Max Lucado Daily: SATAN’S ARSENAL OF UNTRUTHS - September 16, 2025
Satan connives, plots, and deploys tactics. He has a strategy – that’s cause for concern. He is predictable – that is reason for hope. The devil, while potent, is a rotten chess player. He signals his moves in advance. He runs the same play over and over. And since we know it, we can defend against it.
Satan always starts with an untruth. It might be a blatant lie or simply an inaccurate assumption. Either way, it is untrue. Do you remember his words to Eve? “Did God really say, ‘You may not eat from any tree in the garden’?…God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1,5 NIV).
Satan’s greatest weapon is his arsenal of untruths. Be on alert for those lies that he is telling you.
Tame Your Thoughts: Three Tools to Renew Your Mind and Transform Your Life
Leviticus 26
“Don’t make idols for yourselves; don’t set up an image or a sacred pillar for yourselves, and don’t place a carved stone in your land that you can bow down to in worship. I am God, your God.
2 “Keep my Sabbaths; treat my Sanctuary with reverence. I am God.
“If You Live by My Decrees …”
3–5 “If you live by my decrees and obediently keep my commandments, I will send the rains in their seasons, the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. You will thresh until the grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting time; you’ll have more than enough to eat and will live safe and secure in your land.
6–10 “I’ll make the country a place of peace—you’ll be able to go to sleep at night without fear; I’ll get rid of the wild beasts; I’ll eliminate war. You’ll chase out your enemies and defeat them: Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand and do away with them. I’ll give you my full attention: I’ll make sure you prosper, make sure you grow in numbers, and keep my covenant with you in good working order. You’ll still be eating from last year’s harvest when you have to clean out the barns to make room for the new crops.
11–13 “I’ll set up my residence in your neighborhood; I won’t avoid or shun you; I’ll stroll through your streets. I’ll be your God; you’ll be my people. I am God, your personal God who rescued you from Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I ripped off the harness of your slavery so that you can move about freely.
“But If You Refuse to Obey Me …”
14–17 “But if you refuse to obey me and won’t observe my commandments, despising my decrees and holding my laws in contempt by your disobedience, making a shambles of my covenant, I’ll step in and pour on the trouble: debilitating disease, high fevers, blindness, your life leaking out bit by bit. You’ll plant seed but your enemies will eat the crops. I’ll turn my back on you and stand by while your enemies defeat you. People who hate you will govern you. You’ll run scared even when there’s no one chasing you.
18–20 “And if none of this works in getting your attention, I’ll discipline you seven times over for your sins. I’ll break your strong pride: I’ll make the skies above you like a sheet of tin and the ground under you like cast iron. No matter how hard you work, nothing will come of it: No crops out of the ground, no fruit off the trees.
21–22 “If you defy me and refuse to listen, your punishment will be seven times more than your sins: I’ll set wild animals on you; they’ll rob you of your children, kill your cattle, and decimate your numbers until you’ll think you are living in a ghost town.
23–26 “And if even this doesn’t work and you refuse my discipline and continue your defiance, then it will be my turn to defy you. I, yes I, will punish you for your sins seven times over: I’ll let war loose on you, avenging your breaking of the covenant; when you huddle in your cities for protection, I’ll send a deadly epidemic on you and you’ll be helpless before your enemies; when I cut off your bread supply, ten women will bake bread in one oven and ration it out. You’ll eat, but barely—no one will get enough.
27–35 “And if this—even this!—doesn’t work and you still won’t listen, still defy me, I’ll have had enough and in hot anger will defy you, punishing you for your sins seven times over: famine will be so severe that you’ll end up cooking and eating your sons in stews and your daughters in barbecues; I’ll smash your sex-and-religion shrines and all the paraphernalia that goes with them, and then stack your corpses and the idol-corpses in the same piles—I’ll abhor you; I’ll turn your cities into rubble; I’ll clean out your sanctuaries; I’ll hold my nose at the “pleasing aroma” of your sacrifices. I’ll turn your land into a lifeless moonscape—your enemies who come in to take over will be shocked at what they see. I’ll scatter you all over the world and keep after you with the point of my sword in your backs. There’ll be nothing left in your land, nothing going on in your cities. With you gone and dispersed in the countries of your enemies, the land, empty of you, will finally get a break and enjoy its Sabbath years. All the time it’s left there empty, the land will get rest, the Sabbaths it never got when you lived there.
