Daily Archives: May 5, 2017

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – Choosing Love Over Rights

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Matthew 5:38-48

We talk a lot about rights these days. Yet the attention given to human entitlements hasn’t brought about corporate or personal freedom. Instead, most people are prisoners of jealousy (You have greater rights than I do!), greed (I deserve more!), or bitterness (My rights have been violated!).

In lieu of focusing on what is due them, Christians should follow Christ’s command to love enemies and forgive persecutors (Matt. 5:44). Believers lay down their rights so they can take up the cause of a holy kingdom. That doesn’t mean we let people trample on us. Rather, we offer a proper response according to biblical principles. In short, we should be more concerned about showing God’s love to those who wrong us than insisting on privileges we assume are rightfully ours.

Perhaps you’re thinking that I don’t know how you’ve been mistreated. Indeed I don’t. But I do know how Jesus reacted to terrible abuse. He was betrayed by His friends, persecuted by His people, condemned by His peers, and crucified for our sins. Yet He said, “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34).

Before assuming that Jesus’ capacity for forgiveness and love is out of reach for mere human beings, remember: His Spirit dwells in believers. We can choose to give away our rights and let God’s love work through us.

Luke 6:29 says to turn the other cheek and give up more than is asked because expressing love outweighs exerting our rights. You can’t lose when you show others the boundless care of the Lord. You gain His blessing, and what’s more, someone could be saved because of your example.

Bible in One Year: 1 Chronicles 13-15

 

http://www.intouch.org/

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — The Ministry of Memory

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Read: Jeremiah 29:4–14

Bible in a Year: 1 Kings 19–20; Luke 23:1–25

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”—Jeremiah 29:11

Our experiences of loss and disappointment may leave us feeling angry, guilty, and confused. Whether our choices have closed some doors that will never reopen or, through no fault of our own, tragedy has invaded our lives, the result is often what Oswald Chambers called “the unfathomable sadness of ‘the might have been.’ ” We may try to suppress the painful memory, but discover we can’t.

Chambers reminds us that the Lord is still active in our lives. “Never be afraid when God brings back the past,” he said. “Let memory have its way. It is a minister of God with its rebuke and chastisement and sorrow. God will turn the ‘might have been’ into a wonderful [place of growth] for the future.”

In Old Testament days when God sent the people of Israel into exile in Babylon, He told them to serve Him in that foreign land and grow in faith until He brought them back to their home. “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’ ” (Jer. 29:11).

God urged them not to ignore or be trapped by events of the past but instead to focus on Him and look ahead. The Lord’s forgiveness can transform the memory of our sorrow into confidence in His everlasting love. —David McCasland

Father, thank You for Your plans for us, and for the future that awaits us in Your love.

For more insight from Oswald Chambers, visit utmost.org.

God can use our deepest disappointments to nurture our faith in Him.

INSIGHT: What is one past sorrow that you find great difficulty in letting go? How does God’s promise in Jeremiah 29:11-14 comfort and encourage you as you turn your pain over to the Lord?  Sim Kay Tee

 

http://www.odb.org

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Which God?

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I cannot begin to estimate how many times I have attempted to encourage someone with the assurance of God’s nearness to their situation: God is with you. God is near. God is among us. As a Christian, it is an astonishing attribute of the God I profess, a comforting attribute that voices long before my own confessed: “God is our refuge and strength,” writes the psalmist, “an ever-present help in trouble.”(1) “The Lord is near,” the apostle tells the Philippians, “Do not be anxious.”(2) That there is one who draws near is a vital part of the story of Christianity, one in which Christians understandably draw hope. But it is not automatically hopeful to everyone. I was reminded of this when my assurance of God’s presence in the life of a struggling friend was met with her honest rejoinder: “Is that supposed to encourage me?”

Nearness in and of itself is not assuring. I had forgotten this in my well-meaning, though knee-jerk truism. An essential ingredient in the assurance that comes from nearness is the person who is drawing near. The degree of comfort and assurance (or wisdom and conviction) we draw from those near us is wholly contingent on who it is that has drawn near. For some, that God is near resembles more a threat than a promise. My friend’s perception of God in that moment was closer to Julian Huxley’s than King David’s. For Huxley, God resembled “not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.” For David, God’s nearness was clearly thought his good.(3)

Who is it that Christians believe is near? And what does this even mean?

