Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Our life is a story. A rather long and complicated story that has unfolded over time. There are many scenes, large and small, and many "firsts." Your first step; your first word; your first day of school. There was your first best friend; your first recital; your first date; your first love; your first kiss; your first heartbreak. If you stop and think of it, your heart has lived through quite a story thus far. And over the course of that story your heart has learned many things. Some of what you learned is true; much of it is not. Not when it comes to the core questions about your heart and the heart of God. Is your heart good? Does your heart really matter? What has life taught you about that? Imagine for a moment that God is walking softly beside you. You sense his presence, feel his warm breath. He says, "Tell me your sorrows." What would you say in reply? "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever — the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-17). Come again? How would you feel if your spouse or a friend said to you, "I think you need some counseling, and so I've arranged for it. You start tomorrow; it'll probably take years"? I've got five bucks that says you'd get more than a little defensive. The combination of our pride — I don't need any therapy, thank you very much — and the fact that it's become a profession — Freud and Prozac and all that — has kept most of us from realizing that, in fact, we do need counseling. All of us. Jesus sends us his Spirit as Counselor; that ought to make it clear. In fact, we apparently need quite a lot of counsel — the Spirit isn't just stopping in to give us a tune-up; not even an annual checkup. He has come to stay. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

God created us in freedom to be his intimate allies, and he will not give up on us. He seeks his allies still. Not religion. Not good church people. Lovers. Allies. Friends of the deepest sort.I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart. (Jer. 24:7)It is the most beautiful of all love stories. On the other hand, Kierkegaard's tale The King and the Maiden doesn't capture the cost the King will have to pay to ransom his Beloved. He'll have to die.Have you noticed that in the great stories the hero must often die to win the freedom of his beloved?William Wallace is slowly and brutally tortured for daring to oppose the wicked king. He is executed (upon a cross), and yet his death breaks the grip that darkness has held over Scotland. Neo is the Chosen One, faster and more daring than any other before him. Even so, he is killed—shot in the chest at point-blank range. His death and resurrection shatter the power of the Matrix, set the captives free.Aslan dies upon the stone table for the traitor Edmund and for all Narnia. Maximus dies in the arena to win the freedom of his friends and all Rome. They are all pictures of an even greater sacrifice.The Son of Man ... [came] to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matt. 20:28)Remember, God warned us back in the Garden that the price of our mistrust and disobedience would be death. Not just a physical death, but a spiritual death — to be separated from God and life and all the beauty, intimacy, and adventure forever. Through an act of our own free will, we became the hostages of the Kingdom of Darkness and death. The only way out is ransom. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's new book, Becoming a King“What does a man need to survive?” I posed this question years ago to my very young son as we were headed out on an adventure.After careful and honest consideration, he responded, “A wallet and a phone.”It was brilliant. And painful. Brilliant because of his perceptivity about our culture, painful because the culture in which my kids are being raised gives the false perception that his response is true. Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac, offered a thought that implied part of the antidote to a world without men. “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other is believing that heat comes from the furnace.” Something in us recoils. Right. These spiritual dangers have become institutionalized norms in our technological age. Anything you need you can order online, even get it shipped for free in one day via Amazon Prime. All that’s required is a few clicks. Yet in this age of über-convenience, something inside us grows soft, atrophies, and dies.How do we avoid the spiritual dangers Leopold described? Dang, it’s hard. After all, most days it feels like heat does come from the furnace and our breakfast does come from the grocery. And on any given day, doesn’t it feel true that what we really need to survive are a wallet and a phone?After years of choosing to risk responding to God’s initiation of my soul and moving toward parts of me that remained untrained and untested, last night we bucked that trend. With elk steaks hot off the grill and a roaring fire from freshly split Colorado aspens gleaned with our own hands and chainsaw, something was healing in my friend and me and in our kingdoms. We avoided — at least for a moment — the spiritual dangers of which Leopold warned. For a moment, something was restored, strengthened. Our food hadn’t come from the grocery; our heat hadn’t come from the furnace. It took time to reverse the trend and recover these atrophied places in our masculine soul. It required consenting to initiation uniquely scripted by God. And it was good, really good. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

