Good Stuff by Max Lucado January 09

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WHEN CHRIST COMES - - -
by Max Lucado

You are in your car driving home. Thoughts wander to the game you want to see or meal you want to eat, when suddenly a sound unlike any you’ve ever heard fills the air. The sound is high above you. A trumpet? A choir? A choir of trumpets? You don’t know, but you want to know. So you pull over, get out of your car, and look up. As you do, you see you aren’t the only curious one. The roadside has become a parking lot. Car doors are open, and people are staring at the sky. Shoppers are racing out of the grocery store. The Little League baseball game across the street has come to a halt. Players and parents are searching the clouds.

And what they see, and what you see, has never before been seen.

As if the sky were a curtain, the drapes of the atmosphere part. A brilliant light spills onto the earth. There are no shadows. None. From whence came the light begins to tumble a river of color—spiking crystals of every hue ever seen and a million more never seen. Riding on the flow is an endless fleet of angels. They pass through the curtains one myriad at a time, until they occupy every square inch of the sky. North. South. East. West. Thousands of silvery wings rise and fall in unison, and over the sound of the trumpets, you can hear the cherubim and seraphim chanting, “Holy, holy, holy.”

The final flank of angels is followed by twenty-four silver-bearded elders and a multitude of souls who join the angels in worship. Presently the movement stops and the trumpets are silent, leaving only the triumphant triplet: “Holy, holy, holy.” Between each word is a pause. With each word, a profound reverence. You hear your voice join in the chorus. You don’t know why you say the words, but you know you must.

Suddenly, the heavens are quiet. All is quiet. The angels turn, you turn, the entire world turns—and there he is. Jesus. Through waves of light you see the silhouetted figure of Christ the King. He is atop a great stallion, and the stallion is atop a billowing cloud. He opens his mouth, and you are surrounded by his declaration: “I am the Alpha and the Omega.”

The angels bow their heads. The elders remove their crowns. And before you is a figure so consuming that you know, instantly you know: Nothing else matters. Forget stock markets and school reports. Sales meetings and football games. Nothing is newsworthy. All that mattered, matters no more, for Christ has come. . . .
__________________________
from When Christ Comes: The Beginning of the Very Best

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A CLOAK OF LOVE - - -
by Max Lucado

Do you own a cloak of love? Do you know anyone who needs one? When you cover someone with concern, you are fulfilling what Paul had in mind when he wrote the phrase “love … always protects” (1 Cor. 13:4–7 NIV).

The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament is known for its word study, not its poetry. But the scholar sounds poetic as he explains the meaning of protect as used in 1 Corinthians 13:7. The word conveys, he says, “the idea of covering with a cloak of love.”

Know anyone in need of a cloak of love?

A few years back I offered one to my daughters. The whirlwind of adolescence was making regular runs through our house, bringing with it more than our share of doubts, pimples, and peer pressure. I couldn’t protect the girls from the winds, but I could give them an anchor to hold in the midst. On Valentine’s Day, 1997, I wrote the following and had it framed for each daughter:

- - - - -
I have a special gift for you. My gift is warmth at night and sunlit afternoons, chuckles and giggles and happy Saturdays.

But how do I give this gift? Is there a store which sells laughter? A catalog that offers kisses? No. Such a treasure can’t be bought. But it can be given. And here is how I give it to you.

Your Valentine’s Day gift is a promise, a promise that I will always love your mother. With God as my helper, I will never leave her. You’ll never come home to find me gone. You’ll never wake up and find that I have run away. You’ll always have two parents. I will love your mother. I will honor your mother. I will cherish your mother. That is my promise. That is my gift.

Love, Dad
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Know anyone who could use some protection? Of course you do. Then give some.

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POOR I-SIGHT - - - - - - -
by Max Lucado

We suffer from poor I-sight. Not eyesight, a matter of distorted vision that lenses can correct, but I-sight. Poor I-sight blurs your view, not of the world, but of yourself.

Some see self too highly. You wonder who puts the “air” in arrogance and the “vain” in vainglory? Those who say, “I can do anything.”

You’ve said those words. For a short time, at least. A lifetime, perhaps. We all plead guilty to some level of superiority. And don’t we know the other extreme: “I can’t do anything”?

Forget the thin air of pomposity; these folks breathe the thick, swampy air of self-defeat. Roaches have higher self-esteem. Earthworms stand taller. “I’m a bum. I am scum. The world would be better off without me.”

