Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. —Henri J. M. Nouwen When I was young, I thought that following God and being a Christian would lead to a life that was kind of easy, filled only with happiness and free from pain and sorrow. Silly me. I’m not even sure where I got that idea, except maybe from teachings spouted by TV evangelists who espoused a prosperity “name it and claim it” doctrine that was popular when I first chose to follow Jesus. It tickles the ears, doesn’t it? It’s so appealing, this thought that if you are a true believer you are spared suffering and gifted only with a positive existence. It is also completely contrary to what the Scriptures teach. If Jesus was perfected through His suffering, who are we to think we won’t be perfected through the same means? (Hebrew 2:10). Now, don’t get me wrong, Jesus came that we might have life and life to the full (John 10:10), and it’s the joy of the Lord that is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10). It’s just that this promised joy and life come to us in the midst of the easy and the hard, the triumphs and the travails. The key, then, is to intentionally cultivate that joy in our hearts—to choose it—no matter what season we’re in, the easy or the hard. And life is hard a lot of the time. This world we live in is not Eden. We are not in heaven. Not yet. But, in the middle of this often difficult journey, God “has taken great measures to preserve our freedom of choice.” We have the freedom to choose to grow in joy or to retreat from it. Said another way, life will inevitably be hard, and as maturing believers with our eyes set on Jesus, we will constantly be presented with opportunities to make choices that will either lead to a deeper joy or not. Want more? Get your copy of Defiant Joy today

To wait is to learn the spiritual grace of detachment, the freedom of desire. Not the absence of desire, but desire at rest. St. John of the Cross lamented that “the desires weary and fatigue the soul; for they are like restless and discontented children, who are ever demanding this or that from their mother, and are never contented.” Detachment is coming to the place where those demanding children are at peace. As King David said, “I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Ps. 131:2). Such a beautiful picture, a young one leaning against her mother’s breast. There is no fussing, no insistent tears.She has learned to wait. The word detachment might evoke wrong impressions.It is not a cold and indifferent attitude; not at all. May writes, “An authentic spiritual understanding of detachment devalues neither desire nor the objects of desire.” Instead, it “aims at correcting one’s own anxious grasping in order to free oneself for committed relationship to God.”As Thomas à Kempis declared, “Wait a little while, O my soul, wait for the divine promise, and thou shalt have abundance of all good things in heaven.” In this posture we discover that, indeed, we are expanded by longing. Something grows in us, a capacity if you will, for life and love and God. I think of Romans 8:24–25: “That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy” (The Message). There is actually a sweet pain in longing, if we will let it draw our hearts homeward. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'""You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:1-6)Evil was lurking in that Garden. The mighty angel had once been glorious as well, more glorious than we. He was, if you recall, captain of the Lord's armies, beautiful and powerful beyond compare. But he rebelled against his Creator, led a great battle against the forces of heaven, and was cast down. Banished but not destroyed, he waited in the shadows for an opportunity to take his revenge.You must understand: the Evil One hates God, hates anything that reminds him of the glory of God... wherever it exists. Unable to overthrow the Mighty One, he turned his sights on those who bore his image.Satan came into the Garden and whispered to Adam and Eve — and in them, to all of us — "You cannot trust the heart of God...he's holding out on you... you've got to take matters under your control." He sowed the seed of mistrust in our hearts; he tempted us to seize control.It's the same lie he is using in your life today, by the way: "Trusting God is way too risky. You're far too vulnerable. Rewrite the Story. Give yourself a better part. Arrange for your own happiness. Disregard him." Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

Lately, the surge is toward “justice Christianity” — intervening to prevent human trafficking or slavery, caring for indigenous cultures or for the planet itself. And it is right and it is wrong. My goodness, yes, of course God cares about justice. But to be frank, it is actually not the central theme of the Bible. Christianity isn’t simply a religious version of the Peace Corps.All of these “camps” are Christianity — sort of. Like elevator music is music — sort of. Like veggie burgers are hamburgers — sort of. Think gas fireplaces, wax fruit, frozen burritos. They look like the real thing, but…It all comes down to this: What is Christianity supposed to do to a person?Long before he laid down earth’s foundations God had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love to be made whole and holy with his love. (Ephesians 1:4 TM)God is restoring the creation he made. What you see in Jesus is what he is after in you. This is a really core assumption. Your belief about this will affect the rest of your life. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

Why don’t I wake with a joyful heart? Joy was just here. Where did it go?I began to realize that what I’ve done for most of my life is resign myself to this idea: I’m really not going to have any lasting joy. And from that resignation, I’ve gone on to try and find what I could have. Women do this in marriage. They see that they are not going to have any real intimacy with their husbands, so they lose themselves in soaps or tabloids or romance novels. Men find their work a sort of slow death, so they get a little something in the bar scene each night. Have a few beers with the boys, watch the game. Joy isn’t even a consideration. Settle for relief.Now, to be fair, joy isn’t exactly falling from the sky these days. We don’t go out to gather it each morning like manna. It’s hard to come by. Joy seems more elusive than winning the lottery. We don’t like to think about it much, because it hurts to allow ourselves to feel how much we long for joy, and how seldom it drops by.But joy is the point. I know it is. God says that joy is our strength. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). I think, My strength? I don’t even think of it as my occasional boost. But yes, now that I give it some thought, I can see that when I have felt joy I have felt more alive than at any other time in my life. Pull up a memory of one of your best moments. The day at the beach. Your eighth birthday. Remember how you felt. Now think what life would be like if you felt like that on a regular basis. Maybe that’s what being strengthened by joy feels like. It would be good. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

We are not what we were meant to be, and we know it. If, when passing a stranger on the street, we happen to meet eyes, we quickly avert our glance. Cramped into the awkward community of an elevator, we search for something, anything to look at instead of each other. We sense that our real self is ruined, and we fear to be seen. But think for a moment about the millions of tourists who visit ancient sites like the Parthenon, the Colosseum, and the Pyramids. Though ravaged by time, the elements, and vandals through the ages, mere shadows of their former glory, these ruins still awe and inspire. Though fallen, their glory cannot be fully extinguished. There is something at once sad and grand about them. And such we are. Abused, neglected, vandalized, fallen — we are still fearful and wonderful. We are, as one theologian put it, “glorious ruins.” But unlike those grand monuments, we who are Christ’s have been redeemed and are being renewed as Paul said, “day by day,” restored in the love of God.Could it be that we, all of us, the homecoming queens and quarterbacks and the passed over and picked on, really possess hidden greatness? Is there something in us worth fighting over? The fact that we don’t see our own glory is part of the tragedy of the Fall; a sort of spiritual amnesia has taken all of us. Our souls were made to live in the Larger Story, but as G.K. Chesterton discovered, we have forgotten our part:We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is ... We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. (Orthodoxy) Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] Our adolescent culture really does play into our confusion; with so many answers supposedly on the other side of our keyboards, we often won’t ask for counsel, and even more often don’t want to ask anyway. I have found myself swinging between being impulsive and being immobilized, and from what I’ve seen I’m not alone. If the choice is up to us and no other guidance is forthcoming, the only natural response in a culture of “instant gratification” (read, impatience) is either to jump at something, anything, or to never jump at all. Those that don’t jump usually have found some kind of escapism by creating a small world that they feel safe in or by sinking into the imaginary worlds of TV shows and video games. Avoiding that, we might hitch our wagon to the latest revolution, simply wanting to catch some of the momentum and meaning it seems to offer. If all we are doing is spending time and energy on a product, not stepping into something we believe is right for us, it is only a matter of time before all that is left is buyer’s remorse.Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

