Max Lucado Daily: Heaven’s Throne Room
You sleep alone in a double bed. You walk the hallways of a silent house. You catch yourself calling out his name or reaching for her hand. Good-bye is the challenge of your life! To get through this is to get through this raging loneliness, this strength-draining grief. Just the separation has exhausted your spirit. You feel quarantined, isolated.
May I give you some hope? If heaven’s throne room has a calendar, one day is circled in red and highlighted in yellow. The Bible says that the The Master himself will give the command. Archangel thunder! God’s trumpet blast! He will come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then the rest of us who are still alive will be caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Master. (I Thessalonians 4:15-17).
Oh, what a day that will be! We’ll be walking on air! And there will be one huge family reunion. I leave you with this reminder: You will get through this!
From You’ll Get Through This
Numbers 27
The Daughters of Zelophehad
1 27 The daughters of Zelophehad showed up. Their father was the son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Makir son of Manasseh, belonging to the clans of Manasseh son of Joseph. The daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.
2–4 They came to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. They stood before Moses and Eleazar the priest and before the leaders and the congregation and said, “Our father died in the wilderness. He wasn’t part of Korah’s rebel anti-God gang. He died for his own sins. And he left no sons. But why should our father’s name die out from his clan just because he had no sons? So give us an inheritance among our father’s relatives.”
5 Moses brought their case to God.
6–7 God ruled: “Zelophehad’s daughters are right. Give them land as an inheritance among their father’s relatives. Give them their father’s inheritance.
8–11 “Then tell the People of Israel, If a man dies and leaves no son, give his inheritance to his daughter. If he has no daughter, give it to his brothers. If he has no brothers, give it to his father’s brothers. If his father had no brothers, give it to the nearest relative so that the inheritance stays in the family. This is the standard procedure for the People of Israel, as commanded by God through Moses.”
Joshua
12–14 God said to Moses, “Climb up into the Abarim Mountains and look over at the land that I am giving to the People of Israel. When you’ve had a good look you’ll be joined to your ancestors in the grave—yes, you also along with Aaron your brother. This goes back to the day when the congregation quarreled in the Wilderness of Zin and you didn’t honor me in holy reverence before them in the matter of the waters, the Waters of Meribah (Quarreling) at Kadesh in the Wilderness of Zin.”
15–17 Moses responded to God: “Let God, the God of the spirits of everyone living, set a man over this community to lead them, to show the way ahead and bring them back home so God’s community will not be like sheep without a shepherd.”
18–21 God said to Moses, “Take Joshua the son of Nun—the Spirit is in him!—and place your hand on him. Stand him before Eleazar the priest in front of the entire congregation and commission him with everyone watching. Pass your magisterial authority over to him so that the whole congregation of the People of Israel will listen obediently to him. He is to consult with Eleazar the priest who, using the oracle-Urim, will prayerfully advise him in the presence of God. He will command the People of Israel, the entire community, in all their comings and goings.”
22–23 Moses followed God’s orders. He took Joshua and stood him before Eleazar the priest in front of the entire community. He laid his hands on him and commissioned him, following the procedures God had given Moses.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, October 25, 2025
by Patricia Raybon
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Exodus 34:4-10
So Moses cut two tablets of stone just like the originals. He got up early in the morning and climbed Mount Sinai as God had commanded him, carrying the two tablets of stone. God descended in the cloud and took up his position there beside him and called out the name, God. God passed in front of him and called out, “God, God, a God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient—so much love, so deeply true—loyal in love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. Still, he doesn’t ignore sin. He holds sons and grandsons responsible for a father’s sins to the third and even fourth generation.”
8–9 At once, Moses fell to the ground and worshiped, saying, “Please, O Master, if you see anything good in me, please Master, travel with us, hard-headed as these people are. Forgive our iniquity and sin. Own us, possess us.”
10–12 And God said, “As of right now, I’m making a covenant with you: In full sight of your people I will work wonders that have never been created in all the Earth, in any nation. Then all the people with whom you’re living will see how tremendous God’s work is, the work I’ll do for you.
Today's Insights
At the heart of the book of Exodus is the question whether God’s presence can dwell in the midst of a sinful people. In chapter 33, Moses petitions God to go with him and the Israelites: “How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us?” (v. 16). God responds by saying that He will indeed do what Moses asks (v. 17).
This conversation takes place immediately after Israel sins with the golden calf. Would their betrayal of God prevent Him from ever dwelling in their presence? God’s answer is clear: He shows compassion and grace and abounds in love and faithfulness (34:6-7). He’d go with them no matter what. The same is true today for believers in Jesus. God forgives our sins and yearns to restore us.
When God Forgives
[The Lord] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God.” Exodus 34:6
After a four-year-old boy accidentally broke a rare 3,500-year-old Bronze Age jar displayed at a museum in Israel, he received a kind and surprising response. The museum staff forgave him and invited him back. Roee Shafir, speaking for the Hecht Museum, said doing so heightened global interest in the restoration process and might serve to inspire the boy’s interest in history and archaeology—a healing and positive outcome.
The story brings to mind God’s compelling declaration of His forgiveness after rebellion by the Israelites. They’d rebelled against Him by begging Moses’ brother Aaron to make a gold calf for them for idol worship (Exodus 32:1). “When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets [of covenant law] out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain” (v. 19).
At God’s instruction, “Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning” (34:4). When God came down, He “passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God . . . maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin’ ” (vv. 6-7).
What a profound reminder. Despite our worst sins, God still forgives. He yearns to restore us.
Reflect & Pray
What sins of yours has God forgiven? Why is His forgiveness an amazing gift of grace?
When my sin angers or disappoints You, dear God, please invite me back into the compassion of Your love with forgiveness.
For further study, read Accepting God's Forgiveness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, October 25, 2025
All Things to All People
I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. — 1 Corinthians 9:22
A Christian worker must learn how to be God’s noble man or woman amid a crowd of ignoble things. Never make this plea: “If only I were somewhere else, then I would be noble.” You can be noble now, no matter the setting, no matter the limits of your natural abilities. All God’s workers are ordinary people, made extraordinary by what he has put into them.
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you” (John 15:16). If you ever begin to doubt that you’re up to the task God has set for you, remember that it isn’t your own choice that has made you his worker. It isn’t that you’ve got hold of God, but that he has got hold of you. Keep this note of greatness in your creed. God is at work in you even now, bending, breaking, molding, doing just as he chooses. Why? For one purpose: that he will be able to say, “This is my man; this is my woman.”
We have to be in God’s hand so that he can plant others on the rock as he has planted us. Many people do deliberately choose to be God’s workers, but they have nothing in them of God’s mighty grace, nothing of his mighty word. Unless we have the right things in our minds intellectually and the right things in our hearts affectionately, we will be useless to God. Paul had the right things in his heart and mind and soul; he was entirely taken up with what Jesus Christ came to do. We, too, must focus on this one central fact: “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Never choose to be God’s worker, but never turn away when God’s call comes. He will do with you what he never did with you before. He will do something unique, something he isn’t doing with other people. Let him have his way.
Jeremiah 6-8; 1 Timothy 5
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
We begin our Christian life by believing what we are told to believe, then we have to go on to so assimilate our beliefs that they work out in a way that redounds to the glory of God. The danger is in multiplying the acceptation of beliefs we do not make our own.
Conformed to His Image, 381 L
