Max Lucado Daily:The Gladdest News of All
Grace is simply another word for God’s reservoir of strength and protection. Not occasionally or miserly but constantly and aggressively, wave upon wave. We barely regain our balance from one breaker, and then, bam, here comes another!
We dare to stake our hope on the gladdest news of all: if God permits the challenge, he will provide the grace to meet it. We never exhaust his supply. “Stop asking so much! My grace reservoir is running dry.” Heaven knows no such words. God has enough grace to solve every dilemma you face, wipe every tear that you cry, and answer every question you ask.
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32).
Having given the supreme and costliest gift, how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?
From GRACE
Deuteronomy 21
If a dead body is found on the ground, this ground that God, your God, has given you, lying out in the open, and no one knows who killed him, your leaders and judges are to go out and measure the distance from the body to the nearest cities. The leaders and judges of the city that is nearest the corpse will then take a heifer that has never been used for work, never had a yoke on it. The leaders will take the heifer to a valley with a stream, a valley that has never been plowed or planted, and there break the neck of the heifer. The Levitical priests will then step up. God has chosen them to serve him in these matters by settling legal disputes and violent crimes and by pronouncing blessings in God’s name. Finally, all the leaders of that town that is nearest the body will wash their hands over the heifer that had its neck broken at the stream and say, “We didn’t kill this man and we didn’t see who did it. Purify your people Israel whom you redeemed, O God. Clear your people Israel from any guilt in this murder.”
8–9 That will clear them from any responsibility in the murder. By following these procedures you will have absolved yourselves of any part in the murder because you will have done what is right in God’s sight.
10–14 When you go to war against your enemies and God, your God, gives you victory and you take prisoners, and then you notice among the prisoners of war a good-looking woman whom you find attractive and would like to marry, this is what you do: Take her home; have her trim her hair, cut her nails, and discard the clothes she was wearing when captured. She is then to stay in your home for a full month, mourning her father and mother. Then you may go to bed with her as husband and wife. If it turns out you don’t like her, you must let her go and live wherever she wishes. But you can’t sell her or use her as a slave since you’ve humiliated her.
15–17 When a man has two wives, one loved and the other hated, and they both give him sons, but the firstborn is from the hated wife, at the time he divides the inheritance with his sons he must not treat the son of the loved wife as the firstborn, cutting out the son of the hated wife, who is the actual firstborn. No, he must acknowledge the inheritance rights of the real firstborn, the son of the hated wife, by giving him a double share of the inheritance: that son is the first proof of his virility; the rights of the firstborn belong to him.
18–20 When a man has a stubborn son, a real rebel who won’t do a thing his mother and father tell him, and even though they discipline him he still won’t obey, his father and mother shall forcibly bring him before the leaders at the city gate and say to the city fathers, “This son of ours is a stubborn rebel; he won’t listen to a thing we say. He’s a glutton and a drunk.”
21 Then all the men of the town are to throw rocks at him until he’s dead. You will have purged the evil pollution from among you. All Israel will hear what’s happened and be in awe.
22–23 When a man has committed a capital crime, been given the death sentence, executed and hung from a tree, don’t leave his dead body hanging overnight from the tree. Give him a decent burial that same day so that you don’t desecrate your God-given land—a hanged man is an insult to God.
by, December 06, 2025
by Poh Fang Chia
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Genesis 16:5-13
Sarai told Abram, “It’s all your fault that I’m suffering this abuse. I put my maid in bed with you and the minute she knows she’s pregnant, she treats me like I’m nothing. May God decide which of us is right.”
6 “You decide,” said Abram. “Your maid is your business.”
Sarai was abusive to Hagar and Hagar ran away.
7–8 An angel of God found her beside a spring in the desert; it was the spring on the road to Shur. He said, “Hagar, maid of Sarai, what are you doing here?”
She said, “I’m running away from Sarai my mistress.”
9–12 The angel of God said, “Go back to your mistress. Put up with her abuse.” He continued, “I’m going to give you a big family, children past counting.
