a work performed by Jesus Christ. “He will baptize you….” The only experience that those who are baptized with the Holy Spirit are ever conscious of is the experience of sensing their absolute unworthiness.
“I indeed” was this in the past, “but He” came and something miraculous happened. Get to the end of yourself where you can do nothing, but where He does everything.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. Baffled to Fight Better, 69 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Living with Someone Else's Heart - #8248
Some dear friends of ours lost their 19-year-old son. Because of the way it happened, his death was a sudden, gut-wrenching tragedy. With Jesus as their anchor, even through this, they made this incredible faith statement, his mom and dad. They said, "God wants life to come from his death.” One way that's happened is through their decision to donate his organs to help save and improve some other lives. Not long after their son's death, the word came back that someone in a neighboring state had received their son's heart. That's been a source of comfort and encouragement to them. As they say, "Our son's heart is giving life to someone else.”
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living with Someone Else's Heart.”
In a sense, Jesus wants to give you a new life by giving you a new heart spiritually-His heart. To live your life seeing what He sees in the lives around you, caring about the things He cares about. It's part of the miracle that happens when you turn your life over to Jesus. He fulfills this promise from Ezekiel 36:26-27, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit in you.”
When you ask Jesus to put His heart in you, your life can never be the same. Paul talked about what a Jesus-heart does in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in 2 Corinthians 5, beginning with verse 14. "Christ's love compels us.” Suddenly the love Jesus has for this world is part of you, and that love drives you to touch as many lives as possible with that love. Paul goes on to describe the dramatic revolution that takes place in what, or who, you live for. "He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again.”
Look, what's our natural bent? To live for ourselves, right? What makes us look good, what makes us comfortable, what fulfills our desires, advances our agenda. But when Jesus puts His selfless heart in you, it's not all about you anymore. It's all about Him and the people He died for, and your life is never the same.
A life that's all about your needs and your agenda is a very small life. A life that's all about Jesus, all about the needs of others, all about introducing people to Jesus-that's a super-sized life-one with the satisfaction of knowing you are fulfilling your created destiny. But it takes a new heart, because our heart is, by itself, self-centered and earth-centered - not eternity centered.
When Jesus plants His heart in you, you finally realize who you really are and why you are where you are. Paul says, "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God was making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconciled to God.”
Going to work is never the same again; going to school, going to the club or the gym, even going home to your neighborhood, because now you see the people there through Jesus' eyes, and He sees future inhabitants of hell unless someone helps them get to heaven by getting them to Jesus. You now know you are there on Christ's behalf, saying what He would say to them, trying to rescue them as He would rescue them. And your everyday stuff? It's never everyday again; it's got eternal significance.
If your life has been very full but not very fulfilling, if you want the rest of your life to really count, if you want to live your life for something that will outlast you, then it's time for you to open up your heart to receive the heart of your Jesus. It begins when you pray, "Go ahead, God, and break my heart for the things that break yours. Go ahead and fill my heart with the love and the burden that fills yours.” Then fasten your seatbelt for a life of spiritual greatness.
With His heart in you, you will live a life you could have no other way. Don't settle for anything less.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Luke 6:27-49, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: CHOOSE YOUR INHERITANCE
One of the most famous stories in the Bible has to do with inheritance. The Hebrews had just been delivered from Egyptian captivity. God led them and Moses to the edge of the promised land and made this offer. “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders” (Numbers 13:1-2).
God didn’t tell the Israelites to conquer, invade, or secure the land. He told them he was giving it to them. Their choice was clear: promises or circumstances? The circumstances said, No way. Stay out. There are giants in the land. God’s promise said, The land is yours. The victory is yours. Take it.
Circumstances say, cower to your fears. Your inheritance says otherwise: You are a child of the King. And because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Luke 6:27-49
“To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
31-34 “Here is a simple rule of thumb for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them! If you only love the lovable, do you expect a pat on the back? Run-of-the-mill sinners do that. If you only help those who help you, do you expect a medal? Garden-variety sinners do that. If you only give for what you hope to get out of it, do you think that’s charity? The stingiest of pawnbrokers does that.
35-36 “I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You’ll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we’re at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind.
37-38 “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”
39-40 He quoted a proverb: “‘Can a blind man guide a blind man?’ Wouldn’t they both end up in the ditch? An apprentice doesn’t lecture the master. The point is to be careful who you follow as your teacher.
41-42 “It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this I-know-better-than-you mentality again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your own part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
Work the Words into Your Life
43-45 “You don’t get wormy apples off a healthy tree, nor good apples off a diseased tree. The health of the apple tells the health of the tree. You must begin with your own life-giving lives. It’s who you are, not what you say and do, that counts. Your true being brims over into true words and deeds.
46-47 “Why are you so polite with me, always saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘That’s right, sir,’ but never doing a thing I tell you? These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.
48-49 “If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a dumb carpenter who built a house but skipped the foundation. When the swollen river came crashing in, it collapsed like a house of cards. It was a total loss.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Luke 23:44–48
The Death of Jesus
44 It was now about the sixth hour,[a] and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour,[b] 45 while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. 47 Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” 48 And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts.
Footnotes:
Luke 23:44 That is, noon
Luke 23:44 That is, 3 p.m.
INSIGHT
In Luke’s account of Christ’s death, we see several dramatic events. A seemingly inexplicable darkness was present over the entire earth—not just over Jerusalem where the crucifixion took place (vv. 44–45). Inside the temple in Jerusalem the curtain that separated worshipers from the holy of holies was torn in two, symbolizing that through Christ our access to God has been opened (v. 45). After Christ died, a Roman soldier who had participated in His execution declared, “Surely this was a righteous man” (v. 47). And others watching lamented and beat their breasts (v. 48).
The witness in the sky, within the temple, and by people at the foot of the cross demonstrate that this was no ordinary death. It was the death of the loving God-Man who shed His blood to redeem all who would believe in Him.
For further study, see The Passion of Christ at discoveryseries.org/q0210. - Dennis Fisher
A Prayer to Point Us Home
By James Banks
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. John 1:12
One of the first prayers I learned as a little boy was “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . .” It was a prayer I learned from my parents, and I taught it to my son and daughter when they were little. As a child, I found great comfort in placing myself in God’s hands with those words before I fell asleep.
There’s a similar prayer neatly tucked away in the “prayer book” of the Bible, the Psalms. Some biblical scholars suggest that the phrase “Into your hands I commit my spirit” (Psalm 31:5) was a “bedtime” prayer taught to children in Jesus’s day.
You may recognize that prayer as Jesus’s final cry from the cross. But Jesus added one more word to it: Father (Luke 23:46). By praying that word in the moments before His death, Jesus demonstrated His intimate relationship with the Father and pointed believers toward their home with Him (John 14:3).
Jesus died on the cross so we could live in the wonder of a relationship with God as our heavenly Father. How comforting it is to know that because of Jesus’s sacrificial love for us, we can rest in God’s care as His children! We can close our eyes without fear because our Father watches over us and has promised to wake us up to life with Him (1 Thessalonians 4:14).
Lord Jesus, I receive the gift of forgiveness You offer me through the cross. Help me to turn from my sins and follow You, all the way home.
A bright new morning awaits us in Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
The Ministry of the Unnoticed
Blessed are the poor in spirit… —Matthew 5:3
The New Testament notices things that do not seem worthy of notice by our standards. “Blessed are the poor in spirit….” This literally means, “Blessed are the paupers.” Paupers are remarkably commonplace! The preaching of today tends to point out a person’s strength of will or the beauty of his character— things that are easily noticed. The statement we so often hear, “Make a decision for Jesus Christ,” places the emphasis on something our Lord never trusted. He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him— something very different. At the foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is the genuine loveliness of those who are commonplace. I am truly blessed in my poverty. If I have no strength of will and a nature without worth or excellence, then Jesus says to me, “Blessed are you, because it is through your poverty that you can enter My kingdom.” I cannot enter His kingdom by virtue of my goodness— I can only enter it as an absolute pauper.
The true character of the loveliness that speaks for God is always unnoticed by the one possessing that quality. Conscious influence is prideful and unchristian. If I wonder if I am being of any use to God, I instantly lose the beauty and the freshness of the touch of the Lord. “He who believes in Me…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). And if I examine the outflow, I lose the touch of the Lord.
Who are the people who have influenced us most? Certainly not the ones who thought they did, but those who did not have even the slightest idea that they were influencing us. In the Christian life, godly influence is never conscious of itself. If we are conscious of our influence, it ceases to have the genuine loveliness which is characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.
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
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Missing the Light You Can't Afford to Miss - #8247
Chaco Culture National Historical Park-it's situated in a remote corner of New Mexico. It's a place where a thousand years ago, the ancient ancestors of some of today's Indian tribes enjoyed this thriving civilization. They were, as an article in USA Today reported, "astronomically observant." For modern observers, it's still a great spot to be astronomically observant; a place where you can see the heavens without the interference of the artificial light that's all around us much of the time. Several years ago, a woman came to the visitor's center desk to report something remarkable she'd seen in the sky. The ranger held his breath for another "UFO sighting," only to be surprised by the woman's excited description of a "lane of white powder" she said that she had seen spanning the heavens above her campsite. The ranger had the great pleasure of informing this lady that, for the first time in her life, she had actually seen the Milky Way.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Missing the Light You Can't Afford to Miss."
It's estimated that more than two-thirds of the people in the United States and Europe cannot see their home galaxy from their backyard because of all the other light in their world. We're actually blinded to God's real light by the artificial light around us. We are. There's so much distraction all around us we can miss the one light we can't afford to miss. For you, today could be the day that God wants to help you take a step away and see that light for yourself, and I will tell you, your life will never be the same.
In 2 Corinthians 4, beginning with verse 4, our word for today from the Word of God, we have unveiled for us a spiritual conspiracy to actually keep you blinded to the greatest light of all. You need this information. Here's what it says: "The god of this age..." When the Bible says that, it's referring to the enemy of your soul and mine, the Devil. Who, by the way, hates you and wants you in hell with him forever. "...the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel (or the Good News) of the glory of Christ."
All your life, Satan has been flashing artificial lights in your eyes to keep you from seeing the only light that can direct you to heaven. That light is Jesus Christ, who loved you enough to die to pay for your sins, who's powerful enough to walk out of His grave under His own power.
The Devil has a pretty simple strategy for keeping you out of God's family and keeping you out of heaven forever..."anything but Jesus." He doesn't care what your heart turns to as long as it's not Jesus. Satan doesn't care if you get real religious, if you're active in your church or community, if you pursue spirituality, even if you get a lot of Christianity, just as long as he can use all your Christianity to blind you to the fact that you're missing Christ. He'll keep your heart busy with a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, a marriage, a family, all kinds of demands on you, a career, recreation, fitness, a house, a car, retirement-whatever it takes to keep you from seeing your need of Jesus until one day it is forever too late.
But the Bible tells us that God has mounted a counterattack so you don't miss the one who came here to rescue you. The Bible says, "God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.'" That's what God is doing in your heart right now as you listen to these words. He's turning on the light in your heart.
It's important you give yourself to Jesus while the light is still where you can see it, because very soon your enemy from hell will come again and turn on the artificial lights that have made you miss Jesus all this time. This is your day to meet the One who created you, to begin a personal relationship with the One you were made by and made for, and who loved you enough to die for you. It starts when you say, "Jesus, I'm yours." I'd love to help you get the rest of the way. Go to our website ANewStory.com.
God's shining His light in your heart right now. Please don't miss it.
One of the most famous stories in the Bible has to do with inheritance. The Hebrews had just been delivered from Egyptian captivity. God led them and Moses to the edge of the promised land and made this offer. “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders” (Numbers 13:1-2).
God didn’t tell the Israelites to conquer, invade, or secure the land. He told them he was giving it to them. Their choice was clear: promises or circumstances? The circumstances said, No way. Stay out. There are giants in the land. God’s promise said, The land is yours. The victory is yours. Take it.
Circumstances say, cower to your fears. Your inheritance says otherwise: You are a child of the King. And because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Luke 6:27-49
“To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
31-34 “Here is a simple rule of thumb for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them! If you only love the lovable, do you expect a pat on the back? Run-of-the-mill sinners do that. If you only help those who help you, do you expect a medal? Garden-variety sinners do that. If you only give for what you hope to get out of it, do you think that’s charity? The stingiest of pawnbrokers does that.
35-36 “I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You’ll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we’re at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind.
37-38 “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”
39-40 He quoted a proverb: “‘Can a blind man guide a blind man?’ Wouldn’t they both end up in the ditch? An apprentice doesn’t lecture the master. The point is to be careful who you follow as your teacher.
41-42 “It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this I-know-better-than-you mentality again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your own part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
Work the Words into Your Life
43-45 “You don’t get wormy apples off a healthy tree, nor good apples off a diseased tree. The health of the apple tells the health of the tree. You must begin with your own life-giving lives. It’s who you are, not what you say and do, that counts. Your true being brims over into true words and deeds.
46-47 “Why are you so polite with me, always saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘That’s right, sir,’ but never doing a thing I tell you? These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.
48-49 “If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a dumb carpenter who built a house but skipped the foundation. When the swollen river came crashing in, it collapsed like a house of cards. It was a total loss.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Luke 23:44–48
The Death of Jesus
44 It was now about the sixth hour,[a] and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour,[b] 45 while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. 47 Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” 48 And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts.
Footnotes:
Luke 23:44 That is, noon
Luke 23:44 That is, 3 p.m.