I’ve come to the place where I have had to stop telling people, “I’ll pray for you.” I simply know that despite my good intentions — and these promises are almost always spoken with good intent — I know that nine times out of ten I just don’t remember to follow through. Not until maybe a week or two later, and then I feel guilty that I forgot. I don’t like promising something I probably won’t live up to. You know how these stories go: someone you care about tells you of their pain, need, or struggle, and you respond with, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that; I’ll pray for you.” But then, most of the time, we never do. If all the prayers that were promised were actually prayed, this would be a different world by now.So instead of promising future prayer, what I try to do nowadays is stop, right there in the moment, and pray. Right then and there. It’s funny how many Christians this actually throws off guard. “You mean, right now?” “Yes — absolutely. Let’s pray.” In the restaurant, in the car, on the plane, wherever. If it’s a text or e-mail request, I’ll start praying as I type my response, typing out a prayer for them right then and there. Not only does it help me follow through, but it helps them to agree right along with what I have prayed, and agreement is mighty powerful as we know. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

The only person that can satisfy the aching abyss of the human heart is Jesus Christ. —Oswald Chambers I hate Valentines Day. There, I said it. Most of the guys reading this just thought, Yes! I can’t believe he said that. Most of the women just thought, What a jerk! I can’t believe he said that. But it’s true. I hate Valentine's Day. And Stasi loves it; it’s one of her favorite holidays. (God, what are you thinking?!). I hate being told, “Today, you will be romantic. Today, you will be amazing. Today, you will get it all right. And tonight, you will arrange for one of the most romantic evenings you two will have this year. Tonight, sex will be on a level with the Hallelujah chorus. Hollywood will have wished they had filmed this day.” Who wants to live under that kind of pressure? Real romance doesn’t work like that. Romance seems to happen not because we’ve turned our google-eyed attention to romance, but because we are focused on other things—a beautiful fall day, and a spontaneous walk in the woods. An evening out “just because,” and we stumble on a great little restaurant and it all just becomes lovely. Or maybe the two of you simply rent a movie and watch it in your sweats, but it stirs both your hearts deeply and afterwards you have an amazing conversation and the intimacy makes you want to rip each other’s clothes off. Romance requires free hearts. Pressure, on the other hand, kills everything it touches. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

John Wesley was thirty-five when he experienced the now famous "warming" of his heart — not his mind — toward Christ, and knew in that moment he had become not merely a Christian, but something more — a lover of God. Shortly after, he penned the hymn "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," whose first verse goes like this: "Jesus, Lover of my soul/Let me to thy bosom fly." Down through the years the hymn has left many a hymnologist reaching for a more palatable translation, "the difficulty," as John Julian said, "is the term Lover as applied to our Lord." Revisions now in hymnbooks read, "Jesus, Savior of my soul" or, "Jesus, Refuge of my soul," which are touching but nothing close to what Wesley meant. He meant Lover.You'll notice how dominant the "reason and knowledge are everything" approach has been by noticing that men who have fallen in love with God are often referred to in the church as "mystics," a term that gives a sort of honor while at the same time effecting a dismissal. Mystic, meaning "inexplicable," which devolves into "unreasonable." Mystic, meaning also "exceptional, as opposed to perfectly normal." Odd, even. Difficult to analyze.David would have had no problem at all understanding this. The poetry that flowed from the heart of this passionate Lover is filled with unapologetic emotion toward God. He speaks of drinking from God's "river of delights" (Ps. 36:8 NIV), how his Lover has filled his heart "with greater joy" (4:7 NIV) than all the wealth other men have found, and he writes in many of his love songs how his heart sings to God. He cries through the night, aches to be with God, for he has found, really found, his life in God: "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence" (16:11 NIV) to such a degree that his heart and soul "pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God" (42:1-2 NIV), his body even longing for God. These are not the words of a dry theologian or moralist. These are not the words of even your average pastor. For him, God's love "is better than life" (63:3 NIV). David is captivated by the Beauty he finds in God. On and on it goes. The man is undone. He is as smitten as any lover might be, only — can we begin to accept this? do we even have a category for it? — his lover is God. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered By God today

There are three desires that I have found essential to a woman’s heart, which are not entirely different from a man’s and yet they remain distinctly feminine. Not every woman wants a battle to fight, but every woman yearns to be fought for. Listen to the longing of a woman’s heart: She wants to be more than noticed — she wants to be wanted. She wants to be pursued.Every woman also wants an adventure to share. “I want to be Isabo in Ladyhawk,” confessed a female friend. “To be cherished, pursued, fought for — yes. But also, I want to be strong and a part of the adventure.” So many men make the mistake of thinking that the woman is the adventure. But that is where the relationship immediately goes downhill. A woman doesn’t want to be the adventure; she wants to be caught up into something greater than herself.And finally, every woman wants to have a beauty to unveil. Not to conjure, but to unveil. Most women feel the pressure to be beautiful from very young, but that is not what I speak of. There is also a deep desire to simply and truly be the beauty, and be delighted in.The world kills a woman’s heart when it tells her to be tough, efficient, and independent. Sadly, Christianity has missed her heart as well. Walk into most churches in America, have a look around, and ask yourself this question: What is a Christian woman? Again, don’t listen to what is said, look at what you find there. There is no doubt about it. You’d have to admit a Christian woman is...tired. All we’ve offered the feminine soul is pressure to “be a good servant.” No one is fighting for her heart; there is no grand adventure to be swept up in; and every woman doubts very much that she has any beauty to unveil. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

His ability to live with all these qualities we’ve seen, in such a way that no one quality dominates—as is so often the case in our personalities—eclipsing the richness of the others. To live in such a way that there is always something of an element of surprise, and yet, however he acts turns out to be exactly what was needed in the moment. Oh, his brilliance shines through, but never blinding, never overbearing. He is not glistening white marble. He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road. Reclining at a meal, laughing with friends, and then going to the cross. That is what we mean when we say that Jesus is beautiful. But most of all, it is the way he loves. In all these stories, every encounter, we have watched love in action. Love as strong as death; a blood, sweat, and tears love, not a get-well card. You learn a great a deal about the true nature of a person in the way they love, why they love, and, in what they love.But it takes a beautiful heart to recognize the beauty in a scandalous act, and to love it as he does. This is why we say Jesus is beautiful. A Beautiful Outlaw. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