From this pregnancy, you’ll get a son: Name him Ishmael;
for God heard you, God answered you.
He’ll be a bucking bronco of a man,
a real fighter, fighting and being fought,
Always stirring up trouble,
always at odds with his family.”
13 She answered God by name, praying to the God who spoke to her, “You’re the God who sees me!
“Yes! He saw me; and then I saw him!”
Today's Insights
The Bible introduces us early to a God who hears and sees each of us. In the midst of Hagar’s distress in Genesis 16, she names her son Ishmael, which means “God hears” (v. 11). Hearing implies listening attentively. God also sees Hagar’s distress. She feels isolated, alone, and abandoned, but He’s already listening and watching. She confesses, “You are the God who sees me” (v. 13). Later when Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac, he too recognizes God’s oversight. He names the place, “The Lord Will Provide” (22:14), or literally, He “sees.” Today, we can also be assured that God hears and sees us in our distress, and that He’s with us.
God Sees Me
You are the God who sees me. Genesis 16:13
When Sun’s husband had a stroke, her life took a dramatic turn. She found herself having to assist her husband with the activities of daily living and cope with his emotional outbursts. For seventeen years, she’d faithfully cared for her husband. When a fall hastened his decline, however, the weight of caregiving finally became too much, and Sun sank into depression. “I felt I’d lost my faith,” she shared, “and I couldn’t see God.”
But looking back, Sun now believes that God saw her because He provided subsidized home medical and nursing care to manage her husband’s chronic condition and sent social workers to support Sun in managing the emotional challenges of caregiving.
God revealed himself as the God who sees in the story of Hagar. In Genesis 16, the slave Hagar was running away from her mistress’ mistreatment (v. 6) when the “angel of the Lord” found her “near a spring in the desert” (v. 7). He urged Hagar to “go back to [her] mistress” (v. 9) and assured her of His blessing. Even though Hagar was a nobody in her culture, God was watching out for her well-being. In gratitude, Hagar declared, “You are the God who sees me” (v. 13).
God sees us in our distress too. We’re never alone because our loving Father knows our situation, and He’s trustworthy. We can cry out to Him for help, and He’ll lift us up.
Reflect & Pray
How have you experienced that God sees and knows your need in the past? How can this knowledge help you in your present trials?
Dear Father, thank You for assuring me that You see what I’m going through.
For further study, listen to What's True About God.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, December 06, 2025
The Bow in the Cloud
I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. — Genesis 9:13
God’s will is that human beings should enter into a moral relationship with him. All his covenants are for this purpose. “Why doesn’t God save me?” you ask. He has saved you, but you haven’t entered into a moral relationship with him. “Why hasn’t God answered my prayer?” He has answered it, but this isn’t the point. The question you must answer is, Will I step into a moral relationship with him? All of God’s great blessings are finished and complete, but they aren’t mine until I enter into a relationship based on his covenant.
Entering into a moral relationship with God requires exertion on my part. Just as God went beyond himself in his relationship with humanity, becoming flesh for our sake, so I must go beyond myself in my covenant with him. I can’t just sit back and wait. Waiting for God is like unbelief; it means that I lack faith in him, that I’m waiting for a specific thing to happen so that then I can have faith in that. God will never do the thing I’m waiting for, because that isn’t the basis of his relationship with humanity.
Faith in God is the rarest thing. Most of us have faith only in our feelings. We don’t believe God unless he places something in our hand, something we can point to and say, “Now I believe.” There’s no faith in that. God says, “Turn to me and be saved” (Isaiah 45:22), not “Turn to what I’ve given you.”
When I truly enter into a covenant relationship with God, letting go of everything else, I have no sense of having achieved something by my own merit. There’s no human ingredient in it at all, just an overwhelming feeling of being brought into union with him, the whole thing transfigured with peace and joy.
Daniel 3-4; 1 John 5
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The root of faith is the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest snares is the idea that God is sure to lead us to success.
My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L