"The King is enthralled by your beauty." Psalm 45:11Lovely little six-year-old Lacey was visiting our ministry headquarters the other day, going from office to office, swinging on the door frame and asking with a smile, "Would you like to hear my song?" Her face kissed by the sun with charming freckles, two front teeth missing and eyes dancing with merriment, who could refuse her? She didn't really care if she was an interruption. I doubt the thought crossed her mind. She sang her newly made-up song fully expecting to be delighted in, then skipped down the hall to grace the occupant of the next office. She was like a ray of summer sun, or, better, a garden fairy, flitting from office to office. She was a little girl in her glory, unashamed in her desire to delight, and be delighted in.Remember twirling skirts? Most little girls go through a season where they will not wear anything if it does not twirl (and if it sparkles, so much the better). Hours and hours of endless play result from giving little girls a box filled with hats, scarves, necklaces, clothes. Dime store beads are priceless jewels; hand-me-down pumps are glass slippers. Grandma's nightie a ballroom gown. Once dressed, they dance around the house or preen in front of a mirror. Their young hearts intuitively want to know they are lovely. Some will ask with words, "Am I lovely?" Others will simply ask with their eyes. Verbal or not, whether wearing a shimmery dress or covered in mud, all little girls want to know. As a young songwriter recently wrote,I want to be beautiful And make you stand in awe Look inside my heart And be amazed I want to hear you say Who I am is quite enough I just want to be worthy of love And beautiful.(Bethany Dillon) Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

The word I choose to describe Jesus is life. Pure, lush, exuberant Life. Life that proves to be unquenchable, unstoppable, indestructible. As John summarized the whole affair, “In him was life, and that light was the light of men” (1:4). It sure was. Let’s turn back to nature one more time. It is such a liberating force from the religious fog, because it is God’s and it speaks volumes about his true—pardon the pun— nature. What does creation say about his life? A single tree is enough to make me worship—the beauty, the elegance, the perseverance, the life coursing through it. If I were given a lifetime, I could never make one myself. Now—have you ever stopped to imagine how many trees there are on this planet? The Taiga forest spans the globe through Sweden, Siberia, Alaska and Canada. It contains one-third of all the trees on earth and produces enough oxygen to replenish earth’s supply. That’s one forest. Have you ever wondered how many fish are swimming our oceans and seas? About seven hundred billion sardines are harvested each year off the coast of Peru—that is one tiny subspecies, off one coastline. There are a lot of fish finning around out there. It boggles the imagination. Come closer, take a microscopic view of our world. There are hundreds to thousands of organisms in a single drop of pond water—protozoans, amoebas, rotifers, water bears. One drop. How many drops fill a bucket, how many buckets a pond? And there’s a lot of ponds on this planet. The earth is like a massive petri dish, teeming and trumpeting with life in such staggering diversity and abundance that science still hasn’t come close to cataloging it all. Nature is bursting with life—even after all these years of war. Now, what would happen if this sort of life expressed itself in a man? Exactly. It did. When Jesus fed the five thousand, the tally counted only men. So the crowd was probably more like ten thousand including women and children. From fives loaves and two (small) fish. With leftovers. He doesn’t even say anything in Cana after, “Fill the jars.” The 180 gallons of wine are suddenly just ... there. With a shout he raises Lazarus from the dead. One word best describes what is going on here: life. Jesus really is the Lord of Life. Now for a wonder of wonders—not only do you get Jesus, you get to live his life. Really. Everything you’ve seen here, everything you’ve read about, this life is yours for the asking. This is what Jesus believed. This was his understanding of our desperation and his mission.Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

