Max Lucado: Jesus is the Gift
Little Carol with the pigtails, freckles, and shiny back shoes. Don’t let her sweet description fool you. She broke my heart! On the day of the great gift exchange in my fourth-grade class, I ripped the wrapping paper off the box to find—stationery. Stationery! Brown envelopes and folded note cards with a picture of a cowboy lassoing a horse. What ten-year-old boy uses stationery? There’s a term for this kind of gift: obligatory!
I know we shouldn’t complain, but don’t you detect a lack of originality? And when a person gives a genuine gift, don’t you cherish the presence of a gift just for you? Have you ever received such a gift? Yes, you have. You’ve been given a perfect personal gift. One just for you. God says to anyone who’ll listen: ”There has been born for you…a Savior…. ” Jesus is the gift!
“There has been born for you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:11”
From GRACE
Joshua 2
Rahab
1 2 Joshua son of Nun secretly sent out from Shittim two men as spies: “Go. Look over the land. Check out Jericho.” They left and arrived at the house of a harlot named Rahab and stayed there.
2 The king of Jericho was told, “We’ve just learned that men arrived tonight to spy out the land. They’re from the People of Israel.”
3 The king of Jericho sent word to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you to stay the night in your house. They’re spies; they’ve come to spy out the whole country.”
4–7 The woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, two men did come to me, but I didn’t know where they’d come from. At dark, when the gate was about to be shut, the men left. But I have no idea where they went. Hurry up! Chase them—you can still catch them!” (She had actually taken them up on the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax that were spread out for her on the roof.) So the men set chase down the Jordan road toward the fords. As soon as they were gone, the gate was shut.
8–11 Before the spies were down for the night, the woman came up to them on the roof and said, “I know that God has given you the land. We’re all afraid. Everyone in the country feels hopeless. We heard how God dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt, and what he did to the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you put under a holy curse and destroyed. We heard it and our hearts sank. We all had the wind knocked out of us. And all because of you, you and God, your God, God of the heavens above and God of the earth below.
12–13 “Now promise me by God. I showed you mercy; now show my family mercy. And give me some tangible proof, a guarantee of life for my father and mother, my brothers and sisters—everyone connected with my family. Save our souls from death!”
14 “Our lives for yours!” said the men. “But don’t tell anyone our business. When God turns this land over to us, we’ll do right by you in loyal mercy.”
15–16 She lowered them down out a window with a rope because her house was on the city wall to the outside. She told them, “Run for the hills so your pursuers won’t find you. Hide out for three days and give your pursuers time to return. Then get on your way.”
17–20 The men told her, “In order to keep this oath you made us swear, here is what you must do: Hang this red rope out the window through which you let us down and gather your entire family with you in your house—father, mother, brothers, and sisters. Anyone who goes out the doors of your house into the street and is killed, it’s his own fault—we aren’t responsible. But for everyone within the house we take full responsibility. If anyone lays a hand on one of them, it’s our fault. But if you tell anyone of our business here, the oath you made us swear is canceled—we’re no longer responsible.”
21 She said, “If that’s what you say, that’s the way it is,” and sent them off. They left and she hung the red rope out the window.
22 They headed for the hills and stayed there for three days until the pursuers had returned. The pursuers had looked high and low but found nothing.
23–24 The men headed back. They came down out of the hills, crossed the river, and returned to Joshua son of Nun and reported all their experiences. They told Joshua, “Yes! God has given the whole country to us. Everybody there is in a state of panic because of us.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, December 28, 2025
by Tom Felten
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“That’s right. The time is coming when I will make a brand-new covenant with Israel and Judah. It won’t be a repeat of the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant even though I did my part as their Master.” God’s Decree.
33–34 “This is the brand-new covenant that I will make with Israel when the time comes. I will put my law within them—write it on their hearts!—and be their God. And they will be my people. They will no longer go around setting up schools to teach each other about God. They’ll know me firsthand, the dull and the bright, the smart and the slow. I’ll wipe the slate clean for each of them. I’ll forget they ever sinned!” God’s Decree.
Today's Insights
Jeremiah 31:31-34 is quoted in Hebrews 8:8-12 (the longest Old Testament Scripture quotation in the New Testament). The author of Hebrews says that Jesus, who is seated at God’s right hand (8:1), is the mediator of the new and better covenant between God and His people (vv. 6-7). Chapter 10 emphasizes the superior work of Christ: “But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God . . . . For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (vv. 12, 14). Jeremiah 31 is quoted again in verses 16-17, reminding us that through Christ, God transforms the hearts of those who trust in Him. When we confess our sins, He forgives them and “will remember [them] no more” (Hebrews 10:17).
Hear more about Jesus' role as High Priest and atoning sacrifice.
Hearts Transformed by God
I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God. Jeremiah 31:33
Today's Devotional
Like many people who struggle with pornography, Russell was exposed to it at a young age. The desire to use it was overpowering, and it poisoned his heart. “My life [became] completely saturated by it,” he writes, “so much so that it was like a cancer that was deeply rooted into my very fiber.” By God’s grace, he was finally set free of porn’s power—along with other addictions—when he received salvation in Jesus and was transformed from the inside out. “I credit it all to Jesus Christ, . . . [He’s] the one who delivered me,” Russell says.
Jeremiah delivered a message from God to Israel that one day He would “put [His] law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (31:33). Under this new covenant, fulfilled in Christ (Hebrews 8:6-13), all people could be transformed by God’s grace through faith. And now, “his Spirit . . . lives in [us]” (Romans 8:11), and God’s moral law has been written on our hearts. For Russell, and for all who believe, the Holy Spirit’s power provides what’s needed to turn from harmful behavior that displeases God and seeks to destroy us.
Transformation isn’t always instantaneous or easy. But let’s remember that when we’re dealing with difficult—even addictive—sin, God can transform our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). He says, you “will know me” (v. 34 nlt), and we can also know His heart-changing power.
Reflect & Pray
Why is it possible to turn from even chronic sin in God’s power? How can you live out your new heart with the Spirit’s help?
Loving God, thank You for transforming my heart.
Learn more by listenting to When We Sin.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, December 28, 2025
Continuous Conversion
Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 18:3
Our Lord is speaking here of the change that marks our initial conversion. But this isn’t a change we make just once at the start of our walk with him. We have to be continuously converted all the days of our lives, to continually turn to God as little children.
If we trust in our intelligence instead of in God, we’ll produce consequences for which God will hold us responsible. Whenever our bodies are brought into new conditions by his providence, we have to see that our natural life obeys the dictates of his Spirit. Just because we’ve done it once is no proof that we’ll do it again. The relation of the natural to the spiritual has to be one of continuous conversion. And yet continually converting our natural impulses into spiritual obedience is the one thing we object to.
In every new setting in which God places us, his Spirit remains unchanged and his salvation unaltered. But we have to “put on the new self” (Ephesians 4:24) by undergoing another conversion. God holds us responsible every time we refuse to convert ourselves, because he knows that our reason for refusing is natural willfulness.
Our natural impulses must not rule; God must. The obstacle in our spiritual life is that we have great wedges of obstinacy inside us, places where pride spits at the throne of God and says, “I won’t.” We refuse to be continually converted, deifying independence and willfulness and calling them by the wrong name. We call them “strength,” while God sees them as obstinate weakness. There are whole regions of our lives that we haven’t yet brought into subjection to him. The only way we can make them submit is by continuous conversion. Slowly but surely, we can claim the whole territory for the Spirit of God.
Zechariah 5-8; Revelation 19
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God.
Not Knowing Whither