The reason a woman wants a beauty to unveil, the reason she asks, Do you delight in me? is simply that God does as well. God is captivating beauty. As David prays, “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may...gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” (Ps. 27:4). Can there be any doubt that God wants to be worshiped? That he wants to be seen, and for us to be captivated by what we see? As C. S. Lewis wrote, “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male...to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes of her own delightfulness.”This is far too simple an outline, I admit. There is so much more to say, and these are not hard and rigid categories. A man needs to be tender at times, and a woman will sometimes need to be fierce. But if a man is only tender, we know something is deeply wrong, and if a woman is only fierce, we sense she is not what she was meant to be. If you’ll look at the essence of little boys and little girls, I think you’ll find I am not far from my mark. Strength and beauty. As the psalmist says,One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving. (Ps. 62:11–12) Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. (Revelation 19:1–2)Evil judged and utterly destroyed. Forever and ever. Not just in the fairy tale, but in your story. Satan, his armies, and every form of evil are destroyed with a punishment that never ends.What will it be like to no longer be assaulted? To look in the mirror and hear no accusing thoughts or voices? To be completely free of all temptation and the sabotage of your character—not because you are successfully resisting it in a moment of great resolve, but because it no longer exists? Imagine having the dark clouds lifted between you and your beloved Jesus, that veil that clouds your relationship with him. Imagine when all the physical affliction, emotional torment, abuse—all the evil in this world has vanished.Oh, the joy you’ll experience when you get to watch with your own eyes the enemy brought down for good, cast into his eternal torment! What hope rises at the thought of a world where the enemy no longer gets to do what he does? To see your loved ones released from their lifelong battles? To be released from your own lifelong battles? The kingdom of death and darkness is forever destroyed.You long for this day, and you long for it in very particular ways. Someday, it will come.———————————Think of it—what evils will you no longer have to live with personally? What will this moment mean for you? Want more? Order your copy of Restoration Year today

In [Christ] you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ. (Col. 2:11)It’s not just that the Cross did something for us. Something deep and profound happened to us in the death of Christ. Remember — the heart is the problem. God understands this better than anyone, and he goes for the root. God promised in the new covenant to “take away your heart of stone.” How? By joining us to the death of Christ. Our nature was nailed to the cross with Christ; we died there, with him, in him. Yes, it is a deep mystery — “deep magic” as Lewis called it — but that does not make it untrue. “The death he died, he died to sin once for all ... In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin” (Rom. 6:10–11). Jesus was the Last Adam, the end of that terrible story.You’ve been far more than forgiven. God has removed your heart of stone. You’ve been delivered of what held you back from what you were meant to be. You’ve been rescued from the part of you that sabotages even your best intentions. Your heart has been circumcised to God. Your heart has been set free. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

I always felt it strange that God needed to command us to love him. (It is the first and greatest of all the commandments.) Now I see better. When God calls us to love him as our “first love,” it is not only because he deserves to hold that place in our hearts, but also because he knows what pain will come when we get that out of order. If you give the part of your soul that is meant for God to lesser things, they will break your heart because they cannot possibly come through for you in the ways God can. Only he will never leave you or forsake you. The command is a rescue from disaster.Many of you have begun to discover the joy and freedom loving God brings to the rest of your life. Keeping God as our first love, we are not destroyed when others fail to love us well; we are able to weather criticism, loneliness, and rejection. Our other loves are able to find their whole and wholesome expression, and we are able to flourish as human beings. Anchored in True Love, our hearts can go on to love. Because we have first things first, as the saying goes. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Choosing love will open spaces of immense beauty and joy for you, but you will be hurt. You already know this. You have retreated from love countless times in your life because of it. We all have. We have been and will be hurt by the loss of loved ones, by what they have done to us and we to them. Even in the bliss of love there is a certain exquisite pain: the pain of too much beauty, of overwhelming magnificence. Further, no matter how perfect a love may be, it is never really satisfied ... In both joy and pain, love is boundless. (Gerald May, The Awakened Heart)Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointments—sometimes deep and devastating disappointment. One storm claimed the lives of eight of Krakauer's companions in the Everest disaster of 1996. Should they not have tried? Many have said they were foolish even to begin. Do we reach for nothing in life because our reaching opens us up to tragedy? Because of its vulnerable nature, desire begins to feel like our worst enemy. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

We are now far into this Epic that every great story points to. We have reached the moment where we, too, must find our courage and rise up to recover our hearts and fight for the hearts of others. The hour is late, and much time has been wasted. Aslan is on the move; we must rally to him at the stone table. We must find Geppetto lost at sea. We must ride hard, ride to Minas Tirith and join the last great battle for Middle Earth.Jesus calls to you to be his intimate ally once more. There are great things to be done and great sacrifices to be made. You won't lose heart if you know what's really going on here, where this Story is headed and what your Lover has promised to you.It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name...That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still. (Telling the Truth)This is the gospel.This is the Story we are living in.May you play your part well. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

To live as an authentic, ransomed, and redeemed woman means to be real and present in this moment. If we continue to hide, much will be lost. We cannot have intimacy with God or anyone else if we stay hidden and offer only who we think we ought to be or what we believe is wanted. We cannot play the ezer role we were meant to play if we remain bound by shame and fear, presenting only to the world the face we have learned is safe. You have only one life to live. It would be best to live your own. What have we to offer, really, other than who we are and what God has been pouring into our lives? It was not by accident that you were born; it was not by chance that you have the desires you do. The Victorious Trinity has planned on your being here now, “for such a time as this” (Est. 4:14). We need you. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (John 13:3–5, emphasis added) Jesus knew who he was. He knew where he had come from and where he was going. He knew why he was here. And so, in power and strength, in humility and complete freedom, he offers. He ministers to us and ultimately he pours out his life as an offering for ours. Pleasing and holy and acceptable. Jesus does this, he says, as “an example that you should do as I have done for you” (v. 15). God really does want you to know who you are. He wants you to be able to understand the story of your life, to know where you have come from, and to know where you are going. There is freedom there. Freedom to be and to offer and to love. Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

