Max Lucado Daily: AS IF UPON KNEES - February 28, 2025
Unceasing prayer may sound complicated, but it needn’t be that way. Do this: think of prayer less as an activity for God and more as an awareness of God. Seek to live in uninterrupted awareness. As you stand in line to register your car, think, “Thank you, Lord, for being here.” In the grocery store as you shop, think, “Your presence, my King, I welcome.” As you wash the dishes, worship your Maker.
Brother Lawrence called himself the “lord of all pots and pans.” He wrote: The time of busyness does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon knees at the blessed sacrament.
So talk to God, always.
Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions
Job 8
BILDAD’S RESPONSE
Does God Mess Up?
1–7 8 Bildad from Shuhah was next to speak:
“How can you keep on talking like this?
You’re talking nonsense, and noisy nonsense at that.
Does God mess up?
Does God Almighty ever get things backward?
It’s plain that your children sinned against him—
otherwise, why would God have punished them?
Here’s what you must do—and don’t put it off any longer:
Get down on your knees before God Almighty.
If you’re as innocent and upright as you say,
it’s not too late—he’ll come running;
he’ll set everything right again, reestablish your fortunes.
Even though you’re not much right now,
you’ll end up better than ever.
To Hang Your Life from One Thin Thread
8–19 “Put the question to our ancestors,
study what they learned from their ancestors.
For we’re newcomers at this, with a lot to learn,
and not too long to learn it.
So why not let the ancients teach you, tell you what’s what,
instruct you in what they knew from experience?
Can mighty pine trees grow tall without soil?
Can luscious tomatoes flourish without water?
Blossoming flowers look great before they’re cut or picked,
but without soil or water they wither more quickly than grass.
That’s what happens to all who forget God—
all their hopes come to nothing.
They hang their life from one thin thread,
they hitch their fate to a spider web.
One jiggle and the thread breaks,
one jab and the web collapses.
Or they’re like weeds springing up in the sunshine,
invading the garden,
Spreading everywhere, overtaking the flowers,
getting a foothold even in the rocks.
But when the gardener rips them out by the roots,
the garden doesn’t miss them one bit.
The sooner the godless are gone, the better;
then good plants can grow in their place.
20–22 “There’s no way that God will reject a good person,
and there is no way he’ll help a bad one.
God will let you laugh again;
you’ll raise the roof with shouts of joy,
With your enemies thoroughly discredited,
their house of cards collapsed.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, February 28, 2025
by Patricia Raybon
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Colossians 3:8-17
But you know better now, so make sure it’s all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.
9–11 Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
12–14 So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
15–17 Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.
Today's Insights
Paul wrote to the Colossian church to correct false teaching about Jesus and to instruct us how to live “worthy of the Lord”—fruitful and faithful lives that “please him in every way” (1:10). The apostle emphasizes the supremacy of Christ in creation, redemption, and the church (chs. 1-2). He then calls for Jesus to be supreme in their lives (chs. 3-4). Using the metaphors of putting on and taking off clothes, Paul says to live a transformed life—a Christlike life reflecting His character (3:1-17). The apostle lists various sins that believers must “put to death” (v. 5): “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed . . . anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language” (vv. 5, 8). Then he instructs believers to replace them with the Christ-honoring virtues of “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (v. 12). We’re to “bear with each other and forgive one another” (v. 13) and envelop everything in love (v. 14).
Peace of Christ
As members of one body you were called to peace. Colossians 3:1
Would they win by arguing? Never, a small-town leader warned residents in Adirondack Park, where a pitched battle between environmentalists and small-business owners ignited the “Adirondack Wars.” The name described their fight whether to save the area’s pristine wilderness in Upstate New York or develop it.
“Go back wherever you came from!” a local leader had shouted at an environmentalist. But soon a new message emerged: “Don’t yell at each other. Try to talk to each other.” A Common Ground Alliance was formed to build bridges between warring factions. Civic dialogue led to progress—with nearly a million acres of wild land protected even as Adirondack towns grew more prosperous than they’d been in twenty years.
Peaceful coexistence is a start, but Paul taught something even better. To the new believers in Colossae, he said, “Rid yourselves of . . . anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips” (Colossians 3:8). Paul urged them to exchange their old ways for a new nature in Christ: “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience,” he wrote (v. 12).
The invitation is offered today to all believers: surrender our old, cantankerous lives to new life in Christ. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace” (v. 15). Then, in our peace, the world will see Jesus.
Reflect & Pray
Whom could you forgive today? With whom can you make peace?
Dear God, when my old life erupts in anger, please grant me new peace in You.