INSIGHT
In Luke’s account of Christ’s death, we see several dramatic events. A seemingly inexplicable darkness was present over the entire earth—not just over Jerusalem where the crucifixion took place (vv. 44–45). Inside the temple in Jerusalem the curtain that separated worshipers from the holy of holies was torn in two, symbolizing that through Christ our access to God has been opened (v. 45). After Christ died, a Roman soldier who had participated in His execution declared, “Surely this was a righteous man” (v. 47). And others watching lamented and beat their breasts (v. 48).
The witness in the sky, within the temple, and by people at the foot of the cross demonstrate that this was no ordinary death. It was the death of the loving God-Man who shed His blood to redeem all who would believe in Him.
For further study, see The Passion of Christ at discoveryseries.org/q0210. - Dennis Fisher
A Prayer to Point Us Home
By James Banks
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. John 1:12
One of the first prayers I learned as a little boy was “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . .” It was a prayer I learned from my parents, and I taught it to my son and daughter when they were little. As a child, I found great comfort in placing myself in God’s hands with those words before I fell asleep.
There’s a similar prayer neatly tucked away in the “prayer book” of the Bible, the Psalms. Some biblical scholars suggest that the phrase “Into your hands I commit my spirit” (Psalm 31:5) was a “bedtime” prayer taught to children in Jesus’s day.
You may recognize that prayer as Jesus’s final cry from the cross. But Jesus added one more word to it: Father (Luke 23:46). By praying that word in the moments before His death, Jesus demonstrated His intimate relationship with the Father and pointed believers toward their home with Him (John 14:3).
Jesus died on the cross so we could live in the wonder of a relationship with God as our heavenly Father. How comforting it is to know that because of Jesus’s sacrificial love for us, we can rest in God’s care as His children! We can close our eyes without fear because our Father watches over us and has promised to wake us up to life with Him (1 Thessalonians 4:14).
Lord Jesus, I receive the gift of forgiveness You offer me through the cross. Help me to turn from my sins and follow You, all the way home.
A bright new morning awaits us in Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
The Ministry of the Unnoticed
Blessed are the poor in spirit… —Matthew 5:3
The New Testament notices things that do not seem worthy of notice by our standards. “Blessed are the poor in spirit….” This literally means, “Blessed are the paupers.” Paupers are remarkably commonplace! The preaching of today tends to point out a person’s strength of will or the beauty of his character— things that are easily noticed. The statement we so often hear, “Make a decision for Jesus Christ,” places the emphasis on something our Lord never trusted. He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him— something very different. At the foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is the genuine loveliness of those who are commonplace. I am truly blessed in my poverty. If I have no strength of will and a nature without worth or excellence, then Jesus says to me, “Blessed are you, because it is through your poverty that you can enter My kingdom.” I cannot enter His kingdom by virtue of my goodness— I can only enter it as an absolute pauper.
The true character of the loveliness that speaks for God is always unnoticed by the one possessing that quality. Conscious influence is prideful and unchristian. If I wonder if I am being of any use to God, I instantly lose the beauty and the freshness of the touch of the Lord. “He who believes in Me…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). And if I examine the outflow, I lose the touch of the Lord.
Who are the people who have influenced us most? Certainly not the ones who thought they did, but those who did not have even the slightest idea that they were influencing us. In the Christian life, godly influence is never conscious of itself. If we are conscious of our influence, it ceases to have the genuine loveliness which is characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.
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
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Missing the Light You Can't Afford to Miss - #8247
Chaco Culture National Historical Park-it's situated in a remote corner of New Mexico. It's a place where a thousand years ago, the ancient ancestors of some of today's Indian tribes enjoyed this thriving civilization. They were, as an article in USA Today reported, "astronomically observant." For modern observers, it's still a great spot to be astronomically observant; a place where you can see the heavens without the interference of the artificial light that's all around us much of the time. Several years ago, a woman came to the visitor's center desk to report something remarkable she'd seen in the sky. The ranger held his breath for another "UFO sighting," only to be surprised by the woman's excited description of a "lane of white powder" she said that she had seen spanning the heavens above her campsite. The ranger had the great pleasure of informing this lady that, for the first time in her life, she had actually seen the Milky Way.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Missing the Light You Can't Afford to Miss."
It's estimated that more than two-thirds of the people in the United States and Europe cannot see their home galaxy from their backyard because of all the other light in their world. We're actually blinded to God's real light by the artificial light around us. We are. There's so much distraction all around us we can miss the one light we can't afford to miss. For you, today could be the day that God wants to help you take a step away and see that light for yourself, and I will tell you, your life will never be the same.
In 2 Corinthians 4, beginning with verse 4, our word for today from the Word of God, we have unveiled for us a spiritual conspiracy to actually keep you blinded to the greatest light of all. You need this information. Here's what it says: "The god of this age..." When the Bible says that, it's referring to the enemy of your soul and mine, the Devil. Who, by the way, hates you and wants you in hell with him forever. "...the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel (or the Good News) of the glory of Christ."
All your life, Satan has been flashing artificial lights in your eyes to keep you from seeing the only light that can direct you to heaven. That light is Jesus Christ, who loved you enough to die to pay for your sins, who's powerful enough to walk out of His grave under His own power.
The Devil has a pretty simple strategy for keeping you out of God's family and keeping you out of heaven forever..."anything but Jesus." He doesn't care what your heart turns to as long as it's not Jesus. Satan doesn't care if you get real religious, if you're active in your church or community, if you pursue spirituality, even if you get a lot of Christianity, just as long as he can use all your Christianity to blind you to the fact that you're missing Christ. He'll keep your heart busy with a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, a marriage, a family, all kinds of demands on you, a career, recreation, fitness, a house, a car, retirement-whatever it takes to keep you from seeing your need of Jesus until one day it is forever too late.
But the Bible tells us that God has mounted a counterattack so you don't miss the one who came here to rescue you. The Bible says, "God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.'" That's what God is doing in your heart right now as you listen to these words. He's turning on the light in your heart.
It's important you give yourself to Jesus while the light is still where you can see it, because very soon your enemy from hell will come again and turn on the artificial lights that have made you miss Jesus all this time. This is your day to meet the One who created you, to begin a personal relationship with the One you were made by and made for, and who loved you enough to die for you. It starts when you say, "Jesus, I'm yours." I'd love to help you get the rest of the way. Go to our website ANewStory.com.
God's shining His light in your heart right now. Please don't miss it.
Monday, August 20, 2018
Deuteronomy 25, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: AN ADVENTUROUSLY EXPECTANT LIFE
As a child of God, “this resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant…greeting God with a childlike, ‘What’s next, Papa?’ God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get an unbelievable inheritance!” (Romans 8:15-17 MSG).
God says, “Hey, Lucado. You are an heir to the joy of Christ. Why not ask Jesus to help you?” “And you, Mr. Without-a-Clue. Aren’t you an heir to God’s storehouse of wisdom?” “Mrs. Worrywart, Why do you let fears steal your sleep? Are you not a beneficiary of God’s trust fund?” Approach God’s throne not as an interloper but as a child of the living and loving God! Because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable.
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 25
When men have a legal dispute, let them go to court; the judges will decide between them, declaring one innocent and the other guilty. If the guilty one deserves punishment, the judge will have him prostrate himself before him and lashed as many times as his crime deserves, but not more than forty. If you hit him more than forty times, you will degrade him to something less than human.
4 Don’t muzzle an ox while it is threshing.
5-6 When brothers are living together and one of them dies without having had a son, the widow of the dead brother shall not marry a stranger from outside the family; her husband’s brother is to come to her and marry her and do the brother-in-law’s duty by her. The first son that she bears shall be named after her dead husband so his name won’t die out in Israel.
7-10 But if the brother doesn’t want to marry his sister-in-law, she is to go to the leaders at the city gate and say, “My brother-in-law refuses to keep his brother’s name alive in Israel; he won’t agree to do the brother-in-law’s duty by me.” Then the leaders will call for the brother and confront him. If he stands there defiant and says, “I don’t want her,” his sister-in-law is to pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and say, “This is what happens to the man who refuses to build up the family of his brother—his name in Israel will be Family-No-Sandal.”
11-12 When two men are in a fight and the wife of the one man, trying to rescue her husband, grabs the genitals of the man hitting him, you are to cut off her hand. Show no pity.
13-16 Don’t carry around with you two weights, one heavy and the other light, and don’t keep two measures at hand, one large and the other small. Use only one weight, a true and honest weight, and one measure, a true and honest measure, so that you will live a long time on the land that God, your God, is giving you. Dishonest weights and measures are an abomination to God, your God—all this corruption in business deals!
17-19 Don’t forget what Amalek did to you on the road after you left Egypt, how he attacked you when you were tired, barely able to put one foot in front of another, mercilessly cut off your stragglers, and had no regard for God. When God, your God, gives you rest from all the enemies that surround you in the inheritance-land God, your God, is giving you to possess, you are to wipe the name of Amalek from off the Earth. Don’t forget!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, August 20, 2018
Read: Hebrews 10:5–14
Consequently, when Christ[a] came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ[b] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
Footnotes:
Hebrews 10:5 Greek he
Hebrews 10:12 Greek this one
INSIGHT
The words “It’s finished!” can mean different things to different people. For the student, they might mean, “I’m finally graduating!” For the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus, these words could mean they had succeeded in killing Jesus (John 11:53). For the Roman soldiers, it could describe the death penalty they had successfully carried out (19:16–18). For the disciples, these words could mean that their hopes of the Messiah delivering them from Roman bondage were dashed (Luke 24:19–21). But when Jesus uttered, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He was declaring He had completed the work the Father gave Him to do (17:4)—to be “an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
For more about the death and resurrection of Jesus, check out our free online course at christianuniversity.org/CA206. - K. T. Sim
In Progress or Completed?
By Adam Holz
For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Hebrews 10:14
It’s satisfying to finish a job. Each month, for instance, one of my job responsibilities gets moved from one category to another, from “In Progress” to “Completed.” I love clicking that “Completed” button. But last month when I clicked it, I thought, If only I could overcome rough spots in my faith so easily! It can seem like the Christian life is always in progress, never completed.
Then I remembered Hebrews 10:14. It describes how Christ’s sacrifice redeems us totally. So in one important sense, that “completed button” has been pressed for us. Jesus’s death did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves: He made us acceptable in God’s eyes when we place our faith in Him. It is finished, as Jesus Himself said (John 19:30). Paradoxically, even though His sacrifice is complete and total, we spend the rest of our lives living into that spiritual reality—“being made holy,” as Hebrews’ author writes.
The fact that Jesus has finished something that’s still being worked out in our lives is hard to understand. When I’m struggling spiritually, it’s encouraging to remember that Jesus’s sacrifice for me—and for you—is complete . . . even if our living it out in this life is still a work in progress. Nothing can stop His intended end from being achieved eventually: being transformed into His likeness (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).
Jesus, thank You for giving Your life for us. Help us trust You as we grow into followers whose lives look more and more like Yours, knowing that You are the one who makes us complete.
God is at work to make us who He intends us to be.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, August 20, 2018
Christ-Awareness
…and I will give you rest. —Matthew 11:28
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
God engineers circumstances to see what we will do. Will we be the children of our Father in heaven, or will we go back again to the meaner, common-sense attitude? Will we stake all and stand true to Him? “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” The crown of life means I shall see that my Lord has got the victory after all, even in me. The Highest Good—The Pilgrim’s Song Book, 530 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, August 20, 2018
Spiritually Cross-Eyed - #8246
And now once again it's time for another of my science guy experiments. Let's say I'm looking at this beautiful scene on a calendar. It's a picture of snow-capped mountains in the background with stately evergreen trees in the foreground and a azure-blue sky. In the upper left-hand corner, an eagle is soaring majestically over the trees. I love eagles, so I decide that's the thing in the picture that most catches my attention. In fact, forget the rest of the picture, I'll just take a closer look at the eagle. So I bring him closer to my eyes and closer and now my nose is touching the calendar. I am totally focused on the eagle and I am suddenly cross-eyed!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritually Cross-Eyed.”
It's an interesting phenomenon. When you get too focused on one part, too close to one part of a bigger picture, things start to get distorted. That's not only true of physical vision. No, it happens to people spiritually, too.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 1:10. It says, "I appeal to you, brothers, that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.” How did they become divided? He says, "There are quarrels among you. One of you says, 'I follow Paul'; another 'I follow Apollos'; another, 'I follow Cephas'; still another, 'I follow Christ.'” Well, these people had gotten really focused on the teaching of one particular leader and they'd forgotten the big picture of the whole body of Christ. And they were dividing into separate camps, seeing each other as theological adversaries, instead of brothers and sisters who will be together forever.
Paul tries to bring them back to the big picture that unites God's people and away from this narrow focus that divides God's people. He says, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” Later he will remind them and us, "The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.”(1 Corinthians 12:12)
When believers get fixated on their particular group, or their particular theological distinctive, or their spiritual hobbyhorse, their vision gets distorted. When you get too close to, too focused on one part of the Christian faith, you start to become spiritually cross-eyed. And we tend to become a little arrogant about our particular viewpoint, a little judgmental of those who don't see it our way. And sometimes you become the center of dissension and division, which puts you on God's hate list in Proverbs 6, "There are six things the Lord hates,” and it starts with "a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.” Wow!
There are many wonderful truths in God's Word, all of which are meant to be rounded out by other truths in God's Word. When we move in real close to one truth, we almost always become lopsided and even divisive. The gifts of the Spirit are a wonderful part of the Christian experience, but just focus on that and you'll start to become spiritually cross-eyed. The same thing can happen when you become fixated on God's predestination in our salvation, or on man's choice; or on one particular view of baptism, or prophecy, or one particular sin or behavior, or one group's distinctives. You can become too focused on the analytical side of the Christian life and miss the experience part; or you can become too focused on the experience side and miss the solid study of God's Word.