We have no idea who we really are. Whatever glory was bestowed, whatever glory is being restored, we thought this whole Christian thing was about ... something else. Trying not to sin. Going to church. Being nice. Jesus says it is about healing your heart, setting it free, restoring your glory. A religious fog has tried to veil all that, put us under some sort of spell or amnesia, to keep us from coming alive. As Blaise Pascal said, "It is a monstrous thing ... an incomprehensible enchantment, and a supernatural slumber." And, Paul said, it is time to take that veil away.When anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:16-18)A veil removed, bringing freedom, transformation, glory. Do you see it? I am not making this up—though I have been accused of making the gospel better than it is. The charge is laughable. Could anyone be more generous than God? Could any of us come up with a story that beats the one God has come up with? Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Finding more of God, growing strong in soul and spirit, requires creating space in your day for God — to intentionally put yourself in a place that allows you to draw upon and experience the healing power of the life of God filling you. Over the ages, serious followers of Jesus have used stillness and quiet, worship, fasting, prayer, beautiful places, and a number of other “exercises” to drink deeply of the presence of God. And untangle their souls from the world.The ongoing deluge of intriguing facts and commentary, scandal and crisis, genuinely important guidance combined with the latest insider news from across the globe and our friends’ personal lives, gives the soul a medicated feeling of awareness, connection, and meaning. Really, it’s the new Tower of Babel — the immediate access to every form of “knowledge” and “groundbreaking” information right there on our phones, every waking moment. It confuses the soul into a state of artificial meaning and purpose, all the while preventing genuine soul care and life with God. Who has time to read a book? Plant a garden?Let me say it again, because it’s so counter to the social air we breathe: what has become the normal daily consumption of input is numbing the soul with artificial meaning and purpose while in fact the soul grows thinner and thinner through neglect, forced by the very madness that passes for a progressive life. We are literally being forced into the “shallows” of our life.I’m not scolding; I’m tossing a lifeline.Sincere followers of Jesus in every age have faced very difficult decisions — usually at that point of tension where their life with and for God ran straight against the prevailing cultural norm. The new Tower of Babel is ours. We have always been “strangers and aliens” in the world, insofar as our values seemed so strange and bizarre to those around us. We are now faced with a series of decisions that are going to make us look like freaks — choices like fasting from social media, never bringing our smartphones to any meal, conversation, or Bible study, cutting off our media intake so we can practice stillness every day.The good news is that we actually have a choice. Unlike persecution, the things currently assaulting us are things we can choose not to participate in. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Our enemy is the angel Lucifer, son of the morning, one of the first and highest angels God created. He is the antagonist in the Sacred Romance—the great villain. All other villains are only a shadow of him. He is the one God gave a place of honor and trust "among the fiery stones" of the courts of heaven and who sees God face-to-face even to this day. He is one who spurned God's love and lost everything good through the sin of presumption. His desire was, and still is, to possess everything that belongs to God, including the worship of all those whom God loves. And God, as the Author of the great Story in which we are all living, has mysteriously allowed him a certain freedom to harass and oppress the other characters in the play, sometimes in a severe manner.In some ways, due to his great age and dark wisdom, Satan knows us better than we know ourselves. The one purpose of his heart is the destruction of all that God loves, particularly his beloved. He stalks us day and night, as the Lord tells us through Peter: "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). Peter makes it clear he is talking especially to believers, saying in verse 9, "Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings" (emphasis added). Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Jesus said this was the first and greatest commandment. So let’s keep this simple: Do you love God? It all starts there. Make a practice of loving God. “But how?” a friend asked. How do you love any of the people or the things that you currently love? You delight in them. You give your heart over to them. You choose them over other things and other people. They hold a special place in your heart. They get the lion’s share of your time, your attention, your presence. Don’t they? Then this is what we do — we give our whole heart to God. We make him the treasure of our life.It will be a profound moral rescue. It’s pretty hard to lust after someone if in that very moment you start saying, Jesus, I love you, I love you, I love you. It’s pretty hard to hold bitterness toward someone if in that very moment you start loving God. Whatever it is we find ourselves struggling with, right then and there in that very place we practice loving God and what we find is that our heart is freed to be good again. Loving God alone will heal your humanity. It’s what you were made for.Loving God is the centering of your existence as a human being. It’s the restoration of your reason for existence. What a relief it is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. What an utter relief. For then, every other relationship falls into place; every other desire finds its appropriate place in our life. Again, this is why mere “morality” can never substitute for true holiness. You can keep all the rules you think are important and not love God. This is where it all begins, truly loving Jesus with all your heart. Where things are out of whack, that is where our repenting needs to take place. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

In the end, it doesn't matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished—a life without heart is not worth living. For out of this wellspring of our soul flow all true caring and all meaningful work, all real worship and all sacrifice. Our faith, hope, and love issue from this fount, as well. Because it is in our heart that we first hear the voice of God and it is in the heart that we come to know him and learn to live in his love.So you can see that to lose heart is to lose everything. And a "loss of heart" best describes most men and women in our day. It isn't just the addictions and affairs and depression and heartaches, though, God knows, there are enough of these to cause even the best of us to lose heart. But there is the busyness, the drivenness, the fact that most of us are living merely to survive. Beneath it we feel restless, weary, and vulnerable.Indeed, the many forces driving modern life have not only assaulted the life of our heart, they have also dismantled the heart's habitat—that geography of mystery and transcendence we knew so well as children.All of us have had that experience at one time or another, whether it be as we walked away from our teachers, our parents, a church service, or sexual intimacy; the sense that something important, perhaps the only thing important, had been explained away or tarnished and lost to us forever. Sometimes little by little, sometimes in large chunks, life has appropriated the terrain meant to sustain and nourish the wilder life of the heart, forcing it to retreat as an endangered species into smaller, more secluded, and often darker geographies for its survival. As this has happened, something has been lost, something vital. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Above all else, guard your heart. We usually hear this with a sense of "Keep an eye on that heart of yours," in the way you'd warn a deputy watching over some dangerous outlaw, or a bad dog the neighbors let run. "Don't let him out of your sight." Having so long believed our hearts are evil, we assume the warning is to keep us out of trouble. So we lock up our hearts and throw away the key and then try to get on with our living. But that isn't the spirit of the command at all. It doesn't say guard your heart because it's criminal; it says guard your heart because it is the wellspring of your life, because it is a treasure, because everything else depends on it. How kind of God to give us this warning, like someone's entrusting to a friend something precious to him, with the words: "Be careful with this — it means a lot to me."Above all else? Good grief — we don't even do it once in a while. We might as well leave our life savings on the seat of the car with the windows rolled down — we're that careless with our hearts. "If not for my careless heart," sang Roy Orbison, and it might be the anthem for our lives. Things would be different. I would be farther along. My faith would be much deeper. My relationships so much better. My life would be on the path God meant for me ... if not for my careless heart. We live completely backward. "All else" is above our hearts. I'll wager that caring for your heart isn't even a category you think in. "Let's see — I've got to get the kids to soccer, the car needs to be dropped off at the shop, and I need to take a couple of hours for my heart this week." It probably sounds unbiblical, even after all we've covered.Seriously now—what do you do on a daily basis to care for your heart? Okay, that wasn't fair. How about weekly? Monthly? Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

The renewal of all things is meant to be the center of our view of the world, our hopes, and our tangible expectations as we plan our lives going forward. The phrase bucket list comes from the expression “kick the bucket,” the day we give it all up. A bucket list means those things we hope to do before we die. Meaning, it’s now or never, baby. Bucket list mentality is very revealing and even more tragic, because it betrays our belief that this life really is our only chance. After all — we think the earth is destroyed and we go to the pews in the sky. No wonder the human race grows more desperate in our search for kingdom counterfeits.What is it, my readers, that you hope to hang on to? If you love your athletic condition, surely you realize it cannot go on forever; eventually your body will succumb to age and your performance will diminish every year. Inexorably. If you relish your mind, you understand that your mind will dim with age; even if you dodge the great leveler dementia, you will forget many things, and may eventually have the mental capacity of a small child. And the people you love? You will lose them or they you; your very life is but a passing breeze, “each of us is but a breath” (Psalm 39:5 NLT). The fall and winter of your life will come; they are perhaps upon many of you even now. There is no holding back that winter.You understand, dear friends, that you will say good-bye to everyone you love and everything you hold dear.I am not a fatalist, not even a pessimist. I find joy in many things. I am practically a hedonist in my love for life. A novel based on the life of Vincent van Gogh bears a title I used to swear by: Lust for Life. But if we are going to embrace the hope God is so lavishly extending us, we must be honest about the nature of this life. As Henri Nouwen admitted,Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

