Max Lucado Daily: WHAT YOU NEED - April 9, 2026
She was only five years old when you took the photo. Cheeks freckled by the summer sun, hair in pigtails. That was twenty years ago. Three marriages ago. A million flight miles and e-mails ago. Today she walks down the aisle on the arm of another father. You left your family bobbing in the wake of your high-speed career. Now that you have what you wanted, you don’t want it at all. Oh, to have a second chance.
Did you know God will give you one? 1 John 4:15 says, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” God repurposes bad decisions and squalid choices. To be saved by grace is to be saved by God, who placed a term limit on sin, and his son Jesus Christ, who danced a victory jig in the graveyard. God can do something with the mess of your life, and Grace is what you need.
Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine
Luke 21:20-38
Vengeance Day
20–24 “When you see soldiers camped all around Jerusalem, then you’ll know that she is about to be devastated. If you’re living in Judea at the time, run for the hills. If you’re in the city, get out quickly. If you’re out in the fields, don’t go home to get your coat. This is Vengeance Day—everything written about it will come to a head. Pregnant and nursing mothers will have it especially hard. Incredible misery! Torrential rage! People dropping like flies; people dragged off to prisons; Jerusalem under the boot of barbarians until the nations finish what was given them to do.
25–26 “It will seem like all hell has broken loose—sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.
27–28 “And then—then!—they’ll see the Son of Man welcomed in grand style—a glorious welcome! When all this starts to happen, up on your feet. Stand tall with your heads high. Help is on the way!”
29–33 He told them a story. “Look at a fig tree. Any tree for that matter. When the leaves begin to show, one look tells you that summer is right around the corner. The same here—when you see these things happen, you know God’s kingdom is about here. Don’t brush this off: I’m not just saying this for some future generation, but for this one, too—these things will happen. Sky and earth will wear out; my words won’t wear out.
34–36 “But be on your guard. Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping. Otherwise, that Day is going to take you by complete surprise, spring on you suddenly like a trap, for it’s going to come on everyone, everywhere, at once. So, whatever you do, don’t go to sleep at the switch. Pray constantly that you will have the strength and wits to make it through everything that’s coming and end up on your feet before the Son of Man.”
37–38 He spent his days in the Temple teaching, but his nights out on the mountain called Olives. All the people were up at the crack of dawn to come to the Temple and listen to him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, April 09, 2026
by Sheridan Voysey
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
1 Thessalonians 1:2-7
Convictions of Steel
2–5 Every time we think of you, we thank God for you. Day and night you’re in our prayers as we call to mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope in following our Master, Jesus Christ, before God our Father. It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.
5–6 You paid careful attention to the way we lived among you, and determined to live that way yourselves. In imitating us, you imitated the Master. Although great trouble accompanied the Word, you were able to take great joy from the Holy Spirit!—taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with the trouble.
7–10 Do you know that all over the provinces of both Macedonia and Achaia believers look up to you?
Today's Insights
Acts 9 introduces us to a believer in Jesus who was prompted by love to serve others. “In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha [Dorcas] . . . ; she was always doing good and helping the poor” (v. 36). The Greek word at the root of the word translated “helping the poor” means to “have mercy” or “pity.” In Joppa, there was a specific group of people who benefited from Tabitha’s “acts of charity” (v. 36 esv). We read how “all the widows stood around [Peter], crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas (Tabitha's Greek name) had made while she was still with them” (v. 39). Her legacy of love for Christ included acts of mercy and kindness for vulnerable people. Her example as well as that of believers in Thessalonica remind those who’ve been “loved by God” (1 Thessalonians 1:4) to allow the Holy Spirit to help us find ways to tangibly show love to others.
Explore why community is so important.
Prompted by Love
We remember . . . your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope. 1 Thessalonians 1:3
Emily Kenward walked down Lavender Street in Brighton, England. Having recently become a believer in Jesus, she now saw the street differently. She noticed how many homes had their curtains drawn in the daytime, and how few older people were about, despite the area’s high elderly population. It spurred an idea.
Emily found out where Brighton’s elderly lived and invited them to an afternoon tea. Those who came told a similar story. Now living alone, they often went months without seeing anyone. What they longed for, they said, was a visitor.
Believing in Jesus changes how we respond to the world and its needs. We see this happening to the Thessalonians. Having turned to God (1 Thessalonians 1:9), they had become a model of faith to others by their transformed lives (vv. 6-7). The apostle Paul noted their “work produced by faith” and their “labor prompted by love” (v. 3). True faith had moved them to acts of service that brought honor to Jesus.
Emily was so moved by what she heard at that afternoon tea that she started a charity linking Brighton’s elderly with volunteer visitors. She remembers one woman hugging her tightly, sobbing, grateful for finally feeling seen and heard. The work grew, inspiring others to do the same. It makes me wonder what labors prompted by love the Holy Spirit might inspire you and me to do today.
