Daily Scripture Devotional

Then behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”

—Matthew 9:2

The Gospel of Mark gives us the account of a group of men who wanted to bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus for healing. Jesus was teaching in a home, and the men could not get in because of the huge crowd. So they climbed up on top of the house and dug through the roof to lower their friend inside (see Mark 2:1–5).

When Jesus saw the faith of these men, he looked at their paralyzed friend and said, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you” (Matthew 9:2). Jesus was saying, “You no longer have to be afraid of the penalty for your sin. Your past is behind you. I am giving you another chance in life.”

Jesus then told him to get up, pick up his bed, and go to his house (Matthew 9:6). This man had a choice. He could have stayed on his sickbed forever. He could have said, “I can’t,” or “I won’t.” He had a choice, and he decided to respond.

There are people today who don’t want to change. They don’t want to leave their lifestyle or turn from the choices they have made. They will not take hold of God’s promises and provision and power.

If you want to change, if you want to break free from a vice that has you in its grip, a lifestyle you are trapped in, or an addiction that you can’t seem to shake, then Christ has a word of encouragement to you: “Get up and walk. You can do it. Be of good cheer, and arise.”

by Pastor Greg Laurie

“Please give me a drink.” (John 4:7)

We worship a God who became a vulnerable human being. Superman took kryptonite. Samson let his hair be cut. Jack Frost relinquished his wintry powers to become the town tailor. Jesus got thirsty. It’s a story that is played out not only in history, but in fantasy, legend, and mythology – someone with supernatural powers gives up those powers to become human and it is always done for one reason: love. That was God’s reason. “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” (Romans 5:8)

And yet Jesus did more than just come to die. He also came to live as a human being. And that’s how it came to be that the God who made the heavens and the earth, including the clouds that bring water to a thirsty land, wound up at the well of Jacob asking a Samaritan woman for a drink. She had something he needed. He gave her worth by asking her for it. Due to tradition and culture, he should have had nothing to do with this woman. As it turned out, he ended up revealing to her his identity as the Messiah –something he did not do that directly to anyone for the rest of his ministry on earth.

Love always makes you vulnerable. There’s no way you can love and not expose yourself in some way or give something up. Love and need go together. God’s love compelled him to do what he did because that very love created in him a need for us. By creating us he also created in himself a place for us, and that need was reflected many times through the life of Christ.

Jesus Christ didn’t die for us because it made for good theology, he died for us because he loved us, lost us to sin, and gave himself up to buy us back. By doing this, he had to become vulnerable to the very system he created, that we might see how true love behaves. There is a death in love, and that death is the death of self. Jesus died to love us; we die as well in order to love and serve others. And part of that is in being vulnerable.

Sometimes the best thing we can do for someone is ask for help. Jesus asked the woman for a drink and three years later, he was asking for the same thing from the cross –symbolic of the vulnerability he placed himself into for the whole human race. Being vulnerable to those you love is a big part of love itself.

By John Fischer

“I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity.”
(1 Chronicles 29:17, NIV)

It’s been a tough week.

Saturday, our goat Jimmy escaped from his barn and ate one of my favorite bushes.

Sunday, our dog Larry chewed up the cover to one of our Little House in the Prairie DVD collections. Little green bits of season three lay scattered like confetti all over the carpet. All the scotch tape in my junk drawer couldn’t reconstruct the faces of those Ingalls.

And then came Monday morning. Someone left our cat Lucy inside all night. When I emerged from the bedroom she gave me a guilty, I’ve-got-to-get-out-of-here look and swiped a claw across the front door. I lectured her briefly about not sleeping in the house and let her go.

Ten minutes later, while I was busy making breakfast, my husband asked, “What happened to your book?” I walked into the living room and saw him holding my copy of The Purpose-Driven Life. A friend had given me the beautiful, leather-bound copy, and I’d worked hard to keep it pristine. There wasn’t so much as a coffee stain, greasy fingerprint or chocolate smudge on the cover of that book. But now it was covered with cat scratches. And if you squinted just right – with one eye closed just a bit more than the other – those scratches spelled out the words “neener, neener”

“Oh, that is just IT!” All my frustration exploded. “Bushes and DVD covers and books … will it never end? Can nothing we own stay nice? Must everything be destroyed?”

But it’s a funny thing. Right in the middle of my tirade – while I was running my hands over the ruined cover and wondering how to retaliate against my cat – I remembered a single line from chapter five of the very book I was holding: “Life is a test.”

It struck me as so ironic that I had to laugh. Life is a test. God allows altered plans and disappointments and ruined possessions because he wants to see how we’re going to react. He wants to stretch our character and get our attention.

I had a clawed-up book and a chewed-up DVD cover and a naked-branched bush – but I still had my salvation. I still had Jesus. Nothing of true value had been lost.

I failed three tests this week, but in the end I think I won. Because somewhere in the middle of it all, God grabbed my heart again and re-focused my perspective.

Still, I’ll be keeping an eye on our chickens today. It’s probably their turn.

Point to ponder: God allows disappointments to stretch us.

Verse: “I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity.” (1 Chronicles 29:17, NIV)

What will you do about it: When disappointments come today – and they will – see them as an opportunity to let go of this world and focus on heaven. Learn to say, “Oh, well.”

Prayer: Ask God to teach you to stop clutching your agenda, your plans and your possessions.

By Shannon Woodward