36–39 “As for those among you still alive, I’ll give them over to fearful timidity—even the rustle of a leaf will throw them into a panic. They’ll run here and there, back and forth, as if running for their lives even though no one is after them, tripping and falling over one another in total confusion. You won’t stand a chance against an enemy. You’ll perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will eat you up. Any who are left will slowly rot away in the enemy lands. Rot. And all because of their sins, their sins compounded by their ancestors’ sins.
“On the Other Hand, If They Confess …”
40–42 “On the other hand, if they confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, their treacherous betrayal, the defiance that set off my defiance that sent them off into enemy lands; if by some chance they soften their hard hearts and make amends for their sin, I’ll remember my covenant with Jacob, I’ll remember my covenant with Isaac, and, yes, I’ll remember my covenant with Abraham. And I’ll remember the land.
43–45 “The land will be empty of them and enjoy its Sabbaths while they’re gone. They’ll pay for their sins because they refused my laws and treated my decrees with contempt. But in spite of their behavior, while they are among their enemies I won’t reject or abhor or destroy them completely. I won’t break my covenant with them: I am God, their God. For their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I, with all the nations watching, brought out of Egypt in order to be their God. I am God.”
46 These are the decrees, laws, and instructions that God established between himself and the People of Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
by Winn Collier
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Romans 12:14-21
Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
17–19 Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”
20–21 Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.
Today's Insights
Romans 12 is a marvelous treatise from the apostle Paul on how to live out Jesus’ challenge to be salt and light to this dark world (see Matthew 5:13-14). Through the lives of believers in Christ, the world has the opportunity to see God’s goodness and peace on display. Why? Because of the dramatic contrast goodness and peace provide to the evil and conflict around us. Paul’s words also give a powerful picture of how we’re to live out the gospel. Living out our faith isn’t optional—it’s inherent to being witnesses to the life-changing power of the gospel. What we believe must necessarily make a difference in how we live, and when we live out our faith through the power of the Spirit, we put the heart of God on display.
Overcoming Evil with Good
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21
Doctor Dolittle, the fictional doctor who converses with animals, has delighted fans through books, movies, and plays. However, few people know that author Hugh Lofting first wrote the Dolittle tales to his children from the ghastly trenches of World War I. He later said that the war was too awful to recount in his letters—so he wrote and illustrated stories instead. These whimsical, joy-filled tales were Lofting’s way of pushing back against the war’s horror.
It’s inspiring to see a person moving against the menacing, degrading forces that seem too powerful to thwart. We admire this resilient courage because we fear that injustice, violence, and greed will triumph. Sometimes we fear that the whole world will be “overcome by evil” (Romans 12:21). And these fears are well-founded if we’re left to ourselves. However, God has not left us to ourselves. He fills us with His divine strength, places us in the action, and calls us to “overcome evil with good” (v. 21).
We each overcome evil with good in whatever ways God has put into our hearts. Some of us write beautiful stories. Some of us care for the poor. Some of us make our homes places of welcome. Some of us share God’s story through melody, poetry, or conversation. In a myriad of ways, we carry His goodness and peace into the world (v. 18), overcoming evil as we go.
Reflect & Pray
Where do you see evil lurking? How can you be part of overcoming evil with good?
Dear God, please help me be part of overcoming evil with good.
Check out this article to learn how to live a wholehearted life for Christ.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
The Divine Region Of Religion
When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. — Matthew 6:6
It’s impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without setting aside definite times for secret prayer. The main idea of the life of faith is “My eyes on God, not on people.” When you pray, your motive shouldn’t be to be known as one who prays. Go into an inner chamber—a place where no one will know you are praying—then shut the door and talk to God in secret. Have no motive other than to know your Father in heaven.