We need each other no matter how noble the truth, or it can become distorted and divisive because that's all we focus on. The body of Jesus has been broken enough. He doesn't need for us to break it more with doctrine wars or theological crusades over one part of God's infinite truth.
Those who divide God's people are probably too close to one part. They got spiritually cross-eyed. Those who are agents of love and unity about God's people are those who stand back and appreciate the big picture with all its color, all its diversity, and all the panorama of the whole truth of God.
As a child of God, “this resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant…greeting God with a childlike, ‘What’s next, Papa?’ God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get an unbelievable inheritance!” (Romans 8:15-17 MSG).
God says, “Hey, Lucado. You are an heir to the joy of Christ. Why not ask Jesus to help you?” “And you, Mr. Without-a-Clue. Aren’t you an heir to God’s storehouse of wisdom?” “Mrs. Worrywart, Why do you let fears steal your sleep? Are you not a beneficiary of God’s trust fund?” Approach God’s throne not as an interloper but as a child of the living and loving God! Because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable.
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 25
When men have a legal dispute, let them go to court; the judges will decide between them, declaring one innocent and the other guilty. If the guilty one deserves punishment, the judge will have him prostrate himself before him and lashed as many times as his crime deserves, but not more than forty. If you hit him more than forty times, you will degrade him to something less than human.
4 Don’t muzzle an ox while it is threshing.
5-6 When brothers are living together and one of them dies without having had a son, the widow of the dead brother shall not marry a stranger from outside the family; her husband’s brother is to come to her and marry her and do the brother-in-law’s duty by her. The first son that she bears shall be named after her dead husband so his name won’t die out in Israel.
7-10 But if the brother doesn’t want to marry his sister-in-law, she is to go to the leaders at the city gate and say, “My brother-in-law refuses to keep his brother’s name alive in Israel; he won’t agree to do the brother-in-law’s duty by me.” Then the leaders will call for the brother and confront him. If he stands there defiant and says, “I don’t want her,” his sister-in-law is to pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and say, “This is what happens to the man who refuses to build up the family of his brother—his name in Israel will be Family-No-Sandal.”
11-12 When two men are in a fight and the wife of the one man, trying to rescue her husband, grabs the genitals of the man hitting him, you are to cut off her hand. Show no pity.
13-16 Don’t carry around with you two weights, one heavy and the other light, and don’t keep two measures at hand, one large and the other small. Use only one weight, a true and honest weight, and one measure, a true and honest measure, so that you will live a long time on the land that God, your God, is giving you. Dishonest weights and measures are an abomination to God, your God—all this corruption in business deals!
17-19 Don’t forget what Amalek did to you on the road after you left Egypt, how he attacked you when you were tired, barely able to put one foot in front of another, mercilessly cut off your stragglers, and had no regard for God. When God, your God, gives you rest from all the enemies that surround you in the inheritance-land God, your God, is giving you to possess, you are to wipe the name of Amalek from off the Earth. Don’t forget!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, August 20, 2018
Read: Hebrews 10:5–14
Consequently, when Christ[a] came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ[b] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
Footnotes:
Hebrews 10:5 Greek he
Hebrews 10:12 Greek this one
INSIGHT
The words “It’s finished!” can mean different things to different people. For the student, they might mean, “I’m finally graduating!” For the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus, these words could mean they had succeeded in killing Jesus (John 11:53). For the Roman soldiers, it could describe the death penalty they had successfully carried out (19:16–18). For the disciples, these words could mean that their hopes of the Messiah delivering them from Roman bondage were dashed (Luke 24:19–21). But when Jesus uttered, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He was declaring He had completed the work the Father gave Him to do (17:4)—to be “an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
For more about the death and resurrection of Jesus, check out our free online course at christianuniversity.org/CA206. - K. T. Sim
In Progress or Completed?
By Adam Holz
For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Hebrews 10:14
It’s satisfying to finish a job. Each month, for instance, one of my job responsibilities gets moved from one category to another, from “In Progress” to “Completed.” I love clicking that “Completed” button. But last month when I clicked it, I thought, If only I could overcome rough spots in my faith so easily! It can seem like the Christian life is always in progress, never completed.
Then I remembered Hebrews 10:14. It describes how Christ’s sacrifice redeems us totally. So in one important sense, that “completed button” has been pressed for us. Jesus’s death did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves: He made us acceptable in God’s eyes when we place our faith in Him. It is finished, as Jesus Himself said (John 19:30). Paradoxically, even though His sacrifice is complete and total, we spend the rest of our lives living into that spiritual reality—“being made holy,” as Hebrews’ author writes.
The fact that Jesus has finished something that’s still being worked out in our lives is hard to understand. When I’m struggling spiritually, it’s encouraging to remember that Jesus’s sacrifice for me—and for you—is complete . . . even if our living it out in this life is still a work in progress. Nothing can stop His intended end from being achieved eventually: being transformed into His likeness (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).
Jesus, thank You for giving Your life for us. Help us trust You as we grow into followers whose lives look more and more like Yours, knowing that You are the one who makes us complete.
God is at work to make us who He intends us to be.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, August 20, 2018
Christ-Awareness
…and I will give you rest. —Matthew 11:28
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
God engineers circumstances to see what we will do. Will we be the children of our Father in heaven, or will we go back again to the meaner, common-sense attitude? Will we stake all and stand true to Him? “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” The crown of life means I shall see that my Lord has got the victory after all, even in me. The Highest Good—The Pilgrim’s Song Book, 530 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, August 20, 2018
Spiritually Cross-Eyed - #8246
And now once again it's time for another of my science guy experiments. Let's say I'm looking at this beautiful scene on a calendar. It's a picture of snow-capped mountains in the background with stately evergreen trees in the foreground and a azure-blue sky. In the upper left-hand corner, an eagle is soaring majestically over the trees. I love eagles, so I decide that's the thing in the picture that most catches my attention. In fact, forget the rest of the picture, I'll just take a closer look at the eagle. So I bring him closer to my eyes and closer and now my nose is touching the calendar. I am totally focused on the eagle and I am suddenly cross-eyed!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritually Cross-Eyed.”
It's an interesting phenomenon. When you get too focused on one part, too close to one part of a bigger picture, things start to get distorted. That's not only true of physical vision. No, it happens to people spiritually, too.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Corinthians 1:10. It says, "I appeal to you, brothers, that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.” How did they become divided? He says, "There are quarrels among you. One of you says, 'I follow Paul'; another 'I follow Apollos'; another, 'I follow Cephas'; still another, 'I follow Christ.'” Well, these people had gotten really focused on the teaching of one particular leader and they'd forgotten the big picture of the whole body of Christ. And they were dividing into separate camps, seeing each other as theological adversaries, instead of brothers and sisters who will be together forever.
Paul tries to bring them back to the big picture that unites God's people and away from this narrow focus that divides God's people. He says, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” Later he will remind them and us, "The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.”(1 Corinthians 12:12)
When believers get fixated on their particular group, or their particular theological distinctive, or their spiritual hobbyhorse, their vision gets distorted. When you get too close to, too focused on one part of the Christian faith, you start to become spiritually cross-eyed. And we tend to become a little arrogant about our particular viewpoint, a little judgmental of those who don't see it our way. And sometimes you become the center of dissension and division, which puts you on God's hate list in Proverbs 6, "There are six things the Lord hates,” and it starts with "a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.” Wow!
There are many wonderful truths in God's Word, all of which are meant to be rounded out by other truths in God's Word. When we move in real close to one truth, we almost always become lopsided and even divisive. The gifts of the Spirit are a wonderful part of the Christian experience, but just focus on that and you'll start to become spiritually cross-eyed. The same thing can happen when you become fixated on God's predestination in our salvation, or on man's choice; or on one particular view of baptism, or prophecy, or one particular sin or behavior, or one group's distinctives. You can become too focused on the analytical side of the Christian life and miss the experience part; or you can become too focused on the experience side and miss the solid study of God's Word.
We need each other no matter how noble the truth, or it can become distorted and divisive because that's all we focus on. The body of Jesus has been broken enough. He doesn't need for us to break it more with doctrine wars or theological crusades over one part of God's infinite truth.
Those who divide God's people are probably too close to one part. They got spiritually cross-eyed. Those who are agents of love and unity about God's people are those who stand back and appreciate the big picture with all its color, all its diversity, and all the panorama of the whole truth of God.
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Deuteronomy 24, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: Lists
Everyone likes a list. Lists are reassuring. They comfort us. To list is to understand, solve, and even control. Moses brought a list down from the mountain. There are lists of the gifts of the Spirit. Lists of good fruit and bad. I've compiled a list of some God-given, time-tested truths that define the way to navigate life. May I share it with you?
" When no one is watching, live as if someone is.
" Succeed at home first.
" Pray twice as much as you fret.
" Listen twice as much as you speak.
" God has forgiven you; you'd be wise to do the same.
" Once a week, let a child take you on a walk.
" Only harbor a grudge when God does.
" Never let the important be the victim of the trivial.
Those are just a few ideas on my list. Why don't you compile your own?
From In the Eye of the Storm
Deuteronomy 24
If a man marries a woman and then it happens that he no longer likes her because he has found something wrong with her, he may give her divorce papers, put them in her hand, and send her off. After she leaves, if she becomes another man’s wife and he also comes to hate her and this second husband also gives her divorce papers, puts them in her hand, and sends her off, or if he should die, then the first husband who divorced her can’t marry her again. She has made herself ritually unclean, and her remarriage would be an abomination in the Presence of God and defile the land with sin, this land that God, your God, is giving you as an inheritance.
5 When a man takes a new wife, he is not to go out with the army or be given any business or work duties. He gets one year off simply to be at home making his wife happy.
6 Don’t seize a handmill or an upper millstone as collateral for a loan. You’d be seizing someone’s very life.
7 If a man is caught kidnapping one of his kinsmen, someone of the People of Israel, to enslave or sell him, the kidnapper must die. Purge that evil from among you.
8-9 Warning! If a serious skin disease breaks out, follow exactly the rules set down by the Levitical priests. Follow them precisely as I commanded them. Don’t forget what God, your God, did to Miriam on your way out of Egypt.
10-13 When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, don’t enter his house to claim his pledge. Wait outside. Let the man to whom you made the pledge bring the pledge to you outside. And if he is destitute, don’t use his cloak as a bedroll; return it to him at nightfall so that he can sleep in his cloak and bless you. In the sight of God, your God, that will be viewed as a righteous act.
14-15 Don’t abuse a laborer who is destitute and needy, whether he is a fellow Israelite living in your land and in your city. Pay him at the end of each workday; he’s living from hand to mouth and needs it now. If you hold back his pay, he’ll protest to God and you’ll have sin on your books.
16 Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their parents. Each person shall be put to death for his own sin.
17-18 Make sure foreigners and orphans get their just rights. Don’t take the cloak of a widow as security for a loan. Don’t ever forget that you were once slaves in Egypt and God, your God, got you out of there. I command you: Do what I’m telling you.
19-22 When you harvest your grain and forget a sheaf back in the field, don’t go back and get it; leave it for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow so that God, your God, will bless you in all your work. When you shake the olives off your trees, don’t go back over the branches and strip them bare—what’s left is for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. And when you cut the grapes in your vineyard, don’t take every last grape—leave a few for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. Don’t ever forget that you were a slave in Egypt. I command you: Do what I’m telling you.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Read: Psalm 104:24–34
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.[a]
27 These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.
28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
30 When you send forth your Spirit,[b] they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.
31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works,
32 who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke!
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
Footnotes:
Psalm 104:26 Or you formed to play with
Psalm 104:30 Or breath
INSIGHT
This remarkable psalm is like an orchestra proclaiming the different sights and sounds of creation. Land and sea; sky and clouds; animal and plant life; light and darkness all point to the ultimate reality of God. It’s easy for the reader to be reminded of the Genesis account of creation that describes the glory of God (Genesis 1–2). Psalm 104 doesn’t read like an objective and dispassionate record of what we see in nature, however. Instead, the psalmist finds in all of creation a marvelous symphony that exalts the Creator. Creation is the signpost pointing to the majesty of God: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20).
Be on the lookout today for something in creation for which you can express praise to God. - Dennis Fisher
Marvelous Maker
By Xochitl Dixon
How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Psalm 104:24
As an amateur photographer, I enjoy capturing glimpses of God’s creativity with my camera. I see His fingerprints on each delicate flower petal, each vibrant sunrise and sunset, and each cloud-painted and star-speckled sky canvas.
My camera’s powerful zoom option allows me to take photos of the Lord’s creatures too. I’ve snapped shots of a chattering squirrel in a cherry blossom tree, a colorful butterfly flitting from bloom to bloom, and sea turtles sunning on a rocky, black beach. Each one-of-a-kind image prompted me to worship my marvelous Maker.
I’m not the first of God’s people to praise Him while admiring His unique creations. The writer of Psalm 104 sings of the Lord’s many works of art in nature (v. 24). He regards “the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number” (v. 25) and rejoices in God for providing constant and complete care for His masterpieces (vv. 27–31). Considering the majesty of the God-given life around him, the psalmist bursts with worshipful gratitude: “I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live” (v. 33).
While reflecting on the Lord’s magnificent and immense creation, we can look closely at His intentional creativity and attention to detail. And like the psalmist, we can sing to our Creator with thankful praise for how powerful, majestic, and loving He is and always will be. Hallelujah!
