29 Jan 2026
Nothing that happens to us catches God by surprise. He called us to Himself even before we knew ourselves. Our task is to choose to walk with Him, to accept His invitation to be His close friend. Our second task is to learn what His will for us is. This understanding and hope is the anchor we need to keep us grounded in Him, no matter what happens. Ephesians 1:3-12.
Finding God’s Will
How in the world do we know what God wants? Ever have trouble determining God’s will for your future? You’re not alone. The questions are endless. Every new responsibility brings new decisions. How in the world do we know what God wants? To know God’s will, we must totally surrender to God’s will. So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him (Romans 12:1 MESSAGE). Our tendency is to make God’s decision for him. Don’t go to God with options and expect him to choose one of your preferences. Go to him with empty hands – no hidden agendas, no crossed fingers, nothing behind your back. Go to him with a willingness to do whatever he says. Have trouble determining God’s will for you? The Bible says that if you surrender your will, then he will “equip you with everything good for doing his will” (Hebrews 13:21). It’s a promise! From Max’s book God is With You Everyday © Max Lucado. Used by permission. All rights reserved. About the author: Max is the best selling author of many many Christian books, a sought out speaker, and loving husband, father, and grandfather. Max is in real life what you see in his book — someone who loves Jesus and loves the same kind of people that Jesus loves!
Your Sins Are Forgiven
Only God can forgive. A fourth of the way through his Gospel, Luke uses the seventh chapter to have Jesus, in words and actions, leave little doubt that he is God. The chapter opens with him healing a servant from a distance, then he raises a son from the dead as his corpse was being carried to the graveyard. In fact, Jesus himself describes the activities by saying: [T]hat the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the Gospel preached to them (Luke 7:22). Jesus did a lot of miracles in the course of two days, things that man could do only with God’s help. In fact, some of the Old Testament prophets did similar things, with God’s help. It is at the end of the chapter, that he does something only God can do. The story has Jesus eating at the home of one of the religious leaders when a woman from the city begins to wash Jesus’ feet. This woman had a reputation. Jesus knew this, the religious leader knew, everyone else knew, that she was a sinner. Actually that probably should be spelled SINNER. I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for She loved much… Then he said to her, “Your sins are Forgiven… Your faith has saved you. Go in peace” (Luke 7:47-50). And with those words, spoken out loud for all to hear, Jesus claims he is God. Only God can forgive sin, his followers couldn’t, the religious leader couldn’t, the woman herself couldn’t, only God could and can. Only God through Jesus can forgive you, SINNER! Want to know how you can claim that forgiveness? Join our conversation at www.hopeforlife.org or email me at bbrant@heraldoftruth.org. (Expressed written consent must be obtained prior to republishing, retransmitting or otherwise reusing the content of this article. Contact us at info@hopeforlife.org) About the author: Bill Brant is the President and CEO of Herald of Truth Ministries based in Abilene, Texas.
Trust God to Lead
Why do we worry about what lies ahead when we know the One Who is already there? Worrying is one job you cannot farm out – but you can overcome it! And there’s no better place to begin than David’s beloved “Shepherd Psalm”: He leads me beside the still waters… (Psalm 23:2 ESV). David declares: “He leads me!” God isn’t behind me, yelling, “Go!” He’s ahead of me bidding, “Come!” He’s in front, clearing the path and cutting the brush. Standing next to the rocks, He warns watch your step there. Isn’t this what God gave the children of Israel? He promised to supply them with manna each day, but He told them to collect only one day’s supply at a time. Jesus reminded us to give our entire attention to what God is doing right now; don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow (Matthew 6:34). God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes. God is leading you – so, leave tomorrow’s problems until tomorrow. Adapted from Max’s book Traveling Light. © Max Lucado. Used by permission. All rights reserved. About the author: Max is the best selling author of many many Christian books, a sought out speaker, and loving husband, father, and grandfather. Max is in real life what you see in his book — someone who loves Jesus and loves the same kind of people that Jesus loves!
