Max Lucado Daily: THE IMMUTABLE QUALITIES OF GOD - October 31, 2025
Here is a practical idea. Quarry from your Bible a list of the immutable qualities of God and press them into your heart. When calamity strikes, recite them over and over. My list reads like this:
He is still sovereign. He still knows my name. Angels still respond to his call. The hearts of rulers still bend at his bidding. The death of Jesus still saves souls. The Spirit of God still indwells saints. Heaven is still only heartbeats away. The grave is temporary housing. God is still faithful. He is not caught off guard. He uses everything for his glory and my ultimate good. He uses tragedy to accomplish his will, and his will is right and holy and perfect. God bears fruit in the midst of affliction.
Welcome this truth into your heart: Jesus understands. Grip God’s sovereignty and never let it go.
Tame Your Thoughts: Three Tools to Renew Your Mind and Transform Your Life
Luke 1:21-38
Meanwhile, the congregation waiting for Zachariah was getting restless, wondering what was keeping him so long in the sanctuary. When he came out and couldn’t speak, they knew he had seen a vision. He continued speechless and had to use sign language with the people.
23–25 When the course of his priestly assignment was completed, he went back home. It wasn’t long before his wife, Elizabeth, conceived. She went off by herself for five months, relishing her pregnancy. “So, this is how God acts to remedy my unfortunate condition!” she said.
A Virgin Conceives
26–28 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:
Good morning!
You’re beautiful with God’s beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.
29–33 She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.
He will be great,
be called ‘Son of the Highest.’
The Lord God will give him
the throne of his father David;
He will rule Jacob’s house forever—
no end, ever, to his kingdom.”
34 Mary said to the angel, “But how? I’ve never slept with a man.”
35 The angel answered,
The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
the power of the Highest hover over you;
Therefore, the child you bring to birth
will be called Holy, Son of God.
36–38 “And did you know that your cousin Elizabeth conceived a son, old as she is? Everyone called her barren, and here she is six months pregnant! Nothing, you see, is impossible with God.”
And Mary said,
Yes, I see it all now:
I’m the Lord’s maid, ready to serve.
Let it be with me
just as you say.
Then the angel left her.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, October 31, 2025
by Karen Huang
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Ephesians 1:5-7
Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7–10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!
Today's Insights
Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus is a monument to God’s love for the church—His beloved children. The idea the apostle introduces in Ephesians 1:5-7 is unpacked more thoroughly in chapter 2. There, he not only explains the magnificent process that made our rescue possible but reminds us that we’re entrusted with great responsibility: “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (v. 10). As God’s children, we’re given high purpose—to serve Him and others in His strength and grace. That grand idea is explored more fully in chapters 4-6, where Paul describes what the good works of God’s adopted children are to look like—works that impact our relationships at church, in our families, and in our work relationships. All of life is to look different because He has made us His children.
What Jesus Did for Us
In him we have redemption through his blood. Ephesians 1:7
Andres, the owner of an electronics company, was giving employees with outstanding sales records a day trip to a beach resort. Andres was also taking his seven-year-old son Jimmy. Before departure, he excitedly held his dad’s hand as everyone boarded the van. “You’re joining us? How many sales have you made?” one employee jokingly asked Jimmy. “None!” he replied, motioning to his dad. “He’s letting me join!”
Jimmy didn’t have to work to earn his inclusion on the trip because his dad was paying his way. As believers in Jesus, we also don’t rely on our good works as the basis of our inclusion in heaven. We’re granted access because of Jesus’ death and resurrection on our behalf. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and Jesus’ own blood was the “payment,” releasing us from our debt to Him. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians 1:7). He opened the way for whoever believes in Him to “not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Christ’s work and our trust in that work allows us to be with Him for eternity.
When we believe in Jesus as Savior, we become God’s children. Such is His “glorious grace, which he has freely given us” (Ephesians 1:6). Like Jimmy, we can look to our heavenly Father and say with confidence, “He’s letting me join!”
Reflect & Pray
How does knowing that Jesus died for you make you feel? How does this truth impact your life?
Dear Jesus, thank You for dying for me. Because of Your grace and love, I’m forgiven. I can look forward to being with You forever.
