Max Lucado Daily: THE GIANT OF GRIEF - March 20, 2025
After the wife of C.S. Lewis died he wrote, “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” Just when you think the beast of grief is gone, you pass a restaurant where the two of you used to eat, or you hear a song she loved. And the giant of grief keeps stirring up. You see couples and long for your mate. You see parents with kids and yearn for your child. The giant stirs up insomnia, loss of appetite, even thoughts of suicide. Grief is not a mental illness, but it sure feels like one sometimes.
Jesus understands. Next to the tomb of his dear friend, “Jesus wept.” And in his tears we find permission to shed our own. Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 7:3 (NLT), “Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us.” Face your grief. Permit yourself tears. God understands, and he will get you through this.
Facing Your Giants: God Still Does the Impossible
Job 22
ELIPHAZ ATTACKS JOB—THE THIRD ROUND
Come to Terms with God
1–11 22 Once again Eliphaz the Temanite took up his theme:
“Are any of us strong enough to give God a hand,
or smart enough to give him advice?
So what if you were righteous—would God Almighty even notice?
Even if you gave a perfect performance, do you think he’d applaud?
Do you think it’s because he cares about your purity
that he’s disciplining you, putting you on the spot?
Hardly! It’s because you’re a first-class moral failure,
because there’s no end to your sins.
When people came to you for help,
you took the shirts off their backs, exploited their helplessness.
You wouldn’t so much as give a drink to the thirsty,
or food, not even a scrap, to the hungry.
And there you sat, strong and honored by everyone,
surrounded by immense wealth!
You turned poor widows away from your door;
heartless, you crushed orphans.
Now you’re the one trapped in terror, paralyzed by fear.
Suddenly the tables have turned!
How do you like living in the dark, sightless,
up to your neck in flood waters?
12–14 “You agree, don’t you, that God is in charge?
He runs the universe—just look at the stars!
Yet you dare raise questions: ‘What does God know?
From that distance and darkness, how can he judge?
He roams the heavens wrapped in clouds,
so how can he see us?’
15–18 “Are you going to persist in that tired old line
that wicked men and women have always used?
Where did it get them? They died young,
flash floods sweeping them off to their doom.
They told God, ‘Get lost!
What good is God Almighty to us?’
And yet it was God who gave them everything they had.
It’s beyond me how they can carry on like this!
19–20 “Good people see bad people crash, and call for a celebration.
Relieved, they crow,
‘At last! Our enemies—wiped out.
Everything they had and stood for is up in smoke!’
21–25 “Give in to God, come to terms with him
and everything will turn out just fine.
Let him tell you what to do;
take his words to heart.
Come back to God Almighty
and he’ll rebuild your life.
Clean house of everything evil.
Relax your grip on your money
and abandon your gold-plated luxury.
God Almighty will be your treasure,
more wealth than you can imagine.
26–30 “You’ll take delight in God, the Mighty One,
and look to him joyfully, boldly.
You’ll pray to him and he’ll listen;
he’ll help you do what you’ve promised.
You’ll decide what you want and it will happen;
your life will be bathed in light.
To those who feel low you’ll say, ‘Chin up! Be brave!’
and God will save them.
Yes, even the guilty will escape,
escape through God’s grace in your life.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, March 20, 2025
by Tim Gustafson
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
John 16:16-24
“In a day or so you’re not going to see me, but then in another day or so you will see me.”
Joy Like a River Overflowing
17–18 That stirred up a hornet’s nest of questions among the disciples: “What’s he talking about: ‘In a day or so you’re not going to see me, but then in another day or so you will see me’? And, ‘Because I’m on my way to the Father’? What is this ‘day or so’? We don’t know what he’s talking about.”
19–20 Jesus knew they were dying to ask him what he meant, so he said, “Are you trying to figure out among yourselves what I meant when I said, ‘In a day or so you’re not going to see me, but then in another day or so you will see me’? Then fix this firmly in your minds: You’re going to be in deep mourning while the godless world throws a party. You’ll be sad, very sad, but your sadness will develop into gladness.
21–23 “When a woman gives birth, she has a hard time, there’s no getting around it. But when the baby is born, there is joy in the birth. This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain. The sadness you have right now is similar to that pain, but the coming joy is also similar. When I see you again, you’ll be full of joy, and it will be a joy no one can rob from you. You’ll no longer be so full of questions.
23–24 “This is what I want you to do: Ask the Father for whatever is in keeping with the things I’ve revealed to you. Ask in my name, according to my will, and he’ll most certainly give it to you. Your joy will be a river overflowing its banks!
Today's Insights
The Upper Room Discourse (John 14-16) is the main teaching focus of John’s gospel. The night before Jesus went to the cross, He was preparing His disciples for His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and return. He told them that their “grief [would] turn to joy” (John 16:20). One of the main features of Jesus’ teaching in these chapters is the promise of the coming Holy Spirit—Christ’s provision for His people after His departure. This promise was eventually fulfilled on the day of Pentecost (see Acts 2), some ten days after Jesus’ ascension to heaven when the Spirit came to indwell believers in Christ.
Joy in Jesus
Your grief will turn to joy . . . and no one will take away your joy. John 16:20, 22
“I have the right to be happy,” said a teenager as she spoke before a legislature. Yet she could have been anyone, anywhere, speaking for everybody. It’s our human cry. One self-help guru even said, “God wants you to be happy.”
