Max Lucado Daily: HEART-SHAPING PROMISES - December 3, 2025
No day is accidental or incidental. No acts are random or wasted. Look at Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem. A king ordered a census. Joseph was forced to travel. Mary, round as a ladybug, bounced on a donkey’s back. The hotel was full, the hour was late. The event was one big hassle. Yet out of the hassle, hope was born. It still is.
I don’t like hassles. But I love Christmas because it reminds us of the heart-shaping promises of Christmas. Long after the guests have left, and the carolers have gone home, and the lights have come down, these promises endure: God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God. Perhaps you could use some Christmas this Christmas?
Because of Bethlehem
Deuteronomy 19
When God, your God, throws the nations out of the country that God, your God, is giving you and you settle down in their cities and houses, you are to set aside three easily accessible cities in the land that God, your God, is giving you as your very own. Divide your land into thirds, this land that God, your God, is giving you to possess, and build roads to the towns so that anyone who accidentally kills another can flee there.
4–7 This is the guideline for the murderer who flees there to take refuge: He has to have killed his neighbor without premeditation and with no history of bad blood between them. For instance, a man goes with his neighbor into the woods to cut a tree; he swings the ax, the head slips off the handle and hits his neighbor, killing him. He may then flee to one of these cities and save his life. If the city is too far away, the avenger of blood racing in hot-blooded pursuit might catch him since it’s such a long distance, and kill him even though he didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t his fault. There was no history of hatred between them. Therefore I command you: Set aside the three cities for yourselves.
8–10 When God, your God, enlarges your land, extending its borders as he solemnly promised your ancestors, by giving you the whole land he promised them because you are diligently living the way I’m commanding you today, namely, to love God, your God, and do what he tells you all your life; and when that happens, then add three more to these three cities so that there is no chance of innocent blood being spilled in your land. God, your God, is giving you this land as an inheritance—you don’t want to pollute it with innocent blood and bring bloodguilt upon yourselves.
11–13 On the other hand, if a man with a history of hatred toward his neighbor waits in ambush, then jumps him, mauls and kills him, and then runs to one of these cities, that’s a different story. The elders of his own city are to send for him and have him brought back. They are to hand him over to the avenger of blood for execution. Don’t feel sorry for him. Clean out the pollution of wrongful murder from Israel so that you’ll be able to live well and breathe clean air.
14 Don’t move your neighbor’s boundary markers, the longstanding landmarks set up by your pioneer ancestors defining their property.
15 You cannot convict anyone of a crime or sin on the word of one witness. You need two or three witnesses to make a case.
16–21 If a hostile witness stands to accuse someone of a wrong, then both parties involved in the quarrel must stand in the Presence of God before the priests and judges who are in office at that time. The judges must conduct a careful investigation; if the witness turns out to be a false witness and has lied against his fellow Israelite, give him the same medicine he intended for the other party. Clean the polluting evil from your company. People will hear of what you’ve done and be impressed; that will put a stop to this kind of evil among you. Don’t feel sorry for the person: It’s life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
by Marvin Williams
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Psalm 119:65-72
Be good to your servant, God;
be as good as your Word.
Train me in good common sense;
I’m thoroughly committed to living your way.
Before I learned to answer you, I wandered all over the place,
but now I’m in step with your Word.
You are good, and the source of good;
train me in your goodness.
The godless spread lies about me,
but I focus my attention on what you are saying;
They’re bland as a bucket of lard,
while I dance to the tune of your revelation.
My troubles turned out all for the best—
they forced me to learn from your textbook.
Truth from your mouth means more to me
than striking it rich in a gold mine.
Today's Insights
Psalm 119 is an extended song/poem about the beauty of the law even in hard times. In today’s text (vv. 65-72), the psalmist uses a variety of terms to describe the law, including “word,” “commands,” “decrees,” “precepts,” and “law.” These ideas are intensely personal for him, for he speaks from his experiences of pain. He uses terms like “afflicted” (vv. 67, 71) and “smeared . . . with lies” (v. 69) to cry out to God‚ grateful for all he’d learned from those seasons of struggle. In spite of his afflictions and mistreatment, however, he concludes in verse 68, “You are good, and what you do is good.” In a broken world filled with hatred and pain, we too can rest in the never-failing goodness of God. He uses all things, even our trials, for our spiritual growth and to conform us to the image of His Son, Jesus.
Growth Through Pain
It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. Psalm 119:71
The brain is remarkably small, but stress can make it even smaller. Recent research has revealed that cumulative stress can shrink the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for managing emotions, impulses, and social interactions. This shrinkage is linked to anxiety and depression, highlighting the toll that a lifetime of stress can take. But there’s good news—the brain’s plasticity allows it to heal through intentional practices like exercise, meditation, and meaningful relationships.
