Daily Archives: April 8, 2019

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – Courage Behind Your Convictions

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Daniel 1:1-21

Today we live in a society that is convinced there are no absolute moral truths. It not only considers the Bible outdated and irrelevant to contemporary problems but also sees each person as free to decide what is right. As a result, our culture is ungodly, immoral, violent, and self-centered. How are we as Christians supposed to live in such an environment?

We need look no further than the example of a teenage boy named Daniel, who had the courage to stand for his convictions in the midst of the depraved atmosphere of Babylon. Despite his immersion in Babylonian culture, he committed to following the Lord faithfully, even if doing so would cost him his life. The issue of diet may seem trivial to us, but Jewish people of his day believed eating meat that had been offered to idols was an abomination to God.

In the modern Western world, we may find it hard to relate to Daniel’s example. Few of us are willing to take such a bold stand even though we have no fear of losing our life. It’s the threat of rejection, ridicule, or being seen as narrow-minded or judgmental that keeps us silent. Or worse, it may be that we don’t have any strong convictions because we haven’t let God’s Word develop them within us. Ignorance of Scripture may let us live comfortably in a sinful culture, but it will never please the Lord.

God is looking for people like Daniel—followers of Christ who will stand by their convictions, regardless of threats or the temptation to compromise for the sake of profit or acceptance. Are you such a person?

Bible in One Year: 2 Samuel 13-14

 

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Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Unexpected Winners

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Bible in a Year:1 Samuel 10–12; Luke 9:37–62

Many who are first will be last.

Matthew 19:30

Today’s Scripture & Insight:Matthew 19:17–30

Perhaps the most preposterous, spellbinding moment in the 2018 Winter Olympics was when the Czech Republic’s world champion snowboarder Ester Ledecka won an event in a completely different sport: skiing! And she took the first-place gold medal even though she had the unenviable position of skiing 26th—a feat believed to be basically impossible.

Amazingly, Ledecka qualified to race the women’s super-G—an event that combines downhill skiing with a slalom course. After she won by .01 of a second on borrowedskis, she was just as shocked as the media and other contestants who had assumed the winner would be one of the top skiers.

This is how the world works. We assume the winners will keep winning while all the others will lose. It was a jolt, then, when the disciples heard Jesus say how “hard [it is] for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:23). Jesus turned everything upside down. How could being rich (a winner) offer a roadblock? Apparently, if we trust in what we have (what we can do, who we are), then it’s not only hard but actually impossible to trust God.

The kingdom of God doesn’t play by our rules. “Many who are first,” Jesus says, “will be last, and many who are last will be first” (v. 30). And, whether you’re first or last, everything we receive is purely by grace—by God’s unmerited favor.

By Winn Collier

Today’s Reflection

Consider how you view people, or how you view your own life. How does Jesus’s way of seeing so-called losers and winners change your perspective?

 

http://www.odb.org

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Where Forgiveness Is Suffering

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In four horrific months in 1994, at the urging of the Rwandan government, the poorer Hutu majority took up bayonets and machetes and committed genocide against the wealthier Tutsi minority. In the wake of this unspeakable tragedy, nearly a million people had been murdered.

In August of 2003, driven by overcrowded prisons and backlogged court systems, 50,000 genocide criminals, people who had already confessed to killing their neighbors, were released again into society. Murderers were sent back to their homes, back to neighborhoods literally destroyed at their own hands, to live beside the few surviving relatives of the very men, women, and children they killed.

Now more than twenty years later, with eyes still bloodshot at visions of a genocide it failed to see, the world continues to watch Rwanda with a sense of foreboding, wondering what happens when a killer comes home; what happens when victims, widows, orphans, and murderers look each other in the eyes again; what happens when the neighbor who killed your family asks to be forgiven. For the people of Rwanda, the description of the Hebrew prophet is a reality with which they live: “And if anyone asks them, ‘What are these wounds on your chest?’ the answer will be, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends.’”(1)

How does a culture bear the wounds of genocide and the agony of forgiveness?

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Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Just Do It!

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Because of laziness the building decays, and through idleness of hands the house leaks.

— Ecclesiastes 10:18 (NKJV)

Adapted from the resource Love Out Loud Devotional – by Joyce Meyer

Do you truly believe that love can change the world? I do. But I also know the events and accomplishments that have brought lasting change to the world have not been accidental; they have been things people thought through and acted on deliberately. The Bible is filled with instructions for us to be active.

