Max Lucado Daily: 'Birthdays'
What is it about birthdays that causes us to quiver so? Certainly part of the problem is the mirror. Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician. But the real pain is deeper. Sometimes a dream-come-true-world has come true and it’s less than you’d hoped. Regret becomes a major pastime.
Luke 17:33 says, “Whoever tries to keep his life safe will lose it, and the one who’s prepared to lose his life will preserve it.” “There are two ways to view life,” Jesus is saying, “those who protect it or those who pursue it. The wisest are not the ones with the most years in their lives, but the most life in their years.”
You can take the safe route. Or you can hear the voice of adventure—God’s adventure. Adopt the child. Teach the class. Change careers. Make a difference. Sure it isn’t safe, but what is?
from He Still Moves Stones
Psalm 29
A David Psalm
1–2 29 Bravo, God, bravo!
Gods and all angels shout, “Encore!”
In awe before the glory,
in awe before God’s visible power.
Stand at attention!
Dress your best to honor him!
3 God thunders across the waters,
Brilliant, his voice and his face, streaming brightness—
God, across the flood waters.
4 God’s thunder tympanic,
God’s thunder symphonic.
5 God’s thunder smashes cedars,
God topples the northern cedars.
6 The mountain ranges skip like spring colts,
The high ridges jump like wild kid goats.
7–8 God’s thunder spits fire.
God thunders, the wilderness quakes;
He makes the desert of Kadesh shake.
9 God’s thunder sets the oak trees dancing
A wild dance, whirling; the pelting rain strips their branches.
We fall to our knees—we call out, “Glory!”
10 Above the floodwaters is God’s throne
from which his power flows,
from which he rules the world.
11 God makes his people strong.
God gives his people peace.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, July 19, 2026
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Daniel 6:16-23
The king caved in and ordered Daniel brought and thrown into the lions’ den. But he said to Daniel, “Your God, to whom you are so loyal, is going to get you out of this.”
17 A stone slab was placed over the opening of the den. The king sealed the cover with his signet ring and the signet rings of all his nobles, fixing Daniel’s fate.
18 The king then went back to his palace. He refused supper. He couldn’t sleep. He spent the night fasting.
19–20 At daybreak the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. As he approached the den, he called out anxiously, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve so loyally, saved you from the lions?”
21–22 “O king, live forever!” said Daniel. “My God sent his angel, who closed the mouths of the lions so that they would not hurt me. I’ve been found innocent before God and also before you, O king. I’ve done nothing to harm you.”
23 When the king heard these words, he was happy. He ordered Daniel taken up out of the den. When he was hauled up, there wasn’t a scratch on him. He had trusted his God.
Today's Insights
When King Darius signed a decree that anyone who prayed to someone other than himself would be tossed into the lions’ den (Daniel 6:7), he was commanding a sentence of trial by ordeal—an ancient Near Eastern practice designed to put someone accused of a crime into a dangerous situation. If the person survived, it was seen as proof of their innocence because it would’ve taken divine intervention to save them. When the king realized his decree would condemn Daniel, he couldn’t reverse it since Persian law was irrevocable (vv. 8, 12, 15). Daniel’s survival proved both his innocence of wrongdoing and God’s presence with him, which meant he could legally walk free (vv. 21-22). God’s presence with Daniel reminds us today that no matter our circumstances, He’ll never leave us.
Learn more about having a personal relationship with God.
The God who Saves
Amy Py
When the king heard these words, he was happy. He ordered Daniel taken up out of the den. When he was hauled up, there wasn’t a scratch on him. He had trusted his God. Daniel 6:23
Sentenced to life in prison, Vic shared with friends his sense of longing. When they said that Jesus would fill the empty spaces in Vic’s life, he mocked their statements. To Vic, Jesus being a man who died yet still lived today seemed fantastical. Although skeptical, sometime later he began listening to a Christian radio station and even reading the Bible. Eventually he asked God to reveal Himself to him.
Vic’s anxieties and fears began to fade. He reflected, “Physically, I was incarcerated in a prison with two massive cage-like fences keeping me in, but mentally I was free and protected like Daniel when he was in the den with the lions.” Shortly thereafter, he received Jesus as his Savior.
Vic read the Old Testament story of Daniel, an exile from Judah who was thrown into a den with lions. Daniel had refused to stop praying to God three times a day, even when the king signed an edict disallowing all prayer for thirty days except to himself (Daniel 6:6-10). The king was “greatly distressed” and regretted having to punish him with a certain death by the lions (vv. 14, 16). But God, revealing His power and authority, kept Daniel safe, and “the king was overjoyed” (v. 23).
Whatever our circumstances, including great hardship, God never leaves us. We need only to turn to Him.
Reflect & Pray
How can you find safety and security in God? How can you look to Him for help and strength today?
Freeing God, thank You for canceling my debt of sin through the death of Your Son, Jesus. I look to You for my salvation.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Authority over the Believer
You call me “Teacher” and “Lord,” and rightly so, for that is what I am. —John 13:13
Our Lord never insists on having authority. He never says, “You must.” He leaves us perfectly free. So free that we can spit in his face, as people did, so free that we can put him to death, as people did, and he will never say a word. But when his life has been created inside me by his redemption, I instantly recognize his right to absolute authority over me. It is a moral domination: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power” (Revelation 4:11).
Only the thing that is unworthy in me refuses to bow down to what is worthy. When I meet people who are more righteous than me, I must recognize their worthiness and obey what comes through them. If I don’t, it reveals my own unworthiness. God educates us through people who are a little better than we are—not intellectually better, but “holily” better. He does this until we come under the rule of the Lord himself. When we are under his rule, the attitude of our entire life is one of obedience to him.
The way I understand obedience reveals my growth in grace. We use the word obedience to mean the submission of an inferior to a superior. Our Lord used the word to describe a relationship of equals, that of a Son and a Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Jesus obeyed his Father not because he had no choice in the matter but because he loved him. “I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me” (14:31).
When we truly see our Lord, we cannot help but recognize his moral authority over us. We obey him instantly, eager to show our love for him: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (v. 21).
Psalms 23-25; Acts 21:18-40
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus.
We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed.