Learn more about having a personal relationship with God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, October 31, 2025
Discernment of Faith
If you have faith as small as a mustard seed . . . — Matthew 17:20
We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith. This might be true in the initial stages of our walk with him, but we don’t earn anything by faith. Faith brings us into right relationship with God and gives God his opportunity.
If you are walking with God, he will often knock the bottom out of your experience in order to bring you into immediate contact with him. God wants you to understand that it’s a life of faith, not of emotional enjoyment of his blessings. Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sunspot of experience that had as much sensibleness as faith in it; it was full of light and sweetness. Then God withdrew his blessings—not all of them, just those you were conscious of—to teach you to walk by faith. Now you are worth far more to him than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony.
Faith by its very nature must be tried. The real trial of faith isn’t that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of inexpressible isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life. Much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. In the Bible, faith means trusting God in the face of everything that contradicts him. Faith says, “No matter what God does, I will remain true to his character.” “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15): this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.
Jeremiah 22-23; Titus 1
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The Bible is a relation of facts, the truth of which must be tested. Life may go on all right for a while, when suddenly a bereavement comes, or some crisis; unrequited love or a new love, a disaster, a business collapse, or a shocking sin, and we turn up our Bibles again and God’s word comes straight home, and we say, “Why, I never saw that there before.”
Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, October 31, 2025
NO GREATER JOY - #10125
So this friend of mine pulled out his wallet and said, "Ron, can I show you my pride and joy?" And he did. There was a picture of a little dusting compound called Pride and a dishwashing detergent called Joy. So, here were these two household items. I was fully expecting to see his children, but then, of course, I have strange friends.
Actually, most people do produce a picture of their children or their grandchildren when they say, "Would you like to see my pride and joy?" That's the way it should be. But if we were to judge our greatest source of joy from the time we spend on things, maybe we should put a picture of our desk and say, "Here's my pride and joy, or our house, or our car. Or, "Here's a picture of my paycheck" or my name being in print. Or, "Here's my sporting equipment for what I spend so much of my time doing." Maybe we need to stop and evaluate what really is our greatest fulfillment factor... or what should be.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Greater Joy."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God. We're in the book of 3 John. Yes, Virginia, there is a third John after first and second John. And if you would like to read a book of the Bible pretty quickly, well you've got your choice right here. There are only about 13 or 14 verses in 3 John. So look it up! I'm reading to you from the fourth verse. It says: "I have no greater joy..." John says, okay, here's his pride and joy. Can you imagine him pulling out his wallet and saying, "Okay, I'm going to show you my pride and joy"? "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth."
We know that John here was talking about his spiritual children. But he was saying that the greatest fulfillment factor I have in my life is to know they're walking in the truth. Notice he didn't say it's that they know the truth or they're giving the right answers, or that they're quoting the truth. He says, "They're walking around in it. They're living it."
Now, if you're a parent as I am, you need to remember that God's value system puts the highest priority on the spiritual welfare of your children. How are they doing? Are they walking in the ways of Jesus? That's one way to find out how you're doing as a follower of Christ. Could it be that something else has replaced your children - pushed them to the edge a little bit? You didn't mean for it to happen. You're not even aware of it; it has been subtle. But somehow something has edged out your children as your main fulfillment factor. It could be your career. Maybe it's education or pursuing some goal in that area. Maybe it's just in improving your lifestyle. You're trying to do it for your kids, of course. But somehow it's taking so much time that your kids are crowded out. Maybe it's even church work that has left your kids virtual orphans a lot of the time.
Remember, somebody else could do that job at work - that job at church. It might be a very noble goal you're pursuing, but you are the only daddy. You are the only mommy they will ever really have. And they will reflect the amount of investment you have placed in them spiritually. No greater joy than them? Is it your greatest investment to see that you're doing all you can to see that your children walk in truth: Time to pray together, to apply the Bible together, to serve Christ together, to talk about Christian values, to talk about a Christian lifestyle together?
They are your greatest responsibility, don't let anything else take their place. They're supposed to be your greatest fulfillment. And, I hope, your very greatest joy.
