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‘Lord, there is no one like You to help the powerless against the mighty.’ 2 Chronicles 14:11 NIV

Faced with an enemy he couldn’t conquer on his own, King Asa prayed, ‘“Lord, there is no one like You to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, Lord our God, for we rely on You, and in Your name we have come against this vast army. Lord, You are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against You.” The Lord struck down the Cushites before Asa and Judah.’ (2 Chronicles 14:11–12 NIV)

FB Meyer wrote: ‘Remind God of His entire responsibility. “There is none like Thee to help.” The odds against Asa were enormous. There were a million men in arms… beside three hundred chariots. It seemed impossible to hold his own against that vast multitude. There were no allies who would come to his help: his only hope therefore was in God. There was none beside to help. It may be that your difficulties have been allowed to come to so alarming a pitch that you may be compelled to renounce all [human] aid, to which in lesser trials you have had recourse, and cast yourself back on your Almighty friend. Put God between yourself and the foe. To Asa’s faith, [God] seemed to stand between the might of Zerah and himself, as one who had no strength. Nor was he mistaken… the Ethiopians were destroyed before the Lord, and before His host, as though celestial combatants flung themselves against the foe on Israel’s behalf. Our God is [the Lord] of Hosts, who can summon unexpected reinforcements at any moment to the aid of His people. Believe that He is there between you and your difficulty, and what baffles you will flee before Him as clouds before the gale.’

SoulFood: Luke 24:50–53, Acts 1:1–11, Eph 4:7–10

The Word for Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright © 2026

‘They have dug… broken cisterns that cannot hold water.’ Jeremiah 2:13 NIV

We are desirous by nature. We keep desiring things just like we keep taking our next breath. The trouble is, when we get the things we want, they don’t bring us the happiness we yearn for. So, we keep looking for more and more things. Advertising is the business of ‘creating need’. Things we’d put into our ‘want’ category are switched to our ‘need’ category. But according Miroslav Volf, here is the problem: ‘We cannot get enough of what we do not need… No matter how much we have, we remain “not-enough” people. For not-enough people, there exists no lasting soul satisfaction. I saw an ad that featured the tagline “yesterday I didn’t know it existed; today I can’t live without it”. It’s called the myth of more, the myth that one day more will be enough. If we believe this myth, we spend our lives looking for the next thing. It might be a car, or a promotion, or the love of a beautiful woman or handsome man… We keep hoping that the next thing will be it—the source of true satisfaction for our souls. For a few minutes, or perhaps days, we experience true soul satisfaction. Then it wears off. It always wears off.’

Understand this: only Jesus can satisfy; everything else disappoints. God said, ‘My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.’ (Jeremiah 2:13 NIV) If you are tired of living an empty life, come to Jesus. He won’t disappoint you.

SoulFood: Deut 32:29–34:12, Matt 10:11–20, Ps 49, Pro 12:20–22

The Word for Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright © 2026

‘Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.’ Ephesians 6:4 NIV

Parenting doesn’t end when your child becomes a teenager. Teens are just more mobile, spend less time with you, and are more independent. Now they value and emulate their friends who are as immature as they are. Even when you have laid moral and spiritual foundations in their early years, something will happen that leaves you asking, ‘What happened? Where did I go wrong?’ Adolescence happened! It’s the teenager’s brain; it’s wired that way. Their frontal lobes—the part of the brain linked to moral development, emotional reactivity, impulse control, and decision-making—aren’t fully developed yet. Their frontal lobes won’t finish growing before their twenties, and sometimes later.

In the meantime, what happened to all those Bible stories and your efforts to build Godly beliefs into them? It’s all in there, temporarily lost in those budding lobes! They aren’t bad or ignorant, though they sometimes seem to act that way. They haven’t abandoned your teachings. The belief systems you helped them construct earlier are not erased—they have been transferred to a ‘holding file’ until their new sanity-restoring brain cells arrive. And they will! Your job is to avoid panic, pray, and allow God to work on them, love them unconditionally, and be their anchor.

Stand firm and live by your principles. Demonstrate empathy, but teach them how their decisions affect others. Help them learn self-control by letting them deal with their consequences! Be patient, supportive, and never give up on them. You have sown the seed of God’s Word into them, and ‘in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.’ (Galatians 6:9 NKJV)

SoulFood: Deut 30:1–32:28, Matt 10:1–10, Ps 62, Pro 12:18–19

The Word for Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright © 2026

‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ Proverbs 22:6 KJV

Training a child is both challenging and rewarding. By shaping their underlying belief system, you help their developing brain establish permanent neural pathways that will guide their moral and spiritual growth. Neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, authors of Born to Believe, tell us the most crucial years are from age seven to ten. That’s when a child has the greatest propensity to understand the concept of a God they can’t see, feel, or hear. What an ideal opportunity!

Newberg and Waldman also suggest that our most effective tool for belief-building at this stage is storytelling, not preaching or moralising. Stories that incorporate godly principles, moral behaviours, courage, faith, love, compassion, and forgiveness are welcomed, easily digested ingredients for building Christian character. Storytelling was how God instructed the Israelites to teach their children about His ways and Word. Stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Daniel, Esther, Samson, Ruth, and David; of Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection; of Jesus walking on the sea, raising the dead, and feeding the 5000 stir the hearts, interest, and imagination of young children and impart enduring, life-changing principles! In fact, studies show that the belief systems of adults are powerfully influenced by stories they heard growing up. Implant stories that will become the underpinning for their character and the basis for a lifetime of faith.

Let’s remember and honour our parents who did their best to teach us right from wrong. Whether they were Christians or not, God tells us to honour them, for without them, you would not be here today.

SoulFood: Deut 28–29, Matt 9:27–38, Ps 57, Pro 12:15–17

The Word for Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright © 2026

‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ Romans 8:1 NIV

Once we understand that God’s love for us is based on what Christ did for us rather than what we do ourselves, the struggle is over. Now we can stop ‘performing’, and we can serve God because we know He loves us and that we don’t need to try to make Him love us. We no longer fear rejection by Him because of our mistakes. When we do something wrong, now all we do is repent, receive God’s forgiveness, and then refuse the condemnation that sin brings. Realising we are loved and accepted even though we’re imperfect is such a relief! Serving God out of desire rather than obligation is incredibly liberating!

The moment you place your trust in Christ, God sees you as righteous from that point on. He doesn’t accept you because of your performance but because of your relationship with Him through Christ. And you need to decide to believe it and stand on it. Joyce Meyer writes: ‘We become what we believe we are; therefore, as we become convinced that we are right with God, our behaviour will improve. We will do things right and with less effort. No matter what other people may have told you that you are not, God delights in telling you in His Word who you are in Him—loved, valuable, precious, talented, gifted, capable, powerful, wise, and redeemed. Take a moment and repeat those nine things aloud. Say, “I am loved, valuable, precious, talented, gifted, capable, powerful, wise, and redeemed.”’ That’s how God sees you, and it’s how you need to start seeing yourself.

SoulFood: Ps 91:1–2, Pro 3:5–6, Jeremiah 17:7–8

The Word for Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright © 2026