Max Lucado Daily: SPEAK THE TRUTH - May 22, 2026
In Acts 1:8 Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses—in Jerusalem, in all of Judea, in Samaria, and in every part of the world” (MSG). We are God’s witnesses.
And we are to speak truthfully. God loves the truth and God hates deceit. But Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (NIV). How do we explain our dishonesty? Well, for one thing, we don’t like the truth because the truth isn’t fun. The wages of deceit is death. Not death of the body, perhaps, but death of a marriage, a conscience, a career, or faith. But perhaps the most tragic death that occurs from deceit is our witness.
Examine your heart. Do you tell the truth…always? If not, start today. Be just like Jesus. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Just Like Jesus
2 Samuel 11
David’s Sin and Sorrow
1 11 When that time of year came around again, the anniversary of the Ammonite aggression, David dispatched Joab and his fighting men of Israel in full force to destroy the Ammonites for good. They laid siege to Rabbah, but David stayed in Jerusalem.
2–5 One late afternoon, David got up from taking his nap and was strolling on the roof of the palace. From his vantage point on the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was stunningly beautiful. David sent to ask about her, and was told, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite?” David sent his agents to get her. After she arrived, he went to bed with her. (This occurred during the time of “purification” following her period.) Then she returned home. Before long she realized she was pregnant.
Later she sent word to David: “I’m pregnant.”
6 David then got in touch with Joab: “Send Uriah the Hittite to me.” Joab sent him.
7–8 When he arrived, David asked him for news from the front—how things were going with Joab and the troops and with the fighting. Then he said to Uriah, “Go home. Have a refreshing bath and a good night’s rest.”
8–9 After Uriah left the palace, an informant of the king was sent after him. But Uriah didn’t go home. He slept that night at the palace entrance, along with the king’s servants.
10 David was told that Uriah had not gone home. He asked Uriah, “Didn’t you just come off a hard trip? So why didn’t you go home?”
11 Uriah replied to David, “The Chest is out there with the fighting men of Israel and Judah—in tents. My master Joab and his servants are roughing it out in the fields. So, how can I go home and eat and drink and enjoy my wife? On your life, I’ll not do it!”
12–13 “All right,” said David, “have it your way. Stay for the day and I’ll send you back tomorrow.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem the rest of the day.
The next day David invited him to eat and drink with him, and David got him drunk. But in the evening Uriah again went out and slept with his master’s servants. He didn’t go home.
14–15 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Put Uriah in the front lines where the fighting is the fiercest. Then pull back and leave him exposed so that he’s sure to be killed.”
16–17 So Joab, holding the city under siege, put Uriah in a place where he knew there were fierce enemy fighters. When the city’s defenders came out to fight Joab, some of David’s soldiers were killed, including Uriah the Hittite.
18–21 Joab sent David a full report on the battle. He instructed the messenger, “After you have given to the king a detailed report on the battle, if he flares in anger, say, ‘And by the way, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.’ ”
22–24 Joab’s messenger arrived in Jerusalem and gave the king a full report. He said, “The enemy was too much for us. They advanced on us in the open field, and we pushed them back to the city gate. But then arrows came hot and heavy on us from the city wall, and eighteen of the king’s soldiers died.”
25 When the messenger completed his report of the battle, David got angry at Joab. He vented it on the messenger: “Why did you get so close to the city? Didn’t you know you’d be attacked from the wall? Didn’t you remember how Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth got killed? Wasn’t it a woman who dropped a millstone on him from the wall and crushed him at Thebez? Why did you go close to the wall!”
“By the way,” said Joab’s messenger, “your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.”
Then David told the messenger, “Oh. I see. Tell Joab, ‘Don’t trouble yourself over this. War kills—sometimes one, sometimes another—you never know who’s next. Redouble your assault on the city and destroy it.’ Encourage Joab.”
26–27 When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she grieved for her husband. When the time of mourning was over, David sent someone to bring her to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son.
