Daily Archives: June 7, 2017

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley –Single-Minded Focus

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2 Timothy 2:4-5

“No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life” (2 Tim. 2:4). The word for “entangle,” which also occurs in 2 Peter 2:20, means to be so wrapped up in something that movement is hindered. This is the term the Greeks would have used to describe a rabbit ensnared in a thorn patch.

Peter’s letter admonished followers not to return to past sins, but Paul was emphasizing a different lesson: He was warning Timothy against allowing essential daily pursuits to supersede a commitment to Christ. Paul himself at times worked as a tentmaker while carrying on with ministry; however, he realized there was potential for an occupation to become all-consuming, to the detriment of a person’s spiritual life.

Growing and managing wealth, providing for one’s family, and taking advantage of leisure time are important activities. In fact, God encourages all of them. However, these blessings are not to become distractions that draw believers away from church or regular prayer and Bible study. Nor are we to compartmentalize our life into “Christian ministry” and “regular work/play.” We are Christ’s soldiers, no matter where we are or what we are doing—there is no such thing as a part-time warrior.

It’s important for believers not to draw artificial boundary lines between the secular and the sacred. Everything God gives—from vocation and wealth to leisure activities—is to be used for His glory. By keeping priorities straight and activities in balance, you can prevent hobbies and interests from becoming a snare.

Bible in One Year: Job 26-30

 

http://www.intouch.org/

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — God Calling

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Read: Genesis 3:1–10

Bible in a Year: 2 Chronicles 28–29; John 17

This is how God showed his love . . . : He sent his one and only Son into the world.—1 John 4:9

One morning my daughter gave her eleven-month-old son her cell phone for a moment to entertain him. Less than a minute later my phone rang, and as I picked it up I heard his little voice. He had somehow hit the “speed dial” to my number, and what followed was a “conversation” I will long remember. My grandson can only say a few words, but he knows my voice and responds to it. So I talked to him and told him how much I love him.

The joy I felt at the sound of my grandson’s voice was a reminder to me of God’s deep desire for a relationship with us. From the very beginning, the Bible shows God actively pursuing us. After Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God and then hid from Him in the garden, “the Lord God called” to Adam (Gen. 3:9).

God continued to pursue humanity through Jesus. Because God desires a relationship with us, He sent Jesus to earth to pay the penalty for our sin by His death on the cross. “This is how God showed his love . . . . He sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God” (1 John 4:9-10 The Message).

How good it is to know that God loves us and wants us to respond to His love through Jesus. Even when we don’t quite know what to say, our Father longs to hear from us! —James Banks

Heavenly Father, thank You for loving me and pursuing a relationship with me. Help me to be a joy to You by drawing near to You.

God’s love for us is revealed through Jesus.

INSIGHT: God did not force Adam and Eve to obey Him but allowed them to choose whether or not they would obey. Similarly, He did not force them to come to Him after they sinned. Instead, He called to them and allowed them to respond to His call. Have you responded to God’s offer of a restored relationship with Him? J.R. Hudberg

 

http://www.odb.org

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Throwing Stones

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Each of us, in an instant, can drudge up a snapshot of humanity at its worst. Images of genocide in Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, or the Sudan come readily to mind. Other impressions are not far off: students planning deadly attacks at school, looters taking advantage of natural disasters, the greed that paved the Trail of Tears. They are visions that challenge the widespread hope that people are generally good, leaving in its wake the sinking feeling of human depravity. But ironically, such snapshots of humanity also seem to grant permission to distance ourselves from this depravity. Whether with theory or judgment, we place ourselves in different categories. Perhaps even unconsciously, we consider their inferior virtue, their primitive sense of morality, or their distinctively depraved character. And it is rare that we see the stones in our hands as a problem.

As Jesus stood with a girl at his feet in the middle of a group armed with rocks and morality, he crouched down in the sand and with his finger wrote something that caused a fuming crowd to drop their stones and a devastated girl to get up. No one knows what he wrote on the ground that day with the Pharisees and the woman caught in adultery, and yet we often emerge from the story not with curiosity but with satisfaction. This public conviction of the Pharisees strikes most of us with the force of victory. Their air of superiority is palpable, and it is satisfying to picture them owning up to their own shortfall. If we imagine ourselves in the scene at all, it is most likely in a crumpled heap of shame with the woman at Jesus’s feet; it is rarely, if ever, with the Pharisees.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Throwing Stones →

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Regret & Dread

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Key Scripture: Philippians 3: 13,14

“I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling me upward.”

When making decisions in your life, it’s easy to start asking yourself the question, “Did I make the right decision?” And although some of that can be healthy, it can also quickly get out of balance and lead your heart to place of regret and dread. When this happens, it’s also easy to start regretting the past and dreading the future, and in fact, both are “thieves of joy.”

Many people stay trapped in the past. There is only one thing that can be done about the past, and that is to forget it. When we make mistakes or bad decision (which we all do from time to time), the only thing we can do is ask God’s forgiveness and go on. Like Paul, we are all pressing toward the mark of perfection, but none of us have arrived.

I believe Paul enjoyed his life and ministry and this “one aspiration” of his was part of the reason why. Like us, he was pressing toward the mark of perfection, admitting that he had not arrived, but having insight on how to enjoy his life while he was making the trip.

