Max Lucado Daily Devotional

Max Lucado

It doesn’t matter if it’s a good day, a hard day, or somewhere in-between—we need the hope God offers every day. Max shares words of hope and help through simple, one-minute daily devotionals to encourage you to take one step closer to Jesus.

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September 18 · length unknown
The Lord Gives A Word
Listen to Today's Devotion For six long weeks Elijah had walked across the wilderness of Sinai. Finally he reached and began to ascend Mt. Horeb. Elijah was in search of God. And, according to 1 Kings 19:9 (NKJV), “the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” Elijah answered with a complaint. I did everything you told me to do, but your people have rejected your covenants and killed your prophets. I’m the only one left in the country, and now they want to kill me too. Well, the Lord gave Elijah a word. According to verse 12, our Creator spoke to the prophet with a still, small voice. He will speak a word to you as well. Let his Word, living and active, speak to you. Open your Bible and listen. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 17 · length unknown
Get Refreshed
Listen to Today's Devotion Elijah was depressed and exhausted. “Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat.’…He ate and drank and then lay down again” (1 Kings 19:5-6 NIV). What does God say to the sad and weary? Be refreshed. God told Elijah to eat and sleep. The drama on Mt. Carmel. The execution of the false priests. The twenty-seven-mile run in front of Ahab’s chariot. He had reason to be depleted. God rested on the seventh day. The world didn’t collapse when he took a Sabbath. It won’t fall apart if you do the same. If you are depressed and feel like giving up, his word to you is “get refreshed.” Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 16 · length unknown
Heed the Promises
Listen to Today's Devotion Reading from 1 Kings 18:45-46, “Meanwhile the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a heavy rain started falling and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. The power of the Lord came on Elijah and…he ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel” (NIV). Elijah, the prophet who brought down fire, is now the prophet who brings down rain. Elijah, the prophet who knelt on Mount Carmel in prayer, becomes the prophet who descends in a flurry. His action inspires us to do likewise. Lift up your eyes! Trust the promises of God. Apart from them life will beat you up. But armed with them, you will weather any storm. How different our lives would be if we heeded the promises and not the problems! Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 15 · length unknown
The Distant Cloud
Listen to Today's Devotion The promises of God glitter like diamonds on the pages of Scripture. Will we gather them? Claim them? Delight in them? Pursue them? Elijah did. He prayed, not just once, but seven times! “Go and look toward the sea,” he told his servant. And he went up and looked. “There is nothing there,” he said. Seven times Elijah said, “Go back.” The seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea” (1 Kings 18:43-44). God’s answer came as a cloud the size of a hand, and that was enough to excite Elijah. Faith sees the distant cloud. Faith sees promises as though they were fulfilled. Can you see the hint of an answer to your prayer? Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 14 · length unknown
The Filter of Faith
Listen to Today's Devotion Christ followers hear a language that others miss. In 2 Kings chapter 6 we see this truth played out in dramatic fashion. Elijah’s protégé, Elisha, followed in his mentor’s footsteps and upset the powers of the age. The king of Aram decided to take the young prophet out. He sent a kill squad. They surrounded the city by night. It appeared to be the end. But the man of God saw what his frightened servant could not. “And Elisha prayed, ‘Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see’” (2 Kings 6:17). One saw through the filter of fear. The other, the filter of faith. Elisha learned this lesson from Elijah. We’d be wise to do the same. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 11 · length unknown
Hear the Voice of God
Listen to Today's Devotion Immediately after the Mount Carmel experience, Elijah instructed Ahab, “Go, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain” (1 Kings 18:41 NIV). But then we read that the sky was cloudless. How do we explain his announcement? I found the answer in the Hebrew word that is translated sound. Elijah was choosing to hear God’s covenant and disregard the circumstances. The circumstances: the silent sky, the blazing sun, dearth of clouds. The promise of God, the words spoken to Elijah, said, “Pull out your umbrella.” Elijah chose to hear the “voice” of God’s promise. What about us? Multiple times each day, we choose the message we follow. Are we reeling from the problems, or are we standing on God’s promises? Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 10 · length unknown
Trust the Promise
Listen to Today's Devotion What tragedy has rendered your life a desert? Has God allowed a season of dryness to come your way? Then learn from the life of Elijah. He trusted the promise despite the predicament. The predicament? Drought. The promise? It appears in 1 Kings 18:1 (NKJV): “Go, present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth.” God had set a limit upon the predicament, and Elijah knew it was just a matter of time before the rain returned. Do you know the same? “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5 NLT). The Bible never guarantees the absence of a drought, but it emphatically assures that the drought will not end in eternal defeat. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 9 · length unknown