The psalmist in Psalm 119 understood this idea of growth and healing after facing stress and hardship: “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (v. 71). Affliction, though painful, became the psalmist’s teacher—taking us from being “astray” from God to choosing to “obey [His] word” (v. 67). The psalmist expresses gratitude for his bitter medicine and God’s goodness (v. 68). While he understood that affliction and suffering could diminish him, he trusted God to use those experiences to refine and restore him (v. 66).
Like our brains, our spirits are capable of being stretched. God uses this stretching to cause growth and renewal. Through Scripture, prayer, and a Spirit-inspired perspective, He can reverse the effects of our hardships. He can use our afflictions for our spiritual growth, transforming pain into purpose.
Reflect & Pray
How has God helped you grow in faith through suffering? How have you embraced gratitude?
Loving God, thank You for teaching me through my trials.
To learn more about faith in pain, read Why? Seeing God in Our Pain.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
By the Power of the Spirit
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. — 1 Corinthians 2:4
When you preach, never substitute your own experience of salvation or sanctification for confidence in the power of the gospel. If you do, you will become an obstacle, blocking others’ access to spiritual reality. You have to make sure that, if you do share your knowledge of the way of salvation, you remain rooted and grounded in faith in God. Never rely on rhetorical skills; never seek to preach “with wise and persuasive words.” Rely instead on the Holy Spirit and on the certainty of God’s redemptive power. When you do, he will create his own life in the souls of those to whom you preach.
Once you are rooted in reality, nothing can shake you. If your faith is rooted only in your experiences, anything that happens is likely to disturb it. But nothing can ever disturb God or the almighty reality of redemption. Base your faith on redemption, and you will be as eternally secure as God. Get into personal contact with Jesus Christ, and you will never be moved again. This is what it means to be sanctified.
God puts his disapproval on our experiences when we begin to think of them as ends in themselves. Sanctification isn’t merely an experience; sanctification itself has to be sanctified. Jesus didn’t have a sanctified experience; he led a sanctified life, and he prayed that his disciples would do the same: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (John 17:18–19). After I’ve had the experience of sanctification, I must deliberately give my sanctified life to God for his service so that he can use me as his hands and feet.
Ezekiel 45-46; 1 John 2
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The fiery furnaces are there by God’s direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances; we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.
The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 674 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
NAMES ON YOUR HEART - #10148
One of the large churches in our area started a new building and they announced it would be for community outreach. But they did something I've never seen a church do before. They gathered the congregation around the just-completed foundation of that new building and they asked them to throw something into the foundation. Now you've no doubt seen people's names on the outside of a building's foundation, especially on the cornerstone. But these folks were actually putting names inside the foundation - the names of people they care about who don't belong to Jesus yet - people they are hoping and praying will be in heaven with them some day.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Names on Your Heart."
That's what should be at the foundation of every church, every ministry, every child of God - the names of specific lost people who we want to rescue. Here's a great example of how it's supposed to work. It's in our word for today from the Word of God.
In John 1:41-42, we find that a young fisherman named Andrew has just discovered Jesus Christ. Notice his very first instinct: "The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, 'We have found the Messiah'... And he brought him to Jesus." Notice the first thing that happened was that Andrew had a name laid on his heart, a specific person he wanted to meet Jesus as he had. And we all know what a world-changer Simon Peter turned out to be because of someone who loved him enough to bring him to Jesus.
There's someone like that in your life - someone who may never make it to Jesus if you don't bring them. And God is trying to plant their name deep in the foundation of your heart, so that person becomes your own personal spiritual mission from God. You need to begin to pray what I call the 3-open prayer on their behalf right now: First, "Lord, open a door." That's a natural opportunity for you to bring up your personal relationship with Jesus. Then, "Lord, open their heart." In other words, do things in that person's heart or life that will make them surprisingly ready to hear about You. And, finally, "Lord, open my mouth." Give me the courage, the words, the tone, and the approach. Let's try those: "Lord, open a door. Lord, open their heart. Lord, open my mouth." By the way, you don't have to pray, "If it be Your will." It is.
It's one thing to talk and pray generally about all those people out there. It's something else to have a burden with a name - a burden that acknowledges your personal responsibility to be the one to introduce that person to Jesus. That's why Jesus put you in their life in the first place! You've been divinely assigned to them.
And lost people should be the consuming passion of every Christian church, every Christian ministry. Our Lord's personal mission statement was to "seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). How can ours be anything less than that?
For all of us, it's just so easy to fall into doing what's easy - which is to have a ministry that's "all about us," "by us," "to us." But Jesus is all about "them." We've got to ask Him to help us see what He sees when He looks at the people all around us. They are the future inhabitants of hell, unless someone intervenes with the love and the hope that only Jesus has.
So would you make the names of some lost people that you want to be in heaven with you part of the foundation of your life, your priorities, your passion, your prayer. They're why He came, and they are why He put you where you are.
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