27–3 12 But God was not at all pleased with what David had done,
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, May 22, 2026
by Kirsten Holmberg
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Isaiah 41:17-20
“The poor and homeless are desperate for water,
their tongues parched and no water to be found.
But I’m there to be found, I’m there for them,
and I, God of Israel, will not leave them thirsty.
I’ll open up rivers for them on the barren hills,
spout fountains in the valleys.
I’ll turn the baked-clay badlands into a cool pond,
the waterless waste into splashing creeks.
I’ll plant the red cedar in that treeless wasteland,
also acacia, myrtle, and olive.
I’ll place the cypress in the desert,
with plenty of oaks and pines.
Everyone will see this. No one can miss it—
unavoidable, indisputable evidence
That I, God, personally did this.
It’s created and signed by The Holy of Israel.
Today's Insights
In chapters 1-39, Isaiah warns an unrepentant people that God will use the Assyrians and the Babylonians to discipline them for their idolatrous unfaithfulness. But beginning in chapter 40, the prophet extols God’s grace and covenantal kindness and prophesies a future restoration and glorious blessing. As the sovereign God, He has the power to save, protect, and restore (40:10-17). The prophet also reminds them of God’s loving, providential care. The Israelites have a very special relationship with Him, having been graciously chosen to be His servant (41:8). God won’t abandon them but will keep them close and care for them (vv. 8-10, 17). He’ll bountifully provide for them and turn the arid desert into a land of flowing water and great productivity (vv. 18-19). Like the people in Isaiah’s days, creation reminds us that He is “the Lord” (v. 13), our “Redeemer” (v. 14), “the Holy One of Israel,” and Creator (v. 20). We can trust Him with the circumstances in our lives.
Seeking God’s Face
I will set . . . the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know . . . the Lord has done this. Isaiah 41:19-20
Those who drive along Highway 18 in western Oregon each fall are greeted with a delightful surprise from the tree-covered hillside flanking the road: a giant smiley face. The cheerful face is only visible in the autumn when the Larch tree needles turn yellow, contrasting with the surrounding, dark green Douglas fir trees (which create the eyes and mouth). A lumber company planted the three-hundred-foot-diameter face in 2011 as part of an effort to replenish the timber they’d harvested.
Isaiah invites us to know God as the one who brings life to desolate places. He reminded the Israelites during the barrenness of their captivity that God “[makes] rivers flow,” can “turn the desert into pools of water,” and grow “the cedar and the acacia” in the desert (Isaiah 41:18-19). God does these things not solely for His (and our) delight; He plants junipers, fir, and cypress “so that people may see and know” (v. 20) that He authors all and will ultimately redeem all—even those places thought to be a “wasteland” (v. 19).
Though we may not glimpse a face smiling back at us from a hillside, all of creation can remind us of God’s redemptive power over our world and our individual circumstances—even in the wake (or fear) of devastation. Let’s seek His face as our source of hope and joy amid our struggles.
Reflect & Pray
When has God brought joy or hope to a place of sadness in your life? How does creation direct your focus to Him in times of hardship?
Thank You, dear Father, for Your creative and redemptive work in the world.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, May 22, 2026
Now This Explains It
. . . that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.— John 17:21
If you are walking a lonely path just now, read John 17. It explains exactly why you are where you are: Jesus has prayed that you may be one with him, as he is one with the Father. Jesus isn’t leaving you all alone; he is getting you alone with him, so that his prayer for oneness might be answered. Are you helping God to answer Jesus’s prayer? Or do you have some other goal for your life? Since you became a disciple, you cannot be as independent as you used to be.
Some of us think God’s entire purpose is to answer our prayers. But there is only one prayer that God must answer, and that is the prayer of Jesus: “. . . that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” Are you this intimate with Jesus?