I had my own tin-foil-brain, fried-soul kind of day. My rescue didn't take place until I had thrashed through most of the calamity. It was the kind of day when everything seems to go sideways from the moment you get out of bed; I’ll bet you’ve had one of these:There’s no milk, so there’s no cereal, and you’re late anyways, so there’s no breakfast. You’re halfway to work when you realize you forgot your phone — and who can live without their phone these days — so you’re late to work because you went back and got your phone and now you’re behind on everything. People are tweaked at you. You can’t answer that urgent email someone keeps asking about, because you’re waiting for an answer yourself, but the person who has the answer took the morning off for a "doctor's appointment" (sure you did, you think, you're out for a ride, you slouch). On it goes.You look forward to lunch as your first chance to come up for air, but the line at your favorite taco joint is out the door, and though you should have stayed, you’re already well on your way to totally fried so you leave in frustration, which only makes you skip lunch, which justifies your use of chocolate and caffeine to see you through the afternoon. But that completely takes your legs out from under you, and all you end up accomplishing is making a list of the things you need to do, which overwhelms you. By the time you get home you are seriously fried.I was strung out, deep in a vat of anger, frustration, self-indulging cynicism, and fatigue. A dangerous place to be. The next move would be rescue or the knockout punch. After a cold dinner I went out on the porch and just sat there. I knew I needed rescue, and I knew the nearest hope of that was the porch. It was a beautiful Indian summer evening, the kind where the heat of the day has warmed the breezes, but you can also feel the cool from the mountains beginning to trickle down like refreshing streams. The crickets were going at it full bore, as they do when their season is about over, and the sunset was putting on a Western Art show. I could feel the rescue begin to enter my body and soul. Nature began its gentle work.I let out a few deep sighs — “Spirit sighs,” as a friend calls them, meaning your spirit is breathing in the Spirit of God and you find yourself letting go of all the mess, letting go of everything. They weren’t cynical or defeated sighs; they were “letting it all go” sighs. My body relaxed, which made me realize how tense I’d been all day. My heart started coming to the surface, as it often does when I can get away into nature and let beauty have its effect on me. Mind you — I didn’t get to the beach. I’m not canoeing some mountain lake. I’m simply sitting on my back porch. It doesn’t take much; rescue is always at hand. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Life is a journey of the heart that requires the mind—not the other way around. The church sometimes gets this backward and makes knowing the right things the center of life. It’s not; the heart is the center of life. Desire is always where the action is. However, staying alive to our desire is not enough; we know that only too well. We must bring the truth into our hearts to guard and to guide our desire; this is the other half of our mission. With a recovery of heart and soul taking place in many quarters, my fear now is that we will abandon the pursuit of truth and try to base our journey on our feelings and intuition. “Follow your heart” is becoming a popular message in our culture. Or as Sting sings, “Trust your soul.” It will not work. Our spiritual fathers and mothers knew this only too well. In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis warned, “Our own opinion and our own sense do often deceive us, and they discern but little.” We must cling to the truth for dear life. And so our spiritual forebears urged us to bring both heart and mind together.Now, not all truths help us descend with the mind into the heart. There is a way of talking about the truth that can actually deaden our hearts. Most of us were raised in the modern era, the age of reason and science. We came to believe that truth is best discovered in the scientific method.What is the truth of a kiss? Technically, in a modernistic sense, it is two sets of mandibles pressing together for a certain duration of time. Those of you who have experienced the wonders of a kiss will know that while true, this description is so untrue. It takes away everything beautiful and mysterious and passionate and intimate and leaves you with an icy cold fact. Those who know kissing feel robbed; those who don’t are apt to say, “If that’s what kissing is all about, I think I’d rather not.”We’ve done the same thing to theology. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

Love your neighbor, Jesus urged, as you love yourself. (Which, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, is a pretty sick command if we are to hate ourselves.) How you handle people is the second great test of your character. Again, Jesus is cutting through both all the complexity and our dodging by helping us focus on our motives. It’s pretty hard to be a racist and still love that person. It’s pretty hard to hold bitterness in your heart and still love that person. So here, too, we find a profound rescue. Wherever it is we find ourselves struggling, we begin to choose love; in our hearts we begin to reaffirm our love for this human being. I find myself wanting to get irritated and judge: Jesus, help me love this person. I find myself wanting to envy: Jesus, help me love this person. As we allow love in, it flushes an awful lot of other stuff out. “Do not murder,” the Bible says, but what about dismissal? I write people off far too quickly, and it is not good. What difference is there between dismissal and murder, really? Aren’t I basically saying, “I don’t want your existence — not in my orbit, not in my universe. You’re gone, you’re out of here.” James tells us, “Don’t show favorites.” Maybe we don’t have favorites, but we withhold praise, we withhold love, we withhold affection, we parcel it out based on all kinds of other motives than love. Most often it is based on how they are treating me, what they can do for me.Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] I know so many of us long for words of validation, but few ever hear them. An acquaintance of mine who lived down the street went out and bought a new (used) car one day. He spent quite a bit and took out a loan to boot. When he pulled up he started dancing around the driveway chanting, “I own a car! Now I am a man! I own a car! Now I am a man!” I wish I were kidding. It felt pretty hollow at the time; I knew that he was getting his validation from owning things. But it’s something that society had told him marks the way to adulthood. [John] More like killing a dandelion, isn’t it? But in the absence of validation from God, we’ll take whatever scraps come our way.Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