“Do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7). God is never impressed by earnestness. It isn’t because we go to him with an earnest desire to be heard that he hears us. He hears us on the basis of the redemption; only because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross are we able to approach God in prayer. If Jesus Christ has been formed inside us by spiritual rebirth, he will press forward in our minds and change our attitude about prayer. No longer will we be driven by commonsense concerns for our lives. No longer will we go to God to get our earthly desires met. We’ll go in order to get into perfect communion with him.
“Everyone who asks receives” (7:8). We pray pious nonsense, without putting our will into it. Then we say that God doesn’t answer our prayers. But we haven’t asked for anything! “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). Asking means willing ourselves to ask for those things which are in keeping with the God whom Jesus Christ revealed; if we are remaining in him, this is exactly what we’ll do. Whenever Jesus talked about prayer, he talked about it with the simplicity of a child. We complicate things and argue with God. We say, “Yes, Lord, but . . .” Jesus said, simply, “Ask.”
Proverbs 25-26; 2 Corinthians 9
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Beware of bartering the Word of God for a more suitable conception of your own.
Disciples Indeed, 386 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
DRAWING A LINE - #10092
People become like the environment they spend their time in. At least that's what I've been told. For example, if you work at IBM, you become amazingly well organized for some strange reason. If you live in a college town, or if you work around a college, it's amazing how your vocabulary can change; sometimes increases. Oh, and your clothing? Yeah, it becomes a little bit more collegiate. You know?
I've noticed that people who live near the ocean or resort areas, they just kind of dress, you know, more loose, more casually all year long. If you move from the North to the South, you may very well find your pace slowing down to match your environment.
When I moved to the New York area, I know my driving changed. They say in New York about the roads there that there are two kinds of people, the quick and the dead, and I decided to become the quick. You become like your environment. That seems to be a pretty consistent principle; maybe too consistent.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Drawing a Line."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Timothy 3 - one of the more amazing chapters in the Bible. If you want to read a startling description of the last days of this planet, read 2 Timothy 3 with today's newspaper or news website in your other hand. It's startling because of how it matches up with our headlines. Verse 1 says, "There will be dangerous times." And it talks about these characteristics of people that lead you to believe the reason it's going to be dangerous is because of the death of love. There won't be much love in that world.
Paul's orders to Timothy are included in this chapter, and God's orders to us. Verse 14, listen: "But as for you, you continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of because you know those from whom you have learned it. All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Now, Paul is saying if you live in a world that is racing away from God's standards, you can't afford to become like your environment even a little.
See, there's always a noticeable difference between lost people and God's people. It's kind of my equal distance theory. There's always an equal distance between the standards and lifestyles of the people of God and the people of the world.
Let's say figuratively speaking that the church, or the people of God, are always ten miles closer to God than the world is. The problem is that as the world moves to the left, away from God, so does the church. Now, we're still ten miles away from the marriages of the world, and from the sexual standards of the world, and their hardness, and their love of material things. But as the world moves faster and faster away from God's standards, so do we. We're still the same distance from our culture. So, in a matter of like five or ten years, we Christians are where lost people were only a few years ago, accepting what we thought we would never accept, doing what we never thought we'd do, watching, listening to what we never thought would be part of our lives. But we can feel pretty good about it, because we're better than the folks around us.
But see, the rate of speeding away from God is accelerating right now, and God says, "Hey, you continue where you are! Don't move! Stand still! Don't move any further." He's not saying detach yourself from people who need Him. No, you live in the world, but you don't live as part of it. You don't march to that drumbeat. You know, you feel like you're pretty good if you compare yourself to what the world is doing, or maybe even what most Christians are doing, and saying and accepting. But that's not the measure.
We're to measure ourselves by the God-breathed scriptures of the Lord himself. If you turn the light of God's Word on your lifestyle, maybe you'll see how far you've drifted. You just can't move any more. We've got to get back to God's standards for love, for marriage, for honesty, for family, our relationships.
Our environment is terminally polluted. We can't be like our environment. It's time to draw the line.
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