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One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on the Daily Radio Bible, a daily Bible-in-a-year podcast with 20-minute Scripture readings, Christ-centered devotion, and guided prayer. This daily Bible reading and devotional invites you to live as a citizen of Jesus' kingdom, reconciled, renewed, and deeply loved.
TODAY'S EPISODE Today, October 18th, our journey through Scripture takes us into Job 3–4 and Acts 8–9. In Job, we hear the cries of a man overwhelmed by suffering. Job doesn't hide his anguish or pretend that everything is fine. His friend Eliphaz begins to offer explanations, but his words remind us how easily we can misunderstand the suffering of others when we're more interested in providing answers than offering our presence.
In Acts, we witness something remarkable. The life of Jesus is spreading beyond the familiar boundaries of Jerusalem. Philip shares the good news with the people of Samaria and an Ethiopian official. Then Saul, a man determined to destroy the followers of Jesus, encounters the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. His eyes are opened, and everything changes.
These passages remind us that God's love is far greater than our expectations. His grace reaches into our suffering, crosses the boundaries we've created, and transforms even those we might consider beyond hope.
TODAY'S DEVOTION The Grace That Opens Our Eyes
Something remarkable is happening in our reading today. The life of Jesus is spreading. It's moving beyond Jerusalem, beyond the familiar, beyond the people anyone might have expected.
We see Philip bringing the good news to Samaria. We see an Ethiopian official, someone who would have been considered an outsider in so many ways, welcomed into the life of Christ. And then we see Saul. Saul, of all people. A man who has been breathing threats against the followers of Jesus. A man who is absolutely convinced that he's doing the right thing, even as he's doing terrible harm.
And what does Jesus do? He meets him on the road.
I want us to think about that for a moment. Jesus doesn't come to Saul with a message that he is beyond hope. He comes to reveal himself. And the man who had been so certain he could see clearly discovers that he's been blind all along.
That's a powerful picture of grace, isn't it?
Because sometimes the greatest blindness isn't the inability to see. It's being absolutely certain that we already do.
Saul had his convictions. He had his theology. He had his understanding of who was in and who was out. But then he encountered Jesus, and everything he thought he knew had to be reconsidered in the light of the risen Christ.
And here's the beautiful thing. Jesus wasn't simply changing Saul's mind. He was bringing Saul into a whole new way of being human. A life shaped not by hostility and exclusion, but by the self-giving love of God.
Friends, that's what the gospel does. It opens our eyes to a reality that has been true in Jesus all along. That God is for us. That his love is reaching toward us. That the life Jesus shares with his Father and the Spirit is a life into which we have been graciously included.
And this life cannot be contained by the boundaries we create.
It reaches the Samaritan. It reaches the Ethiopian. It reaches the persecutor. It reaches people whose stories are complicated, whose lives are broken, whose hearts are searching. It reaches people like you and me.
Maybe today you're feeling like Job, sitting in the ashes, wondering where God is in the middle of your pain. Or maybe you're more like Saul, moving through life with a great deal of certainty, only to discover that Jesus is inviting you to see things differently.
Wherever you find yourself, the invitation is the same. Open your eyes to Jesus. See the God who has come near. See the love that refuses to give up on his creation. See the life that is being offered to you right here, right now.
And as we begin to see more clearly, we become people through whom that same love can flow into the lives of others.
That's the prayer that I have for my own soul. And that's the prayer that I have for my family, for my wife and my daughters. And that's the prayer that I have for you.
May the Spirit open our eyes today. May we see Jesus more clearly, recognize his presence in unexpected places, and become people who carry his kindness, his peace, and his love into the world.
And remember, friends, you are loved.
TODAY'S PRAYERS:
Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.
Oh God you have made of...