God isn’t concerned about our plans. He doesn’t say, “Do you want to go through this trial? Do you want to suffer this loss?” He allows things to happen to us for his own purposes. Either the things we go through make us sweeter, better, and nobler, or they make us more critical and fault-finding, more insistent on having our own way. Either trials and difficulties make us fiends, or they make us saints; it depends entirely on our relationship with God. If our relationship to him is one in which we always say, “Your will be done,” then we will have the consolation of John 17. We will know that our Father is working according to his wisdom and toward his ends, and this will prevent us from becoming mean and cynical.
Jesus has prayed for nothing less than absolute oneness with him. Some of us are far from this state of oneness, but we can be sure that, because Jesus has prayed that it may be so, God won’t leave us alone until it is.
1 Chronicles 16-18; John 7:28-53
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1449 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, May 22, 2026
Aliens - And Beyond - #10269
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:11
We’ve been looking for them, at least since I was a kid. Life forms from somewhere else in the universe.
In the 1930s for example, famed actor, Orson Welles, freaked out a nation with a radio broadcast of simulated news bulletins. Millions were convinced an alien invasion was taking place.
And then in the 1950’s, sightings of UFO’s triggered reports of downed aliens secretly kept in New Mexico’s infamous “Area 51.” And then in the 1990s, the hit TV series, “X Files.”
Now our government has started releasing extensive files with all kinds of footage of aerial phenomena. Is it military technology? The interplanetary visitors we’ve been waiting for? Or spiritual forces, as the Bible talks about in a section about “how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:9).
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Aliens – And Beyond.”
In our broader popular culture, extraterrestrial life is one of the most enduring mysteries of the past century. But it’s just one of many things in the “beyond us” category.
Astronauts return from space in awe of the magnitude of what they have seen beyond our world. And millions of us are endlessly curious about a buffet of spiritualities and unexplainable spiritual phenomena.
And while our fascination with things “beyond us” takes us down many different trails, there is one common source.
There’s a yearning in our soul that needs something bigger than ourselves. Bigger than can be explained.
And the revealing explanation for this comes from the greatest “beyond us” of all. The God who created us. Who says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, our word for today from the Word of God:
“God has placed eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
We are looking for something that will last forever!
Which effectively eliminates everything “earth.” Oh, we try all kinds of relationships and accomplishments and experiences – but they don’t last! And all of our ventures into the unknown and unexplainable are ultimately, well, substitute supernaturals. Little bridges that leave us stranded. Because none of them reach the destination our soul craves.
Knowing our Creator. For He tells us that we were “created by Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16). And as He prayed, Jesus said, “This is the way to have eternal life – to know You, the only true God” (John 17:3).
But our search for lasting love and peace and meaning has not taken us to Him. It has taken us away from Him. God describes it this way: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray; each of us has turned to our own way” (Isaiah 53:6). The opposite of God’s way.
Tragically, that has left us “without God and without hope” (Ephesians 2:12). Alone in His universe. By our choice, not His.
A lot of religions talk about God at the top of a mountain. And us on many different roads, hoping they will lead to Him.
But the divine bombshell is this amazing reality: we can’t possibly reach a sinless God, no matter which road we choose. But God loves us too much to leave us lost.
So in the greatest act of love in human history, He came down from the mountain to bring us to Him! At the unspeakable price of dying to pay the penalty for the very sinning we’ve done against Him. In the Bible’s words: “Christ died for sinners to bring you safely home to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
Then He rose from the dead to give us a gift that answers the eternity in our heart.
Life. Eternal life!
That life is within your reach today.
That’s what our website is all about, and I encourage you to go to ANewStory.com. There you’ll see from the Bible how to begin this life-changing relationship with the Jesus.
Suddenly all the scattered pieces of our life make something. All our fear of the future is swallowed up by life that lasts forever. And the cosmic loneliness of our life is finally satisfied by the endless love of God.
No, the answer is not “out there."
It’s right here. In the Savior waiting for us with arms open wide.