Wishing for something does not produce the results we desire, but we must aggressively do what needs to be done to achieve them. We will never find a successful man who spent his life wishing for success and attained it. The same principle applies to loving God, loving our­selves, and loving others. If we want to love people as Jesus instructed, we will have to do so on purpose. It will not happen by accident.

If we seek opportunities to love people, we are sure to find them, and that will protect us from being idle and passive. We must ask our­selves if we are alert and active or passive and inactive? God is alert and active! I am glad He is; otherwise, things in our lives would deteriorate rapidly.

So much good can happen in your life and in the lives of those around you if you’ll simply decide not to be passive, but to follow the Holy Spirit as He leads you. God-inspired, balanced activity will keep you from being idle and bless many people in the process.

Prayer Starter: Lord, help me today to be active and intentional, not passive or idle. Each day, help me to take steps and make progress as it pertains to my dreams, responsibilities, and loving others in my life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org

Campus Crusade for Christ

Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – Reap What You Sow 

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“Don’t be misled; remember that you can’t ignore God and get away with it: a man will always reap just the kind of crop he sows!” (Galatians 6:7).

Steve had just been introduced to this great and exciting law of sowing and reaping. “Is it really true,” he asked, “that I will always reap what I sow – and more than I sow – good or bad?”

I was able to assure him, from the authority of Scripture, from experience of 36 years of walking with Christ and by observing closely the lives of many thousands of Christians with whom I have counseled and worked, that the law of sowing and reaping is just as true and inviolate as the law of gravity.

If you want to judge a man, an American humorist once said, you should not look at him in the face but get behind him and see what he is looking at, what he is sowing.

For example, is he looking at God with reverence – or with no deference at all? Does he really believe God means what He says?

A student once asked, “If I give my life to Christ, do I become a puppet?”

The answer is a resounding no! We never become puppets. We have the right of choice; we are free moral agents. God’s Word assures us that He guides and encourages us, but we must act as a result of our own self-will. God does not force us to make decisions.

The more we understand the love, the wisdom, the sovereignty, the grace and power of God, the more we will want to trust Him with every detail of our lives. The secret of the supernatural life is to keep Christ on the throne of our lives and delight ourselves in Him as Lord.

We fail in the Christian life when we, as a deliberate act of our will, choose to disobey the leading of the Holy Spirit.

It is a tragedy of the human will that we often think we have a better way than God has for living the Christian life. But do not deceive yourself or allow Satan to mislead you: God’s way is best!

Bible Reading: Galatians 6:6-10

TODAY’S ACTION POINT:  I will seek to sow seeds of love and kindness and faith knowing that as a result I will reap God’s best for my life.

 

http://www.cru.org

Max Lucado

Max Lucado – God Will Never Give Up!

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Listen to Today’s Devotion

God never gives up.  When on trial before the cross, people spat in his face, but he didn’t spit back.  When a whip ripped his sides, he didn’t command the awaiting angels to stuff that whip down the soldier’s throat. When human hands fastened the divine hands to a cross with spikes, it wasn’t the soldiers who held the hands of Jesus  steady.  It was God who held them steady.

God never gives up. Not then, not now, not ever. So the next time doubt walks in. Escort him out. Out to the hill. Out to Calvary. Out to the cross where, with holy blood, holy hands wrote the promise: God would give up His only Son before He’d give up on you.

Read more Six Hours One Friday

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

http://www.maxlucado.com

Denison Forum

Denison Forum – How Brad Paisley and his wife are changing lives: The secret of significance

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Keith Urban won Entertainer of the Year at last night’s Academy of Country Music Awards. Thomas Rhett and Kacey Musgraves won Male and Female Artist of the Year.

But, in my opinion, the most significant achievement in country music came earlier in the week.

Brad Paisley and his wife, Kimberly, broke ground on a Nashville grocery store that is unlike any I know. Customers will walk through the aisles selecting fruit, vegetables, cereal, and other groceries. Then they will check out at the register.

However, no money will change hands.

The Paisleys partnered with Belmont University, a Christian university and Brad’s alma mater, building the store next to the school’s ministry center. They hope to serve three thousand impoverished people a year.

Their Christian faith is on clear display in a way that will impact lives far beyond Nashville.

“All healthy things grow”

Many years ago, I attended a church growth conference led by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in California. His approach was not at all what I expected.

I assumed Rick would talk about his church’s leadership structure, ministry organization, and marketing strategy. Instead, he spent most of the conference discussing the importance of spiritual health—for himself, his leadership team, and their members.

Continue reading Denison Forum – How Brad Paisley and his wife are changing lives: The secret of significance →