God gives Adam some instructions on the care of creation and his role in the unfolding story. It's pretty basic, and very generous (see Gen. 2:16-17). But notice what God doesn't tell Adam. There is no warning or instruction over what is about to occur: the Temptation of Eve. This is just staggering. Notably missing from the dialogue between Adam and God is something like this:"Adam, one more thing. A week from Tuesday, about four in the afternoon, you and Eve are going to be down in the orchard and something dangerous is going to happen. Adam, are you listening? The eternal destiny of the human race hangs on this moment. Now, here's what I want you to do ..." He doesn't tell him. He doesn't even mention it, so far as we know. Good grief — why not?! Because God believes in Adam. This is what he's designed to do — to come through in a pinch. Adam doesn't need play-by-play instructions because this is what Adam is for. It's already there, everything he needs, in his design, in his heart. Needless to say, the story doesn't go well. Adam fails; he fails Eve and the rest of humanity.Let me ask you a question: Where is Adam, while the serpent is tempting Eve? He's standing right there: "She also gave some to her husband, who was with her. Then he ate it, too" (Gen. 3:6 NLT). The Hebrew for "with her" means right there, elbow to elbow. Adam isn't away in another part of the forest; he has no alibi. He is standing right there, watching the whole thing unravel. What does he do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He says not a word, doesn't lift a finger. He won't risk, he won't fight, and he won't rescue Eve.Our first father — the first real man — gave in to paralysis. He denied his very nature and went passive. And every man after him, every son of Adam, carries in his heart now the same failure. Every man repeats the sin of Adam, every day. We won't risk, we won't fight, and we won't rescue Eve. We truly are a chip off the old block. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Why did Nicodemus visit Jesus at night? Fear of what his peers would do if they found out. He wasn’t alone in this; John says that “many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue” (John 12:42). They chose job security over Jesus. This fear is a mighty powerful force.The fear of man. Peer pressure. What will others think? This can get deadly.This fear runs deep in the human race. It is ancient, Genesis 3:10 stuff — “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” The fear of exposure. It is far more powerful than we like to admit — the origin of every fig leaf and fashion trend. It’s what gives power to culture. We long to be praised. We dread exposure. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

I realize that many dear followers of Christ have been taught that God only speaks to his sons and daughters through the Bible. The irony of that theology is this: that’s not what the Bible teaches! The Scriptures are filled with stories of God speaking to his people — intimately, personally. Adam and Eve spoke with God. As did Abraham, Moses, and Elijah. So did Noah, Gideon, Aaron, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ananias, and the apostle Paul. On and on the examples go. In the course of time, David inquired of the Lord. “Shall I go up to one of the towns of Judah?” he asked. The Lord said, “Go up.” David asked, “Where shall I go?” “To Hebron,” the Lord answered.” (2 Sam. 2:1) Over and over again, the Scriptures provide doctrine and example that we are meant to hear God’s voice: He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. (Isa. 50:4)Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

I love the story of a certain man whom Jesus interfered with, much to his initial chagrin. Remember when Jesus met the man possessed with many demons in Luke 8? So they arrived in the region of the Gerasenes, across the lake from Galilee. As Jesus was climbing out of the boat, a man who was possessed by demons came out to meet him. For a long time he had been homeless and naked, living in the tombs outside the town. As soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down in front of him. Then he screamed, “Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” (vv. 26–28 NLT) The man in this true story was tormented by demons to the point that it was impossible for him to live a healthy life. He was isolated from his family and friends, not able to work or do anything other than endure the excruciating torment. And after many years of this, Jesus showed up. When He did, the man came running naked to Him (that must have been a little unnerving — at least for the disciples), shouting, “What are You doing here? Why are You interfering with me? This is my life. I’m fine. Leave me alone!” Huh. We all know he wasn’t fine. His life had not been his own for quite some time. In fact, it wasn’t him at all who was shouting at Jesus to go away but the inner tormenting demons compelled by fear. And Jesus, mighty Love incarnate, refused to leave. Instead He interfered; He intervened. Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee, all sixty-four square miles, to get to this one man. And He has crossed galaxies and heavenly realms to get to you. He passed through unimaginable opposition and endured unfathomable suffering to get to you. To mess with you. He has come, and He is coming still. To save us. To heal us. To help us. To love us. To guide and comfort us. And to interfere with our lives — particularly in the places we do not want Him to. Yes, it can be uncomfortable, but remember who Jesus is. He has the right to interfere. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

Now, you wouldn’t think that morality would ever become popular in the world, but there is a certain kind of “goodness” that is actually quite hip these days. Issues such as the size of your carbon footprint (and therefore the car you drive), where your coffee and chocolate come from, how your vegetables are grown or your fish is caught, the kind of shoes you wear — these are the causes du jour. Before I continue, let me say clearly I think these things are important. I don’t think they are as important as other issues, but I think they are important. I do my shopping at these kinds of stores.But what I want to point out is the softness of popular “goodness.” Recycling can make you feel like “Hey, I’m a good person,” while you ignore the fact that you’ve abandoned your children through your latest divorce. This is human nature: to find a morality that is comfortable and convenient and let it suffice for holiness. But it is not. So you ride your bike to work, or drive a hybrid car — but you have the sexual discretion of an alley cat. Yes, you gave clothing to the homeless — but you hate Republicans; you have hatred in your heart. A classic example would be the popular bumper sticker “Mean People Suck.” Um…meaning you, then, who put this mean-spirited bumper sticker on your car. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