What do I pray, Lord? What is this about? Pause. This is a really, really helpful place to begin — to ask God what to pray. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m looking at the equivalent of a two-headed rooster on my windowsill. I don’t know why God brought this up. So I ask him. Remember the disciples asking Jesus, “Teach us to pray”? Too many times we just jump in and start praying (making prayer speeches to God), and it doesn’t have much effect. We just sort of swing our sword around in the air randomly. Do this for a while and you’ll get the impression that prayer doesn’t really work. Or that God isn’t in it. Oh, it works, and he’s in it. When we pray effectively. John says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14–15). That’s an awesome promise. If we pray according to God’s will, he hears us all right. And he answers our prayers. Isn’t that what you want? I sure do. I want to see my prayers work! I want to pray according to God’s will. But I don’t always know what that is, so, I ask. This has absolutely revolutionized the way I pray. And I am seeing a lot more results, just as the scripture promised. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

I thought of Jesus’ warning about the end of the age, how as times grow dark and people feel more keenly pressed, love will grow rare. “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom … Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:7, 12). These are trying times, for all of us. I venture we will see even more trying times. But Auden was right. We must love one another, or die. Because love is what we are created for; it is the reason for our existence. Love is our destiny. Love God and love one another — these are the two great commands upon the human race. The secret to life is this we are here in order to learn how to love. It’s really quite an epiphany when the truth finally strikes home. It might be the most liberating realization we ever come to. We are here in order to learn how to love. It is our greatest mission of all, our destiny. Though it is the most basic of truths, this epiphany seems to come to few of us — or rather, seems to be accepted by few of us. Most people remain committed to other things as their primary aim in life — happiness, survival, revenge, success, what have you. When a soul comes to accept the fact that they are here to learn how to love, that the course they have been enrolled in is Learning to Love 101, it is as if the sun has just dawned for the first time in their life. All these years they have lived underground and now they have just stepped out into the open air.Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22–24) Heaven is absolutely real and precious far beyond words. It is the “rest of” the kingdom of God, the “paradise” Jesus referred to. The city of God is currently there. For the time being. Remember—Peter explained in his sermon that Jesus remains in heaven until his return, when all things are made new: “Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.” (Acts 3:21) Until—so much gravity and excitement contained in that word, such patient anticipation. When the time comes for God to restore everything, Jesus leaves heaven and comes to earth. To stay. The heavenly Jerusalem comes to earth, and “God’s dwelling place is ... among the people” (Revelation 21:3). Heaven is not the eternal dwelling place of the people of God. The new earth is, just as Revelation says. Just as the entire promise of the renewal of all things says. Just as Jesus explained, and the Bible declares. Better said, we get heaven and earth; both realms of God’s great kingdom come together at the renewal of all things. Then will we truly say, “It’s heaven on earth.” For it will be. Jesus is in heaven at this moment, but Jesus is anxiously awaiting another Day. He is readying his armies; he is cinching the straps on his saddle. There is another event his attention is absolutely fixed upon: “the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28).Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

I cannot say this more emphatically—life affected Jesus. “We have spread so many ashes over the historical Jesus that we scarcely feel the glow of His presence anymore,” lamented Brennan Manning. “He is a man in a way that we have forgotten men can be: truthful, blunt, emotional, non-manipulative, sensitive, compassionate.”Jesus never did anything halfheartedly. When he embraced our humanity, he didn’t pull a fast one by making a show of it. He embraced it so fully and totally that he was able to die. God can’t die. But Jesus did.It will do your heart good to discover that Jesus shares in your humanity. He was, as the creeds insist, fully human. (Yes, yes — more than that to be sure. But never ever less than that.) I’m sure the chipmunks made him laugh. The Pharisees sure made him furious. He felt joy, weakness, sorrow. The more we can grasp his humanity, the more we will find him someone we can approach, know, love, trust, and adore. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