Two extremes of poor I-sight. Self-loving and self-loathing. We swing from one side to the other. One day too high on self, the next too hard on self. Neither is correct. Self-elevation and self-deprecation are equally inaccurate. Where is the truth?

Smack-dab in the middle. Dead center between “I can do anything” and “I can’t do anything” lies “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13)

Neither omnipotent nor impotent, neither God’s MVP nor God’s mistake. Not self-secure or insecure, but God-secure—a self-worth based in our identity as children of God. The proper view of self is in the middle.

But how do we get there? How do we park the pendulum in the center?

Worship. Honest worship lifts eyes off self and sets them on God. Worship adjusts us, lowering the chin of the haughty, straightening the back of the burdened.

Breaking the bread, partaking of the cup. Bowing the knees, lifting the hands.
This is worship.

Worship properly positions the worshiper. And oh how we need it! We walk through life so bent out of shape. So sold on ourselves that we think someone died and made us ruler. Or so down on ourselves that we think everyone died and just left us.

Treat both conditions with worship.
______________________________
From Cure for the Common Life
Copyright 2005, Max Lucado

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LOOKING UNTO JESUS - - -
by Max Lucado

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:1–2 NKJV).

The writer of Hebrews could have been a jogger, for he speaks of a runner and a forerunner. The forerunner is Jesus, the “author and finisher of our faith.” He is the author—that is to say he wrote the book on salvation. And he is the finisher—he not only charted the map, he blazed the trail. He is the forerunner, and we are the runners. And we runners are urged to keep our eyes on Jesus.

I’m a runner. More mornings than not I drag myself out of bed and onto the street. I don’t run fast. And compared to marathoners, I don’t run far. But I run. I run because I don’t like cardiologists. Nothing personal, mind you. It’s just that I come from a family that keeps them in business. One told my dad he needed to retire. Another opened the chests of both my mom and brother. I’d like to be the one family member who doesn’t keep a heart surgeon’s number on speed dial.

Since heart disease runs in our family, I run in our neighborhood. As the sun is rising, I am running. And as I am running, my body is groaning. It doesn’t want to cooperate. My knee hurts. My hip is stiff. My ankles complain. Sometimes a passerby laughs at my legs, and my ego hurts.

Things hurt. And as things hurt, I’ve learned that I have three options. Go home. (Denalyn would laugh at me.) Meditate on my hurts until I start imagining I’m having chest pains. (Pleasant thought.) Or I can keep running and watch the sun come up. My trail has just enough easterly bend to give me a front-row seat for God’s morning miracle. If I watch God’s world go from dark to golden, guess what? The same happens to my attitude. The pain passes and the joints loosen, and before I know it, the run is half over and life ain’t half bad. Everything improves as I fix my eyes on the sun.

Wasn’t that the counsel of the Hebrew epistle—“looking unto Jesus”? Hope is a look away.

Now, what were you looking at?
______________________________
From Traveling Light
Copyright 2001, Max Lucado

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IN THE BEGINNING - - -
by Max Lucado

The Father was dreaming. I could see it in His eyes- the sparkle. It was there again.

“What is it You see, my King?”

He didn’t turn, but kept His gaze fixed on the great emptiness- the massive, boundless, unending space. The more He looked, the more His eyes would dance. I knew He saw something.

I looked in the same direction. I leaned forward and stared intently. All I saw was emptiness. All I ever saw was emptiness.

I hadn’t seen the sphere that He had pulled out of the sky. “Where was that?” I asked as He began molding it in His hands.

“It was there,” He replied, looking outward. I looked and saw nothing. When I turned, He was smiling. He knew a seraph’s vision was too limited.

The same thing happened with the water. “Where did this come from?” I asked, touching the strange substance.

“I saw it, Michael.” He chuckled as He filled an ocean from His palm. “And when I saw it, I made it. I saw it near the stars.”

“The what?”

“The stars.” Out into the void He reached. When He pulled back His hand, He kept it closed as if to entice me to lean forward. I did. And just as my face was near, He opened His hand. A burst of light escaped, and I looked up just in time to see it illuminate His face, too. Once again, He was smiling.

“Watch how they sparkle,” He reveled. And with a flip of His wrist, the palmful of diamonds soared into the blackness until they found their destiny, and there they hung.

“Won’t the children love them?” the Maker said as together we watched the twinkling begin.
_____________________________
From In the Beginning
Copyright 2006, Max Lucado

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HIS FINAL PRAYER WAS ABOUT YOU - - -
by Max Lucado

As Jesus stepped into the garden, you were in his prayers. As Jesus looked into heaven, you were in his vision. As Jesus dreamed of the day when we will be where he is, he saw you there.

