Max Lucado Daily: Max Lucado Daily: Just Like Jesus
When they were young, my daughters loved playing “dress-up.” They’d put on their mom’s shoes, fill up a grown-up purse with crayons and pretend grown-up scenarios. For the moment, they wanted to be just like mom.
Don’t we do the same? We look at ourselves, with our immaturity, our sinfulness, and we want to clothe ourselves in something better. We want to be just like Jesus. This seems like an impossible goal until we accept one simple truth: God will help us. He loves us. Not only does God love each of us exactly as we are, but he wants us, little by little, to become like him. Why? Because he wants us to have a heart like his.
Need to hear that message a few more times? Don’t we all? God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way! He wants you to be just like Jesus!
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26).
From Just Like Jesus
Genesis 11
“God Turned Their Language into ‘Babble’ ”
1–2 11 At one time, the whole Earth spoke the same language. It so happened that as they moved out of the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled down.
3 They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and fire them well.” They used brick for stone and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.”
5 God came down to look over the city and the tower those people had built.
6–9 God took one look and said, “One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they’ll come up with next—they’ll stop at nothing! Come, we’ll go down and garble their speech so they won’t understand each other.” Then God scattered them from there all over the world. And they had to quit building the city. That’s how it came to be called Babel, because there God turned their language into “babble.” From there God scattered them all over the world.
10–11 This is the story of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he had Arphaxad. It was two years after the flood. After he had Arphaxad, he lived 500 more years and had other sons and daughters.
12–13 When Arphaxad was thirty-five years old, he had Shelah. After Arphaxad had Shelah, he lived 403 more years and had other sons and daughters.
14–15 When Shelah was thirty years old, he had Eber. After Shelah had Eber, he lived 403 more years and had other sons and daughters.
16–17 When Eber was thirty-four years old, he had Peleg. After Eber had Peleg, he lived 430 more years and had other sons and daughters.
18–19 When Peleg was thirty years old, he had Reu. After he had Reu, he lived 209 more years and had other sons and daughters.
20–21 When Reu was thirty-two years old, he had Serug. After Reu had Serug, he lived 207 more years and had other sons and daughters.
22–23 When Serug was thirty years old, he had Nahor. After Serug had Nahor, he lived 200 more years and had other sons and daughters.
24–25 When Nahor was twenty-nine years old, he had Terah. After Nahor had Terah, he lived 119 more years and had other sons and daughters.
26 When Terah was seventy years old, he had Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
The Family Tree of Terah
27–28 This is the story of Terah. Terah had Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
Haran had Lot. Haran died before his father, Terah, in the country of his family, Ur of the Chaldees.
29 Abram and Nahor each got married. Abram’s wife was Sarai; Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of his brother Haran. Haran had two daughters, Milcah and Iscah.
30 Sarai was barren; she had no children.
31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and Sarai his daughter-in-law (his son Abram’s wife) and set out with them from Ur of the Chaldees for the land of Canaan. But when they got as far as Haran, they settled down there.
32 Terah lived 205 years. He died in Haran.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, February 01, 2025
by Alyson Kieda
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
1 John 3:1-3, 16-24
What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at
it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn’t recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he’s up to.
2–3 But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own.
This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.
When We Practice Real Love
18–20 My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.
21–24 And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.
Today's Insights
John begins 1 John in a similar way to the opening of his gospel account. In both cases, he goes back to the beginning to affirm Jesus’ identity as God the Son (John 1:1-5; 1 John 1:1-3). In John’s gospel, he does so by showing the Son’s equality with the Father and His primary role in creation: “He was with God in the beginning” and “through him all things were made” (John 1:2-3). In 1 John, the author repeats the idea of Christ’s presence “from the beginning” (1:1) yet affirms that He came and lived among us (v. 2).
Our Father’s Love
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! 1 John 3:1
Today's Devotional
Kim settled in by the window, bag packed, waiting eagerly for her daddy to arrive. But as the bright day darkened and then turned to night, her enthusiasm faded. She realized Daddy wasn’t coming—again.
Kim’s parents were divorced, and she longed to spend time with her father. Not for the first time she thought, I must not really matter. He must not love me.
As Kim later learned—and as all of us who receive Jesus as our Savior come to know—though our earthly parents and others will disappoint us, we have a heavenly Father who loves us and won’t let us down.
John—the author of three inspired biblical letters, the gospel bearing his name, and the book of Revelation—understood the depth of God’s love. In fact, he referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20), identifying himself as someone whose life had been changed by Christ’s love for him. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” he wrote (1 John 3:1).
God loves us so much that He gave His Son Jesus, who laid down His life for us (v. 16; John 3:16). He’s always available to us in prayer, and He promises, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). We can rest secure in His love.
Reflect & Pray
When has another person disappointed you? How have you found comfort in your heavenly Father?
Heavenly Father, thank You for the great love You lavish on me. I rest in Your promise that You’ll never forsake me.
For further study, read In the Grip of God’s Love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, February 01, 2025
The Call of God
Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. —1 Corinthians 1:17
If we are going to preach the gospel, we need to be clear about what the gospel is. In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul says that the gospel—the message God has called on him to deliver—is the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel isn’t Paul’s personal transformation or experience; it isn’t his salvation or sanctification. Paul shares his personal story, but only as an illustration: certain things happened to Paul because of the redemption, but they were not the ultimate reason for it. The ultimate reason Jesus suffered in redemption was to redeem the whole world and place it unimpaired and rehabilitated before the throne of God. This is the gospel, and the only thing we are commissioned to preach.
The difference between Jesus’s act of redemption and our personal holiness is stark: one is cause and the other effect. When we preach, we must be careful where we place the emphasis. Are we placing it on Jesus, or on ourselves? Are we lifting up his holiness, or our own?
When we truly understand the reality of the gospel, we will stop bothering God with questions about ourselves. Imagine, if God were human, how heartsick and tired he would be, listening to the constant requests for our salvation and sanctification! We trouble him day and night, when we should be thanking him. Paul welcomed heartbreak, disillusionment, and tribulation for one reason only: they kept him in unmoved devotion to the gospel of God.
Exodus 27-28; Matthew 21:1-22
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
We begin our Christian life by believing what we are told to believe, then we have to go on to so assimilate our beliefs that they work out in a way that redounds to the glory of God. The danger is in multiplying the acceptation of beliefs we do not make our own.
Conformed to His Image, 381 L
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