Max Lucado Daily: A DOSE OF SERVANTHOOD - November 7, 2025
God’s cure for the common life includes a strong dose of servanthood. Timely reminder. As you celebrate your unique design, be careful. Don’t so focus on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done. A 3:00 AM diaper change fits in very few sweet spots. Visiting your sick neighbor might not come naturally to you. Still, the sick need to be encouraged and diapers need changing.
The world needs servants. People like Jesus, who did not come to be served, but to serve. He chose remote Nazareth over center-stage Jerusalem, his dad’s carpentry shop over a marble-columned palace, and three decades of anonymity over a life of popularity. He selected prayer over sleep, the wilderness over the Jordan, feisty apostles over obedient angels. I’d have gone with the angels, given the choice. Not Jesus. He picked the people. He came to serve! May we do the same.
The Lucado Inspirational Reader
Numbers 36
The Daughters of Zelophehad
1 36 The heads of the ancestral clan of Gilead son of Makir, the son of Manasseh—they were from the clans of the descendants of Joseph—approached Moses and the leaders who were heads of the families in the People of Israel.
2–4 They said, “When God commanded my master to hand over the inheritance-lands by lot to the People of Israel, my master was also commanded by God to hand over the inheritance-land of Zelophehad our brother to his daughters. But what happens if they marry into another tribe in the People of Israel? Their inheritance-land will be taken out of our ancestral tribe and get added into the tribe into which they married. And then when the year of Jubilee comes for the People of Israel their inheritance will be lumped in with the inheritance of the tribe into which they married—their land will be removed from our ancestors’ inheritance!”
5–9 Moses, at God’s command, issued this order to the People of Israel: “What the tribe of the sons of Joseph says is right. This is God’s command to Zelophehad’s daughters: They are free to marry anyone they choose as long as they marry within their ancestral clan. The inheritance-land of the People of Israel must not get passed around from tribe to tribe. No, keep the tribal inheritance-land in the family. Every daughter who inherits land, regardless of the tribe she is in, must marry a man from within her father’s tribal clan. Every Israelite is responsible for making sure the inheritance stays within the ancestral tribe. No inheritance-land may be passed from tribe to tribe; each tribe of the People of Israel must hold tight to its own land.”
10–12 Zelophehad’s daughters did just as God commanded Moses. Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, Zelophehad’s daughters, all married their cousins on their father’s side. They married within the families of Manasseh son of Joseph and their inheritance-lands stayed in their father’s family.
13 These are the commands and regulations that God commanded through the authority of Moses to the People of Israel on the Plains of Moab at Jordan-Jericho.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, November 07, 2025
by Katara Patton
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Numbers 27:1-7
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.
Today's Insights
In Numbers 27:1-7, Zelophehad’s five daughters act as one in their request to receive their father’s inheritance in the promised land. Their boldness in making the request (they followed proper protocol in approaching the leaders at the tent of meeting) is an example of both faith and humility. There was no provision in Israel at that time for women to receive an inheritance; it was only passed through the men.
Moses models the character of a good spiritual leader in responding to their request. Since there was no precedent for women to receive an inheritance, he inquired of God, who said, “You must certainly give them property” (v. 7). The courage of the women and the character of Moses led to a positive solution where the good of the people was served. As we face challenges today, we can seek God’s wisdom for ways to serve together well in Christ.
Working Together in Christ
The Lord said to [Moses], “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property.” Numbers 27:6-7
“No matter where you are, what you’re going through; use what you have and make the most of it,” said the young woman in a TV interview. Her words prompted me to listen carefully to the full story. I learned that she was one of six sisters working toward nursing degrees. They were once homeless and struggling, yet they worked together to reach their common goal. And at the time the story aired, all six sisters were completing the nursing program at a local university.
Numbers 27 tells the story of another group of sisters who worked together and supported each other. The five daughters of Zelophehad made an appeal about an inheritance law. They gathered together and stood before Moses to plead their case, saying, “Our father died . . . for his own sin and left no sons. . . . Give us property among our father’s relatives” (vv. 3-4). God answered with this revolutionary statement: “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance” (v. 7).
The five sisters came together and sought God’s mercy as they stood before Moses. And God provided what they needed as they banded together before Him.
Working together isn’t always easy as believers in Jesus. But as we seek God’s wisdom and direction with humility, we’ll find He can help us serve well together in Christ.
Reflect & Pray
How can you work better with other believers in Christ? How does it encourage you to serve with others?
Dear God, please show me how to work with other believers to accomplish goals that honor You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, November 07, 2025
The Sacredness of Circumstances
In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. —Romans 8:28
In the life of a saint, there is no such thing as chance. God, by his providence, brings you into circumstances that you can’t understand at all, and the only thing you know is that the Spirit of God understands. Never take your circumstances into your own hand and say, “I’m going to be my own providence here. I must watch this and guard that.” All your circumstances are in the hand of God; never think this strange concerning the circumstances you are in.
