Our Daily Bread Devotional

In Texas, where I grew up, there were festive parades and picnics in Black communities every June 19. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I learned the heartbreaking significance of Juneteenth (a word combining “June” and “nineteenth”) celebrations. Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation giving them their freedom—two-and-a-half years earlier. Enslaved people in Texas kept living in slavery because they didn’t know they had been freed.

It's possible to be free and yet live as slaves. In Galatians, Paul wrote about another kind of slavery: living life under the crushing demands of religious rules. In this pivotal verse, Paul encouraged his readers that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves by burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Believers in Jesus had been set free from external regulations including what to eat and who to befriend. Many, however, still lived as if they were enslaved.  

Unfortunately, we can do the same thing today. But the reality is that Jesus set us free from living in fear of man-made religious standards the moment we trusted in Him. Freedom has been proclaimed. Let’s live it out in His power.

The garage of my childhood home holds many memories. On Saturday mornings, my dad would roll our car down the driveway so we had room to work—with my favorite project being a broken go-kart we’d found. On that garage floor, we gave it new wheels, attached a sporty, plastic windshield, and—with Dad on the street looking out for traffic—I would race down the driveway with such excitement! Looking back, I see more was going on in that garage than simply fixing go-karts. Instead, a young boy was being shaped by his dad—and getting a glimpse of God in the process.

Human beings have been patterned on God’s own nature (Genesis 1:27–28). Human parenting has its origin in God too, for He is “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Ephesians 3:14–15). Just as parents imitate God’s life-giving abilities by bringing children into the world, when they nurture and protect their kids, they express qualities not sourced in themselves but in Father God. He is the model all parenting is based on.

My father wasn’t perfect. Like every father and mother, his parenting sometimes failed to imitate heaven’s. But when it so often did imitate God, it gave me a glimpse of God’s own nurture and protection—right there, as we fixed go-karts on the garage floor.

The most powerful orators in history are often those leaders who have used their voices to bring about positive change. Consider Frederick Douglass, whose speeches on abolition and liberty spurred a movement that helped lead to the end of slavery in the United States. What if he’d chosen to be silent? We all possess the capacity to use our voice to inspire and help others, but the fear of speaking out can be paralyzing. In the moments when we feel overwhelmed by this fear, we can look to God, our source of divine wisdom and encouragement.

When God called Jeremiah to be a prophet to the nations, he immediately began to doubt his own abilities. He cried out, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young” (Jeremiah 1:6). But God wouldn’t allow Jeremiah’s fear to get in the way of his divine calling to inspire a generation through his voice. Instead, He instructed the prophet to simply trust God by saying and doing whatever He commanded (v. 7). In addition to affirming Jeremiah, He also equipped him. “I have put my words in your mouth” (v. 9), He assured him.

When we ask God to show us how He wants to use us, He’ll equip us to carry out our purpose. With His help, we can boldly use our voice to make a positive impact on those around us.

A man owned more than $400 million in bitcoin, but he couldn’t access a cent of it. He lost the password for the device storing his funds, and disaster loomed: after ten password attempts, the device would self-destruct. A fortune lost forever. For a decade, the man had agonized, desperately trying to recall the password to his life-altering investment. He tried eight passwords and failed eight times. In 2021, he lamented that he had just two more chances before it all went up in smoke.

We’re a forgetful people. Sometimes we forget small things (where we placed our keys), and sometimes we forget massive things (a password that unlocks millions). Thankfully, God isn’t like us. He never forgets the things or people that are dear to Him. In times of distress, Israel feared that God had forgotten them. “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me” (Isaiah 49:14). Isaiah assured them, however, that their God always remembers. “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast?” the prophet asks. Of course, a mother will not forget her suckling child. Still, even if a mother were to commit such an absurdity, we know God will never forget us (v. 15).

“See,” God says, “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (v. 16). God has etched our names into His own being. Let’s remember that He can’t forget us—the ones He loves.

While our family quarantined due to the global pandemic, we took on an ambitious project—an 18,000-piece puzzle! Even though we worked on it almost daily, often we felt like we weren’t making much progress. Five months after we began, we finally celebrated adding the final piece to the nine feet long and six feet wide puzzle that covered our dining room floor.

Sometimes my life feels a bit like a giant puzzle—many pieces in place, but a whole lot more still lying in a jumble on the floor. While I know that God is at work transforming me to be more and more like Jesus, sometimes it can be hard to see much progress.