Today’s Verse – John 4:24
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in truth. —John 4:24 Thoughts on Today’s Verse… Genuine worship is a gift. God is spirit. God is holy. So, we cannot fully and authentically approach God in worship without the gift and blessing of his Holy Spirit. As Christians who received his Spirit when we were born of God through our faith and baptism (John 3:3-7, 4:23-24; Titus 3:3-7), we can now speak to him and worship him openly and confidently – our spirit combined with the Holy Spirit in us, worshiping God who is Spirit. The Spirit within us makes us a place where God lives through his Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). The Spirit intercedes for us when we approach God in prayer (Romans 8:26-27). We are then filled with God’s Spirit as we worship him (Ephesians 5:18-20). No wonder Jesus commanded: God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in truth. That’s with our spirit, combined with the Holy Spirit, and with worshiping God appropriately; then God is praised and pleased. My Prayer… Abba Father, by the gift of your Spirit, I come to you as your child. Thank you so much for giving me your Spirit so that I can approach you with confidence and know you hear the concerns of my heart. Please accept the worship of my heart, of my words, and of my actions in my daily life. May the things I do today bring you glory as I worship you authentically and through the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen. All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
My True Family
Note from Jesus Dear Child of God, There is so much talk in your world about community. I understand that you want to find a place where you can be close to other people and be yourself. You want people around you who understand you and support you. I know that many folks today don’t like the word church, so community is a nice, safe, nondescript word to use for a gathering of My followers. Yet something precious is lost when My followers are reduced just to being a community. Let Me explain. There are two powerful, dynamic, living images I have given you for My church: My body and My family. I don’t ever talk about a member of the church — in fact nowhere does the Bible use that term. You, however, are a member of My body — a vital body part that the rest of My body needs to function fully as My presence in and to the world! Just as there is no perfect human body, the church as My body will not be perfect. A community can have folks come and go, wander in or wander off. However, this is not true with My body. When a member of a body is hurt, there is pain and impairment to the whole body! When a member of a body is missing, there’s been an amputation. You’re a connected part of Me! You matter. You are much more important than a member of a community or organization! You are also a member of My family. Yes, I know some of you come from messed up families, and sometimes family analogies can be hard for you to hear because of your negative experiences with your family. My spiritual family on earth is far from perfect — a lot like your human family. But I promise you, My family has a future that is so wonderful it is even hard for you to imagine. All those hurtful family connections are caught up in the grace of My presence and perfected. A family — especially My family — is something far more precious than a community. Our Father — your Father — loves you so desperately that He sent Me to bring you into a relationship with Him. I AM your older Brother. I came to rescue and redeem you and restore you to Our family (Hebrews 2:14-18). I paid the ultimate price to buy you out of slavery to sin and death and bring you to the Father and to Our family. So you are far more precious than a member of a community — you are My blood-bought family. The people around you are flawed just as you are flawed. But remember, they are blood-bought family. So when you hear Me teach, I don’t invite you to become part of a community: I call you to be My disciple — a follower who obeys and becomes a vital part of My family as we do the will of the Father. Hear clearly what I say: Anyone who does the will of My Father in heaven is My mother and brother and sister. (Matthew 12:50) When you hear Me teach, pray, or talk with My followers, notice the language I use: it is the language of family. God is your Father. You are brothers and sisters. Yes, community is a nice word, but I call you to something deeper — something you crave and need. I call you family because you are! Verses to Live I AM the Lord, the Christ, the Messiah and Savior. I am also your older Brother Who loves you so much that I left the security of My heavenly home to come to you. I love you so much that I gave up My intimate participation with the Father and the Spirit in Our heavenly glory so that I could bring you home to real, forever, family. So come, follow Me, and let’s walk together in the way and will of the Father as family. While Jesus was speaking to the crowd, His mother and brothers came up and wanted to speak to Him. Someone in the Crowd: Your mother and brothers are waiting outside to speak to You. Jesus: Who is My mother? And who are My brothers? (pointing to His disciples) These are My mother and brothers. Anyone who does the will of My Father in heaven is My mother and brother and sister. (Matthew 12:46-50) Response in Prayer O Father in heaven, You are holy. Without Your grace, I have no chance to be holy. And because of Jesus’ love and sacrifice, I come to You as Your beloved child. I am thankful for Your grace, Your love, Your mercy, and my adoption into Your family. I ask for the Holy Spirit to be poured out into my life so that I can be conformed to Your will and love my brothers and sisters, Your children, just as much as my older Brother Jesus does. I ask this in His name. Amen. ‘A Year with Jesus’ is written by Phil Ware. © 1998-2026, Heartlight, Inc. ‘A Year with Jesus‘ is part of the Heartlight Network.All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Voice™. © 2008 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
28 Jan 2026
It is recorded in God’s word that He is a restorer. We may experience devastating challenges, but when we cry out to Him, he hears and responds. Let us not give up. Jehovah is merciful and gracious. Psalm 102:17-22.