Reflect & Pray
What need do you see in your community? Listening to the Spirit, what would a labor prompted by love look like to help meet it?
Holy Spirit, please fill me afresh to love others well!
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, April 09, 2026
Have I Seen Him?
Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. — Mark 16:12
Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many have accepted God’s grace who have never seen Jesus. Always distinguish between seeing Jesus and seeing what he has done for you. If you see only what Jesus has done for you, you do not have a big enough God; you’ve confused him with your personal experience.
Once you have seen Jesus, you are never the same again. You remain unshaken though experiences come and go, your gaze fixed on “him who is invisible.” Moses “left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).
We cannot dictate when we see Jesus; he comes in his own time. He may be at work in our lives, helping us, long before he actually appears. In John 9, Jesus heals a man who has been blind since birth, but the man does not know who Jesus is. Only later does Jesus appear to the man, revealing his true identity. “Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him” (John 9:38).
When Jesus appears, he appears to each of us individually. No one can see Jesus through another’s eyes; he must appear to your friend as well as to you. A severance takes place when one person and not the other has seen Jesus. If you’ve seen Jesus, you will be eager to tell others about it. But remember that you can’t bring anyone else into fellowship with God; God must do it. “These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe” (Mark 16:13). Keep telling, even if they do not believe.
Oh could I tell ye surely would believe it!
Oh could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can ye receive it, How, till He bringeth you where I have been?
—Frederic W. H. Myers
1 Samuel 13-14; Luke 10:1-24
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye.
Disciples Indeed, 385 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, April 09, 2026
Rwanda - it was the centerpiece of a lot of news attention back in 1994. Bloody civil war; tens of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered there. There were nightly images of emaciated refugees, dying of disease, dying of starvation. And children; oh, you just couldn't forget the children. Many of those kids had lost everything in the carnage.
Billy Graham's son, Franklin Graham, took a medical team to try to help there, and I heard him tell about one little girl he said he could never forget, and I don't think I will. He was in this rebel camp and he was walking by an army truck. He noticed this one little girl sitting in the back of it and she was just rocking back and forth, and she was singing something very softly but in a language Franklin couldn't understand.
There was a soldier standing by there paying no attention to the girl, and Franklin said, "What happened to this little girl?" And he said, "Oh, the same as all the others. She's got nobody left." Franklin said, "Well, would you do me one more favor? Would you tell me what she's singing?" The soldier seemed a little annoyed, but he listened for a minute and he said, "Yeah, it's..." Then he went on to translate it. When he translated the song, it was clear that this little Rwandan orphan hadn't lost everything.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Unloseable."
The soldier, after hearing this song sung by that little Rwandan orphan girl said, "Yeah, it's something about Jesus loving her." Franklin said, "Is it Jesus Loves Me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so?" "Yeah, yeah, that's it." With her world torn apart, with every human who loved her gone, this precious little victim had one unloseable relationship. Do you? They couldn't take Jesus away from her.
Our word for today from the Word of God - Romans 8. It begins by talking about the worst things that could happen to you in your life, and in verse 37 it says, "We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nothing in the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." A love you can never lose; a love that will never lose you.
Jesus is the unloseable person we've looked for all our lives. Actually we're built to belong to our Creator. If it weren't for Jesus, we would never have the possibility of that heart-satisfying relationship because of the gap between God and us. It's called sin. That's basically the self-rule of our lives. It could be summed up in those words "I did it my way." So the God that we're built by and for is out of our reach until that sin bill is paid. Talk about love! God's only Son came to remove the only thing that could keep us from His love - the death penalty for our sin. From the moment you say, "Jesus, I'm putting my total trust in you and what you did on the cross for me" you belong to God. You always will. Nothing in heaven, nothing in hell, nothing on earth can end that relationship. God has guaranteed it.
Quite some time ago, my wife and I spent a week at a little house at the Jersey shore; it was like a mini-honeymoon. And two weeks later she came down with a life-threatening case of hepatitis. I'll never forget the night when she almost died. I realized that this one person who would never choose to leave me might not have any choice about it that night. I'm so grateful God spared her. But that night I realized that the closest thing I have on earth to an unloseable person is loseable. But you know what? Since that day, came the day that I did lose her. But I was still able to sing "Jesus loves me, this I know." I hope you can too.
You probably never thought you'd learn anything from a little Rwandan orphan girl, but she was hanging on to Jesus with all her heart. Maybe it's time for you to do that. I'd love to help you know how. Join me at our website ANewStory.com.
Isn't it time you grabbed Jesus' hand? Because that's the only hand that won't ever let you go.