I take great comfort in Paul’s encouragement in his letter to the Philippians when he said he prayed for them with joy because of the good work they were doing (1:3–4). But his confidence came not in their abilities but in God, believing that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (v. 6).

God has promised to finish His work in us. Like a puzzle, there may be sections that still need our attention, and there are times when we don’t seem to make much progress. But we can have confidence that our faithful God is still putting the pieces together.

Jimmy hadn’t allowed the reality of social unrest, danger, and discomfort to keep him from traveling to one of the poorest countries in the world to encourage ministry couples. The steady stream of text messages to our team back home revealed the challenges he encountered. “Okay, boys, activate the prayer line. We’ve gone ten miles in the last two hours. . . . Car has overheated a dozen times.” Transportation setbacks meant that he arrived just before midnight to preach to those who’d waited for five hours. Later we received a text with a different tone. “Amazing, sweet time of fellowship. . . . About a dozen people came forward for prayer. It was a powerful night!”

Faithfully serving God can be challenging. The exemplars of faith listed in Hebrews 11 would agree. Compelled by their faith in God, ordinary men and women faced uncomfortable and unfathomable circumstances. ”Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment” (v. 36). Their faith compelled them to take risks and rely on God for the outcome. The same is true for us. Living out our faith may not take us to risky places far away, but it may well take us across the street or across the campus or to an empty seat in a lunchroom or boardroom. Risky? Perhaps. But the rewards, now or later, will be well worth the risks as God helps us.

The look on the young teen’s face reflected angst and shame. Heading into the 2022 Winter Olympics her success as a figure skater was unparalleled—a string of championships had made her a lock to win a gold medal. But then a test result revealed a banned substance in her system. With the immense weight of expectations and condemnation pressing down on her, she fell multiple times during her free-skate program and didn’t stand on the victors’ platform—no medal. She’d displayed artistic freedom and creativity on the ice prior to the scandal, but now an accusation of a broken rule bound her to crushed dreams.

From the early days of humanity, God has revealed the importance of obedience as we exercise our free will. Disobedience led to devasting effects for Adam, Eve, and all of us as sin brought brokenness and death to our world (Genesis 3:6–19). It didn’t have to be that way. God had told the two, “You are free to eat from any tree” but one (2:16–17). Thinking their “eyes [would] be opened, and [they would] be like God,” they ate of the banned “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (3:5–7). Sin, shame, and death followed.

God graciously provides freedom and so many good things for us to enjoy (John 10:10). In love, He also calls us to obey Him for our good. May He help us choose obedience and find life full of joy and free of shame.

A reminder of the beauty and brevity of life grows outside my front door. Last spring my wife planted moonflower vines, so named because of their large and round white blooms that resemble a full moon. Each flower opens for one night and then withers in the bright sun the following morning, never to bloom again. But the plant is prolific, and every evening presents a fresh parade of flowers. We love watching it as we come and go each day, wondering what new beauty will greet us when we return.

These fragile flowers call to mind a vital truth from Scripture. The apostle Peter, recalling the words of the prophet Isaiah, wrote, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall’” but God keeps His promises forever! (1 Peter 1:23–25).

Like flowers in a garden, our lives on Earth are short when compared with eternity. But God has spoken beauty into our brevity. Through the good news of Jesus, we make a fresh beginning with God and trust His promise of unlimited life in His loving presence. When Earth’s sun and moon are but a memory, we will praise Him still.

As I prepared to ride a zip-line from the highest point of a rainforest on the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia, fear welled up inside me. Seconds before I jumped from the platform, thoughts of everything that could go wrong filled my mind. But with all the courage I could muster (and few options for turning back), I released. Dropping from the pinnacle of the forest, I whizzed through the lush green trees, wind flowing through my hair and my worries slowly fading. As I moved through the air allowing gravity to carry me, my view of the next platform became clearer and, with a gentle stop, I knew I’d arrived safely.

My time on the zip line pictured for me the times God has us undertake new, challenging endeavors. Scripture teaches us to put our trust in God and “lean not on [our] own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). when we feel doubt and uncertainty. When our minds are filled with fear and doubt, our paths can be unclear and distorted. But once we’ve made the decision to step out in faith by submitting our way to God, “He will make [our] paths straight” (v. 6). We become more confident taking leaps of faith by learning who God is through spending time in prayer and the Scriptures.

We can find freedom and tranquility even in life’s challenges as we hang on to God and allow Him to guide us through the changes in our lives.