Discover more on the healing power of forgiveness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, February 28, 2025
Do You Now Believe?
Now we can see that you know all things … This makes us believe. — John 16:30-31
When the disciples finally told Jesus that they believed he was the Son of God, Jesus replied with skepticism: “Do you now believe? … You will leave me all alone” (John 16:31–32). Many Christians leave Jesus alone as they go about their work. They’re motivated by their conscience or a sense of duty, but their souls aren’t in intimate contact with their Lord; they’re leaning on their own understanding. It isn’t a sin to work for God in this way, and there’s no punishment attached to it, but when we catch ourselves acting like this, when we realize we’ve grown distant from Jesus and produced confusion and sadness for ourselves, we come back to him with shame and contrition.
We need to learn to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus on a much deeper level, to get into the habit of steadily referring everything back to him. We make decisions based on common sense, then ask God to bless those decisions. He cannot. Common sense is not in God’s domain; it is severed from divine reality. Common sense tells us that duty and moral obligation should be our guides. “I must do this; conscience compels me,” we say, haughtily. A decision based on common sense can always be backed up by an argument like this. But when we do something purely out of obedience to the Lord, no commonsense argument is possible. That’s why obedience is so easy to ridicule.
If we don’t want to leave Jesus alone, we must be willing to be ridiculed for his sake. We aren’t told to walk in the light of conscience or of duty; we’re told to walk in the light as God is in the light (1 John 1:7).
Numbers 20-22; Mark 7:1-13
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried.
He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, February 28, 2025
EARTHQUAKE HOPE - #9950
Stranded on the highest mountain on earth. Or buried beneath the rubble of a shattered hotel.
After the earthquake that rocked that mountain kingdom of Nepal, thousands of people lost their lives. Many more found their world, their homes, actually their lives wiped away.
There were some who survived the quake, but they faced the prospect of dying in the aftermath. Like those climbers on Mt. Everest, trapped on the mountain by massive avalanches. Or that 27-year-old man, lying amidst the stench of dead bodies, trapped for 82 hours under mountains of concrete.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Earthquake Hope."
One six-letter word. That was the difference between life and death for the men on the mountain and the man in the rubble.
Rescue. That's the "hope" word that we keep hearing in the heartbreaking news from great disasters all over the world.
In this one, 18 climbers died when part of Everest collapsed on their base camp. There were 140 surviving climbers, but when they tried to go down through the escape route, it was impossibly blocked by fallen rocks. And as time passed, their food was running out; their water was running out.
And then the choppers came. One after another they landed somehow on that mountain, saved those climbers, taking out two at a time.
Then there was young Rishi. He was running out of hope, he was running out of life. Beneath that collapsed hotel. Then, after ten hours of digging through concrete, the rescuers broke through. Rishi is alive...the climbers were alive...because the rescuers came.
Hope in Nepal depended on - as it is in so many disasters - a rescuer from above.
And that's where the news intersects my life and yours. Because hope for me depended on a rescuer from above. At the spiritual crossroads of my life.
I was trapped in a place where I would have died. Except my Rescuer came. His name is Jesus. The One called "Savior" by millions of people around the world. That's Savior as in Rescuer.
In fact, the Bible says in our word for today from the Word of God in Galatians 1:3, "Jesus gave His life for our sins...in order to rescue us." Not to start a religion. Not to be an example or a teacher. But to rescue us. So, it isn't about a religion, called Christianity, it's about a rescuer named Jesus. He came to rescue us at the cost of His life.
Because I - and a world of folks like me - was facing spiritual death for dethroning God in my life. Letting Him run the universe while I ran me. His Book makes the outcome of those sinful choices, unmistakable. It says, "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:3). Here, a life without meaning. Hereafter, an eternity without hope.
But, thank God, the Rescuer came! From above. To a cross. To die for my sin and yours so we don't have to. Amazingly, in the words of Galatians 2:20 in the Bible, "He loved me and gave Himself for me." First person singular. The death of Christ on the cross for my sins.
Then He blasted out of His grave three days later. To reach into my rubble. To reach into your rubble. To save us from certain spiritual death.
If you're ready to make The Rescuer your personal Rescuer from your sin, if you want to begin this life-saving, eternity-changing relationship with Jesus, I invite you to tell Him right now, "Jesus, I'm yours." And go to our website where you can get this confirmed and be sure you belong to Him. That website is ANewStory.com.
There was a day that Jesus reached for me. This may be the day He is reaching for you. Would you grab His nail-scarred hand, my friend? You will be safe. Forever.
