Max Lucado Daily: GOD BREAKS DOWN STRONGHOLDS - March 27, 2025
What is that one weakness, bad habit, rotten attitude? Where does Satan have a stronghold within you?
Stronghold. Ahh, that’s a fitting word. Stronghold: a fortress, thick walls, tall gates. It’s as if the devil staked a claim on one weakness and constructed a rampart around it, placing himself squarely between God’s help and your: explosive temper, fragile self-image, freezer-size appetite. Seasons come and go, and this Loch Ness monster still lurks in the water-bottom of your soul. He won’t go away! He lives up to both sides of his compound name: strong enough to grip like a vise and stubborn enough to hold on.
“We use mighty weapons, not mere worldly weapons, to knock down the devil’s strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4 NLT). You and I fight with toothpicks, but God comes with battering rams and cannons. So give your strongholds to him, and he will break them down.
Facing Your Giants: God Still Does the Impossible
Matthew 12:24-50
But the Pharisees, when they heard the report, were cynical. “Black magic,” they said. “Some devil trick he’s pulled from his sleeve.”
25–27 Jesus confronted their slander. “A judge who gives opposite verdicts on the same person cancels himself out; a family that’s in a constant squabble disintegrates; if Satan banishes Satan, is there any Satan left? If you’re slinging devil mud at me, calling me a devil kicking out devils, doesn’t the same mud stick to your own exorcists?
28–29 “But if it’s by God’s power that I am sending the evil spirits packing, then God’s kingdom is here for sure. How in the world do you think it’s possible in broad daylight to enter the house of an awake, able-bodied man and walk off with his possessions unless you tie him up first? Tie him up, though, and you can clean him out.
30 “This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy; if you’re not helping, you’re making things worse.
31–32 “There’s nothing done or said that can’t be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist in your slanders against God’s Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives. If you reject the Son of Man out of some misunderstanding, the Holy Spirit can forgive you, but when you reject the Holy Spirit, you’re sawing off the branch on which you’re sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.
33 “If you grow a healthy tree, you’ll pick healthy fruit. If you grow a diseased tree, you’ll pick worm-eaten fruit. The fruit tells you about the tree.
34–37 “You have minds like a snake pit! How do you suppose what you say is worth anything when you are so foul-minded? It’s your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words. A good person produces good deeds and words season after season. An evil person is a blight on the orchard. Let me tell you something: Every one of these careless words is going to come back to haunt you. There will be a time of Reckoning. Words are powerful; take them seriously. Words can be your salvation. Words can also be your damnation.”
Jonah-Evidence
38 Later a few religion scholars and Pharisees got on him. “Teacher, we want to see your credentials. Give us some hard evidence that God is in this. How about a miracle?”
39–40 Jesus said, “You’re looking for proof, but you’re looking for the wrong kind. All you want is something to titillate your curiosity, satisfy your lust for miracles. The only proof you’re going to get is what looks like the absence of proof: Jonah-evidence. Like Jonah, three days and nights in the fish’s belly, the Son of Man will be gone three days and nights in a deep grave.
41–42 “On Judgment Day, the Ninevites will stand up and give evidence that will condemn this generation, because when Jonah preached to them they changed their lives. A far greater preacher than Jonah is here, and you squabble about ‘proofs.’ On Judgment Day, the Queen of Sheba will come forward and bring evidence that will condemn this generation, because she traveled from a far corner of the earth to listen to wise Solomon. Wisdom far greater than Solomon’s is right in front of you, and you quibble over ‘evidence.’
43–45 “When a defiling evil spirit is expelled from someone, it drifts along through the desert looking for an oasis, some unsuspecting soul it can bedevil. When it doesn’t find anyone, it says, ‘I’ll go back to my old haunt.’ On return it finds the person spotlessly clean, but vacant. It then runs out and rounds up seven other spirits more evil than itself and they all move in, whooping it up. That person ends up far worse off than if he’d never gotten cleaned up in the first place.
“That’s what this generation is like: You may think you have cleaned out the junk from your lives and gotten ready for God, but you weren’t hospitable to my kingdom message, and now all the devils are moving back in.”