Let Us Worship
Listen to Today's Devotion On Mount Carmel, in full view of 850 false prophets, “Elijah repaired the altar of the Lord” (1 Kings 18:30). Why? Why did the prophet rebuild the altar? Because it was a tool of worship. Do we long to see revival? Then let us begin at the altar. Why does worship matter? Simple. The devil wants the top spot. When you worship God, when you publicly praise Jehovah in song and sacrament, Satan is defeated. He has no recourse to a worshipping church—none. When we sing, angels stand. When we pray, demons flee. When we look to God, heaven hearkens to listen, and hell hurries to leave. Wonder happens when God’s people worship. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 8 · length unknown
Serve the Lord Only
Listen to Today's Devotion Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) reads, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Our enemy is the devil. At the end of this age, his time will end. Until then, expect our Father to show up. He will not sit still while Satan harms his creation. Our days are as dark as were the days of Elijah. Our God is as alive as he was in the days of Elijah. Dare we dream of a renewal that silences the stewards of Satan and reveals them for the frauds they are? Let’s imitate Elijah: Serve the Lord only! God wasn’t one of his options. God was his only option. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 7 · length unknown
Deceive No More
Listen to Today's Devotion 1 Kings 18:40 (NIV) reads, “Elijah commanded them, ‘Seize the prophets of Baal. Don’t let anyone get away!’ They seized them, and Elijah had them…slaughtered there.” This moment does not sit well in our modern, westernized mindset. Elijah, a man of God, brandishing a sword and executing several hundred men? Except for the fact that these weren’t just men; they were disciples of the devil. They were demonic in their devotion to the cause of hell, all in the name of God. In the final days, as recorded in Revelation 20:3 (NKJV), God will “cast him [Satan] into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more.” Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 4 · length unknown
The Lord He is God
Listen to Today's Devotion Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a duel on Mt. Carmel. He dared them to call on Baal to send fire. From morning to evening they cried. Satan had no response. With the prophets of Baal exhausted and defeated, Elijah “repaired the altar of the Lord” (1 Kings 18:30 NASB). Twelve stones symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel. They saturated the altar with water three times so that everything was soaked. Then Elijah prayed. He didn’t even request fire. But the Lord sent it. A blaze from heaven consumed the water, the rocks, the wood, even the dust. For the first time in three generations, the nation of Israel cried to Jehovah, “The Lord, He is God!” (1 Kings 18:39 NASB). Is it time for our generation to rebuild the altar? Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 3 · length unknown
Tattooed on God’s Hand
Listen to Today's Devotion On the second day of the D-Day invasion, Leon was taken captive by the Nazis. While being marched to a POW camp, he and another soldier escaped. A farmer found them and put them in touch with the French underground. They took his US credentials and created a French ID card for him. He made it back to the Allied camp. Yet with no American ID, he was suspected of being a spy. He rolled up his sleeve and said, “Would this prove I’m an American?” It was a tattoo of an eagle, and on its breast was an American flag with the word Mother written across it. That convinced them. Sound familiar? God says, “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16 NIV). Satan is vicious, but he will not be victorious. Why? Your name is tattooed on God’s hand. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 2 · length unknown
One Plus God
Listen to Today's Devotion The devil knows your name. He has a wrecking ball with your name on it. As General Eisenhower wrote to US troops on the eve of the great D-Day invasion, “Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.” But the steadfast soul does not fear Satan. Elijah didn’t. Elijah entered Scriptures talking about the living God. He served and obeyed the living God. He sought the living God. And because he did, the 850+ prophets of Baal meant nothing to him. The equation is never 850 to 1. It is 850 to 1 plus God. F. B. Meyer said, “God will never fail the man who trusts him utterly….Be sure that you are on God’s plan, then go forward in God’s name.” Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
September 1 · length unknown
Bound by Sovereignty
Listen to Today's Devotion Do you recall the day God sent fire from heaven? The display of power occurred on Mount Carmel in the days of Elijah. The prophet laid the ground rules for the event: Your team has 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah; my team has me. You ask Baal for fire, and I’ll ask Jehovah for fire “…and the God who answers by fire, He is God” (1 Kings 18:24 NASB). And when it came time to blast a fire, the devil was powerless. No spark, no flames. In the decisive moment Baal was shown to be no match for the living God. Satan is impotent to defy the plans of God. He is bound by the ropes of God’s sovereignty, gagged by God’s righteous plan. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