Trust His Timing
Don’t you find it hard to wait? One of the features of my new mobile phone is a clock that allows me to see the time in multiple time zones, set an alarm, use a stopwatch, and time an event. When I take a walk, I usually set the timer for about fifteen minutes short of the length of time I want to walk. That way, I can decide the route for the last part of the walk. For instance, if I plan to walk for an hour, I will set the time on my phone for 45 minutes. Invariably, I will check the timer a number of times before the alarm sounds. Is this thing working? Did it sound and I did not hear it? Has something malfunctioned? Thus far, the alarm has never failed to work. I have never walked an extra hour by accident. The device has never failed to perform as it is designed to do. Yet, I still have a feeling of distrust in the clock. The same thing happens as I walk through life, trying to live on God’s time-table. I have read the instructions from His word about trusting Him. I am listening to God, praying for His will to be done. I believe that He is working even though I cannot see it. I know that the Father is in charge. I know that nothing will happen that escapes His view. I know that He cares for me. I know that the Lord has always dealt, and will always deal, with me according to His justice and goodness. However, there are still times when I have difficulty trusting His timing. I have discovered three realities about trusting His timing. First, trusting His timing is sometimes hard. There are times when I eagerly lay my cares down, but then I decide not to wait for God to work and pick them back up again. There are other times when my concerns must be ripped from my hands. My doubts and fears take over: What if He does not listen? What if He hears the wrong thing? What if He chooses to act in a way that I do not like? Or worse, what if He chooses not to act at all? I have swallowed hard when He responded with “No,” and I have laid awake at night wrestling with His answers that appear to be, “Not now.” Second, trusting His timing is sometimes easy. There are times when waiting for God to work His plan is easy. Laying my concerns at the feet of the Lord and leaving them there comes naturally. I have experienced answered prayer soon after making the request. I receive his “Yes” with joy and gratitude. I receive His “No” with patience and trust. Third, whether easy or difficult: I have learned over life and from His word, that the Father’s timing is always right. Solomon said it this way: He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). You may be in a waiting time. Waiting for the answer. Waiting for direction. Waiting for peace. Waiting for hope. Waiting for healing. Waiting for victory. Doubt and uncertainty may have set in. You may be left with questions and fears. Whatever is the focus of your wait, trust His timing … it is always right. He has made everything beautiful in its time. About the author: Tom Norvell is the author of “A Norvell Note” — Thoughts and reflections on God, life, people, and living as a follower of Jesus. He has ministered with followers of Jesus for four decades and loves Jesus, his family, and those seeking Jesus, passionately.
The Waiting Is the Hardest Part
O how our hearts ache till all our precious ones are in Jesus! Waiting is hard work. I confess, I am not good at this work of waiting. I am impatient. Sometimes my impatience borders on an ugly arrogance – “Why should I have to wait so long for something like this?” Sometimes my impatience is just plain impertinence – I romp, stomp, fidget, complain, whine, and make everyone around me miserable. I have opened Christmas presents early, sneaking in with a sharp knife in the middle of the night and carefully opening my presents just enough to see what they were. This made my Christmas at 11 years of age miserable – I faked being surprised by my Christmas morning gifts. Rather than taking delight at my careful sleight of hand at opening and resealing my gifts so my parents wouldn’t know, I was miserable. No surprises, only fake delight on that Christmas morning. I have left lines, only to stand in longer lines because I was impatient. I have daily checked the mailbox, the front porch, and driven the folks at UPS and FedEx crazy trying to track a package that was not even late yet. When my son was assigned in high school many years ago to spend the day working with me, he reported that, “Dad never wasted any time waiting. He was always doing something on his BlackBerry so he didn’t waste time.” What crushed me is that I realized I had not spent the time talking to him! I apologized after reading his report. However, sometimes my impatience is humbling and eye opening. For four years, my heart has stood on tiptoe waiting, praying, and gently visiting with someone I want to come to Christ. She is precious – not just to me, but to my wife Donna and to several of my friends who know her. She desperately wants some switch to go off in her heart so she knows in that place of her reluctance that this is the right thing for her to do. She is gracious, sweet, smart, kind, and good. But she has not yet fully surrendered her life to Jesus… and this keeps my heart in agony. Her decision is