You can’t save the world. You can’t even carry it.“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” (Luke 12:25–26). Jesus is quite serious about turning everything over to him, actually. So let’s repeat the invitation:Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. (Matthew 11:28–30 THE MESSAGE)Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7) Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you. (THE MESSAGE)These aren’t suggestions. The Bible is not a book of suggestions.You’ve got to release the world; you’ve got to release people, crises, trauma, intrigue, all of it. There has to be sometime in your day where you just let it all go. All the tragedy of the world, the heartbreak, the latest shooting, earthquake — the soul was never meant to endure this. The soul was never meant to inhabit a world like this. It’s way too much. Your soul is finite. You cannot carry the sorrows of the world. Only God can do that. Only he is infinite. Somewhere, sometime in your day, you’ve just got to release it. You’ve got to let it go.We need to make this clear — the invitation of God is an unburdened life. Come, you who are heavy laden. Cast your cares upon him. Live carefree before God. It’s practically a party invitation. One of the least understood disciplines of the spiritual life. And therefore a wonderful place of discovery for each of us, and a truly liberating opportunity to experience more of God in our everyday experience. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] Do you feel that you can handle life? A woman? Your finances? Crisis when it hits? “I can handle this,” is the practical daily expression of a validated man. [Sam] Bit by bit it’s happening. Last summer Susie and I had the opportunity to climb Mount Whitney (tallest peak in the contiguous 48) with some friends who had been planning on it for some time. We weren’t sure we would be able to go since all the spots were filled, so we didn’t really train for it. Then two days before the climb, the call came that two spots had opened up. I was jittery to say the least. I felt like the low man on the totem pole, the one who didn’t train, who was the least athletic (or so I felt), and I dreaded the coming weekend. Shame was crouching at the door: You’re going to wimp out. You can’t handle this. You won’t be able to summit. When the climb actually came, the group decided to do the whole thing in one day; starting at base camp at 4:00 a.m. we would summit by early afternoon and be back down in time for dinner. Six hours into the climb we asked a group coming down if we were doing well, if we were even getting close. They laughed at us. We had four hours to go. After ten grueling hours I was the first to summit. My group had been afflicted with altitude sickness, fatigue, and disorientation. By the end I was the only one who felt good enough to keep walking around on top; in fact, Susie and our friend Ryan both fell asleep immediately. At the end of the day I felt so validated, so strong. I had surprised myself and the members of our group by leading the way to the top. Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book Becoming a King:How we arrange our days and spend our time is central to becoming the kind of king to whom God can entrust his creative power. It is this slow and steady exercise — or better said, consistent practicing over time — that produces the kind of king God intends us to become.What is the relationship between the kind of human Jesus was on earth and how he spent his time? We can draw from several foundational truths expressed through his life. We know he spent time in solitude.We can infer that he spent time in study, given his upbringing as a Jewish man and his agility with the Scriptures.We know he spent lots of time outdoors.We know he spent time with his close friends.We know he spent time fasting and feasting.We know he willingly offers himself as our Teacher.Therefore, is it possible that learning from Jesus how to spend our time could be transformative in the process of our becoming? Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

We, too, live in a world that triggers our souls into vigilance far too often. The complexity of modern life is mind-boggling. Thanks to the smartphone and the web, you are confronted on a daily basis with more information than any previous generation had to deal with! And it’s not just information; it’s the suffering of the entire planet, in minute detail, served up on your feed daily. Add to this the pace at which most of us are required to live our lives. It leaves very little room for that sigh and the experiences that bring it.We live in a spiritual and emotional state equivalent to horses on the plains during the late Pleistocene.This morning I can’t tell whether my soul is more in fight or flight. But I do know this — I don’t like the state I’m in. I didn’t sleep well last night (one of the many consequences of living in a hypercharged world), and after I finally conked out, I overslept, woke up late, and ever since I’ve felt behind on everything.I rushed through breakfast, dashed out the door to get to some meetings, and now I’m rattled. I don’t like that feeling and I don’t like the consequences. When I’m rattled, I’m easily irritated with people. I didn’t have the patience to listen to what my wife was trying to say this morning. I find it hard to hear from God, and I don’t like feeling untethered from him.I notice now in my rattled state that I want to eat something fatty and sugary; I want something that’s going to make me feel better now. When we’re unsettled, unnerved, unhinged, it’s human nature to seek a sense of equilibrium, stability, and I find myself wondering — how many addictions begin here, with just wanting a little comfort? Get out of the rattled place and soothe ourselves with “a little something?”We live in a crazy-making world. So much stimulation rushes at us with such unrelenting fury, we are overstimulated most of the time. Things that nourish us — a lingering conversation, a leisurely stroll through the park, time to savor both making and then enjoying dinner — these are being lost at an alarming rate; we simply don’t have room for them. Honestly, I think most people live their daily lives along a spectrum from slightly rattled to completely fried as their normal state of being.In the late morning, I finally do what I should have from the beginning — I pause, get quiet, settle down. I give myself permission to simply pause, a little breathing room to come back to myself and God. My breathing returns to normal (I didn’t even notice I was holding my breath). A little bit of space begins to clear around me. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Hearing from God flows out of our relationship. That relationship was established for us by Jesus Christ. “Therefore, since we have been justified [made right with God] through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (Romans 5:1). Whatever we might be feeling, we do have relationship with God now, because we belong to him. And our relationship is secure. “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).I am God’s. He is mine.Because we do have relationship with God secured for us by Jesus Christ and all he has done, we can now grow in developing that relationship. We can, on the basis of what is objectively true, move into an experience of God in our lives that deepens over time. And that includes learning to hear his voice. Prayer not as making speeches to God, a one-sided conversation, but as the act of talking to and hearing from God. A two-sided conversation. It is a rich inheritance we have. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

The warrior is hardwired into every man. This is true because he is made in the image of God, who is the Great Warrior. Like Father, like son. It is also true because it constitutes a great part of man’s mission here on earth — to join the Great Warrior in his battle against evil. It is this aggressive nature that will enable us to overcome the passivity and paralysis we inherited from Adam. In fact, we are siding with one or the other — the warrior or the paralyzed man — in every decision we make, every day. Encouraging the warrior as it begins to come into full force in a young man’s life will be a great help to him as the years unfold, for you and I know how hard the battle is if we’ve spent years in passivity.I am not saying every man must join the military, though that is a noble calling; there are many ways for the warrior to emerge. Over the ages the pen has proved mightier than the sword, as the old saying goes. What I am saying is that there is an inherent aggressiveness written in the masculine soul. So it shouldn’t surprise us — though many parents are still a bit unnerved — when you see the warrior emerge in the boy when he is very young. As for the stage of the warrior, I believe it begins in the late teens — about the time we send a young man to war. When God tells Moses to arrange the fleeing slaves into tribes, he has them “number by their divisions all the men in Israel twenty years old or more who are able to serve in the army” (Num. 1:3 NIV). So here it is marked at age twenty, and that seems confirmed in so many revolutions fueled by young men.The heart of the warrior says, “I will not let evil have its way. There are some things that cannot be endured. I’ve got to do something. There is freedom to be had.” The heart of the warrior says, “I will put myself on the line for you.” That is why it must come before the lover stage, for he will need to do that time and time again in his marriage, and it is passivity that has broken the heart of many women. The warrior nature is fierce, and brave, ready to confront evil, ready to go into battle. This is the time for a young man to stop saying, “Why is life so hard?” He takes the hardness as the call to fight, to rise up, take it on. He learns to “set his face like a flint,” as Jesus had to do to fulfill his life’s great mission (Isa. 50:7). Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

