Max Lucado Daily: Because of What He Did
Few things can weary you more than the fast pace of the human race. Too many sprints for success. Too many days of doing whatever it takes eventually take their toll. You’re left gasping for air, holding your sides on the side of the track. You’re asking yourself, “When I get what I want, will it be worth the price I paid?”
It’s this weariness that makes the words of Jesus so compelling. “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).
Come to Me. Why Him? He offers the invitation as a penniless rabbi in an oppressed nation. He has no political office. He hasn’t written a best-seller or earned a diploma. Yet they called Him Lord. They called Him Savior. Not so much because of what He said, but because of what He did. What He did—on the Cross! He did it for the weary people of this world.
from Six Hours One Friday
Job 9
JOB CONTINUES
How Can Mere Mortals Get Right with God?
1–13 9 Job continued by saying:
“So what’s new? I know all this.
The question is, ‘How can mere mortals get right with God?’
If we wanted to bring our case before him,
what chance would we have? Not one in a thousand!
God’s wisdom is so deep, God’s power so immense,
who could take him on and come out in one piece?
He moves mountains before they know what’s happened,
flips them on their heads on a whim.
He gives the earth a good shaking up,
rocks it down to its very foundations.
He tells the sun, ‘Don’t shine,’ and it doesn’t;
he pulls the blinds on the stars.
All by himself he stretches out the heavens
and strides on the waves of the sea.
He designed the Big Dipper and Orion,
the Pleiades and Alpha Centauri.
We’ll never comprehend all the great things he does;
his miracle-surprises can’t be counted.
Somehow, though he moves right in front of me, I don’t see him;
quietly but surely he’s active, and I miss it.
If he steals you blind, who can stop him?
Who’s going to say, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’
God doesn’t hold back on his anger;
even dragon-bred monsters cringe before him.
14–20 “So how could I ever argue with him,
construct a defense that would influence God?
Even though I’m innocent I could never prove it;
I can only throw myself on the Judge’s mercy.
If I called on God and he himself answered me,
then, and only then, would I believe that he’d heard me.
As it is, he knocks me about from pillar to post,
beating me up, black-and-blue, for no good reason.
He won’t even let me catch my breath,
piles bitterness upon bitterness.
If it’s a question of who’s stronger, he wins, hands down!
If it’s a question of justice, who’ll serve him the subpoena?
Even though innocent, anything I say incriminates me;
blameless as I am, my defense just makes me sound worse.
If God’s Not Responsible, Who Is?
21–24 “Believe me, I’m blameless.
I don’t understand what’s going on.
I hate my life!
Since either way it ends up the same, I can only conclude
that God destroys the good right along with the bad.
When calamity hits and brings sudden death,
he folds his arms, aloof from the despair of the innocent.
He lets the wicked take over running the world,
he installs judges who can’t tell right from wrong.
If he’s not responsible, who is?
25–31 “My time is short—what’s left of my life races off
too fast for me to even glimpse the good.
My life is going fast, like a ship under full sail,
like an eagle plummeting to its prey.
Even if I say, ‘I’ll put all this behind me,
I’ll look on the bright side and force a smile,’
All these troubles would still be like grit in my gut
since it’s clear you’re not going to let up.
The verdict has already been handed down—‘Guilty!’—
so what’s the use of protests or appeals?
Even if I scrub myself all over
and wash myself with the strongest soap I can find,
It wouldn’t last—you’d push me into a pigpen, or worse,
so nobody could stand me for the stink.
32–35 “God and I are not equals; I can’t bring a case against him.
We’ll never enter a courtroom as peers.
How I wish we had an arbitrator
to step in and let me get on with life—
To break God’s death grip on me,
to free me from this terror so I could breathe again.
Then I’d speak up and state my case boldly.
As things stand, there is no way I can do it.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, March 01, 2025
by Dave Branon
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
2 Timothy 3:14-16
But don’t let it faze you. Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother’s milk! There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way.
Today's Insights
The inspiration of the Scriptures is an astonishing concept to consider. God, in His matchless wisdom, breathed out the words of the Bible by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16-17; see Matthew 22:43) while utilizing the personalities, experiences, and even vocabularies of the individual writers. Over a span of about fifteen hundred years, God used forty different writers to produce a book that has a single and clearly coherent message: God’s love and rescue of His lost and broken creation. More specifically, that message focuses on the rescuer, Jesus Himself. The Old Testament points to and prepares the way for Him, and the New Testament explains His person and work. The Bible is so much more than a collection of sixty-six random books of religious history. It’s a cohesive message of redeeming grace, accomplished through Christ.
Understanding the Bible
The word of God is alive and active. . . . [It] judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
How important is the Bible? It’s so vital that people in many countries risk their lives to translate it into their native languages. Often, these are ordinary believers in Jesus who face arrest for translating the words of Scripture into a heart language others can understand.
One female translator from a country hostile to believers in Jesus said, “I must complete this work. I want to see my beloved ones experience salvation in Christ.” And a man who organizes regular citizens to clandestinely translate Scripture explains that the Bible is essential to growing mature believers in local churches: “You can start a church, but . . . [without] the Bible in its heart language, it will typically only last one generation.”
Why are they doing this? Because there’s no other book like the Bible. Its preservation through the centuries is unique. Its authenticity and its representation of the human heart is accurate. It’s “alive and active . . . [and] judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). And “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), inspired by Him. And most important, it reveals the source and reality of “salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 15).
Let’s read, cherish, and live by the Scriptures. And as God provides, let’s help those around the world receive it and understand it.
Reflect & Pray
What’s your favorite aspect of the Bible? How can you help others understand it better?
Dear God, thank You for the Scriptures and for the privilege of sharing them with others.
For further study, read The Hard Task of Reading Well.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, March 01, 2025
The Piercing Question
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” — John 21:17
No sin can pierce us as deeply as the question Jesus asks of Simon Peter: “Do you love me?” Sin dulls feelings; the word of God intensifies them. When Jesus asks if we love him, the feelings brought up by his question are so intense they hurt. Do we love him? Or are we fooling ourselves?
It is impossible to be casual when Jesus asks this question. Peter’s early love for Jesus was temperamental, professed in the whim of a moment and a mood. He loved Jesus on a purely natural level, in the way any person loves another who is good. It took the hurt of Jesus’s question for Peter to realize that true love never merely professes anything: it pierces straight to the core of our personality, directing not only our words but everything we do.
Unless we get hurt right out of deceiving ourselves, the word of God isn’t having its way with us. His word is sharp: “sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow” (Hebrews 4:12). Jesus’s question strikes against all our illusions, reaching past our selfish individuality into the very center of our being—a terribly painful thing. But to be hurt like this by Jesus is the most exquisite hurt imaginable. It stings away every delusion and doubt, every selfish thought and worry.
When the Lord sends the hurt of his word to his child, there is no mistaking it. But the point of the hurt is the great point of revelation: it reveals to us how we truly feel about our Lord. “Lord,” said Peter, “you know that I love you” (John 21:17).
Numbers 23-25; Mark 7:14-37
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something.
The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L