We value independence. Mobility. Self-sufficiency. Yay. But we are a dependent people. Dependent on air, food, water. Needful of others. Needful of God. He is our divine helper, our ezer, without whom we will not be able to live a life of meaning filled with what matters most. Truth. Beauty. Goodness. Love. How do we get our thirst quenched when we are unable to quench it ourselves? How do we care for ourselves when we are unable to move? How do our needs get addressed when they are too deep for us to tend? We need God. Realizing that we need Him is a profound, humbling, and extraordinary gift—the first step toward a wholeness of soul. Because when we turn to Him, we find Him. When we call out to Him, He answers. When we cry, He comforts—not merely or even primarily in the tangible and immediate way we may yearn for, but more often in a deep, steadying encounter that becomes clear only as the moment has passed. We are not alone. We are not orphans left to figure out life by ourselves. We are dependent on our God who is with us. Do you think that maybe God loves it when we realize this? Don’t you love it when someone you love needs you? I believe God enjoys it when we call out to Him, recognize that we need Him, and lean into His unending, grace-filled strength. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

One of the saddest of all the sad stories in the history of the people of God comes shortly after the dramatic exodus from Egypt, as they stand on the brink of a whole new life in the land God had promised: But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, “The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’” Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you [Not “comfort you.” Not “be with you in your distress, defeated by your enemies.” Fight for you], as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God. ...Then you replied, “We have sinned against the Lord. We will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us.” (Deut. 1:26–32, 41 niv) But it was too late. Their decision not to fight is what led to their wandering in the wilderness for forty years. We often cite that part of the story, talking about our own wilderness experiences, embracing the wilderness saga as if it were inevitable. No, that is not the lesson at all. We have forgotten it was avoidable. The reason they took the lamentable detour into the wilderness was because they would not fight. To be more precise, the wilderness was a punishment, the consequence of refusing to trust God, and fight.Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

Sometimes we feel hopeless to ever change simply because our personal history is filled with our failed attempts to change. Where was that angel who was supposed to be guarding our tongue and preventing those harsh words from lashing out at our children? What happened to that fruit of the Spirit that was empowering us to be self-controlled and pass by the donut section? God has not given me a spirit of fear, so why am I so consumed with worry over my children, my finances, my future? If the fear of man is a snare, why do I still find I am terrified of exposing my true self and then being rejected? My bondage to food has been revealed as a liar and a thief, and yet in the moment of pain, too often I still turn to it.God knows.He has not turned his face away. The very fact that we long for the change we do is a sign that we are meant to have it. Our very dissatisfaction with our weaknesses and struggles points to the reality that continuing to live in them is not our destiny. Read those two sentences again. Let hope rise. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming Myself today

