Max Lucado Daily: JESUS BUILDS BRIDGES - November 19, 2025
People came to Jesus. My, how they came to him! They touched him as he walked down the street; they followed him around the sea; they invited him into their homes and placed their children at his feet. Why? Because he refused to be a statue in a cathedral or a priest in an elevated pulpit. He chose instead to be Jesus.
There’s not a hint of one person who was afraid to draw near him. There were those who mocked him. Those who were envious of him. There were those who misunderstood him. There was not one person who was reluctant to approach him for fear of being rejected.
Remember that. Remember that the next time you find yourself amazed at your own failures. Or the next time acidic accusations burn holes in your soul. Remember, it’s man who creates the distance. It’s Jesus who builds the bridge!
The Lucado Inspirational Reader
Deuteronomy 8
Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.
6–9 So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
10 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
11–16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,
the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness,
those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17–18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
19–20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I’m on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You’ll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn’t obey the Voice of God, your God.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
by Leslie Koh
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Psalm 6:4-10
Break in, God, and break up this fight;
if you love me at all, get me out of here.
I’m no good to you dead, am I?
I can’t sing in your choir if I’m buried in some tomb!
6–7 I’m tired of all this—so tired. My bed
has been floating forty days and nights
On the flood of my tears.
My mattress is soaked, soggy with tears.
The sockets of my eyes are black holes;
nearly blind, I squint and grope.
8–9 Get out of here, you Devil’s crew:
at last God has heard my sobs.
My requests have all been granted,
my prayers are answered.
10 Cowards, my enemies disappear.
Disgraced, they turn tail and run.
Today's Insights
Though the occasion isn’t identified, David’s calamity in Psalm 6 is clear: “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?” (vv. 2-3). The weightiness of the situation also comes through in verses 6-7: “I am worn out from my groaning. . . . My eyes grow weak with sorrow.” From the aches and ashes of his distress, David’s prayers arose (vv. 4-5), and God heard them (vv. 8-9). The same principle is in play in 1 Samuel 1. Hannah, who was childless and oppressed with grief, cried out to God (v. 10). He answered her (vv. 17, 20), and she responded in praise to His goodness (2:1-10). When we’re in trouble, discouraged, or worried, we can come to God in prayer and be assured that He hears us and will answer according to His will.
Listen to how God's peace replaces worry when we draw near in prayer.
Just Pray
The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer. Psalm 6:9
The freelance project wasn’t working out well. The clients were demanding what seemed to be the impossible, and I was stressed and discouraged. My first reaction was just to walk away from it, which would mean not getting paid for the work I’d done—and also eliminating the possibility of future projects with them. Then the thought came to me: Have you prayed to God yet?
Mentally slapping my forehead, I realized that I’d neglected to ask God for help! And so I prayed . . . and immediately felt better. Nothing had changed—the project remained challenging—but I felt peace wash over me. Now I knew I could rest in God: I’d just do whatever I could and leave the outcome to Him.
Perhaps David felt the same way when he submitted his fears and worries to God. In Psalm 6, he starts off describing his anguish at being hounded by his enemies (vv. 3, 7). But as he continued turning to God for help, he felt reassured: “The Lord has heard my cry . . . the Lord accepts my prayer” (v. 9).
That truth came with the hope that he would be delivered, in God’s time and way (v. 10). Prayer isn’t some feel-good technique, but it’s a direct connection with the all-seeing, all-powerful One who will help us in His time and way. Feeling down or discouraged? Just pray—God hears.
Reflect & Pray
What troubles or worries are you facing now? How can you remind yourself to keep bringing them to God?
Dear God, thank You for hearing my prayers for help. Please grant me peace, for I know I can leave my troubles in Your mighty, loving hands.
For further study, listen to Praying with God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Conviction of Sin
When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin. —John 16:8
Very few of us know anything about the conviction of sin. We know what it feels like to be disturbed at having done something wrong, but we don’t know conviction. To be convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit is to have every earthly relationship blotted out and to stand alone with the heavenly Father, knowing fully whom we have wronged: “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4).