Obedience Is Thicker than Blood
46–47 While he was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers showed up. They were outside trying to get a message to him. Someone told Jesus, “Your mother and brothers are out here, wanting to speak with you.”
48–50 Jesus didn’t respond directly, but said, “Who do you think my mother and brothers are?” He then stretched out his hand toward his disciples. “Look closely. These are my mother and brothers. Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys my heavenly Father’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, March 27, 2025
by Tom Felten
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
1 Samuel 8:1-9
Rejecting God as the King
1–3 8 When Samuel got to be an old man, he set his sons up as judges in Israel. His firstborn son was named Joel, the name of his second, Abijah. They were assigned duty in Beer-sheba. But his sons didn’t take after him; they were out for what they could get for themselves, taking bribes, corrupting justice.
4–5 Fed up, all the elders of Israel got together and confronted Samuel at Ramah. They presented their case: “Look, you’re an old man, and your sons aren’t following in your footsteps. Here’s what we want you to do: Appoint a king to rule us, just like everybody else.”
6 When Samuel heard their demand—“Give us a king to rule us!”—he was crushed. How awful! Samuel prayed to God.
7–9 God answered Samuel, “Go ahead and do what they’re asking. They are not rejecting you. They’ve rejected me as their King. From the day I brought them out of Egypt until this very day they’ve been behaving like this, leaving me for other gods. And now they’re doing it to you. So let them have their own way. But warn them of what they’re in for. Tell them the way kings operate, just what they’re likely to get from a king.”
Today's Insights
God set the Israelites apart to be His chosen people. They were to obey His laws and not follow the practices and customs of the surrounding nations (Leviticus 18:1-5; 20:26). Four hundred years later, His people demanded a king to rule over them “such as all the other nations have” (1 Samuel 8:5; see v. 20). Samuel—who faithfully served as Israel’s judge, military leader, priest, and prophet for thirty-five years—was now old, and his sons were unfit to succeed him (v. 5). Faced with external threats, the Israelites wanted a human king to lead them to war. In so doing, they rejected God as their king (v. 7; 12:12). They asked Samuel to intercede for them, and he assured them of his prayers. He exhorted them to remain faithful to God—to obey His laws and to serve Him wholeheartedly because they were God’s covenant people (12:14-15, 20-24).
When They Don’t See
The Lord told [Samuel]: “. . . It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me.” 1 Samuel 8:7
Nuñez tumbled down the mountain and into a valley where everyone was blind. A disease had robbed the original settlers of sight, and subsequent generations—all born blind—had adapted to life without being able to see. Nuñez tried to explain what it was like to possess eyesight, but they weren’t interested. Eventually, he found a passage through the mountain peaks that had prevented him from leaving the valley. He was free! But from his vantage point he now saw that a rockslide was about to crush the blind dwellers below. He tried to warn them, but they ignored him.
This tale by H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind,” would likely resonate with the prophet Samuel. Toward the end of his life, his “sons did not follow his ways” in loving and serving God (1 Samuel 8:3). Their spiritual blindness was mirrored by “the elders of Israel” (v. 4), who told Samuel to “give us a king” (v. 6). They’d all turned their eyes from God and faith in Him. God told Samuel, “It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me” (v. 7).
It can hurt when those we care for reject God in spiritual blindness. But there’s hope even for those whom “the god of this age has blinded” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Love them. Pray for them. The one who “made his light shine in our hearts” (v. 6) can do the same for them.
Reflect & Pray
How does it encourage you to know that God sees those who can’t see Him? Why is there always hope for even the spiritually blind?
Loving God, please help me to pray for those who are blind to Your love and to trust You with them.
We all need mercy, justice, and hope. Reclaim yours today: Read more
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Vision by Personal Character
Come up here, and I will show you. — Revelation 4:1
Elevated emotions can only come out of an elevated habit of personal character. If you’ve developed the kind of character that allows you to live up to the highest standards you know, God will grant you insights that draw you even higher. He will continually say to you, “Come up here, and I will show you.”
