April 14th, 26: Daily Bible in a Year

Welcome to the Daily Radio Bible! In today’s episode, we pause to celebrate over 100 days in Scripture together—a milestone marking not just a habit, but a journey that shapes and surprises us in ways we never expected. Speaker A reflects on how time in the Bible doesn’t save us—but points us to the One who does: Jesus. As we read from 1 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, and begin the Gospel of Matthew, we are reminded that true transformation isn’t found in outward power or appearances, but in the quiet work of God in our hearts. We watch as Saul loses his kingdom, David is anointed in obscurity, the genealogy of Jesus unfolds, and the promise of Emmanuel—“God with us”—is fulfilled. Today’s prayers and reflections invite us to consider where God is quietly at work in our own lives, calling us to live from his anointing, trust in his presence, and step forward in faith and gratitude.

TODAY'S DEVOTION:

It's striking how often power gets measured by what can be controlled, traded, or extracted in our world. Oil has that kind of weight. It fuels economies. It shapes decisions. It even determines, at times, who rises and who falls. But for all its influence, it can't touch the deeper places of a human life. It can't make a heart whole. It can't give peace that holds. It can't form love in us.

The Scriptures speak of another kind of oil—not the kind that drives systems or creates wars, but the kind that marks a life. When Samuel pours oil over David's head, it's almost easy to miss. There's no spectacle, no immediate change in the circumstances. David goes back to the field, back to the ordinary. But something true has been named. Not by outward strength, not by appearance, but by the quiet seeing of God. The Lord looks on the heart.

That moment doesn't make David powerful in the ways we might expect. It places him within a story—a long, winding story where God continues to meet people in hiding places, working through what seems small, overlooked, even unlikely. And when you trace that story forward, through generations and names and lives, it carries all the way to the opening lines of the Gospel of Matthew. Not a story of uninterrupted strength, but a story marked by weakness, failure, surprise, and grace. And at the center of it, not a king grasping for power, but a life-giver—the Anointed One. Not anointed with oil alone, but filled with the very life of God.

A life that doesn't dominate or control, but enters into the human story and transforms it from within. And that same life is not held at a distance. It is shared, poured out, not in spectacle, but in quiet, steady ways, in ordinary lives and people who often return, like David, back to the field.

So maybe the question today isn't about where power is. Maybe it's about where God is at work—in what feels small, in what feels hidden, in what feels unfinished. And the prayer today is simple: that we would trust the places where God has quietly met us. That we would not overlook the life being formed there. That we would learn to live from that anointing—not as something we possess, but as a life we are being invited to share.

That's the prayer that I have for my own soul, for my family, and for you. May it be so.