Max Lucado Daily: Max Lucado Daily: Just Like Jesus
When they were young, my daughters loved playing “dress-up.” They’d put on their mom’s shoes, fill up a grown-up purse with crayons and pretend grown-up scenarios. For the moment, they wanted to be just like mom.
Don’t we do the same? We look at ourselves, with our immaturity, our sinfulness, and we want to clothe ourselves in something better. We want to be just like Jesus. This seems like an impossible goal until we accept one simple truth: God will help us. He loves us. Not only does God love each of us exactly as we are, but he wants us, little by little, to become like him. Why? Because he wants us to have a heart like his.
Need to hear that message a few more times? Don’t we all? God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way! He wants you to be just like Jesus!
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26).
From Just Like Jesus
Judges 4
Deborah
1–3 4 The People of Israel kept right on doing evil in God’s sight. With Ehud dead, God sold them off to Jabin king of Canaan who ruled from Hazor. Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim, was the commander of his army. The People of Israel cried out to God because he had cruelly oppressed them with his nine hundred iron chariots for twenty years.
4–5 Deborah was a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth. She was judge over Israel at that time. She held court under Deborah’s Palm between Ramah and Bethel in the hills of Ephraim. The People of Israel went to her in matters of justice.
6–7 She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “It has become clear that God, the God of Israel, commands you: Go to Mount Tabor and prepare for battle. Take ten companies of soldiers from Naphtali and Zebulun. I’ll take care of getting Sisera, the leader of Jabin’s army, to the Kishon River with all his chariots and troops. And I’ll make sure you win the battle.”
8 Barak said, “If you go with me, I’ll go. But if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.”
9–10 She said, “Of course I’ll go with you. But understand that with an attitude like that, there’ll be no glory in it for you. God will use a woman’s hand to take care of Sisera.”
Deborah got ready and went with Barak to Kedesh. Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali together at Kedesh. Ten companies of men followed him. And Deborah was with him.
11–13 It happened that Heber the Kenite had parted company with the other Kenites, the descendants of Hobab, Moses’ in-law. He was now living at Zaanannim Oak near Kedesh. They told Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor. Sisera immediately called up all his chariots to the Kishon River—nine hundred iron chariots!—along with all his troops who were with him at Harosheth Haggoyim.
14 Deborah said to Barak, “Charge! This very day God has given you victory over Sisera. Isn’t God marching before you?”
Barak charged down the slopes of Mount Tabor, his ten companies following him.
15–16 God routed Sisera—all those chariots, all those troops!—before Barak. Sisera jumped out of his chariot and ran. Barak chased the chariots and troops all the way to Harosheth Haggoyim. Sisera’s entire fighting force was killed—not one man left.
17–18 Meanwhile Sisera, running for his life, headed for the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. Jabin king of Hazor and Heber the Kenite were on good terms with one another. Jael stepped out to meet Sisera and said, “Come in, sir. Stay here with me. Don’t be afraid.”
So he went with her into her tent. She covered him with a blanket.
19 He said to her, “Please, a little water. I’m thirsty.”
She opened a bottle of milk, gave him a drink, and then covered him up again.
20 He then said, “Stand at the tent flap. If anyone comes by and asks you, ‘Is there anyone here?’ tell him, ‘No, not a soul.’ ”
21 Then while he was fast asleep from exhaustion, Jael wife of Heber took a tent peg and hammer, tiptoed toward him, and drove the tent peg through his temple and all the way into the ground. He convulsed and died.
22 Barak arrived in pursuit of Sisera. Jael went out to greet him. She said, “Come, I’ll show you the man you’re looking for.” He went with her and there he was—Sisera, stretched out, dead, with a tent peg through his temple.
23–24 On that day God subdued Jabin king of Canaan before the People of Israel. The People of Israel pressed harder and harder on Jabin king of Canaan until there was nothing left of him.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Sunday, February 01, 2026
by Amy Boucher Pye
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Philippians 1:3-11
A Love That Will Grow
3–6 Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.
7–8 It’s not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you. My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality. You have, after all, stuck with me all the way from the time I was thrown in jail, put on trial, and came out of it in one piece. All along you have experienced with me the most generous help from God. He knows how much I love and miss you these days. Sometimes I think I feel as strongly about you as Christ does!
9–11 So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.
Today's Insights
Paul writes to encourage his spiritual children whom he lovingly describes as “God’s holy people . . . who belong to Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:1 nlt). He’s praying they’ll mature in their faith and become more like Christ (vv. 9-11; see 1 Thessalonians 3:12). The apostle doesn’t simply want them to love each other; he wants them to overflow with God’s love (Philippians 1:9 nlt). Because God is love and He’s demonstrated His love by sending His Son to die for our sins, the apostle John commands us to love one another just as God loved us (1 John 4:7-12): “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect” (vv. 16-17 nlt). Our identity as believers is rooted in knowing that God made us and loves us.
Abounding Love
He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6
At the last night of summer camp, my teenage self felt conspicuous as I stood alone in a group of campers. When one of them mocked me, I felt hurt. I ran back to my tent, pretending to sleep when the group leader checked on me. The next morning I avoided her attempt to talk about it.
She later wrote to me, helping me understand that God truly cared for me. She quoted from the apostle Paul: We can be “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). I felt like the apostle’s words were directed right to me.
Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, which he’d planted over a decade earlier, to encourage them to root their love for God and each other “in knowledge and depth of insight” (v. 9). God would carry on His work in and through them as He filled them “with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ” (v. 11). At the time I didn’t understand the original context, but I started to comprehend that my identity as one loved by God came from knowing and accepting the love of Jesus.
God desires that we receive His love and that it would abound in us more and more. As He fills us with His joy and peace, we’ll grow in the knowledge not only of Him but of His good work in us.
Reflect & Pray
How does knowing that God will complete His work in you shape you? How can you root your identity in Christ more deeply?
Creator God, You made me and love me. Please help me look to You always for love, joy, and help.
For further study, read Remade in the Image of Jesus.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, February 01, 2026
The Call of God
Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. —1 Corinthians 1:17
If we are going to preach the gospel, we need to be clear about what the gospel is. In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul says that the gospel—the message God has called on him to deliver—is the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel isn’t Paul’s personal transformation or experience; it isn’t his salvation or sanctification. Paul shares his personal story, but only as an illustration: certain things happened to Paul because of the redemption, but they were not the ultimate reason for it. The ultimate reason Jesus suffered in redemption was to
redeem the whole world and place it unimpaired and rehabilitated before the throne of God. This is the gospel, and the only thing we are commissioned to preach.
The difference between Jesus’s act of redemption and our personal holiness is stark: one is cause and the other effect. When we preach, we must be careful where we place the emphasis. Are we placing it on Jesus, or on ourselves? Are we lifting up his holiness, or our own?
When we truly understand the reality of the gospel, we will stop bothering God with questions about ourselves. Imagine, if God were human, how heartsick and tired he would be, listening to the constant requests for our salvation and sanctification! We trouble him day and night, when we should be thanking him. Paul welcomed heartbreak, disillusionment, and tribulation for one reason only: they kept him in unmoved devotion to the gospel of God.
Exodus 27-28; Matthew 21:1-22
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
“When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” We all have faith in good principles, in good management, in good common sense, but who amongst us has faith in Jesus Christ? Physical courage is grand, moral courage is grander, but the man who trusts Jesus Christ in the face of the terrific problems of life is worth a whole crowd of heroes.