Each time you go higher, you will face new and different kinds of temptation. The golden rule of temptation is “go higher.” Both God and Satan use the promise of elevation to draw us upward, but they use it to very different effects. Satan whispers to us of an unattainable holiness, a holiness beyond what flesh and blood can bear. He draws us into a spiritual acrobatic performance that ends up freezing us: we are poised on a tightrope and cannot move. But when God, by his grace, elevates us to the heavenly places, we find a vast plateau, where we can move around with liberty and ease.
Compare this week in your spiritual history with the same week last year, and see how God has called you higher. This is how you know you have grown in grace—not because you no longer backslide into sin but because God has granted you new spiritual insight. If God has revealed to you a new truth, you know it is because of growth in your character. Keep trusting and obeying him. Whenever he gives you a truth, apply it instantly to your life. Always work it out in your personal practices; always keep yourself in its light.
“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Genesis 18:17). Why didn’t God immediately tell Abraham about his plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? Because Abraham wasn’t yet ready to receive that truth. God has to hide from us what he does, until by personal character we get to the place where he can reveal it.
Judges 1-3; Luke 4:1-30
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
A fanatic is one who entrenches himself in invincible ignorance.
Baffled to Fight Better, 59 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Flexible Doesn't Break - #9969
If we did a word association game with the words "San Francisco," well, two things that might come up very quickly would be Golden Gate Bridge and earthquakes. Actually, both of those subjects came up a lot when we were in San Francisco for some youth outreaches and to tape some special editions of a youth broadcast. We didn't arrange for a quake while we were there, but we did do a program based on them. And we actually did originate parts of other programs from near the Golden Gate Bridge and even on it. According to some local friends of mine there, and they could just be Californians pulling the leg of an East Coast boy, but they said that the bridge might be one of the safer places to be during an earthquake. No, it's not the one that folded during the last big quake, you might have seen pictures of that. They say one reason the Golden Gate could withstand a quake is this surprising fact - it's built in such a way, that it's flexible. In other words, when the earth under it starts moving, it doesn't just stand there rigid and break. It's built to flex when things are shaking. So, apparently a quake might shake it, but probably not break it.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Flexible Doesn't Break."
The question is how do you react when things start shaking all around you? The answer may be the difference between cracking under the stress and holding together through it. There's a synergy between the plans we make and God's plans that calls for some of that Golden Gate flexibility.
Our word for today from the Word of God, Proverbs 16:9 - "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." The Bible acknowledges that we will make plans, the question is whether those plans are rigid - if we're rigid about having it our way. That "but" after the part about our plans tells me that God has the right to pre-empt my plan, or delay my plan, or redirect my plan. After all, that's what "Lord" means. Often He leads us toward a certain outcome, only to surprise us with an interruption, or with the realization that He did want us on this road, but for a destination other than the one we expected. But God's idea is always a better idea. What looks like Plan B to me may well have been God's Plan A all along. "But the Lord determines his steps."
Notice how James teaches us to make our plans. James 4:15 - "You ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" See I'm a planner by nature. I work hard on those plans, I pray about those plans. I seek God's direction. But once the plan is set, whether it's for the next few hours or the next few years, I don't like change. But change is built into the system, folks, and those who meet changes with rigidity will eventually crack like an unmoving structure in an earthquake.
This recovering "rigidaholic," is that a word?, is slowly but surely learning to enjoy the surprises of God even when they don't appear to be, at least at first, pleasant surprises. And even if it's something Satan has thrown in, my Bible tells me that even that had to be cleared first with my Heavenly Father. If God said it was OK for me, why don't I just try to roll with the quake? For the sooner I embrace His purpose for what's happening, the sooner I'll experience His peace.
I should point out that the Golden Gate Bridge, while flexible, is not made out of Play-Doh. It has solid structure and so should your life and your days. This is no excuse for laziness or lack of planning. But it is an encouragement to folks who like control to loosen up a little bit and make room for God to do His very dynamic thing. It's the ones who are flexible that survive the shaking.