And if regret has us constantly looking backwards in the past, dread has us always fearing forwards concerning the future. I spend a lot of years with regret pulling one arm and dread pulling on the other. The result was that I felt like I was being pulled apart, and I didn’t even know what the problem was.

Dreading things can become a bad habit, an attitude that develops out of lethargy or laziness, or perhaps because of multiple bad decisions. Procrastination and dread often work together. An upcoming task is dreaded, so procrastination says, “Put it off until later.” That sounds good for a few minutes, but the thing is still there to be dreaded until it is finished. It would be far better to do it and be free to go on to other things.

Final Thoughts and Action Items

I have learned from experience that living life one day at a time is something that can be done. God gives me the grace for today, but He does not give me grace for yesterday or tomorrow. When I am trying to live yesterday today, I can easily start to second guess the decisions made and I find myself full of unanswerable questions and regret. When I live tomorrow today, I allow fear of the unknown to creep in and I can easily start walking through life with endless amounts of dread. Ultimately, living in either regret or dread is pressure. And what I’ve discovered over time is to take the pressure off by believing God and trusting His Word.

Action Items

Are you relying on the grace that’s been given to you today? Have you asked God to help you rely on that grace?

Make a mental list of how many times you either think or say things like, “I just regret that decision,” or “I’m really concerned about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Decide that today is the only day God has given you and commit to do the very best that you can. At the end of your day, ask God to help you change the habit of regret and dread.

For more on this topic, check out Joyce’s book Enjoy Your Journey.

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org

Campus Crusade for Christ

Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – Faith Can Grow

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“His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thous has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matthew 25:21, KJV).

At one stage of my spiritual growth, I was able to trust God for a soul – and He answered that prayer by leading me to one person whose heart He had prepared. Through the years God has increased my faith to trust Him for 6 souls then 20, 50, 100, 1000, 1 million, 100 million souls! Always He has honored my faith and obedience. Now I pray for a billion souls and by faith I believe that a billion will be harvested for the glory of God.

God has not changed; I have changed.

I believe that God deals with us in a similar way with regard to spiritual fruit. As we continue to trust God to develop in us all the various love traits, He honors that faithfulness because we are obeying Him by doing what He commands us to do.

Faithfulness is that trait of the Holy Spirit (faithfulness- love) that makes faith a living reality every day in the life of the believer who is living supernaturally. As we continue to walk in the power, love and wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we learn to develop greater confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His Word, in our rights as children of God and in the ability of the indwelling Holy Spirit to empower and control our lives.

Faithfulness can be compared to an athlete’s conditioning. A marathon runner does not begin training by running great distances. Instead, he starts with short runs. Then, as his body becomes more conditioned, he increases the distance of his runs until he reaches the full distance of the marathon.

Faithfulness in the life of a Christian also develops over an extended period of time spent in “conditioning.” As we learn to trust God in small things, our faith grows and grows until we are able to trust Him in greater things.

God rewards us for our faithfulness, and each time we see Him respond favorably, He reaches out to us through His Holy Spirit and increases our faith to trust Him for even greater things.

Bible Reading: Matthew 25:14-20

TODAY’S ACTION POINT: I will seek to cultivate this fruit of the Spirit by being faithful to the calling God has entrusted to me.

 

http://www.cru.org

Max Lucado

Max Lucado – The Master Builder

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Several years ago the state was rebuilding an overpass near my house. Three lanes reduced to one, transforming a morning commute into a daily stew. The project, like human history, had been in development since before time began. My next-door neighbors were highway engineers, consultants to the department of transportation. “It’ll take time,” they responded to my grumbles, “but it will get finished. “ They had seen the plans.

In the Old Testament story of Joseph, God allows us to study His plans. Brothers dumping brother. Their family feuds scattered like nails and cement bags on a vacant lot. But watch the Master Builder at work. He cleared the debris and stabilized the structure. And the chaos of Genesis 37:24—“They cast him into the pit”—became the triumph of Genesis 50:20—“life for many people.” God redeemed the story of Joseph. Can’t He redeem your story as well?

From You’ll Get Through This

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

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Denison Forum

Denison Forum – Facial-recognition software is coming to stores

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I still remember my first crime. I was six or seven years old and was standing with my mother in the grocery store checkout line. As she paid for our food, I snatched a pack of chewing gum from a nearby rack and buried it in my pocket.

I have not shoplifted since. Apparently, I’m the exception to the rule.

The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (its existence tells us this is a serious problem) reports that one in eleven Americans are shoplifters. Many become addicted to the “rush” of getting away with their crime; 57 percent of adult shoplifters say it is hard for them to stop even when they’re apprehended.

Enter facial-recognition software, which uses biometrics of known shoplifters from store databases and police logs. Every visitor’s face is tracked automatically and compared at thirty frames per second. A match is sent to employees’ smartphones. One company says its software has reduced shoplifting by 91 percent.

This is just one way technological innovation is improving our lives.

Apple will soon introduce an iPhone feature that will prevent texting while driving. It will detect that your car is moving or your phone is connected to the vehicle via Bluetooth or cable. Your phone will then withhold notifications for text messages and news updates. This is good news—the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that 3,477 people were killed by distracted driving in 2015. That’s nine people every day.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Facial-recognition software is coming to stores →