Share your favorite photo of God’s creation at Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
God’s works are marvelous, and so is He.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Self-Awareness
Come to Me… —Matthew 11:28
God intends for us to live a well-rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. Then we tend to fall back into self-examination, a habit that we thought was gone. Self-awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self-awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives. Self-awareness is not sin, and it can be produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances. Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ-awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.
Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— “Come to Me….” The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words. Yet in every detail of our lives where we are found not to be real, we would rather dispute the findings than come to Jesus.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye. Disciples Indeed, 385 L
Everyone likes a list. Lists are reassuring. They comfort us. To list is to understand, solve, and even control. Moses brought a list down from the mountain. There are lists of the gifts of the Spirit. Lists of good fruit and bad. I've compiled a list of some God-given, time-tested truths that define the way to navigate life. May I share it with you?
" When no one is watching, live as if someone is.
" Succeed at home first.
" Pray twice as much as you fret.
" Listen twice as much as you speak.
" God has forgiven you; you'd be wise to do the same.
" Once a week, let a child take you on a walk.
" Only harbor a grudge when God does.
" Never let the important be the victim of the trivial.
Those are just a few ideas on my list. Why don't you compile your own?
From In the Eye of the Storm
Deuteronomy 24
If a man marries a woman and then it happens that he no longer likes her because he has found something wrong with her, he may give her divorce papers, put them in her hand, and send her off. After she leaves, if she becomes another man’s wife and he also comes to hate her and this second husband also gives her divorce papers, puts them in her hand, and sends her off, or if he should die, then the first husband who divorced her can’t marry her again. She has made herself ritually unclean, and her remarriage would be an abomination in the Presence of God and defile the land with sin, this land that God, your God, is giving you as an inheritance.
5 When a man takes a new wife, he is not to go out with the army or be given any business or work duties. He gets one year off simply to be at home making his wife happy.
6 Don’t seize a handmill or an upper millstone as collateral for a loan. You’d be seizing someone’s very life.
7 If a man is caught kidnapping one of his kinsmen, someone of the People of Israel, to enslave or sell him, the kidnapper must die. Purge that evil from among you.
8-9 Warning! If a serious skin disease breaks out, follow exactly the rules set down by the Levitical priests. Follow them precisely as I commanded them. Don’t forget what God, your God, did to Miriam on your way out of Egypt.
10-13 When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, don’t enter his house to claim his pledge. Wait outside. Let the man to whom you made the pledge bring the pledge to you outside. And if he is destitute, don’t use his cloak as a bedroll; return it to him at nightfall so that he can sleep in his cloak and bless you. In the sight of God, your God, that will be viewed as a righteous act.
14-15 Don’t abuse a laborer who is destitute and needy, whether he is a fellow Israelite living in your land and in your city. Pay him at the end of each workday; he’s living from hand to mouth and needs it now. If you hold back his pay, he’ll protest to God and you’ll have sin on your books.
16 Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their parents. Each person shall be put to death for his own sin.
17-18 Make sure foreigners and orphans get their just rights. Don’t take the cloak of a widow as security for a loan. Don’t ever forget that you were once slaves in Egypt and God, your God, got you out of there. I command you: Do what I’m telling you.
19-22 When you harvest your grain and forget a sheaf back in the field, don’t go back and get it; leave it for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow so that God, your God, will bless you in all your work. When you shake the olives off your trees, don’t go back over the branches and strip them bare—what’s left is for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. And when you cut the grapes in your vineyard, don’t take every last grape—leave a few for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. Don’t ever forget that you were a slave in Egypt. I command you: Do what I’m telling you.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Read: Psalm 104:24–34
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.[a]
27 These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.
28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
30 When you send forth your Spirit,[b] they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.
31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works,
32 who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke!
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
Footnotes:
Psalm 104:26 Or you formed to play with
Psalm 104:30 Or breath
INSIGHT
This remarkable psalm is like an orchestra proclaiming the different sights and sounds of creation. Land and sea; sky and clouds; animal and plant life; light and darkness all point to the ultimate reality of God. It’s easy for the reader to be reminded of the Genesis account of creation that describes the glory of God (Genesis 1–2). Psalm 104 doesn’t read like an objective and dispassionate record of what we see in nature, however. Instead, the psalmist finds in all of creation a marvelous symphony that exalts the Creator. Creation is the signpost pointing to the majesty of God: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20).
Be on the lookout today for something in creation for which you can express praise to God. - Dennis Fisher
Marvelous Maker
By Xochitl Dixon
How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Psalm 104:24
As an amateur photographer, I enjoy capturing glimpses of God’s creativity with my camera. I see His fingerprints on each delicate flower petal, each vibrant sunrise and sunset, and each cloud-painted and star-speckled sky canvas.
My camera’s powerful zoom option allows me to take photos of the Lord’s creatures too. I’ve snapped shots of a chattering squirrel in a cherry blossom tree, a colorful butterfly flitting from bloom to bloom, and sea turtles sunning on a rocky, black beach. Each one-of-a-kind image prompted me to worship my marvelous Maker.
I’m not the first of God’s people to praise Him while admiring His unique creations. The writer of Psalm 104 sings of the Lord’s many works of art in nature (v. 24). He regards “the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number” (v. 25) and rejoices in God for providing constant and complete care for His masterpieces (vv. 27–31). Considering the majesty of the God-given life around him, the psalmist bursts with worshipful gratitude: “I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live” (v. 33).
While reflecting on the Lord’s magnificent and immense creation, we can look closely at His intentional creativity and attention to detail. And like the psalmist, we can sing to our Creator with thankful praise for how powerful, majestic, and loving He is and always will be. Hallelujah!
Share your favorite photo of God’s creation at Facebook.com/ourdailybread.
God’s works are marvelous, and so is He.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Self-Awareness
Come to Me… —Matthew 11:28
God intends for us to live a well-rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. Then we tend to fall back into self-examination, a habit that we thought was gone. Self-awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self-awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives. Self-awareness is not sin, and it can be produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances. Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ-awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.
Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— “Come to Me….” The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words. Yet in every detail of our lives where we are found not to be real, we would rather dispute the findings than come to Jesus.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye. Disciples Indeed, 385 L
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Deuteronomy 23, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: A Broad Picture
Would you buy a house if you were only allowed to see one of its rooms? Would you buy a car if you saw only its tires and a taillight? Good judgment requires a broad picture.
One failure doesn’t make a person a failure. One achievement doesn’t make a person a success. “The end of the matter is better than its beginning,” penned the sage. “Be patient in affliction,” echoed the apostle Paul. We only have a fragment. Life’s mishaps and horrors are only a page out of a grand book. We must be slow about drawing conclusions. We must reserve judgment on life’s storms until we know the whole story.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:34, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” He should know. He’s the Author of the story, and he has already written the final chapter.
From In the Eye of the Storm
Deuteronomy 23
No eunuch is to enter the congregation of God.
2 No bastard is to enter the congregation of God, even to the tenth generation, nor any of his children.
3-6 No Ammonite or Moabite is to enter the congregation of God, even to the tenth generation, nor any of his children, ever. Those nations didn’t treat you with hospitality on your travels out of Egypt, and on top of that they also hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Mesopotamia to curse you. God, your God, refused to listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing—how God, your God, loves you! Don’t even try to get along with them or do anything for them, ever.
7 But don’t spurn an Edomite; he’s your kin.
And don’t spurn an Egyptian; you were a foreigner in his land.
8 Children born to Edomites and Egyptians may enter the congregation of God in the third generation.
9-11 When you are camped out, at war with your enemies, be careful to keep yourself from anything ritually defiling. If one of your men has become ritually unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he must go outside the camp and stay there until evening when he can wash himself, returning to the camp at sunset.
12-14 Mark out an area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourselves. Along with your weapons have a stick with you. After you relieve yourself, dig a hole with the stick and cover your excrement. God, your God, strolls through your camp; he’s present to deliver you and give you victory over your enemies. Keep your camp holy; don’t permit anything indecent or offensive in God’s eyes.
15-16 Don’t return a runaway slave to his master; he’s come to you for refuge. Let him live wherever he wishes within the protective gates of your city. Don’t take advantage of him.
17-18 No daughter of Israel is to become a sacred prostitute; and no son of Israel is to become a sacred prostitute. And don’t bring the fee of a sacred whore or the earnings of a priest-pimp to the house of God, your God, to pay for any vow—they are both an abomination to God, your God.
19-20 Don’t charge interest to your kinsmen on any loan: not for money or food or clothing or anything else that could earn interest. You may charge foreigners interest, but you may not charge your brothers interest; that way God, your God, will bless all the work that you take up and the land that you are entering to possess.
21-23 When you make a vow to God, your God, don’t put off keeping it; God, your God, expects you to keep it and if you don’t you’re guilty. But if you don’t make a vow in the first place, there’s no sin. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. Keep the vow you willingly vowed to God, your God. You promised it, so do it.
24-25 When you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want until you’re full, but you may not put any in your bucket or bag. And when you walk through the ripe grain of your neighbor, you may pick the heads of grain, but you may not swing your sickle there.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Read: Psalm 102:1–2, 18–28
Do Not Hide Your Face from Me
A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord.
Hear my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you!
2 Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress!
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call!
Psalm 102:18-28 English Standard Version (ESV)
18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height;
from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die,
21 that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord,
and in Jerusalem his praise,
22 when peoples gather together,
and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.
23 He has broken my strength in midcourse;
he has shortened my days.
24 “O my God,” I say, “take me not away
in the midst of my days—
you whose years endure
throughout all generations!”
25 Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
27 but you are the same, and your years have no end.
28 The children of your servants shall dwell secure;
their offspring shall be established before you.
INSIGHT
Altitude expands our field of view, not just our perspective. From the heights we can see things that are hidden from us when we are on the ground. This can be an analogy for God’s view of our life. God looks down from the heavens and sees us (Psalm 102:19). His view takes in both time and space; He sees the ends of the earth and the beginning and end of our lives.
How does knowing that God sees everything from beginning to end offer comfort? - J.R. Hudberg
Sky Garden
By Bill Crowder
He looked down from His holy height. Psalm 102:19 nasb
While in London, a friend arranged for my wife Marlene and me to visit the Sky Garden. On the top floor of a thirty-five-story building in London’s business district, the Sky Garden is a glass-encased platform filled with plants, trees, and flowers. But the sky part captured our attention. We gazed down from a height of over 500 feet, admiring St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, and more. Our views of the capital city were breathtaking—providing a helpful lesson on perspective.
Our God has a perfect perspective of everything we experience. The psalmist wrote, “For He looked down from His holy height; from heaven the Lord gazed upon the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to set free those who were doomed to death” (Psalm 102:19–20 nasb).
Like the hurting people pictured in Psalm 102, we are often locked into the present with its struggles, “groaning” with despair. But God sees our lives from beginning to end. Our Lord is never caught off guard by the things that can blindside us. As the psalmist anticipated, His perfect perspective will lead to an ultimate rescue that sets free even those “doomed to death” (vv. 20, 27–28).
In difficult moments, remember: We may not know what is coming next, but our Lord does. We can trust Him with every moment that stretches before us.
For more perspective on the trying seasons of life, read Why? Seeing God in Our Pain at discoveryseries.org/cb151.
Focusing on Christ puts everything else into perspective.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Have You Ever Been Speechless with Sorrow?
When he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich. —Luke 18:23
The rich young ruler went away from Jesus speechless with sorrow, having nothing to say in response to Jesus’ words. He had no doubt about what Jesus had said or what it meant, and it produced in him a sorrow with no words with which to respond. Have you ever been there? Has God’s Word ever come to you, pointing out an area of your life, requiring you to yield it to Him? Maybe He has pointed out certain personal qualities, desires, and interests, or possibly relationships of your heart and mind. If so, then you have often been speechless with sorrow. The Lord will not go after you, and He will not plead with you. But every time He meets you at the place where He has pointed, He will simply repeat His words, saying, “If you really mean what you say, these are the conditions.”
“Sell all that you have…” (Luke 18:22). In other words, rid yourself before God of everything that might be considered a possession until you are a mere conscious human being standing before Him, and then give God that. That is where the battle is truly fought— in the realm of your will before God. Are you more devoted to your idea of what Jesus wants than to Jesus Himself? If so, you are likely to hear one of His harsh and unyielding statements that will produce sorrow in you. What Jesus says is difficult— it is only easy when it is heard by those who have His nature in them. Beware of allowing anything to soften the hard words of Jesus Christ.
I can be so rich in my own poverty, or in the awareness of the fact that I am nobody, that I will never be a disciple of Jesus. Or I can be so rich in the awareness that I am somebody that I will never be a disciple. Am I willing to be destitute and poor even in my sense of awareness of my destitution and poverty? If not, that is why I become discouraged. Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus— not love for Jesus Himself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
Would you buy a house if you were only allowed to see one of its rooms? Would you buy a car if you saw only its tires and a taillight? Good judgment requires a broad picture.
One failure doesn’t make a person a failure. One achievement doesn’t make a person a success. “The end of the matter is better than its beginning,” penned the sage. “Be patient in affliction,” echoed the apostle Paul. We only have a fragment. Life’s mishaps and horrors are only a page out of a grand book. We must be slow about drawing conclusions. We must reserve judgment on life’s storms until we know the whole story.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:34, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” He should know. He’s the Author of the story, and he has already written the final chapter.
From In the Eye of the Storm
Deuteronomy 23
No eunuch is to enter the congregation of God.