August 31 · length unknown
Pick A Side
Listen to Today's Devotion We cannot win both the applause of people and the “well done” of Christ. Do you play both sides? Many in the West did in the years leading up to World War II. In 1938 Neville Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler. The British prime minister had long championed a policy of appeasing the dictator’s aggressions, so he agreed to Hitler’s demands. Six months later Hitler occupied all of Czechoslovakia. Next he invaded Poland, and the war began. For a decade the world watched as Hitler flexed his muscles. Yet freedom-loving nations waffled between apathy and fear. Many simply couldn’t pick a side. The prophet Elijah once asked, “How long are you going to struggle with the two choices? If the Lord is God, follow Him” (1 Kings 18:21 NASB). Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
August 28 · length unknown
Dare to Think the Unthinkable
Listen to Today's Devotion Dare we think the unthinkable? That God will hear our prayers, that he will listen when we speak? If you were to pray a faith-empowered prayer, what would you say? Then say it! Let faith fuel your prayers. And let prayers put starch in your faith. Will God give you what you request? Yes, he will. He may do so in a different form than you ask for or a different time frame than you prefer, but “it is [Jesus] who is the ‘Yes’ to all of God’s promises” (2 Corinthians 1:20 GNT). Let’s renew our commitment to unreasonable, unquenchable, unthinkable prayer. Let’s ask God to resurrect hope that has perished and dreams that are buried. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
August 27 · length unknown
Hit Your Knees
Listen to Today's Devotion When the child of Elijah’s friend died, the prophet prayed for the boy. “And God listened to Elijah’s prayer…Elijah picked the boy up, carried him downstairs from the loft, and gave him to his mother. ‘Here’s your son,’ said Elijah, ‘alive!’” 1 Kings 17:22-23 MSG). The power of praying it through. Elijah believed in it. Jesus taught it. He told his followers “that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit” (Luke 18:1 MSG). Take the dead and dying portions of your life—the vigor that has faded, the faith that has dwindled—and lay them before the Lord. And next to them place our society, which seems sicker day by day. The theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge called prayer “the greatest achievement of the Christian’s warfare upon earth.” If you want to take a stand against the enemy, hit your knees. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
August 26 · length unknown
Prayer Changes
Listen to Today's Devotion Elijah wasn’t equipped with unique-to-him abilities. He wasn’t embedded with superpowers. James says, “Elijah was a human being just like us. He prayed that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years!” (James 5:17 NCV). Elijah became Elijah by praying that way. Let a man spend a night fasting and praying at the bedside of his sick child, and that father will not be the same man. Let a young mother pour out her complaint to God over the death of her young child, and that young mother will be forever changed. Let a church challenge God to purge sin and send revival, and there is no way that church will be the same. Prayer changes the heart of the one who prays. And prayer touches the heart of the One who hears it. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
August 25 · length unknown
Wrestle in Prayer
Listen to Today's Devotion When the son of his friend died, “Elijah stretched himself out on the child three times, and cried out to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord my God, I pray, let this child’s soul come back to him’” (1 Kings 17:21 NKJV). Elijah had no precedent upon which to base this prayer. Up to this point in Scripture, no person had been brought back to life. He did this because he believed in a living God. There are occasions in which we rest in prayer. There are other occasions in which we wrestle in prayer. Elijah wrestled. Elijah did first what mattered most: he prayed…passionately, dramatically, thunderously. Let’s do likewise. Let’s heed the command of Scripture: “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God…” (Hebrews 4:16 NLT). Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.
August 24 · length unknown
The Strategy for the Tragedy
Listen to Today's Devotion “Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse and finally stopped breathing…Elijah lay on top of the boy three times. He prayed to the Lord, ‘Lord my God, let this boy live again!'” (1 Kings 17:17, 21). The Lord answered Elijah’s prayer, the boy began breathing again, and was alive. What if Elijah holding the dead boy is a picture of you and me in the midst of a sick society? Did you know that nine out of ten young people in Great Britain believe that life has no meaning? What happens when ninety percent of a generation find no reason to live? Anxiety, anger, depression, despair, suicide. We, like Elijah, have been handed a corpse. Elijah shows us what to do. Prayer was his strategy for the tragedy. Read more Unbreakable Courage For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

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