Max Lucado Daily: God is For You
Paul asks the question in Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who can be against us?"
The question isn't simply, "Who can be against you?" You could answer that one. Who is against you? Disease, inflation, corruption, exhaustion. Calamities confront, and fears imprison. Were Paul's question, "Who can be against us?" we could list our foes much easier than we could fight them.
But God is for us. God is for us. God is for us! Your parents may have forgotten you, your teachers may have neglected you, your siblings may be ashamed of you; but within reach of your prayers is the maker of the oceans. God!
God is for you. Not "may be," not "has been," or "was," but God is! He is for you. Today. At this hour. At this minute. As you hear this, He is with you. God is for you!
From The Lucado Inspirational Reader
Deuteronomy 11
So love God, your God;
guard well his rules and regulations;
obey his commandments for the rest of time.
2–7 Today it’s very clear that it isn’t your children who are front and center here: They weren’t in on what God did, didn’t see the acts, didn’t experience the discipline, didn’t marvel at his greatness, the way he displayed his power in the miracle-signs and deeds that he let loose in Egypt on Pharaoh king of Egypt and all his land, the way he took care of the Egyptian army, its horses and chariots, burying them in the waters of the Red Sea as they pursued you. God drowned them. And you’re standing here today alive. Nor was it your children who saw how God took care of you in the wilderness up until the time you arrived here, what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab son of Reuben, how the Earth opened its jaws and swallowed them with their families—their tents, and everything around them—right out of the middle of Israel. Yes, it was you—your eyes—that saw every great thing that God did.
8–9 So it’s you who are in charge of keeping the entire commandment that I command you today so that you’ll have the strength to invade and possess the land that you are crossing the river to make your own. Your obedience will give you a long life on the soil that God promised to give your ancestors and their children, a land flowing with milk and honey.
10–12 The land you are entering to take up ownership isn’t like Egypt, the land you left, where you had to plant your own seed and water it yourselves as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are about to cross the river and take for your own is a land of mountains and valleys; it drinks water that rains from the sky. It’s a land that God, your God, personally tends—he’s the gardener—he alone keeps his eye on it all year long.
13–15 From now on if you listen obediently to the commandments that I am commanding you today, love God, your God, and serve him with everything you have within you, he’ll take charge of sending the rain at the right time, both autumn and spring rains, so that you’ll be able to harvest your grain, your grapes, your olives. He’ll make sure there’s plenty of grass for your animals. You’ll have plenty to eat.
16–17 But be vigilant, lest you be seduced away and end up serving and worshiping other gods and God erupts in anger and shuts down Heaven so there’s no rain and nothing grows in the fields, and in no time at all you’re starved out—not a trace of you left on the good land that God is giving you.
18–21 Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night. Inscribe them on the doorposts and gates of your cities so that you’ll live a long time, and your children with you, on the soil that God promised to give your ancestors for as long as there is a sky over the Earth.
22–25 That’s right. If you diligently keep all this commandment that I command you to obey—love God, your God, do what he tells you, stick close to him—God on his part will drive out all these nations that stand in your way. Yes, he’ll drive out nations much bigger and stronger than you. Every square inch on which you place your foot will be yours. Your borders will stretch from the wilderness to the mountains of Lebanon, from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. No one will be able to stand in your way. Everywhere you go, God-sent fear and trembling will precede you, just as he promised.
26 I’ve brought you today to the crossroads of Blessing and Curse.
27 The Blessing: if you listen obediently to the commandments of God, your God, which I command you today.
28 The Curse: if you don’t pay attention to the commandments of God, your God, but leave the road that I command you today, following other gods of which you know nothing.
29–30 Here’s what comes next: When God, your God, brings you into the land you are going into to make your own, you are to give out the Blessing from Mount Gerizim and the Curse from Mount Ebal. After you cross the Jordan River, follow the road to the west through Canaanite settlements in the valley near Gilgal and the Oaks of Moreh.
31–32 You are crossing the Jordan River to invade and take the land that God, your God, is giving you. Be vigilant. Observe all the regulations and rules I am setting before you today.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, November 22, 2025
by Sheridan Voysey
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
John 12:1-8
Anointing His Feet
1–3 12 Six days before Passover, Jesus entered Bethany where Lazarus, so recently raised from the dead, was living. Lazarus and his sisters invited Jesus to dinner at their home. Martha served. Lazarus was one of those sitting at the table with them. Mary came in with a jar of very expensive aromatic oils, anointed and massaged Jesus’ feet, and then wiped them with her hair. The fragrance of the oils filled the house.