2 No bastard is to enter the congregation of God, even to the tenth generation, nor any of his children.
3-6 No Ammonite or Moabite is to enter the congregation of God, even to the tenth generation, nor any of his children, ever. Those nations didn’t treat you with hospitality on your travels out of Egypt, and on top of that they also hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Mesopotamia to curse you. God, your God, refused to listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing—how God, your God, loves you! Don’t even try to get along with them or do anything for them, ever.
7 But don’t spurn an Edomite; he’s your kin.
And don’t spurn an Egyptian; you were a foreigner in his land.
8 Children born to Edomites and Egyptians may enter the congregation of God in the third generation.
9-11 When you are camped out, at war with your enemies, be careful to keep yourself from anything ritually defiling. If one of your men has become ritually unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he must go outside the camp and stay there until evening when he can wash himself, returning to the camp at sunset.
12-14 Mark out an area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourselves. Along with your weapons have a stick with you. After you relieve yourself, dig a hole with the stick and cover your excrement. God, your God, strolls through your camp; he’s present to deliver you and give you victory over your enemies. Keep your camp holy; don’t permit anything indecent or offensive in God’s eyes.
15-16 Don’t return a runaway slave to his master; he’s come to you for refuge. Let him live wherever he wishes within the protective gates of your city. Don’t take advantage of him.
17-18 No daughter of Israel is to become a sacred prostitute; and no son of Israel is to become a sacred prostitute. And don’t bring the fee of a sacred whore or the earnings of a priest-pimp to the house of God, your God, to pay for any vow—they are both an abomination to God, your God.
19-20 Don’t charge interest to your kinsmen on any loan: not for money or food or clothing or anything else that could earn interest. You may charge foreigners interest, but you may not charge your brothers interest; that way God, your God, will bless all the work that you take up and the land that you are entering to possess.
21-23 When you make a vow to God, your God, don’t put off keeping it; God, your God, expects you to keep it and if you don’t you’re guilty. But if you don’t make a vow in the first place, there’s no sin. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. Keep the vow you willingly vowed to God, your God. You promised it, so do it.
24-25 When you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want until you’re full, but you may not put any in your bucket or bag. And when you walk through the ripe grain of your neighbor, you may pick the heads of grain, but you may not swing your sickle there.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Read: Psalm 102:1–2, 18–28
Do Not Hide Your Face from Me
A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord.
Hear my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you!
2 Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress!
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call!
Psalm 102:18-28 English Standard Version (ESV)
18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height;
from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die,
21 that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord,
and in Jerusalem his praise,
22 when peoples gather together,
and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.
23 He has broken my strength in midcourse;
he has shortened my days.
24 “O my God,” I say, “take me not away
in the midst of my days—
you whose years endure
throughout all generations!”
25 Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
27 but you are the same, and your years have no end.
28 The children of your servants shall dwell secure;
their offspring shall be established before you.
INSIGHT
Altitude expands our field of view, not just our perspective. From the heights we can see things that are hidden from us when we are on the ground. This can be an analogy for God’s view of our life. God looks down from the heavens and sees us (Psalm 102:19). His view takes in both time and space; He sees the ends of the earth and the beginning and end of our lives.
How does knowing that God sees everything from beginning to end offer comfort? - J.R. Hudberg
Sky Garden
By Bill Crowder
He looked down from His holy height. Psalm 102:19 nasb
While in London, a friend arranged for my wife Marlene and me to visit the Sky Garden. On the top floor of a thirty-five-story building in London’s business district, the Sky Garden is a glass-encased platform filled with plants, trees, and flowers. But the sky part captured our attention. We gazed down from a height of over 500 feet, admiring St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, and more. Our views of the capital city were breathtaking—providing a helpful lesson on perspective.
Our God has a perfect perspective of everything we experience. The psalmist wrote, “For He looked down from His holy height; from heaven the Lord gazed upon the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to set free those who were doomed to death” (Psalm 102:19–20 nasb).
Like the hurting people pictured in Psalm 102, we are often locked into the present with its struggles, “groaning” with despair. But God sees our lives from beginning to end. Our Lord is never caught off guard by the things that can blindside us. As the psalmist anticipated, His perfect perspective will lead to an ultimate rescue that sets free even those “doomed to death” (vv. 20, 27–28).
In difficult moments, remember: We may not know what is coming next, but our Lord does. We can trust Him with every moment that stretches before us.
For more perspective on the trying seasons of life, read Why? Seeing God in Our Pain at discoveryseries.org/cb151.
Focusing on Christ puts everything else into perspective.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Have You Ever Been Speechless with Sorrow?
When he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich. —Luke 18:23
The rich young ruler went away from Jesus speechless with sorrow, having nothing to say in response to Jesus’ words. He had no doubt about what Jesus had said or what it meant, and it produced in him a sorrow with no words with which to respond. Have you ever been there? Has God’s Word ever come to you, pointing out an area of your life, requiring you to yield it to Him? Maybe He has pointed out certain personal qualities, desires, and interests, or possibly relationships of your heart and mind. If so, then you have often been speechless with sorrow. The Lord will not go after you, and He will not plead with you. But every time He meets you at the place where He has pointed, He will simply repeat His words, saying, “If you really mean what you say, these are the conditions.”
“Sell all that you have…” (Luke 18:22). In other words, rid yourself before God of everything that might be considered a possession until you are a mere conscious human being standing before Him, and then give God that. That is where the battle is truly fought— in the realm of your will before God. Are you more devoted to your idea of what Jesus wants than to Jesus Himself? If so, you are likely to hear one of His harsh and unyielding statements that will produce sorrow in you. What Jesus says is difficult— it is only easy when it is heard by those who have His nature in them. Beware of allowing anything to soften the hard words of Jesus Christ.
I can be so rich in my own poverty, or in the awareness of the fact that I am nobody, that I will never be a disciple of Jesus. Or I can be so rich in the awareness that I am somebody that I will never be a disciple. Am I willing to be destitute and poor even in my sense of awareness of my destitution and poverty? If not, that is why I become discouraged. Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus— not love for Jesus Himself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ. Approved Unto God, 4 R
Friday, August 17, 2018
Deuteronomy 22, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: HEIRS OF GOD, CO-HEIRS WITH CHRIST
After spending the better part of an hour reciting the woes of my life to my wife, Denalyn interrupted me with a question. “Is God in this anywhere?” I hate it when she does that.
What had happened to me? I was focusing on my resources. I wasn’t consulting God. I had limited my world to my strength, my wisdom, and my power. No wonder I was in a tailspin. For such moments God gives this promise: “We are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” (Romans 8:17).
The cronies of dismay, gloom and rejection have no answer for the promise of inheritance. Tell them, the gauge may be bouncing on empty, but I will not run out of fuel. “I am a child of the living and loving God, and he will help me!” And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 22
If you see your kinsman’s ox or sheep wandering off loose, don’t look the other way as if you didn’t see it. Return it promptly. If your fellow Israelite is not close by or you don’t know whose it is, take the animal home with you and take care of it until your fellow asks about it. Then return it to him. Do the same if it’s his donkey or a piece of clothing or anything else your fellow Israelite loses. Don’t look the other way as if you didn’t see it.
4 If you see your fellow’s donkey or ox injured along the road, don’t look the other way. Help him get it up and on its way.
5 A woman must not wear a man’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing. This kind of thing is an abomination to God, your God.
6-7 When you come across a bird’s nest alongside the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, don’t take the mother with the young. You may take the babies, but let the mother go so that you will live a good and long life.
8 When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof to make it safe so that someone doesn’t fall off and die and your family become responsible for the death.
9 Don’t plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard. If you do, you will forfeit what you’ve sown, the total production of the vineyard.
10 Don’t plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.
11 Don’t wear clothes of mixed fabrics, wool and linen together.
12 Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you use to cover yourself.
13-19 If a man marries a woman, sleeps with her, and then turns on her, calling her a slut, giving her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I slept with her I discovered she wasn’t a virgin,” then the father and mother of the girl are to take her with the proof of her virginity to the town leaders at the gate. The father is to tell the leaders, “I gave my daughter to this man as wife and he turned on her, rejecting her. And now he has slanderously accused her, claiming that she wasn’t a virgin. But look at this, here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” And then he is to spread out her bloodstained wedding garment before the leaders for their examination. The town leaders then are to take the husband, whip him, fine him a hundred pieces of silver, and give it to the father of the girl. The man gave a virgin girl of Israel a bad name. He has to keep her as his wife and can never divorce her.
20-21 But if it turns out that the accusation is true and there is no evidence of the girl’s virginity, the men of the town are to take her to the door of her father’s house and stone her to death. She acted disgracefully in Israel. She lived like a whore while still in her parents’ home. Purge the evil from among you.
22 If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both must die. Purge that evil from Israel.
23-24 If a man comes upon a virgin in town, a girl who is engaged to another man, and sleeps with her, take both of them to the town gate and stone them until they die—the girl because she didn’t yell out for help in the town and the man because he raped her, violating the fiancée of his neighbor. You must purge the evil from among you.
25-27 But if it was out in the country that the man found the engaged girl and grabbed and raped her, only the man is to die, the man who raped her. Don’t do anything to the girl; she did nothing wrong. This is similar to the case of a man who comes across his neighbor out in the country and murders him; when the engaged girl yelled out for help, there was no one around to hear or help her.
28-29 When a man comes upon a virgin who has never been engaged and grabs and rapes her and they are found out, the man who raped her has to give her father fifty pieces of silver. He has to marry her because he took advantage of her. And he can never divorce her.
30 A man may not marry his father’s ex-wife—that would violate his father’s rights.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, August 17, 2018
Read: Matthew 14:22–33
Jesus Walks on the Water
22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but the boat by this time was a long way[a] from the land,[b] beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. 25 And in the fourth watch of the night[c] he came to them, walking on the sea. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”
28 And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind,[d] he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32 And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Footnotes:
Matthew 14:24 Greek many stadia, a stadion was about 607 feet or 185 meters
Matthew 14:24 Some manuscripts was out on the sea
Matthew 14:25 That is, between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.
Matthew 14:30 Some manuscripts strong wind
INSIGHT
The fear-filled disciples who saw Jesus walking on the lake cried out, “It’s a ghost!” (Matthew 14:26). But then they worshipfully acknowledged, “Truly you are the Son of God” (v. 33). In between the collective voices of the disciples, we hear the voices of Jesus and Peter. Following the words of Jesus in verse 27, Peter spoke, “Lord, if it’s you . . . tell me to come to you on the water” (v. 28). At first glance it’s easy to interpret Peter’s “if” as implying uncertainty. An alternate rendering of the word if is since. Given Peter’s actions, it seems to me that this translation makes sense. When Jesus is the one directing us, doubt can yield to confidence. - Arthur Jackson
Jesus Reached Out
By Julie Schwab
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. Matthew 14:31
Sometimes life gets busy—classes are hard, work is exhausting, the bathroom needs to be cleaned, and a coffee date is on the day’s schedule. It gets to the point where I force myself to read the Bible for a few minutes a day and tell myself I’ll spend more time with God next week. But it doesn’t take long before I’m distracted, drowning in the day’s tasks, and forget to ask God for help of any kind.
When Peter was walking on water toward Jesus, he quickly became distracted by the wind and waves. Like me, he began to sink (Matthew 14:29–30). But as soon as Peter cried out, “immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him” (vv. 30–31).
I often feel as if I have to make it up to God after being so busy and distracted that I lose sight of Him. But that’s not how God works. As soon as we turn to Him for help, Jesus reaches out without hesitation.
When we’re unsettled by the chaos of life, it’s easy to forget that God is standing in the middle of the storm with us. Jesus asked Peter, “Why did you doubt?” (v. 31). No matter what we’re going through, He is there. He is here. Next to us at that moment, in this moment, ready to reach out and rescue us.
Lord, help me to turn to You in the midst of my busyness and life’s distractions. Thank You for always being here, ready to catch me.
God is waiting for us to turn to Him so He can reach out and help.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, August 17, 2018
Are You Discouraged or Devoted?
…Jesus…said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have…and come, follow Me." But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich. —Luke 18:22-23
Have you ever heard the Master say something very difficult to you? If you haven’t, I question whether you have ever heard Him say anything at all. Jesus says a tremendous amount to us that we listen to, but do not actually hear. And once we do hear Him, His words are harsh and unyielding.
Jesus did not show the least concern that this rich young ruler should do what He told him, nor did Jesus make any attempt to keep this man with Him. He simply said to him, “Sell all that you have…and come, follow Me.” Our Lord never pleaded with him; He never tried to lure him— He simply spoke the strictest words that human ears have ever heard, and then left him alone.
Have I ever heard Jesus say something difficult and unyielding to me? Has He said something personally to me to which I have deliberately listened— not something I can explain for the sake of others, but something I have heard Him say directly to me? This man understood what Jesus said. He heard it clearly, realizing the full impact of its meaning, and it broke his heart. He did not go away as a defiant person, but as one who was sorrowful and discouraged. He had come to Jesus on fire with zeal and determination, but the words of Jesus simply froze him. Instead of producing enthusiastic devotion to Jesus, they produced heartbreaking discouragement. And Jesus did not go after him, but let him go. Our Lord knows perfectly well that once His word is truly heard, it will bear fruit sooner or later. What is so terrible is that some of us prevent His words from bearing fruit in our present life. I wonder what we will say when we finally make up our minds to be devoted to Him on that particular point? One thing is certain— He will never throw our past failures back in our faces.
