Daily Bread

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

A Precious Story From Isaiah

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

There's a precious story in the Bible that may have been missed (or maybe you've known it all your life). It's in the Good News version of Isaiah:

"The LORD said to me, 'No matter how shepherds yell and shout, they can't scare away a lion from an animal that it has killed [for food]; in the same way, there is nothing that can keep Me, the Lord Almighty, from protecting Mount Zion'” (31:4).

You don't have to live in Africa to know this: when a hungry lion has run and run and finally caught its prey and sits down to enjoy his hard-earned meal, nothing can shy him away from it. Don't you dare try to wrest it from him! You'll see a lion ferocious at his worst.

So, says the LORD Almighty—(your personal Friend and Savior), will He protect you fiercely from anyone who might try to harm you!

We all have often needed that encouragement.

But there's a second story here:

"Just as a bird hovers over its nest to protect its young, so I, the LORD Almighty, will protect Jerusalem and defend it'” (vs. 5). Substitute your name for "Mount Zion” and for "Jerusalem,” and you have the New Covenant message the Lord wants you to grasp.

He is like a super-angry hungry lion and like a quiet mother bird, both. (He created them both so they could teach us a lesson about His character.)

The people in Isaiah's day couldn't forget that vivid lesson! Neither can we.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 6, 2006.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" messages are availalbe via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Monday, November 07, 2011

A Basket Case Lady Can Help Us

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Nobody could have invented the Gospel story as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. No novelist or playwright could have dreamed up such a plot with all its improbable happenings.

For example, the Gospel of Mark. When you get to the last chapter, the "improbables" leap from the page. Jesus is resurrected. You would expect that He would appear first to the disciple who followed him the most closely, John, the man of whom nothing shameful is recorded in the main story. He was a good man, upright, honorable. But no, Jesus does not appear to him at all. He appears first to a woman who had a terrible reputation, a basket-case woman out of whom He had cast seven devils. Her name: Mary Magdalene. That takes your breath away, and incidentally gives all the basket-case people in the world wonderful new hope.

And then, Jesus tells her to go tell His eleven disciples that He has risen from the dead, and these men, John included, simply don't believe it. Any novelist inventing this story would have His close disciples fawning over Him, paragons of leadership wisdom. No, the eleven turn out to be myopic, blind, unbelievers right here at the most wonderful morning in world history when Jesus has risen from the dead.

And here again is the divine wisdom and compassion shining through, which proves that this gospel story is the truth of God. All of us have that same weakness, that same sinful unbelief that plagued the eleven disciples. And we all need healing, so we can learn to believe.

The problem is that hard hearts cannot believe; the heart must be softened, melted, humbled in repentance--and that is where the basket-case lady can help us. She was possessed of seven devils; and having sunk down to the lowest depths, her heart was melted, and she learned to believe.

You don't have to have seven devils cast out--just know and confess that were it not for the grace of Christ, you would have seven devils. Your deliverance is Good News.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: 1994 Phone Message.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Sin's Roots Go Down to Our Toes

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

When we study about "the origin of sin," we don't find much Good News there; but when we study about the "eradication of sin," there's the Good News. The very first page of the New Testament declares that Jesus came to "save His people FROM their sins" (not IN them; Matt. 1:21).

God cannot eradicate sin from His universe until first He eradicates it from human hearts. That is where sin has taken root; the human heart is the last lair where the dragon of sin lurks. Sin's roots go down to our toes. Can sin be overcome, eradicated? The outcome of the great controversy between Christ and Satan depends on the answer.

Some say that sin itself will never be conquered until Christ comes the second time, zaps His saints and gives them holy flesh, removing temptation from them, the implication being that as long as you and I have our "sinful flesh," sin will still win out. But the Bible is clear:

(1) Rom. 6:13, 14, even though we still have sinful flesh or sinful nature, "sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace."

(2) Rom. 5:20, "grace did much more abound" than "sin abounded." In other words, the idea is clear: grace is stronger than sin. If that is not true, the great controversy must end in defeat for God.

(3) 2 Cor. 5:14, 15, this grace of God operates through the revelation of the love of God (agape). Therefore, "theagape of Christ constraineth us ... henceforth" to live not unto self, but "unto Him" who died for us and rose again. The love of self is the very essence of sin, its quintessential element that filled Lucifer's heart in the beginning and which here at the every end of time forces the "church of the Laodiceans" to be lukewarm in heart.

(4) John 12:31-33, not only did Christ conquer the problem of sin by His sinless life and His sacrifice on the cross. In order for the great controversy to come to an end, He must have a people whose faith demonstrates that suchagape will "constrain" them also to "overcome even as [He] overcame" (Rev. 3:21).

