Find Scripture for a need, a topic, the words of Jesus, or today
find_scripture_forPURPOSE: Find the verses that speak to something, read verbatim from the stored text: the hand-picked set for a need or feeling, the house's page on what the Bible says about a topic, what Jesus Himself said about a theme, or the Daily Bread verse every member receives on a date. WHEN TO USE: the person names a feeling, a situation or a topic, or asks for today's verse, without a reference. WHEN NOT: a known reference, exact wording, translations side by side, or checking a quote: read_scripture. A ready-written prayer, a parable, a doctrine or a hard season page: learn_the_faith. Danger to life: get_crisis_help first. MODES (required parameters in brackets): need [subject] matches the person's own words to one of 99 needs ("I am scared about surgery" finds fear) and returns up to limit verses (default 5, max 12), each with a one-line why in the house's words; translation or language read them from another stored Bible. topic [subject] the house's page on one of about 300 topics (shame, money, anger) with its key verses. words_of_jesus [subject] the page on what Jesus said about one theme (love, forgiveness, worry). daily_bread [none] the one verse of a date (date YYYY-MM-DD in the person's own time zone, default today in UTC); translation or language apply. OUTPUT: mode, answered_by, and: need gives need, label, matched, verses [{ref, text, why}], page, pray_with_the_family; topic and words_of_jesus give matched (page path or null), title, url, body (the house's words), verses [{ref, text}], related, and suggestions when nothing matched; daily_bread gives date, ref, text, translation, page. evidence and content_layers keep Scripture apart from the house's words. BEHAVIOR: read only. need and daily_bread read bundled data; topic and words_of_jesus fetch the page from living-bread.org at call time and re-read its verses from the stored KJV. No matching need returns an error listing the needs held; no matching page returns matched null with suggestions. The need text (never a user id) is logged anonymously. Parameters a mode does not use are ignored and named in ignored_params. Access: no sign-in; shared limit of 300 requests a minute per IP.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| date | No | For daily_bread: the calendar day as YYYY-MM-DD in the person's own time zone. Omit for today (UTC). | |
| mode | Yes | Which kind of answer: need, topic, words_of_jesus, daily_bread. Each mode, and the parameters it needs, is explained in the description. | |
| limit | No | For need: maximum verses, 1 to 12 (default 5). | |
| subject | No | The need, feeling or topic in the person's own words: "I am anxious", "my mother died", "shame", "forgiveness". Required for need, topic and words_of_jesus. | |
| language | No | The person's BCP-47 language, e.g. "es", "pt-BR", "sw". Picks the best stored public domain or freely licensed Bible for it; translation wins over it. | |
| translation | No | A stored translation id from read_scripture mode translations, e.g. "bsb", "web", "dra", "rv1909", "cuv". Default: the King James Version, or the best stored Bible for language. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| ok | No | Always true on a successful answer (errors come back as isError, never here). | |
| ids | No | Up to 25 ids found in this answer, for follow-up calls. | |
| mode | Yes | The mode that answered. | |
| license | No | License URL of the returned data (CC BY 4.0 unless stated). | |
| evidence | No | Present when Scripture was read: translation, canon, corpus version, attribution, and a SHA-256 per passage. | |
| freshness | No | How current the answer is: kind (scheduled | recently_observed | verified_live | record), retrieved_at, available_now (true only when activity was verified live). | |
| source_url | No | The first public web page this answer came from or points to. | |
| visibility | No | "public" for shared data, "yours" for the signed-in believer's own data. | |
| answered_by | Yes | The implementation that answered (the same tool name the signed-in endpoint lists). | |
| attribution | No | Credit line for the data: The Living Bread (living-bread.org). | |
| next_actions | No | Up to 4 links the person can open next. | |
| result_state | No | "empty" when nothing matched (count 0, no results); the text then says so plainly. | |
| content_flags | No | ["instruction_like_text_removed"] when retrieved text was withheld. | |
| content_layers | No | Which fields are Scripture and which are human interpretation or reflection. | |
| ignored_params | No | Parameters given that this mode does not use. |