Is that true? It’s not wrong to pursue happiness. That desirable state of mind, however, ebbs and flows with our moment-by-moment circumstances, and the fulfillment of one person’s desires can crush the happiness of another.
Jesus points us to something better. He knew He was about to be nailed to a Roman cross, where He would bear the weight of the world’s sin. Yet His concern was for His disciples. He told them, “You will weep and mourn while the world rejoices.” But He also said, “Your grief will turn to joy” (John 16:20). Then He promised, “No one will take away your joy” (v. 22).
This kind of joy is more than a good feeling based on desirable things happening to us. It grows out of doing the will of our Father in heaven. Jesus also said, “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).
Happiness can slip away with the next unpleasant circumstance. The joy that comes from following Jesus can thrive despite those circumstances.
Reflect & Pray
How does chasing what you want ultimately leave you unhappy? What’s the difference between happiness and joy?
Dear Father, please teach me to learn the difference between temporary happiness and lasting joy.
For further study, read Jesus Is in the Room.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Friendship with God
Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do? — Genesis 18:17
Chapter 18 of Genesis brings out the delights and difficulties of real friendship with God.
Its delights. Real friendship with God is different from occasionally sensing his presence in prayer. To have a real friendship with God is to be in such close contact with him that you never need to ask him to show you his will. It is to be nearing the final stage of the life of faith. When you are rightly related to God, life is full of liberty and delight: you are God’s will. Unless he tells you otherwise, your commonsense decisions are his will for you, decided in perfect friendship with him.
Its difficulties. In Genesis 18, Abraham begins to plead with God to spare Sodom, but he stops before receiving God’s final assurance (vv. 25–33). Why did Abraham stop praying when he did? He was not yet intimate enough with God to go boldly on until his desire was granted. There was something still lacking in their relationship. Whenever we stop short in prayer, there is another stage to go in friendship with God. We aren’t as intimate with God as Jesus was and as God wishes us to be.
What was the last thing you prayed about? Were you devoted to your desire or to God? Did you hope to get some gift of the Spirit, or to get at God himself? “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). The point of asking is to get to know God better. “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). Keep praying in order to get a perfect understanding of God himself.
Joshua 4-6; Luke 1:1-20
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Our danger is to water down God’s word to suit ourselves. God never fits His word to suit me; He fits me to suit His word.
Not Knowing Whither, 901 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, March 20, 2025
The Lasting Mark of Life's Mistakes - #9964
My daughter and I had not been back to that camp in the Tetons since she was a little girl, like five years old. We stayed there as a family way back then, because our good friends from college ran the camp. There she struck up a friendship with their five-year-old who's named Holly. Well, the camp has grown a lot over the years, and so have our daughters who are speeding through their lives.
It was kind of fun for them to see each other again and Holly took my daughter for a little private tour of a bunk house that was there some years ago when we were there. They had to bend down for what Holly wanted to show her. But there it was, still decorating the wood, in living Crayola color, Holly's name in red crayon and my daughter's in blue Crayon; both written in distinctive penmanship that five-year-olds have, and both still there after all these years.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Lasting Mark of Life's Mistakes."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Genesis 32, beginning at verse 24. Jacob has been having a wrestling match with someone who turns out to be divine. And verse 24 says, "Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak." Finally the fight ends when that man touches the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with that man.
Later, Jacob knows who he met there. He called the place Peniel, saying, "'It is because I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.' The sun rose above him as he had passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip." Jacob struggled with God. He'd actually wrestled with Him his whole life. But at this brook he goes for God's full blessing. God changes him from Jacob, the cheat, and He changes his name to Israel, Prince with God. The whole nation will be named after him. God forgives. God transforms Jacob, and He's still doing that with Jacobs today.
But even though the struggle with God was over, Jacob carried a life-long reminder of his struggle - the limp. The sin was forgiven, the man was changed, but as happens so often, he'd struggled with God and that left a mark on him the rest of his life.
Now, my daughter couldn't get over how long the marks had lasted for what she did many years ago. In a way, that's a picture of how sin is. Even though the sin is long behind us, long forgiven, often the consequences, the marks of our sin are there for years to come. Sin is cruel. You were once its slave, and you're free now but you still carry some of the scars of how your slave master treated you. You always will.
We need to remember what sin does, because those scars, those lasting consequences will deter us from leaving God's ways again. Now, forgiveness comes quickly when we bring our sin to the cross of Jesus, but it doesn't come cheaply; it cost Him his life. But the ready availability of forgiveness should not make us forget the sometimes continuing consequences of sin - the limp that is there long after our struggle with God is behind us.
I think of four Rs that explain some of the lasting marks of sin. Reputation - the damage to your reputation can last a long time. Regrets - there for years. Relationships that were damaged that are hard to repair. Recollection - the memories that just keep coming back. It's a sobering reminder to seriously count the cost before we take any spiritual detour.
The scars of our past aren't all bad. Not if they remind us to stay away from sin because of its price tag. And it's wonderful to know that God has forever erased those sins from His book. You say, "Well, Ron, I'm not sure I've ever had that happen." Well, have you ever, in your heart, gone to His cross and said, "Jesus, You're dying for my sins there."
If you've never put your life in His hands, do it now. You say, "Jesus, I'm yours." Our website is there to help you be sure you belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com.
And the next time sin looks enticing and interesting, let's not forget what our daughter was so graphically reminded of, staring at the marks she made so many years ago. The marks still remain long after what we did to make the marks is over.