(5) The bright picture at the end of the Bible is Heaven's spotlight on a group who stand on "a sea of glass mingled with fire" who have "gotten the victory" over sin, "having the harps of God" (Rev. 15:2). That wasn't accomplished by zapping them with sinless flesh, but by giving them grace to "overcome" in sinful flesh.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 29, 1999.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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Please forward these messages to your friends and encourage them to subscribe. The "Dial Daily Bread" Web site resides at:http://1888message.org/dailybread/
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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" messages are availalbe via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Salvation Is Fixed for Eternity

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

God does fantastic things, and the sooner we understand Him the better. He made what appear to be wild promises to His lone patriarch who was willing to forsake his home in the great city of Ur of the Chaldees, and live in a tent the rest of his life. God promised to give Abraham "the book"--the whole world for "an everlasting possession" (not just the measly little land of Palestine! Rom. 4:13), and the everlasting life needed to enjoy it (2 Peter 3:13), and of course the righteousness necessary to inherit it. All this God promised to Abraham and his descendants as an out-and-out gift.

But millions of Christians cling to the idea that 430 years later God revised His promise and changed it into a bargain arrangement, a mutual contract with legal arrangements. The inheritance must now be "offered" to Israel on condition first of their becoming obedient. The "promise" must now involve numerous blood-curdling "curses" threatened for disobedience--all of which were fulfilled to the crossing of the "t" in the multiple destructions ofJerusalem when Israelite mothers ate their own children.

The popular notion of the covenants requires that God change His out-and-out promises into a conditional "offer" of salvation that leaves salvation to the initiative of the people. "Obey and live" is now the fundamental idea; disobey and die.

But there's a snag: when God made His "wild" promises to Abraham, He not only promised--He swore an oath to "GIVE" it all to him and his descendants. He staked His very throne, His existence, on His promise to GIVE it all for free. God giving His law on Mt. Sinai introduces no new feature into His "covenant," for if He made the slightest change in its provisions He would nullify the "will" that was fixed for eternity by the "death of the testator" when "the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world." No, says Paul; salvation is fixed for eternity: it's by grace through faith, which itself is the gift of God.

Which do you want--the New Covenant or the Old? Take what you want.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: December 26, 2002.

Friday, November 04, 2011

An Outlandish Idea?

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Is it an outlandish idea that the apostle Paul writes, that there is something "lacking in the afflictions of Christ" that God's people can "fill up" (Col 1:24)? Didn't Christ already suffer everything bad that we humans can suffer? Well, let's ask one question: did Christ suffer broken bones? The apostle John says of Him, "Not one of His bones shall be broken" (John 19:36), and he is quoting Exodus 12:46 and Psalm 34:20.

We can say indeed that Jesus suffered all the pain that we humans can suffer, for none of us has been literally crucified--a horrendous experience. But here indeed is something that those who suffer broken bones can consider: they are honored in some little way to "fill up in [their] flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ" (says Col. 1:24), permitted the high honor of being "partakers of Christ's sufferings" (1 Peter 4:13).

Those who endure suffering (whether from physical pain, or mental and emotional torture thrust upon them uninvited) are privileged to demonstrate to the world and to the universe what it means in one little way to "follow the Lamb wherever He goes" (Rev. 14:4, 5). They have experienced something special in common with Him. They have a point of contact with Him, an intimacy that they will recognize reflected in His eyes when at last they see Him face to face. When He takes them by the hand, He will squeeze their hand with a special touch of oneness with Him. No longer will they bemoan their "burden" and complain that "it's not fair!" They will recognize their position as princes and princesses in the great kingdom of God, entrusted with a special task to honor Christ.

There was once a great man who suffered agony uninvited. In so doing, he was highly honored. Job said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (13:15). It's NOT that God wanted to "slay" him, but it seemed that way to Job (it was Satan doing it). And Job broke through the clouds and embraced a genuine faith--believing in the goodness of God in total darkness. So can you.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 25, 2000.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

A Genuine New Birth

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Eternal life is promised to everyone who "believes" in Jesus: "If anyone keeps My word He shall never see death," He said (John 8:51). "He who hears My word and believes on Him who sent Me has everlasting life" (5:24).

But what does it mean to "believe" in Him? The Bible warns us of a massive counterfeit of "believing" in these last days (Matt. 24:23, 24, for example):

(a) Genuine believing has to do with the Father GIVING His Son for the world ("God so loved the world that He GAVE ..."; John 3:16).

(b) He GAVE, not LENT Him.

(d) It also means an appreciation of His dying for us because the only way we can "believe" is by seeing Him "lifted up" as Moses "lifted up" a snake on a pole "in the wilderness" (vss. 14, 15).

(e) That directs us to the kind of death that Jesus died--on a cross (12:32, 33).

(f) Therefore, "believing" in Jesus means a heart-appreciation of the Father's giving Him and of Christ's giving Himself in dying for us our "second death" which we had earned for ourselves (cf. Heb. 2:9, Rev. 2:11).

(g) Such "believing" transforms the believer.

(h) It is a genuine new birth because the love of self is "crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20).

Genuine believing in Jesus means therefore that there is a well of "rivers of living water" springing up from within the depths of the heart of every true "believer" in Him (John 7:37, 38). That's what it means to believe in Jesus! You are a channel through which that "water of life" flows to thirsty people. We must ask seriously, Do I truly "believe" in Him? Lord, help my unbelief!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 23, 2005.