In Christian theology, the attributes of God are qualities that attempt to describe the God who has come near enough to reveal who God is. These self-revealed attributes cannot be taken individually, removed from one another like garments in a great wardrobe, or chosen preferentially like items in a buffet. They are not traits that exist independently but simultaneously, at times in paradoxical mystery to us. God is both near us and “among us” as the prophet Isaiah writes; God is also far from us and beyond us—in knowledge, in grandeur, in immensity, in position. “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the LORD, “and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the LORD. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?”

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Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Live One Day at a Time

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So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble. —Matthew 6:34

Most of us have enough to handle today without worrying about tomorrow. God will give you grace for today, but He will not give you grace for tomorrow until tomorrow arrives.

So often people worry about something that never happens. When you begin to think about the “what ifs,” the door opens for fear and worry. Some people worry so much that their worries become fear, and often the things people fear manifest in their life.

Do not allow yourself to dread tomorrow. Just know that God is faithful. It is comforting to know that whatever tomorrow may hold, He holds tomorrow. His grace is sufficient to meet the need. Do not waste today’s grace by worrying about tomorrow. Live one day at a time and you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish for Christ.

From the book Ending Your Day Right by Joyce Meyer.

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org

Campus Crusade for Christ

Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – How to Be Fearless

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“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1).

The psalmist David did not choose words carelessly – but under divine inspiration – when he spoke of lightand salvation.

Of all the memorials in Westminster Abbey, not one has a nobler thought inscribed on it than the monument to Lord Lawrence – simply his name, with the date of his death, and these words:

“He feared man so little because he feared God so much.”

Charles H. Spurgeon gives some helpful insights into Psalm 27:1.

“In the New Testament, the idea which is hinted at in the language of David is expressly revealed as a truth. God does not merely give us His light. He is light, just as He is love in His own uncreated nature.

“God is light, ‘John writes in his epistle,’ and in Him is no darkness at all.’ When John sought to teach us our Lord’s Godhead as clearly and as sharply as possible, he calls Him the ‘light,’ meaning to teach us that as such He shares the essential nature of the Deity.”

How wonderful that we need not live in darkness – in any sense of the word – but that we immediately can have the Light of Life, God Himself, available to us in the person of His indwelling Holy Spirit as well as in His inspired Word. Every prerequisite for the abundant, supernatural life has been made available to us, and access is immediate if we come to Him immediately with our needs.

Bible Reading: Psalm 27:2-6

TODAY’S ACTION POINT: With God’s help, I will follow Him who is my light and my salvation. I will have no fear of men or circumstances.

 

http://www.cru.org

Max Lucado

Max Lucado – Patience is a Fruit of the Spirit

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God’s patience. You’ve read about it. Perhaps underlined Bible passages regarding it. But have you received it? Patience deeply received results in patience freely offered. But patience never received leads to an abundance of problems.

Remember where the king sent the unforgiving servant? “Then the angry king sent the man to prison until he had paid every penny” (Matthew 18:34 NLT). Whew! we sigh. Glad that story is a parable. It’s a good thing God doesn’t imprison the impatient in real life. Don’t be so sure! Impatience still imprisons the soul. For that reason, God does more than demand patience from us; he offers it to us!

Patience is a fruit of his Spirit. It hangs from the tree of Galatians 5:22: “The Spirit produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience.”

From A Love Worth Giving

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

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Denison Forum

Denison Forum – Israel site I would advise Donald Trump to visit

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Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act, legislation promoted by President Trump that would repeal and replace Obamacare. Marking the National Day of Prayer, the president also issued an executive order strengthening religious liberty.

Meanwhile, a third news story involving Mr. Trump has received less notice: he is coming to Israel. A US delegation sent to prepare for an upcoming visit arrived in the Jewish homeland yesterday.

I have been to the Holy Land many times over the years and am leading a tour of Israel this week. If I were in charge of the president’s schedule, there is a surprising site I would urge him to visit.

Our group traveled yesterday to Caesarea Philippi. The area was home to the worship of Pan, the Greek half-man, half-goat. His worshipers believed that Pan was born in a massive cave at this site. A spring brought water into this cave from a depth the ancient world was never able to measure. As a result, they called it the “gates of the underworld” or the “gates of hell.”

Standing here, Jesus told his disciples, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Why did he begin his church here?

Fourteen temples to Baal worship were scattered throughout the area. A massive white marble temple for the worship of Caesar stood at the mouth of the cave. A giant temple for the worship of Zeus stood adjacent to it. Niches carved in the rock wall held every idol imaginable. Worshipers of Pan engaged in unspeakable sexual sin.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Israel site I would advise Donald Trump to visit →