When we are convicted of sin in this way, we know with every power of our conscience that God dare not forgive us—not without a price being paid. If he did, it would mean that we have a stronger sense of justice than God. God’s forgiveness is the great miracle of his grace, but it cost him the breaking of his heart in the death of Christ. Only through this death is the divine nature able to forgive while remaining true to itself. It’s shallow nonsense to say that the reason God forgives us is that God is love. Once we’ve been convicted of sin, we’ll never say this again. The love of God means Calvary and nothing less. The love of God is written on the cross and nowhere else. Only on the cross is God’s conscience satisfied.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean only that I am saved from hell and made right for heaven. It means that I am forgiven into a new relationship; I am re-created and identified with God in Christ. The miracle of redemption is that God turns me, an unholy being, into the standard of himself, the Holy One. He does this by giving me a new disposition, the disposition of his Son, Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel 11-13; James 1
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The message of the prophets is that although they have forsaken God, it has not altered God. The Apostle Paul emphasizes the same truth, that God remains God even when we are unfaithful (see 2 Timothy 2:13). Never interpret God as changing with our changes. He never does; there is no variableness in Him.
Notes on Ezekiel, 1477 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
THE SURPRISING REASON YOU ARE WHERE YOU ARE - #10138
Some years ago, we took a delegation of teenagers to a youth conference at the Jersey Shore, and one of our volunteers was one of the counselors. One evening she left the meeting early to check on one of the kids from our group. She started walking down the Boardwalk. Suddenly she hears this cry for help from the water down below. She realized that a girl was out there in that dark ocean about to drown. So she yelled for others to come, she pulled off her shoes and she jumped into the water. She knew this was a life-or-death situation, and she said, "I just had to do something." Pretty soon a couple of men jumped in to help her and together they were able to rescue that young woman. And you know what? Our friend realized the real reason she had been out on the Boardwalk that night. Much to her surprise, she had literally been placed there to save a life!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Surprising Reason You Are Where You Are."
Now our word for today from the Word of God comes from the amazing story of Esther, which is told in the book in the Bible that carries her name. Esther was a young Jewish woman who was in Persia as part of the Jews who had been brought there when the Persians conquered her people. But through an amazing series of events, she becomes the Queen of Persia, the wife of the most powerful man in the world, but no one knew she was a Jew.
When a power-mad member of the king's court engineered this royal decree to have the Jews annihilated, the man who raised Esther sent her a message, challenging her to use her access to the king to save her people. To do so, she would literally have to risk her life because the law required that anyone who came to the king uninvited - even the queen - would be put to death unless the king extended his golden scepter to spare them, and Esther had not been summoned by the king for a month.
The challenge Esther receives is in our word for today from the Word of God, Esther 4:14, and it may very well be the challenge that our Savior has for you at this point in your life. Here it is. "Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" In other words, God has placed you where you are, not just to enjoy the benefits of your position, but to save lives!
Have you considered that maybe that's the same reason you've been positioned where you are? You work where you work, you live where you live, you go to school where you go to school, you do what you do because God has assigned you there to be those people's link to Jesus!
Some years ago, my friend Gary was talking with a woman whose dad teaches at one of America's military academies. This woman was really spiritually burdened for her dad. Gary knows a lot of influential people and he offered to call the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invite her dad to an upcoming adult outreach. Or, he said, "I'll even call a Christian cabinet member I know in this administration." But to my friend's surprise, this woman said, "No, that won't work." Gary asked her what would work - who could get through to her father. Her answer? "Another professor. Someone like him."
That's probably how the people around you are going to be reached for Christ - through someone who does what they do, lives where they live, faces what they face. And for the people around you, that would be you.
I don't know what you think of when I say the word "evangelist" - probably someone preaching on a crusade platform - but I hope you'll start to think of the man or woman in the mirror. Because all that is, is someone who carries the Good News of Jesus to people who need Him. Of all of the millions of God's children, you're the one He has positioned to rescue the people around you. And where you are is your stretch of the beach and you're His designated lifeguard.
Like a young woman near the ocean that night, like that Jewish girl placed in a strategic spot, you've been placed where you are to save someone who is dying - eternally if they die without Christ. You're not there just to enjoy your spot. You are there to save lives!
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