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
Friday, August 17, 2018
Where You Were Created To Be - #8245
I was speaking at a Bible conference, set right near the shore of a beautiful lake. I was responsible for speaking about eighteen times in six days, literally, so I was a pretty busy boy. But I did something that would have made my wife proud, even in spite of how busy I was. I took time to smell the flowers; well, at least to admire the flowers. I have to admit, I'm partially colorblind, but even I was struck by these rich purple flowers blooming all over this sprawling vine in the garden outside my window. The flowers seemed to be everywhere in the garden. I asked someone from the conference what I was looking at. He told me it's a Vinca vine. He said they had transplanted that vine from a pot to the soil of this garden. And I was told a Vinca vine doesn't produce any flowers when it's in a pot-only when you plant it in the ground. Well, what do you know?
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Where You Were Created To Be."
In the words of the man who had transplanted that vine, "It thrives only when it is where it was created to be." Well, so do we.
And sadly, so many of us spend our whole life looking for, but missing, where we were created to be. And it is only the One who created you who can ultimately tell you where you were created to be. And He has in our word for today from the Word of God. In six little words, our Creator spells out for us the reason for our existence, the answer to life's most ultimate question, "Why am I here?" In Colossians 1:16, speaking of Jesus, God says, "All things were", now here are the six words, "created by Him and for Him."
So you were created by Jesus, you were created for Jesus, and you're going to have hole in your heart until you have Jesus. Maybe you've been trying to fill that hole in your heart for a long time. But no relationship you've ever had has done it, no accomplishment, no experience, no religion. They can't. See, the hole in your heart is so big it can only be filled by the person who created you.
And the reason we can't find the meaning we've been looking for, and the peace we need, the lasting love we desire, the reason is that we're away from the One we were made for. We're away from Him, not by His choice, but by ours. We were created for Him, but we've lived for ourselves. That's what "sin" is all about. Notice the middle letter of sin, it's "I." And nothing is really working, nothing is really fulfilling because your sin-your running of your own life-has cut you off from the love you were made for.
That's why Jesus came. In Colossians 2:13-14, the Bible says, "God forgave us all our sins, having canceled...what was against us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross." When you come in your heart to the cross where Jesus died for every wrong thing you've ever done; when you give yourself to the One who gave Himself for you, the sin-wall comes down and you begin for the first time in your life to be "where you were created to be."
Mark Twain once said, "The two most important days in a person's life are the day they're born and the day they find out why." I know you know the day you were born. This could be the day you find out why.
It begins when you say, "Jesus, I believe when you died on that cross you were paying for every wrong thing I have ever done. And, Jesus, I want your love. I want the wall between me and God to come down. This day I am yours."
Our website's called ANewStory.com, because in a very real way, the day you give yourself to Jesus is the beginning of your new story. I hope you'll go there and find out how you can be sure you belong to Him. ANewStory.com.
Your life really begins when you finally are where you were created to be, and that's in the relationship you were made for, with the person you were made by. And that relationship can begin for you today. You don't have to be outside His love one more day.
After spending the better part of an hour reciting the woes of my life to my wife, Denalyn interrupted me with a question. “Is God in this anywhere?” I hate it when she does that.
What had happened to me? I was focusing on my resources. I wasn’t consulting God. I had limited my world to my strength, my wisdom, and my power. No wonder I was in a tailspin. For such moments God gives this promise: “We are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” (Romans 8:17).
The cronies of dismay, gloom and rejection have no answer for the promise of inheritance. Tell them, the gauge may be bouncing on empty, but I will not run out of fuel. “I am a child of the living and loving God, and he will help me!” And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 22
If you see your kinsman’s ox or sheep wandering off loose, don’t look the other way as if you didn’t see it. Return it promptly. If your fellow Israelite is not close by or you don’t know whose it is, take the animal home with you and take care of it until your fellow asks about it. Then return it to him. Do the same if it’s his donkey or a piece of clothing or anything else your fellow Israelite loses. Don’t look the other way as if you didn’t see it.
4 If you see your fellow’s donkey or ox injured along the road, don’t look the other way. Help him get it up and on its way.
5 A woman must not wear a man’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing. This kind of thing is an abomination to God, your God.
6-7 When you come across a bird’s nest alongside the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, don’t take the mother with the young. You may take the babies, but let the mother go so that you will live a good and long life.
8 When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof to make it safe so that someone doesn’t fall off and die and your family become responsible for the death.
9 Don’t plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard. If you do, you will forfeit what you’ve sown, the total production of the vineyard.
10 Don’t plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.
11 Don’t wear clothes of mixed fabrics, wool and linen together.
12 Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you use to cover yourself.
13-19 If a man marries a woman, sleeps with her, and then turns on her, calling her a slut, giving her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I slept with her I discovered she wasn’t a virgin,” then the father and mother of the girl are to take her with the proof of her virginity to the town leaders at the gate. The father is to tell the leaders, “I gave my daughter to this man as wife and he turned on her, rejecting her. And now he has slanderously accused her, claiming that she wasn’t a virgin. But look at this, here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” And then he is to spread out her bloodstained wedding garment before the leaders for their examination. The town leaders then are to take the husband, whip him, fine him a hundred pieces of silver, and give it to the father of the girl. The man gave a virgin girl of Israel a bad name. He has to keep her as his wife and can never divorce her.
20-21 But if it turns out that the accusation is true and there is no evidence of the girl’s virginity, the men of the town are to take her to the door of her father’s house and stone her to death. She acted disgracefully in Israel. She lived like a whore while still in her parents’ home. Purge the evil from among you.
22 If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both must die. Purge that evil from Israel.
23-24 If a man comes upon a virgin in town, a girl who is engaged to another man, and sleeps with her, take both of them to the town gate and stone them until they die—the girl because she didn’t yell out for help in the town and the man because he raped her, violating the fiancée of his neighbor. You must purge the evil from among you.
25-27 But if it was out in the country that the man found the engaged girl and grabbed and raped her, only the man is to die, the man who raped her. Don’t do anything to the girl; she did nothing wrong. This is similar to the case of a man who comes across his neighbor out in the country and murders him; when the engaged girl yelled out for help, there was no one around to hear or help her.
28-29 When a man comes upon a virgin who has never been engaged and grabs and rapes her and they are found out, the man who raped her has to give her father fifty pieces of silver. He has to marry her because he took advantage of her. And he can never divorce her.
30 A man may not marry his father’s ex-wife—that would violate his father’s rights.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, August 17, 2018
Read: Matthew 14:22–33
Jesus Walks on the Water
22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but the boat by this time was a long way[a] from the land,[b] beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. 25 And in the fourth watch of the night[c] he came to them, walking on the sea. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”
28 And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind,[d] he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32 And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Footnotes:
Matthew 14:24 Greek many stadia, a stadion was about 607 feet or 185 meters
Matthew 14:24 Some manuscripts was out on the sea
Matthew 14:25 That is, between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.
Matthew 14:30 Some manuscripts strong wind
INSIGHT
The fear-filled disciples who saw Jesus walking on the lake cried out, “It’s a ghost!” (Matthew 14:26). But then they worshipfully acknowledged, “Truly you are the Son of God” (v. 33). In between the collective voices of the disciples, we hear the voices of Jesus and Peter. Following the words of Jesus in verse 27, Peter spoke, “Lord, if it’s you . . . tell me to come to you on the water” (v. 28). At first glance it’s easy to interpret Peter’s “if” as implying uncertainty. An alternate rendering of the word if is since. Given Peter’s actions, it seems to me that this translation makes sense. When Jesus is the one directing us, doubt can yield to confidence. - Arthur Jackson
Jesus Reached Out
By Julie Schwab
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. Matthew 14:31
Sometimes life gets busy—classes are hard, work is exhausting, the bathroom needs to be cleaned, and a coffee date is on the day’s schedule. It gets to the point where I force myself to read the Bible for a few minutes a day and tell myself I’ll spend more time with God next week. But it doesn’t take long before I’m distracted, drowning in the day’s tasks, and forget to ask God for help of any kind.
When Peter was walking on water toward Jesus, he quickly became distracted by the wind and waves. Like me, he began to sink (Matthew 14:29–30). But as soon as Peter cried out, “immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him” (vv. 30–31).
I often feel as if I have to make it up to God after being so busy and distracted that I lose sight of Him. But that’s not how God works. As soon as we turn to Him for help, Jesus reaches out without hesitation.
When we’re unsettled by the chaos of life, it’s easy to forget that God is standing in the middle of the storm with us. Jesus asked Peter, “Why did you doubt?” (v. 31). No matter what we’re going through, He is there. He is here. Next to us at that moment, in this moment, ready to reach out and rescue us.
Lord, help me to turn to You in the midst of my busyness and life’s distractions. Thank You for always being here, ready to catch me.
God is waiting for us to turn to Him so He can reach out and help.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, August 17, 2018
Are You Discouraged or Devoted?
…Jesus…said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have…and come, follow Me." But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich. —Luke 18:22-23
Have you ever heard the Master say something very difficult to you? If you haven’t, I question whether you have ever heard Him say anything at all. Jesus says a tremendous amount to us that we listen to, but do not actually hear. And once we do hear Him, His words are harsh and unyielding.
Jesus did not show the least concern that this rich young ruler should do what He told him, nor did Jesus make any attempt to keep this man with Him. He simply said to him, “Sell all that you have…and come, follow Me.” Our Lord never pleaded with him; He never tried to lure him— He simply spoke the strictest words that human ears have ever heard, and then left him alone.
Have I ever heard Jesus say something difficult and unyielding to me? Has He said something personally to me to which I have deliberately listened— not something I can explain for the sake of others, but something I have heard Him say directly to me? This man understood what Jesus said. He heard it clearly, realizing the full impact of its meaning, and it broke his heart. He did not go away as a defiant person, but as one who was sorrowful and discouraged. He had come to Jesus on fire with zeal and determination, but the words of Jesus simply froze him. Instead of producing enthusiastic devotion to Jesus, they produced heartbreaking discouragement. And Jesus did not go after him, but let him go. Our Lord knows perfectly well that once His word is truly heard, it will bear fruit sooner or later. What is so terrible is that some of us prevent His words from bearing fruit in our present life. I wonder what we will say when we finally make up our minds to be devoted to Him on that particular point? One thing is certain— He will never throw our past failures back in our faces.
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
Friday, August 17, 2018
Where You Were Created To Be - #8245
I was speaking at a Bible conference, set right near the shore of a beautiful lake. I was responsible for speaking about eighteen times in six days, literally, so I was a pretty busy boy. But I did something that would have made my wife proud, even in spite of how busy I was. I took time to smell the flowers; well, at least to admire the flowers. I have to admit, I'm partially colorblind, but even I was struck by these rich purple flowers blooming all over this sprawling vine in the garden outside my window. The flowers seemed to be everywhere in the garden. I asked someone from the conference what I was looking at. He told me it's a Vinca vine. He said they had transplanted that vine from a pot to the soil of this garden. And I was told a Vinca vine doesn't produce any flowers when it's in a pot-only when you plant it in the ground. Well, what do you know?
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Where You Were Created To Be."
In the words of the man who had transplanted that vine, "It thrives only when it is where it was created to be." Well, so do we.
And sadly, so many of us spend our whole life looking for, but missing, where we were created to be. And it is only the One who created you who can ultimately tell you where you were created to be. And He has in our word for today from the Word of God. In six little words, our Creator spells out for us the reason for our existence, the answer to life's most ultimate question, "Why am I here?" In Colossians 1:16, speaking of Jesus, God says, "All things were", now here are the six words, "created by Him and for Him."
So you were created by Jesus, you were created for Jesus, and you're going to have hole in your heart until you have Jesus. Maybe you've been trying to fill that hole in your heart for a long time. But no relationship you've ever had has done it, no accomplishment, no experience, no religion. They can't. See, the hole in your heart is so big it can only be filled by the person who created you.
And the reason we can't find the meaning we've been looking for, and the peace we need, the lasting love we desire, the reason is that we're away from the One we were made for. We're away from Him, not by His choice, but by ours. We were created for Him, but we've lived for ourselves. That's what "sin" is all about. Notice the middle letter of sin, it's "I." And nothing is really working, nothing is really fulfilling because your sin-your running of your own life-has cut you off from the love you were made for.
That's why Jesus came. In Colossians 2:13-14, the Bible says, "God forgave us all our sins, having canceled...what was against us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross." When you come in your heart to the cross where Jesus died for every wrong thing you've ever done; when you give yourself to the One who gave Himself for you, the sin-wall comes down and you begin for the first time in your life to be "where you were created to be."
Mark Twain once said, "The two most important days in a person's life are the day they're born and the day they find out why." I know you know the day you were born. This could be the day you find out why.
It begins when you say, "Jesus, I believe when you died on that cross you were paying for every wrong thing I have ever done. And, Jesus, I want your love. I want the wall between me and God to come down. This day I am yours."
Our website's called ANewStory.com, because in a very real way, the day you give yourself to Jesus is the beginning of your new story. I hope you'll go there and find out how you can be sure you belong to Him. ANewStory.com.
Your life really begins when you finally are where you were created to be, and that's in the relationship you were made for, with the person you were made by. And that relationship can begin for you today. You don't have to be outside His love one more day.
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Deuteronomy 21, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: YOU HAVE AN INHERITANCE
Let’s talk about your inheritance. As a child of God, you have one, you know. You aren’t merely a slave, servant, or saint of God. No, you have legal right to the family business and fortune of heaven. The will has been executed. The courts have been satisfied. Your spiritual account has been funded. He “has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3).
