Max Lucado Daily: Jesus Knows Just How You Feel
The next time your world goes from calm to chaos-ponder this: Jesus knows how you feel. His eyes have grown weary. His heart has grown heavy. He knows how you feel. You're no doubt convinced Jesus is acquainted with sorrow and has wrestled with fear. Most people accept that. But can God relate to the hassles and headaches of your life? For some reason this is harder to believe.
Listen to Hebrews 4:15, ". . .he Himself has shared fully in all our experience of temptation, except that He never sinned." The writer of Hebrews anticipates our objections. "God, it's easy for you up there. You don't know how hard it is from down here." Listen again. He has shared fully. Not nearly. Not to a large degree, but entirely! In all our experience, in every hurt and every ache. Why? So that when you hurt, you'll go to Him-who knows how you feel!
From In the Eye of the Storm
Psalm 53
A David Psalm
1–2 53 Bilious and bloated, they gas,
“God is gone.”
It’s poison gas—
they foul themselves, they poison
Rivers and skies;
thistles are their cash crop.
God sticks his head out of heaven.
He looks around.
He’s looking for someone not stupid—
one man, even, God-expectant,
just one God-ready woman.
3 He comes up empty. A string
of zeros. Useless, unshepherded
Sheep, taking turns pretending
to be Shepherd.
The ninety and nine
follow the one.
4 Don’t they know anything,
all these impostors?
Don’t they know
they can’t get away with this,
Treating people like a fast-food meal
over which they’re too busy to pray?
5 Night is coming for them, and nightmare—
a nightmare they’ll never wake up from.
God will make hash of these squatters,
send them packing for good.
6 Is there anyone around to save Israel?
God turns life around.
Turned-around Jacob skips rope,
turned-around Israel sings laughter.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, August 01, 2026
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Hebrews 11:8-16
By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God.
11–12 By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said. That’s how it happened that from one man’s dead and shriveled loins there are now people numbering into the millions.
13–16 Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.
Today's Insights
Hebrews 11 has been referred to as the “Hall of Faith” because everyone listed in the chapter is presented as a model of faith. This makes sense because verse 6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Because our human effort to do good will always fall short of God’s standard (Ephesians 2:8-9), we’re dependent upon Him by faith. By faith we trust God now, and one day we’ll be in His eternal presence (John 3:16).
God's Better Country
Heb. 11:16-They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world.
Michele experienced a mixture of emotions as her father neared the end of his life. She grieved when he said, “Honey, I won’t be here to walk you down the aisle.” But she assured him of her love, clinging to the hope she found in Hebrews 11 as she said, “You’re heading for a better country, a country in heaven.” Michele believed that her dad, when he died, would be with God forever. She reflected, “Heaven will be that good!”
The letter to the Hebrews was aimed at Jewish believers in Jesus experiencing persecution by state and religious opponents. Although it was written before the destruction of the temple in ad 70, the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans may have occurred soon after. In this climate of fear, the author urged the believers to hold firm to their faith as he highlighted a great “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). Each “did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance” (11:13). They lived by faith, “longing for a better country—a heavenly one,” and God was pleased to be called their God, and “prepared a city for them” (v. 16).
Although Michele ached with sadness when her father died, she embraced the promises of her heavenly Father. We too can welcome these same promises “from a distance” (v. 13), trusting in God.
Reflect & Pray
How can you embrace God’s help and trust Him more today? How does the thought of heaven inform your hopes, dreams, and actions?
Heavenly Father, please help me live knowing that You’re trustworthy and will one day welcome me home.
Learn more about God’s wonderful plan for heaven and earth.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, August 01, 2026
Something More about His Ways
When Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities. — Matthew 11:1 kjv
He comes where he commands us to leave. If when God says, “Go,” you stay because you’re concerned about your people at home, you rob your loved ones of the teaching of Jesus himself. When you obey and go, trusting God with the consequences, the Lord himself ministers to those you leave behind, just as he came to “teach and preach” in the disciples’ cities after they’d set out in his service. As long as you refuse to obey, you’re in his way.
Watch out if your idea of duty begins to compete with your Lord’s commands. If you find yourself saying, “I know God told me to go, but my duty is at home,” it’s an indication that you don’t believe Jesus means what he says.
He teaches where he tells us not to. Are you teaching where God has told you not to, playing the amateur providence in other people’s lives? Are you so noisy in instructing others that God can’t get anywhere near them? We have to keep our mouths shut and our spirits alert. God wants to instruct his children in the ways of his Son. He wants to turn our times of prayer into mounts of transfiguration. We won’t let him, because we think we know what he’ll do. When we’re certain of the way God is going to work, he will never work in that way anymore.
He works where he sends us to wait. “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Wait on God, and he will work. But don’t wait sulkily just because you can’t see an inch in front of you! Are you detached enough from your inner hysterics to wait patiently on God? Waiting on him doesn’t mean sitting on the sidelines with your hands folded. It means doing what you are told, in joyful obedience to him.
These are phases of God’s ways we rarely recognize.
Psalms 57-59; Romans 4
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed.
Our Brilliant Heritage