His final prayer was about you. His final pain was for you. His final passion was you.

He steps into the garden, and invites Peter, James, and John to come. He tells them his soul is “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” and begins to pray.

Never has he felt so alone. What must be done, only he can do. An angel can’t do it. No angel has the power to break open hell’s gates. A man can’t do it. No man has the purity to destroy sin’s claim. No force on earth can face the force of evil and win—except God.

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” Jesus confesses.

His humanity begged to be delivered from what his divinity could see. Jesus, the carpenter, implores. Jesus, the man, peers into the dark pit and begs, “Can’t there be another way?”

Did he know the answer before he asked the question? Did his human heart hope his heavenly father had found another way? We don’t know. But we do know he asked to get out. We do know he begged for an exit. We do know there was a time when if he could have, he would have turned his back on the whole mess and gone away.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t because he saw you. Right there in the middle of a world which isn’t fair. He saw you cast into a river of life you didn’t request. He saw you betrayed by those you love. He saw you with a body which gets sick and a heart which grows weak.

He saw you in your own garden of gnarled trees and sleeping friends. He saw you staring into the pit of your own failures and the mouth of your own grave.

He saw you in your Garden of Gethsemane—and he didn’t want you to be alone.

He wanted you to know that he has been there, too. He knows what it’s like to be plotted against. He knows what it’s like to be confused. He knows what it’s like to be torn between two desires. He knows what it’s like to smell the stench of Satan. And, perhaps most of all, he knows what it’s like to beg God to change his mind and to hear God say so gently, but firmly, “No.”

For that is what God says to Jesus. And Jesus accepts the answer. At some moment during that midnight hour an angel of mercy comes over the weary body of the man in the garden. As he stands, the anguish is gone from his eyes. His fist will clench no more. His heart will fight no more.

The battle is won. You may have thought it was won on Golgotha. It wasn’t. You may have thought the sign of victory is the empty tomb. It isn’t. The final battle was won in Gethsemane. And the sign of conquest is Jesus at peace in the olive trees.

For it was in the garden that he made his decision. He would rather go to hell for you than go to heaven without you.

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From And the Angels Were Silent
Copyright 1992, Max Lucado

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THE TALE OF THE CRUCIFIED CROOK - - -

If anyone was ever worthless, this one was. If any man ever deserved dying, this man probably did. If any fellow was ever a loser, this fellow was at the top of the list.

Perhaps that is why Jesus chose him to show us what he thinks of the human race.

Maybe this criminal had heard the Messiah speak. Maybe he had seen him love the lowly. Maybe he had watched him dine with the punks, pickpockets, and potmouths on the streets. Or maybe not. Maybe the only thing he knew about this Messiah was what he now saw: a beaten, slashed, nail-suspended preacher. His face crimson with blood, his bones peeking through torn flesh, his lungs gasping for air.

Something, though, told him he had never been in better company. And somehow he realized that even though all he had was prayer, he had finally met the One to whom he should pray.

“Any chance that you could put in a good word for me?” (Loose translation.)

“Consider it done.”

Now why did Jesus do that? What in the world did he have to gain by promising this desperado a place of honor at the banquet table? What in the world could this chiseling quisling ever offer in return? I mean, the Samaritan woman I can understand. She could go back and tell the tale. And Zacchaeus had some money that he could give. But this guy? What is he going to do? Nothing!

That’s the point. Listen closely. Jesus’ love does not depend upon what we do for him. Not at all. In the eyes of the King, you have value simply because you are. You don’t have to look nice or perform well. Your value is inborn.

Period.

Think about that for just a minute. You are valuable just because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done, but simply because you are. Remember that. The next time someone tries to pass you off as a cheap buy, just think about the way Jesus honors you…and smile.

I do. I smile because I know I don’t deserve love like that. None of us do. When you get right down to it, any contribution that any of us make is pretty puny. All of us—even the purest of us—deserve heaven about as much as that crook did. All of us are signing on Jesus’ credit card, not ours.

And it also makes me smile to think that there is a grinning ex-con walking the golden streets who knows more about grace than a thousand theologians. No one else would have given him a prayer. But in the end that is all that he had. And in the end, that is all it took.

No wonder they call him the Savior.
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From No Wonder They Call Him the Savior
Copyright 1986, Max Lucado

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FINISHING STRONG - - -
by Max Lucado

Remain. Hang in there. Finish. Stick to it until it is done. Unfortunately, very few of us do that. Our human tendency is to quit too soon. Our human tendency is to stop before we cross the finish line.