Need more patience? It’s yours. Need more joy? Request it. Running low on wisdom? God has plenty. You will never exhaust his resources. At no time does he wave away your prayer with Oh, I’m too tired…or I’m weary… or I’m depleted. God is wealthy in love, in hope, and overflowing in wisdom.
“No one has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him!” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 21
If a dead body is found on the ground, this ground that God, your God, has given you, lying out in the open, and no one knows who killed him, your leaders and judges are to go out and measure the distance from the body to the nearest cities. The leaders and judges of the city that is nearest the corpse will then take a heifer that has never been used for work, never had a yoke on it. The leaders will take the heifer to a valley with a stream, a valley that has never been plowed or planted, and there break the neck of the heifer. The Levitical priests will then step up. God has chosen them to serve him in these matters by settling legal disputes and violent crimes and by pronouncing blessings in God’s name. Finally, all the leaders of that town that is nearest the body will wash their hands over the heifer that had its neck broken at the stream and say, “We didn’t kill this man and we didn’t see who did it. Purify your people Israel whom you redeemed, O God. Clear your people Israel from any guilt in this murder.”
8-9 That will clear them from any responsibility in the murder. By following these procedures you will have absolved yourselves of any part in the murder because you will have done what is right in God’s sight.
10-14 When you go to war against your enemies and God, your God, gives you victory and you take prisoners, and then you notice among the prisoners of war a good-looking woman whom you find attractive and would like to marry, this is what you do: Take her home; have her trim her hair, cut her nails, and discard the clothes she was wearing when captured. She is then to stay in your home for a full month, mourning her father and mother. Then you may go to bed with her as husband and wife. If it turns out you don’t like her, you must let her go and live wherever she wishes. But you can’t sell her or use her as a slave since you’ve humiliated her.
15-17 When a man has two wives, one loved and the other hated, and they both give him sons, but the firstborn is from the hated wife, at the time he divides the inheritance with his sons he must not treat the son of the loved wife as the firstborn, cutting out the son of the hated wife, who is the actual firstborn. No, he must acknowledge the inheritance rights of the real firstborn, the son of the hated wife, by giving him a double share of the inheritance: that son is the first proof of his virility; the rights of the firstborn belong to him.
18-20 When a man has a stubborn son, a real rebel who won’t do a thing his mother and father tell him, and even though they discipline him he still won’t obey, his father and mother shall forcibly bring him before the leaders at the city gate and say to the city fathers, “This son of ours is a stubborn rebel; he won’t listen to a thing we say. He’s a glutton and a drunk.”
21 Then all the men of the town are to throw rocks at him until he’s dead. You will have purged the evil pollution from among you. All Israel will hear what’s happened and be in awe.
22-23 When a man has committed a capital crime, been given the death sentence, executed and hung from a tree, don’t leave his dead body hanging overnight from the tree. Give him a decent burial that same day so that you don’t desecrate your God-given land—a hanged man is an insult to God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Read: John 6:32–40
Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
INSIGHT
The heart hunger described in today’s devotional was modeled by Jesus. In Matthew 4:4, Jesus told the Enemy, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then in John 4:34, He told His followers, “My food . . . is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” Jesus’s passion for the Father and His purposes is the greatest example we can have of true spiritual heart hunger. While we cannot perfectly reflect that desire, we can learn to long for the Father’s presence and provision—just as Jesus did.
For more on spiritual hunger and spiritual satisfaction, check out the Discover the Word conversations “Satisfied” at discovertheword.org/series/satisfied-3. - Bill Crowder
Heart Hunger
By Elisa Morgan
I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6:35
Riding along with my husband on some errands, I scrolled through emails on my phone and was surprised at an incoming advertisement for a local donut shop, a shop we had just passed on the right side of the street. Suddenly my stomach growled with hunger. I marveled at how technology allows vendors to woo us into their establishments.
As I clicked off my email, I mused over God’s constant yearning to draw me closer. He always knows where I am and longs to influence my choices. I wondered, Does my heart growl in desire for Him the way my stomach did over the idea of a donut?
In John 6, following the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, the disciples eagerly ask Jesus to always give them “the bread that . . . gives life to the world” (vv. 33–34). Jesus responds in verse 35, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” How amazing that a relationship with Jesus can provide constant nourishment in our everyday lives!
The donut shop’s advertisement targeted my body’s craving, but God’s continuous knowledge of my heart’s condition invites me to recognize my ongoing need for Him and to receive the sustenance only He can provide.
Dear God, remind me of my need for Your daily bread of presence.
Jesus alone offers the only bread that truly satisfies.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Does He Know Me?
He calls his own…by name… —John 10:3
When I have sadly misunderstood Him? (see John 20:11-18). It is possible to know all about doctrine and still not know Jesus. A person’s soul is in grave danger when the knowledge of doctrine surpasses Jesus, avoiding intimate touch with Him. Why was Mary weeping? Doctrine meant no more to her than the grass under her feet. In fact, any Pharisee could have made a fool of Mary doctrinally, but one thing they could never ridicule was the fact that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her (see Luke 8:2); yet His blessings were nothing to her in comparison with knowing Jesus Himself. “…she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus….Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ ” (John 20:14, 16). Once He called Mary by her name, she immediately knew that she had a personal history with the One who spoke. “She turned and said to Him, ‘Rabboni!’ ” (John 20:16).
When I have stubbornly doubted? (see John 20:24-29). Have I been doubting something about Jesus— maybe an experience to which others testify, but which I have not yet experienced? The other disciples said to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord” (John 20:25). But Thomas doubted, saying, “Unless I see…I will not believe” (John 20:25). Thomas needed the personal touch of Jesus. When His touches will come we never know, but when they do come they are indescribably precious. “Thomas…said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ ” (John 20:28).
When I have selfishly denied Him? (see John 21:15-17). Peter denied Jesus Christ with oaths and curses (see Matthew 26:69-75), and yet after His resurrection Jesus appeared to Peter alone. Jesus restored Peter in private, and then He restored him publicly before the others. And Peter said to Him, “Lord…You know that I love You” (John 21:17).
Do I have a personal history with Jesus Christ? The one true sign of discipleship is intimate oneness with Him— a knowledge of Jesus that nothing can shake.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth. The Place of Help, 1005 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, August 16, 2018
The Liar And The Fire - #8244
My wife and I have always, yeah we enjoyed Mexican food. Actually, I just like food, but she really liked Mexican food, but she liked it much hotter than I do. She liked the salsa, the hot sauce – the really hot stuff. I like wimp sauce, yeah. But not even she could handle what our friend from Mexico went for. See, he doesn't just like hot sauce on his food. He likes molten lava. Even the candy he eats has chilies in it. (What in the world?!) It brings tears to our eyes; he pops it like we do M & M's. Recently, he told me about a Mexican pepper that he had never tasted before. Some friends recommended it to him. He took a big bite out of it and he really enjoyed it. It wasn't hot, it was actually mild. He enjoyed it so much, he ate some more. No fire, no burn, just a nice taste experience – until a few minutes later. Here's how he told it, "Suddenly, my mouth burst into flames!" Now, when he thinks something's hot, it's on fire, man! But there was no hint of the fire when he was biting into it. I loved what he named this particular pepper. He calls it "The Liar."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Liar And The Fire."
Looking harmless, tasting harmless but creating fire. That scenario sounds strangely familiar to any of us who have ever been burned by sin. There is one particular sin that is especially notorious for looking almost irresistible, for giving immediate pleasure, and then burning you. Sex out-of-bounds, God's bounds, sex with anyone other than your lifetime marriage partner. God's boundary is clear in Hebrews 13:4, "Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure."
Joseph, in the Old Testament, was faced with an almost irresistible opportunity to have a sexual relationship out-of-bounds. It's our word for today from the Word of God, Genesis 39:7. Now remember he's away from home, he's lonely, he's got this beautiful woman making herself totally available to him. He's got a position of trust where there's a good chance no one is going to ever know if he does this. Does this sound tempting or what?
Here's what it says, "His master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, 'Come to bed with me!' But he refused. 'With me in charge,' he told her, 'my master does not concern himself with anything in the house. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?' And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her."
Now, right here's a model for all of us who live in a world that literally throws sexual temptation at us from every direction. Someone who can look past the magnetic attraction, the short-lived pleasure to the fire that results from sex outside of marriage. The damage it can do to you, to others, to your reputation, to your relationship with God, to your lifetime love.
Like that hot pepper, sex could well be called "The Liar." It promises love outside of marriage and ultimately delivers loneliness and often just a feeling of being not loved, but used. It promises a sense of feeling like you're worth more, and instead, it leaves you with a feeling of being dirty and feeling worth less. It promises you great pleasure, and it ends up robbing you of the ultimate sexual pleasure that comes from saving your sexual love to give uniquely to your lifetime partner. No moments of sexual pleasure can possibly be worth all that loss, plus the shame, plus the loss of the blessing of God.
God knows the temptation you're facing, the thoughts you're thinking, the pressure you're feeling, maybe even the sin you're sinning. And He's trying to pull you back from the edge. Don't fall for the liar of sex outside of God's boundaries. It may look good, it may feel good for a short time, but it isn't worth the fire. You just have too much to lose.
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Deuteronomy 20, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals
Max Lucado Daily: PULLING DOWN STRONGHOLDS
Make no mistake. The devil is a real devil! Every conflict is a contest with Satan and his forces. For that reason the Bible says, “though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4).
What are these weapons? Prayer, worship, and Scripture. When we pray, we engage the power of God against the devil. When we worship, we do what Satan did not do. We place God on the throne. When we pick up the sword of Scripture, we do what Jesus did in the wilderness. He responded to Satan by proclaiming truth. And since Satan has a severe allergy to truth, he left Jesus alone. Satan will not linger long where God is praised and prayers are offered. And because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 20
1-4 When you go to war against your enemy and see horses and chariots and soldiers far outnumbering you, do not recoil in fear of them; God, your God, who brought you up out of Egypt is with you. When the battle is about to begin, let the priest come forward and speak to the troops. He’ll say, “Attention, Israel. In a few minutes you’re going to do battle with your enemies. Don’t waver in resolve. Don’t fear. Don’t hesitate. Don’t panic. God, your God, is right there with you, fighting with you against your enemies, fighting to win.”
5-7 Then let the officers step up and speak to the troops: “Is there a man here who has built a new house but hasn’t yet dedicated it? Let him go home right now lest he die in battle and another man dedicate it. And is there a man here who has planted a vineyard but hasn’t yet enjoyed the grapes? Let him go home right now lest he die in battle and another man enjoy the grapes. Is there a man here engaged to marry who hasn’t yet taken his wife? Let him go home right now lest he die in battle and another man take her.”
8 The officers will then continue, “And is there a man here who is wavering in resolve and afraid? Let him go home right now so that he doesn’t infect his fellows with his timidity and cowardly spirit.”
9 When the officers have finished speaking to the troops, let them appoint commanders of the troops who shall muster them by units.
10-15 When you come up against a city to attack it, call out, “Peace?” If they answer, “Yes, peace!” and open the city to you, then everyone found there will be conscripted as forced laborers and work for you. But if they don’t settle for peace and insist on war, then go ahead and attack. God, your God, will give them to you. Kill all the men with your swords. But don’t kill the women and children and animals. Everything inside the town you can take as plunder for you to use and eat—God, your God, gives it to you. This is the way you deal with the distant towns, the towns that don’t belong to the nations at hand.
16-18 But with the towns of the people that God, your God, is giving you as an inheritance, it’s different: don’t leave anyone alive. Consign them to holy destruction: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, obeying the command of God, your God. This is so there won’t be any of them left to teach you to practice the abominations that they engage in with their gods and you end up sinning against God, your God.
19-20 When you mount an attack on a town and the siege goes on a long time, don’t start cutting down the trees, swinging your axes against them. Those trees are your future food; don’t cut them down. Are trees soldiers who come against you with weapons? The exception can be those trees which don’t produce food; you can chop them down and use the timbers to build siege engines against the town that is resisting you until it falls.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Read: Job 38:1–11
The Lord Answers Job
38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action[a] like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?
Footnotes:
Job 38:3 Hebrew Gird up your loins
INSIGHT
After all Job had endured, how could the Lord of heaven respond to his honest, agonizing questions with more questions?
Job forgot the case he wanted to argue in the court of heaven (Job 23:1–10). The presence and questions of God suddenly reawakened the trust he’d expressed in those first moments of the worst days of his life (1:21; 2:10).
We, on the other hand, have an advantage that Job lacked. In the prologue of Job’s story, we are taken behind the scenes to see how God viewed Job (1:1–2:10).
What if our lives had such a prologue? Would it help to know that more is going on than we can see and that it’s better than we imagine? Even if we aren’t an exemplary example as Job was, can we take heart in being one of the dearly loved sinners for whom Christ died? - Mart DeHaan
The Lord Speaks
By Philip Yancey
Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Job 40:2
We can find nearly every argument in the book of Job about why there is pain in the world, but the arguing never seems to help Job much. His is a crisis of relationship more than a crisis of doubt. Can he trust God? Job wants one thing above all else: an appearance by the one Person who can explain his miserable fate. He wants to meet God Himself, face to face.
Eventually Job gets his wish. God shows up in person (see Job 38:1). He times His entrance with perfect irony, just as Job’s friend Elihu is expounding on why Job has no right to expect a visit from God.
No one—not Job, nor any of his friends—is prepared for what God has to say. Job has saved up a long list of questions, but it is God, not Job, who asks the questions. “Brace yourself like a man,” He begins; “I will question you, and you shall answer me” (v. 3). Brushing aside thirty-five chapters’ worth of debates on the problem of pain, God plunges into a majestic poem on the wonders of the natural world.
