October 4, 2026 Devo

October 4th, 2026

Powerful Words from the Prophets
“You are his successor, O Belshazzar, and you knew all this, yet you have not humbled yourself. For you have proudly defied the Lord of heaven and have had these cups from his Temple brought before you. You and your nobles and your wives and concubines have been drinking wine from them while praising gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone—gods that neither see nor hear nor know anything at all. But you have not honored the God who gives you the breath of life and controls your destiny! So God has sent this hand to write this message. – Daniel 5:22-24 (NLT)
“The Curse of Foolishness”

A couple of days ago, as I was driving home from work, I saw a driver do something really stupid. We were on a four-lane street, and he was in the left lane. The speed limit on this busy street is 50, and we were all cruising along at about 45-48 miles per hour. Evidently, that wasn’t fast enough for this guy. He crossed the double-yellow line with traffic coming at him and passed the guy in front of him. I thought for sure I was about to see a head-on collision. I shook my head in disbelief.
What is with our tendency to do things that are really dumb, even when we know better? Do we think the laws of life and God don’t apply to us, or are we so full of ourselves that we think we will always beat the odds? We swim out into the water on beaches even when signs are posted that there are dangerous rip currents present. We put cigarettes in our mouths after taking them out of packages that clearly state they cause cancer. We watch horrible films in driver’s ed of the aftermath of accidents where people drank and drove, but then we drink and drive anyway. We make decisions to do things that we have personally witnessed cause the destruction of other people’s lives.
The story of Belshazzar is a great example of this tendency. As Daniel begins to interpret the handwriting on the wall, he reminds the king of what happened to the king before him, who allowed himself to get caught up in his pride. Then he makes this haunting statement to the king: “And you knew all this, yet you have not humbled yourself.” Let the full weight of this sink in. “And you KNEW all this.” Daniel was saying, “This wasn’t just sinful. This was downright FOOLISH.”
Reading this today was painful, because I know in my own life I have done the very same thing. Pride is a powerful draw. My prayer today is that God will not only help me to be obedient, but that He will also help me to be WISE. May God help us learn from our mistakes. May God help us learn from the mistakes of OTHERS! We will all make mistakes out of ignorance from time to time. But may God give us the strength and humility not to make mistakes when we know better. Let’s break the curse of foolishness. That’s God’s Word for you today.