Not the Final Chapter

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by Max Lucado

 

Death is not the final chapter in your story. John 11:25-26 assure us that in death we will step into the arms of the One who declared, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (NIV).

Winston Churchill believed this. The prime minister planned his own funeral. Two buglers were positioned in the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. At the conclusion of the service, the first played Taps, the signal of a day completed; the second played Reveille, the song of a day begun. Death is no pit but a passageway, a corner turn. Isaiah wrote, “Your dead will live…All you dead and buried, wake up! Sing!…The earth is bursting with life, giving birth to the dead” (Isaiah 26:19 MSG).

So play on, bugler, play on!

Read more God’s Story, Your Story

 

 

Covered in Christ

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by Max Lucado

 

The Apostle Paul says, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27 NIV). When you make God’s story yours, he covers you in Christ. You wear him like a vest. Old labels no longer apply. How about these new labels: Royal priest. Free from condemnation. Secure. God’s coworker. God’s temple. God’s workmanship. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe.

Psalm 103:12 reminds us not to mess with the old clothes any longer. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (NIV). When God sends your sins to the east and you to the west, you can be sure of this: he sees his Son and not your sin. In fact, Isaiah 43:25 says he “remembers your sins no more.” How do you like that outfit?

Read more God’s Story, Your Story

 

 

Keep Your Mind on Heaven

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by Max Lucado

 

Do you feel as if your best years have passed you by? Hogwash! You’ll do your best work in heaven. Do you regret wasting seasons of life on foolish pursuits? So do I. But we can stop our laments. We have an eternity to make up for lost time.

Colossians 3:1 (NKJV) is a great reminder to “seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.” Seek heaven the way a sailor seeks the coast or a pilot seeks the landing strip. Colossians 3:2 (NCV) says, “Think only about” it. Other translations say, “Keep your mind on” it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides.

In other words, obsess yourself with heaven. Open your eyes, Christ invites. Lift up your gaze. You were made for more than this life.

Read more God’s Story, Your Story

 

 

God Will Never Let You Go

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by Max Lucado

 

Satan tried to write his own story in which he was the hero and God is an afterthought. He admitted as much: “I will ascend to the heavens…I will make myself like the Most High” as quoted in Isaiah 14:13-14. Satan wanted to take God’s place, but God wasn’t—and isn’t—moving. Satan wants to win you to his side, but God will never let you go. You have his word!

Even more, you have his help. Scripture says, “For our high priest (Jesus) is able to understand our weaknesses…he was tempted in every way that we are, but he did not sin. Let us then…come before God’s throne where there is grace…to help us when we need it” (Hebrews 4:15-16). You don’t have to face Satan alone. We shout, and God runs—at the right moment.

Read more God’s Story, Your Story

 

 

God’s Word Is Enough

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by Max Lucado

 

Where do you feel empty? Are you hungry for attention, craving success, longing for intimacy? Be aware of your weaknesses. Bring them to God before Satan brings them to you.

Satan will tell you, as he did when tempting Jesus, to turn stones into bread. In other words, to take matters into your own hands. If Satan convinces us to trust our works over God’s word, he has us dangling from a broken limb.

Do what Jesus did. In Satan’s temptation of Jesus, three times Jesus repeated, “It is written…” “It also is written…” “It is written…” God’s book was enough. Jesus overcame temptation, not with special voices or supernatural signs, but by remembering and quoting Scripture. Do the same. Let God’s words silence Satan’s lies and see what happens.

Read more God’s Story, Your Story

 

 

Tools of Satan

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by Max Lucado

 

How do we explain our stubborn hearts and conniving ways? How do we explain Auschwitz, human trafficking, abuse? If I were the devil, I’d want you to feel attacked by an indefinable force. If I were the devil, I’d keep my name out of it. But God doesn’t let the devil get away with this. He tells us his name: splitter, a divider, a wedge driver. Don’t fault the plunging economy or a raging dictator for your anxiety. They are simply tools in Satan’s tool kit.

We can’t understand God’s narrative without understanding Satan’s strategy. Scripture says, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). God calls the devil by name and promises to defeat him. Be alert to the devil, and be assured his days are numbered.

 

Read more God’s Story, Your Story

 

 

Pray Bold Prayers

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by Max Lucado

 

How bold are your prayers? As John Wesley crossed the Atlantic, he was reading in his cabin and became aware of heavy winds knocking the ship off course. He responded in prayer. A colleague wrote it down:

Almighty and everlasting God…Thou holdest the winds in thy fists and sittest upon the water floods…command those winds and these waves that they obey Thee. Take us speedily and safely to the haven whither we would go.

Having offered the prayer, Wesley took up his book and continued reading. On deck his colleague found calm winds and the ship on course. Wesley made no mention of the answered prayer. His friend wrote, So fully did he expect to be heard that he took it for granted he was heard.

How bold are your prayers?

 

Read more Glory Days: Living Your Promised Land Life Now

 

 

With Ordinary People

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by Max Lucado

 

You have bills to pay, beds to make, and grass to cut. Your face won’t grace any magazine covers, and you aren’t expecting a call from the White House. Congratulations—you qualify for a modern-day Christmas story.

Step into the stable, cradle in your arms the infant Jesus. Listen as one who knew him well puts lyrics to the event. What no theologian conceived, what no rabbi dared to dream, God did. John 1:14 proclaims, “The Word became flesh.” Christ in Mary. God in Christ. The Word of God entered the world with the cry of a baby. God writes his story with ordinary people like Joseph, like Mary. People like you, like me.

Read more God’s Story, Your Story

 

 

More to Your Story

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by Max Lucado

 

Everything changes when you know the rest of your story. In 2 Samuel 22:25 (MSG) David says, “God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.” But what is the text of our lives? Self-help gurus and magazine headlines urge you to “find your narrative.” “Look inside yourself,” they say. But the promise of self-discovery falls short.

Your story indwells God’s. This is the great promise of the Bible. “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone” (Ephesians 1:11-12 MSG). In his story, you’ll find there’s more to your story.

 

 

Read more When God Whispers Your Name

The Headline Story

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by Max Lucado

 

We love to know where we came from. We need to know where we came from. Knowing connects us, links us to something greater than we are. That is why God wants you to know his story.

Framed photos hang in his house and lively talks await you at his table. A scrapbook sits in his living room, brimming with stories. Stories about Bethlehem beginnings and manger miracles. Enemy warfare in the wilderness and fishermen friends in Galilee. The stumbles of Peter, the stubbornness of Paul. All part of the story. But subplots to the central message of the headline story: John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life!”

God saves his people—God’s story. And we are a part of it.

 

Read more When God Whispers Your Name