not something I can cajole, pressure, nudge, or push. She has to do this for herself. But waiting for her to do this, to confess Christ and step into a baptistery and go public with her faith, is harder than I have words to describe. This is a person so precious to us that we cannot imagine her not being in our forever family of grace. This is a different kind of impatience. This impatience has been humbling because it has opened my eyes to parents, spouses, grandparents, and friends who have stood on tiptoe until their spiritual legs have gone into full spasm waiting for their loved one, their precious child, their intended spouse, or their precious one to come to Jesus. I have been blessed to have taken the confession and baptized both of my children, now adults and strong disciples. (Thank you God for this gift beyond words given me by both children!) So this four year experience has opened my eyes and my heart to each of you who are waiting… pleading… hoping… that your special person will make that next crucial step toward the Father. So we keep expectantly scanning the horizon hoping that this is the day they make that crucial step toward Jesus and home. This impatience has been humbling because it has given me a glimpse of how our Father feels with those so close, yet so far away, from being His child. It helps me appreciate and understand that it was not strange for the father in Jesus’ parable (Luke 15:11-32) to scan the horizon every single day, and every single opportunity during the day, to catch the glimpse of his prodigal son on the horizon so he could run to that lost son and welcome him home. In some ways, it is even harder when the person for whom we wait is not a prodigal, but a precious person who is hung up on something we can’t remove… or fix… or at times even understand. So like my life right now, these thoughts won’t end with a simple five-step plan to deal with our impatience or three easy ways on how to win the reluctant loved one. This kind of impatience, this kind of waiting, is hard and without a simple Mr. Fixit recipe. All I know to do is to keep loving my precious one and to keep praying for her heart to reach that decision point and to keep living for the day of joy for which I yearn for her. In addition, I feel a deeper bond and commitment to pray for those who are caught in this time of waiting for someone else they love to come home to Jesus. The waiting is the hardest part. Let’s keep trusting that our waiting will one day give way to what Peter describes as being “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” because the one we love has come to receive the salvation of our God” (1 Peter 1:8-9). O God, please help your day of salvation come soon in the life of this one so precious to me. While I yearn for Jesus “to come quickly, hallelujah,” I beg You Lord to tarry until I can see this one so precious to me become part of our forever family. Amen. Here’s a late update. At 10:45 Thailand time on Sunday January 26, I was privileged to baptize Melody, also called XiaoKang and Nam Tam, into Christ along with two others who have become so precious to me over the last two weeks. Four years of loving and praying and waiting ended in a celebration of joy with this one I have called Precious from the day I first read the story of Jesus with
Dared to Hope
If only we would trust that the Lord can make us all grow! We paused to visit a tiny railway station that used to be a busy place on the southern line. It was now all but deserted. The Station Master’s office and the parcels’ office were silent. They were clothed in a dull brown that has become the mourning color of dying railway stations. We wandered along the tiny platform and saw the remnants of a garden outside the Station Master’s office. Now there was no running water, but there used to be competitions up and down the line for the best-kept garden. On this day, the old garden was just a dead square inside crumbling railway sleepers. Over in one corner stood a rusty drum, and barely alive in it was the commonest form of geranium. It was stunted and tired – nearly dead. I took a piece about as long as one finger. When we returned home, I dared to hope it would grow. So for old time’s sake, I planted it in the best pot in the best location. Feeling terribly foolish for even hoping for growth, I even said a prayer for the unknown hands that planted it long years ago. Today, this finger of planting is now a meter wide and half as tall. It is a joyful and lush plant, but too common to be prized by anyone else. It is valuable only to me because I sense its history in a harsh world where only hardy plants can grow. Do you sometimes feel like a common plant where only hardy plants can grow? God has a word for you. He says that He chose the foolish ones of us in this world, the most common of us, to shame those who are worldly-wise. (1 Corinthians 1:26-28) So say a prayer some time for the ones who planted you! Give thanks that they dared to hope that you would grow! While you’re at it, take a risk on plain ol’ common folks who seem tired, stunted, and nearly dead spiritually, and dare believe that the Lord can help them grow, too! About the author: Elizabeth is a team writer for “Just a Minute” e-zine.