God’s speech defines the vast difference between the God of all creation and one puny man like Job. His presence spectacularly answers Job’s biggest question: Is anybody out there? Job can only respond, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (42:3).
Lord, we have so many questions about life and its unfairness. You have shown Yourself good to us. Help us to trust You for what we cannot understand.
No calamity is beyond God’s sovereignty.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
The Evidence of the New Birth
You must be born again. —John 3:7
The answer to Nicodemus’ question, “How can a man be born when he is old?” is: Only when he is willing to die to everything in his life, including his rights, his virtues, and his religion, and becomes willing to receive into himself a new life that he has never before experienced (John 3:4). This new life exhibits itself in our conscious repentance and through our unconscious holiness.
“But as many as received Him…” (John 1:12). Is my knowledge of Jesus the result of my own internal spiritual perception, or is it only what I have learned through listening to others? Is there something in my life that unites me with the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior? My spiritual history must have as its underlying foundation a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. To be born again means that I see Jesus.
“…unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God ” (John 3:3). Am I seeking only for the evidence of God’s kingdom, or am I actually recognizing His absolute sovereign control? The new birth gives me a new power of vision by which I begin to discern God’s control. His sovereignty was there all the time, but with God being true to His nature, I could not see it until I received His very nature myself.
“Whoever has been born of God does not sin…” (1 John 3:9). Am I seeking to stop sinning or have I actually stopped? To be born of God means that I have His supernatural power to stop sinning. The Bible never asks, “Should a Christian sin?” The Bible emphatically states that a Christian must not sin. The work of the new birth is being effective in us when we do not commit sin. It is not merely that we have the power not to sin, but that we have actually stopped sinning. Yet 1 John 3:9 does not mean that we cannot sin— it simply means that if we will obey the life of God in us, that we do not have to sin.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him. Approved Unto God, 10 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Punching Holes in the Darkness - #8243
Treasure Island, A Child's Garden of Verses-those are just some of the literary classics written by Robert Louis Stevenson. He must have had a way with words from the time he was a boy. Anne Graham Lotz tells of a night in his boyhood when his nanny just couldn't get him to bed. Young Robert just kept staring out the window, oblivious to her talking to him. Finally, she said, "Robert, what in the world are you looking at out there?" As she pulled back the curtain, she realized he was watching the lamplighter making his way down the street, lighting one street lamp after another. Young Robert Louis Stevenson saw something more. He said, "Look at that man! He's punching holes in the darkness!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Punching Holes in the Darkness."
What an awesome description of the reason God has placed you where you are! You're not there to shake your head and bemoan how dark it is where you work or go to school or whatever your environment. You're there to punch holes in the darkness! So, how are you doing on that so far?
Well, let's listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 5:14-16, our word for today from the Word of God. If you belong to Jesus, He's including you in this. "You are the light of the world." Wow! Think of your personal world and people in your world. Jesus says you are their light. He goes on to say, "A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp or put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its' stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."
Look, we live in a pretty dark world, right. But it is not a world without light unless the Christian in a situation fails to punch holes in the darkness by living like Jesus would live there, treating people like Jesus would treat people there, and handling situations and temptations as Jesus would handle them. So many of Jesus' followers don't realize who they are-His personal representative in their personal world.
You punch another hole in the darkness every time you show up with joy instead of gloom on your face, with good things to say instead of griping, every time you stop for someone who's struggling, when you consciously put someone else ahead of you, when you insist on taking the high road when it's tempting to cut corners, every time you weep with someone who's weeping, or you rejoice with someone who's rejoicing, and when you reach out to someone who's really been acting pretty unloveable.
The lost folks around you probably won't be all that impressed with your don'ts or all the religious meetings you go to. No, they need to see meaningful differences in you because of Christ in you.
But it isn't enough that they just see that you're different. They need to know why, or they'll never be able to get out of the darkness themselves. They need Jesus. See, He put you in their life so they could find out what Jesus did for them on the cross; so they could find out from someone who's living proof that Jesus is alive and how they, too, could have a life-changing relationship with Him. Have you told them about your Jesus yet?
Humanly speaking, you may very well be their best chance at heaven-or maybe their only chance. They could watch you for the rest of your life and they're never going to say, "You know, Charlie's such a nice guy. I'll bet Jesus died on the cross for my sins." They're not going to figure that out. You have to tell them that.
Every morning, before your Lord, tell Him and tell yourself, "I am the light of my world." And go out there, showing a harsh and lonely and self-serving world that there's another way to be. Defy the darkness wherever you go. Punch holes in the darkness with the brilliant light of Jesus Christ that lives in you!
Make no mistake. The devil is a real devil! Every conflict is a contest with Satan and his forces. For that reason the Bible says, “though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4).
What are these weapons? Prayer, worship, and Scripture. When we pray, we engage the power of God against the devil. When we worship, we do what Satan did not do. We place God on the throne. When we pick up the sword of Scripture, we do what Jesus did in the wilderness. He responded to Satan by proclaiming truth. And since Satan has a severe allergy to truth, he left Jesus alone. Satan will not linger long where God is praised and prayers are offered. And because God’s promises are unbreakable, our hope is unshakable!
Read more Unshakable Hope
Deuteronomy 20
1-4 When you go to war against your enemy and see horses and chariots and soldiers far outnumbering you, do not recoil in fear of them; God, your God, who brought you up out of Egypt is with you. When the battle is about to begin, let the priest come forward and speak to the troops. He’ll say, “Attention, Israel. In a few minutes you’re going to do battle with your enemies. Don’t waver in resolve. Don’t fear. Don’t hesitate. Don’t panic. God, your God, is right there with you, fighting with you against your enemies, fighting to win.”
5-7 Then let the officers step up and speak to the troops: “Is there a man here who has built a new house but hasn’t yet dedicated it? Let him go home right now lest he die in battle and another man dedicate it. And is there a man here who has planted a vineyard but hasn’t yet enjoyed the grapes? Let him go home right now lest he die in battle and another man enjoy the grapes. Is there a man here engaged to marry who hasn’t yet taken his wife? Let him go home right now lest he die in battle and another man take her.”
8 The officers will then continue, “And is there a man here who is wavering in resolve and afraid? Let him go home right now so that he doesn’t infect his fellows with his timidity and cowardly spirit.”
9 When the officers have finished speaking to the troops, let them appoint commanders of the troops who shall muster them by units.
10-15 When you come up against a city to attack it, call out, “Peace?” If they answer, “Yes, peace!” and open the city to you, then everyone found there will be conscripted as forced laborers and work for you. But if they don’t settle for peace and insist on war, then go ahead and attack. God, your God, will give them to you. Kill all the men with your swords. But don’t kill the women and children and animals. Everything inside the town you can take as plunder for you to use and eat—God, your God, gives it to you. This is the way you deal with the distant towns, the towns that don’t belong to the nations at hand.
16-18 But with the towns of the people that God, your God, is giving you as an inheritance, it’s different: don’t leave anyone alive. Consign them to holy destruction: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, obeying the command of God, your God. This is so there won’t be any of them left to teach you to practice the abominations that they engage in with their gods and you end up sinning against God, your God.
19-20 When you mount an attack on a town and the siege goes on a long time, don’t start cutting down the trees, swinging your axes against them. Those trees are your future food; don’t cut them down. Are trees soldiers who come against you with weapons? The exception can be those trees which don’t produce food; you can chop them down and use the timbers to build siege engines against the town that is resisting you until it falls.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Read: Job 38:1–11
The Lord Answers Job
38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action[a] like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?
Footnotes:
Job 38:3 Hebrew Gird up your loins
INSIGHT
After all Job had endured, how could the Lord of heaven respond to his honest, agonizing questions with more questions?
Job forgot the case he wanted to argue in the court of heaven (Job 23:1–10). The presence and questions of God suddenly reawakened the trust he’d expressed in those first moments of the worst days of his life (1:21; 2:10).
We, on the other hand, have an advantage that Job lacked. In the prologue of Job’s story, we are taken behind the scenes to see how God viewed Job (1:1–2:10).
What if our lives had such a prologue? Would it help to know that more is going on than we can see and that it’s better than we imagine? Even if we aren’t an exemplary example as Job was, can we take heart in being one of the dearly loved sinners for whom Christ died? - Mart DeHaan
The Lord Speaks
By Philip Yancey
Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Job 40:2
We can find nearly every argument in the book of Job about why there is pain in the world, but the arguing never seems to help Job much. His is a crisis of relationship more than a crisis of doubt. Can he trust God? Job wants one thing above all else: an appearance by the one Person who can explain his miserable fate. He wants to meet God Himself, face to face.
Eventually Job gets his wish. God shows up in person (see Job 38:1). He times His entrance with perfect irony, just as Job’s friend Elihu is expounding on why Job has no right to expect a visit from God.
No one—not Job, nor any of his friends—is prepared for what God has to say. Job has saved up a long list of questions, but it is God, not Job, who asks the questions. “Brace yourself like a man,” He begins; “I will question you, and you shall answer me” (v. 3). Brushing aside thirty-five chapters’ worth of debates on the problem of pain, God plunges into a majestic poem on the wonders of the natural world.
God’s speech defines the vast difference between the God of all creation and one puny man like Job. His presence spectacularly answers Job’s biggest question: Is anybody out there? Job can only respond, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (42:3).
Lord, we have so many questions about life and its unfairness. You have shown Yourself good to us. Help us to trust You for what we cannot understand.
No calamity is beyond God’s sovereignty.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
The Evidence of the New Birth
You must be born again. —John 3:7
The answer to Nicodemus’ question, “How can a man be born when he is old?” is: Only when he is willing to die to everything in his life, including his rights, his virtues, and his religion, and becomes willing to receive into himself a new life that he has never before experienced (John 3:4). This new life exhibits itself in our conscious repentance and through our unconscious holiness.
“But as many as received Him…” (John 1:12). Is my knowledge of Jesus the result of my own internal spiritual perception, or is it only what I have learned through listening to others? Is there something in my life that unites me with the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior? My spiritual history must have as its underlying foundation a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. To be born again means that I see Jesus.
“…unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God ” (John 3:3). Am I seeking only for the evidence of God’s kingdom, or am I actually recognizing His absolute sovereign control? The new birth gives me a new power of vision by which I begin to discern God’s control. His sovereignty was there all the time, but with God being true to His nature, I could not see it until I received His very nature myself.
“Whoever has been born of God does not sin…” (1 John 3:9). Am I seeking to stop sinning or have I actually stopped? To be born of God means that I have His supernatural power to stop sinning. The Bible never asks, “Should a Christian sin?” The Bible emphatically states that a Christian must not sin. The work of the new birth is being effective in us when we do not commit sin. It is not merely that we have the power not to sin, but that we have actually stopped sinning. Yet 1 John 3:9 does not mean that we cannot sin— it simply means that if we will obey the life of God in us, that we do not have to sin.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him. Approved Unto God, 10 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Punching Holes in the Darkness - #8243
Treasure Island, A Child's Garden of Verses-those are just some of the literary classics written by Robert Louis Stevenson. He must have had a way with words from the time he was a boy. Anne Graham Lotz tells of a night in his boyhood when his nanny just couldn't get him to bed. Young Robert just kept staring out the window, oblivious to her talking to him. Finally, she said, "Robert, what in the world are you looking at out there?" As she pulled back the curtain, she realized he was watching the lamplighter making his way down the street, lighting one street lamp after another. Young Robert Louis Stevenson saw something more. He said, "Look at that man! He's punching holes in the darkness!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Punching Holes in the Darkness."
What an awesome description of the reason God has placed you where you are! You're not there to shake your head and bemoan how dark it is where you work or go to school or whatever your environment. You're there to punch holes in the darkness! So, how are you doing on that so far?
Well, let's listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 5:14-16, our word for today from the Word of God. If you belong to Jesus, He's including you in this. "You are the light of the world." Wow! Think of your personal world and people in your world. Jesus says you are their light. He goes on to say, "A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp or put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its' stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."
Look, we live in a pretty dark world, right. But it is not a world without light unless the Christian in a situation fails to punch holes in the darkness by living like Jesus would live there, treating people like Jesus would treat people there, and handling situations and temptations as Jesus would handle them. So many of Jesus' followers don't realize who they are-His personal representative in their personal world.
You punch another hole in the darkness every time you show up with joy instead of gloom on your face, with good things to say instead of griping, every time you stop for someone who's struggling, when you consciously put someone else ahead of you, when you insist on taking the high road when it's tempting to cut corners, every time you weep with someone who's weeping, or you rejoice with someone who's rejoicing, and when you reach out to someone who's really been acting pretty unloveable.
The lost folks around you probably won't be all that impressed with your don'ts or all the religious meetings you go to. No, they need to see meaningful differences in you because of Christ in you.
But it isn't enough that they just see that you're different. They need to know why, or they'll never be able to get out of the darkness themselves. They need Jesus. See, He put you in their life so they could find out what Jesus did for them on the cross; so they could find out from someone who's living proof that Jesus is alive and how they, too, could have a life-changing relationship with Him. Have you told them about your Jesus yet?
Humanly speaking, you may very well be their best chance at heaven-or maybe their only chance. They could watch you for the rest of your life and they're never going to say, "You know, Charlie's such a nice guy. I'll bet Jesus died on the cross for my sins." They're not going to figure that out. You have to tell them that.
Every morning, before your Lord, tell Him and tell yourself, "I am the light of my world." And go out there, showing a harsh and lonely and self-serving world that there's another way to be. Defy the darkness wherever you go. Punch holes in the darkness with the brilliant light of Jesus Christ that lives in you!
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