Our inability to finish what we start is seen in the smallest of things:

A partly mowed lawn. A half-read book. Letters begun but never completed. An abandoned diet. A car up on blocks.

Or, it shows up in life’s most painful areas:

An abandoned child. A cold faith. A job hopper. A wrecked marriage. An unevangelized world.

Am I touching some painful sores? Any chance I’m addressing someone who is considering giving up? If I am, I want to encourage you to remain. I want to encourage you to remember Jesus’ determination on the cross.

Jesus didn’t quit. But don’t think for one minute that he wasn’t tempted to. Watch him wince as he hears his apostles backbite and quarrel. Look at him weep as he sits at Lazarus’s tomb or hear him wail as he claws the ground of Gethsemane.

Did he ever want to quit? You bet.

That’s why his words are so splendid.

“It is finished.”

A cry of defeat? Hardly. Had his hands not been fastened down I dare say that a triumphant fist would have punched the dark sky. No, this is no cry of despair. It is a cry of completion. A cry of victory. A cry of fulfillment. Yes, even a cry of relief.

Are you close to quitting? Please don’t do it. Are you discouraged as a parent? Hang in there. Are you weary with doing good? Do just a little more. Are you pessimistic about your job? Roll up your sleeves and go at it again. No communication in your marriage? Give it one more shot. Can’t resist temptation? Accept God’s forgiveness and go one more round. Is your day framed with sorrow and disappointment? Are your tomorrows turning into nevers? Is hope a forgotten word?

Remember, a finisher is not one with no wounds or weariness. Mother Teresa is credited with saying, “God didn’t call us to be successful, just faithful.”

The Land of Promise, says Jesus, awaits those who endure. (Matthew 10:22) It is not just for those who make the victory laps or drink champagne. No sir. The Land of Promise is for those who simply remain to the end.

Let’s endure.

__________________________________
from No Wonder They Call Him the Savior
Copyright 1986, Max Lucado

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THE TORN CURTAIN - - -
by Max Lucado

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matt. 27:50-51 NIV).

It’s as if the hands of heaven had been gripping the veil, waiting for this moment. Keep in mind the size of the curtain—sixty feet tall and thirty feet wide. One instant it was whole; the next it was ripped in two from top to bottom. No delay. No hesitation.

What did the torn curtain mean? For the Jews it meant no more barrier between them and the Holy of Holies. No more priests to go between them and God. No more animal sacrifices to atone for their sins.

And for us? What did the torn curtain signify for us?

We are welcome to enter into God’s presence—any day, any time. God has removed the barrier that separates us from him. The barrier of sin? Down. He has removed the curtain.

But we have the tendency to put the barrier back up. Though there is no curtain in a temple, there is a curtain in the heart. Our guilty conscience becomes a curtain that separates us from God.

As a result we hide from our Master.

That’s exactly what my dog, Salty, does. He knows he isn’t supposed to get into the trash. But let the house be human free, and the dark side of Salty takes over. If there is food in a trash can, the temptation is too great. He will find it and feast.

That’s what he had done the other day. When I came home, he was nowhere to be found. I saw the toppled trash, but I didn’t see Salty. At first I got mad, but I got over it. If I was cooped up all day with only dog food to eat, I might rummage a bit myself. I cleaned up the mess and went about the day and forgot about it.

Salty didn’t. He kept his distance. When I finally saw him, his tail was between his legs, and his ears were drooping. Then I realized, “He thinks I’m mad at him. He doesn’t know I’ve already dealt with his mistake.”

May I state the obvious application? God isn’t angry with you. He has already dealt with your mistake.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow you got tangled up in garbage, and you’ve been avoiding God. You’ve allowed a veil of guilt to come between you and your Father. You wonder if you could ever feel close to God again. The message of the torn flesh is you can. God welcomes you. God is not avoiding you. God is not resisting you. The curtain is down, the door is open, and God invites you in.

Don’t trust your conscience. Trust the cross. The blood has been spilt and the veil has been split. You are welcome in God’s presence.
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From Next Door Savior
Copyright 2000, Max Lucado

[chriscraig]

I like Max Lucado. I was touched by the quote "He would rather go to hell for you than to go to heaven without you."

Many times I have felt alone in my life. I still have trouble grasping the idea that Christ is always with me. I do believe and I pray for a stronger faith.
Chris