The story that is the Sacred Romance begins not with God alone, the Author at his desk, but God in relationship, intimacy beyond our wildest imagination, heroic intimacy. The Trinity is at the center of the universe; perfect relationship is the heart of all reality. Think of your best moments of love or friendship or creative partnership, the best times with family or friends around the dinner table, your richest conversations, the acts of simple kindness that sometimes seem like the only things that make life worth living. Like the shimmer of sunlight on a lake, these are reflections of the love that flows among the Trinity. We long for intimacy because we are made in the image of perfect intimacy. Still, what we don't have and may never have known is often a more powerful reminder of what ought to be.Our story begins with the hero in love. As Frederick Buechner reminds us, "God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love because within himself love happens."And yet, what kind of love? There are selfish forms of love, relationships that create closed systems, impenetrable to outsiders. Real love creates a generous openness. Have you ever been so caught up in something that you just had to share it? When you are walking alone in the woods, something takes your breath away — a sunset, a waterfall, the simple song of a bird — and you think, If only my beloved were here. The best things in life were meant to be shared. That is why married lovers want to increase their joy by having children. And so it is with God. "Father," Jesus says, "I want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am. I want them to be one heart and mind with us" (John 17). Overflowing with the generosity that comes from the abundance of real love, he creates us to share in the joy of this heroic intimacy.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book, Becoming a KingToday’s headlines are replete with stories of dethroned monarchs, religious or secular. Scripture is as well. Though the characters change, the story line remains the same: broken, unfinished, uninitiated men causing injury to the lives of others with the mishandling of power. Think of the men who have held positions of authority over you in your own story. When did they use their power to meet their own unharnessed need for validation rather than offer their strength in the service of love? Coaches, teachers, pastors, bosses working out their core desire to feel powerful at the expense of those entrusted to their care. The list is long, and the damage is real. Kings of this world are notorious for using the talent of young men to serve their own needs to build their kingdom. More sobering, when I survey my own domain and all that has been entrusted to my care, I see that my own mishandling of power has wounded those I love most. Though in ways I am growing and maturing in my capacity to love well, the harm I’ve caused others is undeniable and long-standing. I am not yet the man I was made to become. Both in acts of commission, where my power has hurt others, and in acts of omission, where I have failed to engage, to bring a genuine strength in love, I have brought harm. Even this morning I found myself needing to pause and invite my wife to sit face-to-face, heart-to-heart, so that I could take renewed responsibility for places where I have failed to bring into our story the strength and love she deserves. And so we return to the question, when can you trust a man with power? Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

When the apostles needed the help of some good men to shepherd the exploding new church, they chose men "full of the Spirit and wisdom" (Acts 6:3). The two go together; we need them both. We need to walk by the inspiration of the Spirit, and we need wisdom as well. Wisdom and Revelation. Early on in our journey, I think we should lean more into wisdom. It takes time to learn to walk with God in a deeply intimate way, and many challenges face us before we are accustomed to the way of the heart. We must practice our chords; we must do our drills.For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.Then you will understand what is right and just and fair — every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you. (Proverbs 1:32-33; 2:9-11)We seek wisdom because the trail is narrow and hard to find. It is a cruel thing to tell someone to follow their dreams without also warning them what hell will come against them. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

All masculine initiation is ultimately spiritual. The tests and challenges, the joys and adventures are all designed to awaken a man’s soul, draw him into contact with the masculine in himself, in other men, in the world, and in God, as Father. I make no distinction between taking a boy or a man on an adventure and, say, teaching that man to pray. The adventure — rightly framed — can be a powerful experience of God. And prayer or Bible study — rightly framed — is meant to be the same. Most boys and men share the perception that God is found in church, and that the rest of life is ... just the rest of life. It’s the old Gnostic heresy, the division of the sacred and the profane. The tragedy of this is that the rest of life seems far more attractive to them than church, and thus God seems removed and even opposed to the things that make them come alive.But as Christians, we believe God embraces the physical world, that he loves Creation as we do, pronounced it very good (Gen. 1:31), that he speaks through it and uses it to teach us many things. We’ve lost many boys and men from the church because we’ve given them an unspeakably boring spirituality, implying that God is most interested in things like hymnals and baptismal founts. We’ve made the spiritual very small, and sanctimonious, robed and often effeminate. And yet, most of the stories of men encountering God in the Bible do not take place in church(!). Moses is met in the desert, in a burning bush. Jacob wrestles with God in the wilderness also, in the dead of night. David wrote most of his psalms out under the stars. Paul is met on the desolate dirt road between Jerusalem and Damascus. And most of the stories of Jesus with his disciples don’t take place in church. Not even indoors. We have got to recover the wildness of spirituality — especially masculine spirituality. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

Our acts of remembering must therefore involve both essential truths and dramatic narrative. I believe we need to hold the creeds in one hand and our favorite forms of art in the other. There are films, books, poems, songs, and paintings I return to again and again for some deep reason in my heart. Taking a closer look, I see that they all tell me about some part of the Sacred Romance. They help wake me to a deeper remembrance. As Don Hudson has said, “Art is, in the final analysis, a window on heaven.”Now that we are on our way, Satan will do everything he can to steal the Romance. One way he does this is to leave us only propositions, or worse, “principles,” like “the management techniques of Jesus” or “the marketing methods of Jesus.” The heart cannot live on facts and principles alone; it speaks the language of story, and we must rehearse the truths of our faith in a way that captures the heart and not just the mind.Let us return again to that central scene and see what it is the author of Hebrews wants us to see in order to follow our Hero in the race ahead. How did Jesus sustain his passionate heart in the face of brutal opposition? He never lost sight of where he was headed. He had a vision for the future that was grounded in the past. In the story of the Last Supper, we are told that Jesus knew “he had come from God and was returning to God,” and lived his life of selfless love to the end. He remembered both where he had come from and where he was going (John 13:3). And so must we. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

There is a widespread belief in the church that to be a Christian somehow satisfies our every desire. As one camp song has it, “I’m inright, outright, upright, downright happy all day long.” What complete nonsense! Augustine emphasized, “The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. What you desire ardently, as yet you do not see.” So, “let us long because we are to be filled ... That is our life, to be exercised by longing.” There’s the mystery again. Longing leads to fullness somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, being content is not the same thing as being full.Paul said he had “learned the secret of being content” (Phil. 4:12), and many Christians assume he no longer experienced the thirst of his soul. But earlier in the same epistle, the old saint said that he had not obtained his soul’s desire, or “already been made perfect.” Quite the contrary. He described himself as pressing on, “straining toward what is ahead” (3:12–14). These are not the words of a man who no longer experienced longing because he had arrived. They are the account of a man propelled on his life quest by his desire.Contentment is not freedom from desire, but freedom of desire. Being content is not pretending that everything is the way you wish it would be; it is not acting as though you have no wishes. Rather, it is no longer being ruled by your desires. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

I am loved. Deeply and truly loved.“I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). If all the pain of the world were gathered together, and sorted by cause into great basins, the vast majority of tears would fill an ocean entitled, “Unloved.” Because love is the deepest longing of the human heart — however hard we might try to pretend otherwise. When things get painful in our marriage, the arrows that pierce our hearts carry some message of You are not loved. The arrows might be Rejection, or Anger, Betrayal, or Blaming, or even Silence. But the message is You are no longer loved; you never really have been. We’ve got to anchor our heart in the one sure Love. You are now, you always have been, and you will forever be loved. It might help to say that to yourself, every day. Maybe every hour. This is the boat that carries your heart right across that ocean of pain to the safe haven of God.Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