God is bringing you into certain places and among certain people for a reason: so that the Holy Spirit inside you can intercede along a particular line. The Holy Spirit’s part in intercessory prayer isn’t the human part. As a human being, you are not to engage in the agonies of intercession; the Holy Spirit takes those upon himself. “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26). Your part is to take the circumstances you’re in and the people you’re among and bring them before God’s throne. This is how you give the Spirit inside you a chance to intercede, and how God is going to sweep the whole world with his saints.
Ask yourself: Am I making the Holy Spirit’s work difficult by being noncommittal or by trying to do his work for him? You must leave the Spirit side of intercession alone and focus on your side—your specific circumstances and acquaintances.
My intercessions can never be your intercessions, and your intercessions can never be mine. But the Holy Spirit makes intercessions in each of our lives, intercessions without which someone else will be impoverished.
Jeremiah 40-42; Hebrews 4
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Beware of isolation; beware of the idea that you have to develop a holy life alone. It is impossible to develop a holy life alone; you will develop into an oddity and a peculiarism, into something utterly unlike what God wants you to be. The only way to develop spiritually is to go into the society of God’s own children, and you will soon find how God alters your set. God does not contradict our social instincts; He alters them.
Biblical Psychology, 189 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, November 07, 2025
WHEN YOU'RE HIT WITH LIFE'S HAMMER - #10130
When You're Hit With Life's Hammer - #10130
WHEN YOU'RE HIT WITH LIFE'S HAMMER - #10130
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November 7, 2025
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Full disclosure here. I'm not the guy you want to call when you need a guy to do a job with a hammer. But look, I do know the fundamentals. A hammer can be used to build something, right? Or to tear it down. Either way, what a hammer hits is not going to stay the same. Life's hammers are like that: Losing your job, your health, the one you love most. Those are hammers! And maybe one of those has hit you recently. Or it maybe hit a long time ago but its effects are still there today. And whatever the hammer hits can't possibly stay the same. The only question is whether the blows will build you or tear you down. But the hammer doesn't decide that. We do.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "When You're Hit With Life's Hammer."
Each summer, I travel with a team of young Native Americans who've been hammered all their lives by family violence, sexual violence, addiction, and depression. Most have been to a dozen or more funerals by the time they're 16.
But when they talk about their lives with reservation young people like them, they don't sound like victims. Oh, they acknowledge the damage the blows have done. But what they talk about most is hope! Because they made choices that have made them stronger, more compassionate, people of great faith, and they hand out hope wherever they go.
We don't get to choose if and when life's hammers hit, but we totally choose what kind of person it's going to make us. Will I let this tenderize my heart or turn it hard? Will I let pain open up my heart or close my heart in fear that I'll get hurt again? Will I let it go, by forgiving and be free, or will I let it grow into a cancer in my soul? Will I let the blows equip me to be a wounded healer for other bleeding people, or is it going to make me one of those hurt people who hurt people?
The hole left by my Karen's absence is unfillable. But God has used it to open my heart to Him and to other wounded people as never before. I'm living with His promise, and it's our word for today from the Word of God: "He comforts us in all our troubles so we can comfort others" and "give them the same comfort God has given us" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
When we've been hurt, we can choose to let the hammer turn us inward, putting up walls that say, "Leave me alone." People get that vibe and they oblige, and we end up self-isolated at the very time when we need people the most. On the other hand, if we choose to reach out, we can experience the very flood of love and support that we're going to need to heal.
Maybe the worst choice we can make when the hammer hits is to turn our back on God. We go, "why?", and the heavens seem silent. But when we turn our back on God at the very point where we need Him the most, we're turning our back on the only One who can make any sense out of what's happened. Who can bring meaning out of our pain. Who has the hope and the supernatural strength we need to go on. As the Bible promises, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:13). Even through the most leveling blow of my life.
My Jesus gets it. No one took the blows He did. Literally loving me enough to take the hellish punishment for my sin so I wouldn't have to. And anyone who loved me enough to die for me will never do me wrong. So, yes, I can trust Him. Even when I can't understand Him.
I would encourage you, if you've never reached out to Him and begun your relationship with Him, tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm yours." And let me urge you to go to our website and there get all the information you'll need to get this relationship started. It's ANewStory.com.
When my son was three years old, we visited the U.S. Capitol. You can imagine how those long, steep stairs looked with little legs. Impossible. But he made it to the top! Not with his strength. With his daddy's. I carried him.
Just as Jesus has been carrying me and wants to carry you. He's carried me where I never could have gone without Him. He's waiting to do that for you.