4–6 Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, even then getting ready to betray him, said, “Why wasn’t this oil sold and the money given to the poor? It would have easily brought three hundred silver pieces.” He said this not because he cared two cents about the poor but because he was a thief. He was in charge of their common funds, but also embezzled them.
7–8 Jesus said, “Let her alone. She’s anticipating and honoring the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you. You don’t always have me.”
Today's Insights
Through her actions, Mary of Bethany displayed how precious Jesus was to her. Several things are worth noting in this account. Her devotion was costly: “Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume . . . . It was worth a year’s wages” (John 12:3, 5). Furthermore, the scent of the perfume (v. 3) matched the fragrant aroma of her devotion to Christ. But the striking scene of lavish devotion was disrupted by the response of Judas Iscariot. “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” he asked (v. 5). Judas, who would later betray Jesus (v. 4), was a deceiver who covered his motives with pious words (v. 5); he was a hypocrite and a thief (v. 6) who would betray Christ for thirty pieces of silver (four months’ wages). But Jesus had the last word when He replied, “Leave her alone” (v. 7). Christ, who surrendered all for us, still desires that we treasure Him over everything.
Visit go.odb.org/112225 to learn more about what Mary’s actions tell us about worship.
Treasured Possession
Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. John 12:3
My father first locked eyes on my mother at a party in London. Next he gate-crashed a second party, then organized a third, just to see her again. Finally he asked Mum out for a country drive, picking her up in his old Rover sedan—his treasured possession.
Mum and Dad became sweethearts, but there was a problem. Mum was about to move to Peru to become a missionary. Dad took her to the airport, then five months later arrived in Peru himself—to propose to her. And the best part of the story? He’d sold his beloved Rover to pay for the plane ticket.
If you would’ve asked Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, what her most treasured possession was, she’d have shown you a precious bottle of “expensive perfume” (John 12:3). And if you’d have been at the party she and Martha threw for Jesus (v. 2) and watched her lavish that bottle’s contents on his feet, you’d have known just what Christ meant to her. He was that precious, that valuable.
For my mother, Dad selling his car wasn’t just about a plane ticket. It was a sign of how much he valued her. And Mary’s actions had deeper meaning too—she was preparing Jesus for His burial (v. 7). Like her, when we sacrifice for God what we treasure most, we take part in His redemptive work by echoing His great sacrifice for us.
Reflect & Pray
What treasure would you give up for God? How would you feel in Mary’s place, when Jesus revealed the deeper meaning of her actions?
Dear Jesus, You’re more valuable to me than my most treasured earthly possession.
For further study read, Lazarus Comes Back from the Dead—and That’s a Problem.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Shallow and Profound
Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. — 1 Corinthians 10:31
Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow concerns of life aren’t ordained by God. Shallow things belong to God as much as profound things. If you refuse to be shallow, it isn’t because you’re more devoted to God than others; it’s because you want to impress them with how deep you are, a sure sign that you’re a spiritual snob. If this is the case, watch out: snobbery and contempt will make you go around like a walking rebuke, chastising others because you think they’re more shallow than you. Beware of posing as a profound person; God became a baby.
Being shallow isn’t a sign of being wicked. Nor is shallowness a sign that there are no depths; the ocean has a shore. The simple, shallow delights of life—eating and drinking, walking and talking—are all ordained by God. Our Lord lived in the shallows. He lived in them as the Son of God, and he said, “The student is not above the teacher” (Luke 6:40).
Our safeguard is in the shallow things. We have to live the surface, commonplace life in a commonsense way. Deeper concerns do come, but they come separately; God gives them to us apart from the shallow concerns. Never show the depths to anyone but God. We are so abominably serious, so desperately interested in our own characters, that we refuse to behave like Christians in the simple concerns of life.
Take no one seriously except for God—especially not yourself. You’ll find that the first person you need to leave severely alone, for being the greatest fraud you’ve ever encountered, is you.
Ezekiel 18-19; James 4
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
There is nothing, naturally speaking, that makes us lose heart quicker than decay—the decay of bodily beauty, of natural life, of friendship, of associations, all these things make a man lose heart; but Paul says when we are trusting in Jesus Christ these things do not find us discouraged, light comes through them.
The Place of Help