Once more, lend a mythic eye to your situation. Let your heart ponder this:You awake to find yourself in the middle of a great and terrible war. It is, in fact, our most desperate hour. Your King and dearest Friend calls you forth. Awake, come fully alive, your good heart set free and blazing for him and for those yet to be rescued. You have a glory that is needed. You are given a quest, a mission that will take you deep into the heart of the kingdom of darkness, to break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron so that your people might be set free from their bleak prisons. He asks that you heal them. Of course, you will face many dangers; you will be hunted.Would you try and do this alone?Something stronger than Fate has chosen you. Evil will hunt you. And so a Fellowship must protect you.Honestly, though he is a very brave and true Hobbit, Frodo hasn't a chance without Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. He will need his friends. And you will need yours. You must cling to those you have, you must search wide and far for those you do not yet have. You must not go alone. From the beginning, right there in Eden, the Enemy's strategy has relied upon a simple aim: Divide, and conquer. Get them isolated, and take them out.You see this sort of thing at the center of every great story. Dorothy takes her journey with the Scarecrow, the Tinman, the Lion, and of course, Toto. Maximus rallies his little band and triumphs over the greatest empire on earth. When Captain John Miller is sent deep behind enemy lines to save Private Ryan, he goes in with a squad of men. And, of course, Jesus had the Twelve. This is written so deeply on our hearts: You must not go alone. The Scriptures are full of such warnings, but until we see our desperate situation, we hear it as an optional religious assembly for an hour on Sunday mornings.Imagine you are surrounded by a small company of friends who know you well (characters, to be sure, but they love you, and you have come to love them). They understand that we are all at war, know that the purposes of God are to bring a man or woman fully alive, and are living by sheer necessity and joy in the Four Streams. They fight for you, and you for them. Imagine you could have a little fellowship of the heart. Would you want it, if it were available?That is our destiny. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

Does God have a good heart? When we think of God as Author, the Grand Chess Player, the Mind Behind It All, we doubt his heart. As Melville said, "The reason the mass of men fear God and at bottom dislike him is because they rather distrust his heart, and fancy him all brain, like a watch." Do you relate to the author when reading a novel or watching a film? Caught up in the action, do you even think about the author? We identify with the characters in the story precisely because they are in the story. They face life as we do, on the ground, and their struggles win our sympathy because they are our struggles also. We love the hero because he is one of us, and yet somehow rises above the fray to be better and wiser and more loving as we hope one day we might prove to be.The Author lies behind, beyond. His omniscience and omnipotence may be what creates the drama, but they are also what separates us from him. Power and knowledge don't qualify for heart. Indeed, the worst sort of villain is the kind who executes his plans with cold and calculated precision. He is detached; he has no heart. If we picture God as the mastermind behind the story — calling the shots while we, like Job, endure the calamities — we can't help but feel at times what C. S. Lewis was bold enough to put words to: "We're the rats in the cosmic laboratory." Sure, he may have our good in mind, but that still makes him the "vivisectionist" — the experimenter.We root for the hero and heroine, even come to love them, because they are living in the drama. They feel the heartache, they suffer loss and summon courage and shed their own blood in their struggles against evil. What if ? Just what if we saw God not as Author, the cosmic mastermind behind all human experience, but as the central character in the larger story? What could we learn about his heart? Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

A friend of mine wanted to teach English as a second language in an Asian country, as a way of becoming a sort of undercover missionary. A beautiful dream, one that I'm sure she would have been excellent in fulfilling. But she rushed to the field unprepared in many ways. I don't mean finances and language skills; I mean in the ways of the heart. Lurking down in her soul were some deep and unresolved issues that would set her up for a fall: among them shame and guilt from an abusive past. The team she joined was totally unfamiliar with the new heart, and they doubted its goodness; as with too many Christian ministries, shame and guilt were often used as motivators. Their old covenant theology would play right into Susan's issues, shut down her young heart. Finally, she was unpracticed in spiritual warfare, ill-equipped for what hell would throw at her. The devil is a master at shame and guilt. She went; she got hammered; she came home, defeated. Her friends wonder if she'll ever try it again.The disaster could have been avoided. Wisdom was crying out: do not rush the field (Luke 14:31); train yourself to discern good and evil (Heb. 5:14); live as though your life is at stake, and the enemy is waiting to outwit you (Matt. 10:16). God has given us all sorts of counsel and direction in his written Word; thank God, we have it written down in black and white. We would do well to be familiar with it, study it with all the intensity of the men who studied the maps of the Normandy coastline before they hit the beaches on D-Day. The more that wisdom enters our hearts, the more we will be able to trust our hearts in difficult situations. Notice that wisdom is not cramming our head with principles. It is developing a discerning heart. What made Solomon such a sharp guy was his wise and discerning heart (1 Kings 3:9).We don't seek wisdom because it's a good idea; we seek wisdom because we're dead if we don't. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

First, where does Jesus Christ now reside, in the life of the believer? Inside us; more precisely, in our hearts: “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:14–17). So we should expect to experience Christ within us, as well as “with us,” or alongside us.Next, is there any aspect of our personal history that is beyond the reach of Jesus Christ? Never. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps. 139:16). Would the faculty of our memory be a realm beyond the understanding of Jesus Christ, or — more important — beyond his access? No. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). So, Jesus within us is also Lord of our memory.Finally, if our relationship with Christ or our witness for him in this world is being hindered because a part of our soul is not yet fully under his loving rule, would Jesus want to address that? Of course he would. Remember his fierce intention. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Many people have the vague but ominous idea that God destroys the current reality and creates a new “heavenly” one. But that is not what Scripture actually says.For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. (Romans 8:19–23 NLT) Paul teaches us that creation—meaning the earth and the animal kingdom—longs for the day of its redemption, when “it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay” (v. 21). Clearly that does not imply destruction; far from it. Paul anticipated a joyful day when creation shares in the eternity of the children of God: The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. (Romans 8:19–21 The Message) The glorious times ahead, when all things are made new. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

And then, alas, there is the church. Christianity, as it currently exists, has done some terrible things to men. When all is said and done, I think most men in the church believe that God put them on the earth to be a good boy. The problem with men, we are told, is that they don't know how to keep their promises, be spiritual leaders, talk to their wives, or raise their children. But if they will try real hard they can reach the lofty summit of becoming ... a nice guy. That's what we hold up as models of Christian maturity: Really Nice Guys. We don't smoke, drink, or swear; that's what makes us men. Now let me ask my male readers: In all your boyhood dreams growing up, did you ever dream of becoming a Nice Guy? (Ladies, was the Prince of your dreams dashing ... or merely nice?)Really now—do I overstate my case? Walk into most churches in America, have a look around, and ask yourself this question: What is a Christian man? Don't listen to what is said, look at what you find there. There is no doubt about it. You'd have to admit a Christian man is ... bored. At a recent church retreat I was talking with a guy in his fifties, listening really, about his own journey as a man. "I've pretty much tried for the last twenty years to be a good man as the church defines it." Intrigued, I asked him to say what he thought that was. He paused for a long moment. "Dutiful," he said. "And separated from his heart." A perfect description, I thought. Sadly, right on the mark. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today