Where do we go from here? "This life," wrote Jonathan Edwards, "ought to be spent by us only as a journey towards heaven." That's the only story worth living in now. The road goes out before us and our destination awaits. In the imagery of Hebrews, a race is set before us and we must run for all we're worth. Our prayers will have been answered if we've helped to lift some of the deadweight so that your heart may rise to the call, hear it more clearly, respond with "eager feet." Our final thoughts echo the advice found in Hebrews 12:2-3:Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed — that exhilarating finish in and with God — he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! (Eugene Peterson's translation from The Message)Jesus remembered where he was headed, and he wanted to get there with all his heart. These two themes, memory and desire, will make all the difference in our journey ahead. Without them, we will not run well, if we run at all. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The deeper reason we fear our own glory is that once we let others see it, they will have seen the truest us, and that is nakedness indeed. We can repent of our sin. We can work on our "issues." But there is nothing to be "done" about our glory. It's so naked. It's just there — the truest us. It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling his. For a woman to be truly feminine and beautiful is to invite suspicion, jealousy, misunderstanding. A friend confided in me, "When you walk into a room, every woman looks at you to see — are you prettier than they are? Are you a threat?"And that is why living from your glory is the only loving thing to do. You cannot love another person from a false self. You cannot love another while you are still hiding. You cannot love another unless you offer her your heart. It takes courage to live from your heart. My friend Jenny said just the other day, "I desperately want to be who I am. I don't want the glory that I marvel at in others anymore. I want to be that glory which God set in me."Finally, our deepest fear of all ... we will need to live from it. To admit we do have a new heart and a glory from God, to begin to let it be unveiled and embrace it as true — that means the next thing God will do is ask us to live from it. Come out of the boat. Take the throne. Be what he meant us to be. And that feels risky ... really risky. But it is also exciting. It is coming fully alive. My friend Morgan declared, "It's a risk worth taking." Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Believing in God is not the same thing as union with God. Doing various God — activities is not the same as union with God. Obeying God isn’t necessarily union with God. These things can all be done while there is a kind of distance between our soul and God. You can read all about Italy but that is very different from actually living there. You can do things for your spouse but that’s not the same as being united with them.What I want to suggest is that the basic things we do, the things that are at the top of our “To Do” lists, become things that help us find union with God. Step 1 is understanding that God wants union with you, that union is the purpose of your creation, and that it is the priority. That’s a good starting point. It is a massive re-orientation. Because it leads quickly to Step 2, which is presenting ourselves to God for union. I do this every day: “I present myself to You, God, for union with You.” We pray for union; we ask for it.Step 3 (and this is not science, folks, it’s poetry; these “steps” are simply for clarity’s sake) is to release everything else that is taking up room in your soul. “I give everything and everyone to You for union with You.” And then, I have found it very important to ask God to heal my union with him: “Father—I pray you would heal our union. I pray your glory would fill our union.” This is critical because the enemy is always trying to harm our union with God, and it needs healing and repairing on a regular basis.Jesus, Father, Holy Spirit—I give myself to you to be one with you in everything. I pray for union and I pray for oneness. I pray to be one heart and one mind, one will, one life. Restore me in you; restore our union. I give everything and everyone to you in order to have union with you. Heal our union, God; restore and renew our union. I pray your glory fills our union. I pray for a deeper union with you, a deeper and more complete oneness.To listen to Part 1 of the Union with God podcast series, click here. To listen to Part 2 of the Union with God podcast series, click here.

Do not give way to fear. (1 Peter 3:6) The reason we fear to step out is because we know that it might not go well (is that an understatement?). We have a history of wounds screaming at us to play it safe. We feel so deeply that if it doesn’t go well, if we are not received well, their reaction becomes the verdict on our lives, on our very beings, on our hearts. We fear that our deepest doubts about ourselves will be confirmed. Again. That we will hear yet again the message of our wounds, the piercing negative answers to our Question. That is why we can only risk stepping out when we are resting in the love of God. When we have received his verdict on our lives — that we are chosen and dearly loved. That he finds us captivating. Then we are free to offer. You could say that people did not respond very well to Jesus’ love, to his stepping out in faith and playing the role that was his alone to play. And that would be a ridiculous understatement. The very people that Jesus died for hurled insults at him, mocked him, spat at him, crucified him. Jesus had to trust his Father profoundly, with his very being. Peter uses him as our example saying, “Follow in his steps ... He did not retaliate when he was insulted. When he suffered, he did not threaten to get even. He left his case in the hands of God” (1 Peter 2:21–23 NLT). Or, as another translation has it, “he entrusted himself” to God. He was okay. He entrusted himself to God. A few verses later Peter says, “In the same way ... do not give way to fear” (3:1, 6). Jesus lived a life of love, and he invites us to do the same. Regardless of the response.Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

Christianity is often presented as essentially the transfer of a body of knowledge. We learn about where the Philistines were from, and how much a drachma would be worth today, and all sorts of things about the original Greek. The information presented could not seem more irrelevant to our deepest desires.Then there are the systems aimed at getting our behavior in line, one way or another. Regardless of where you go to church, there is nearly always an unspoken list of what you shouldn’t do (tailored to your denomination and culture, but typically rather long) and a list of what you may do (usually much shorter — mostly religious activity that seems totally unrelated to our deepest desires and leaves us only exhausted). And this, we are told, is the good news. Know the right thing; do the right thing. This is life? When it doesn’t strike us as something to get excited about, we feel we must not be spiritual enough. Perhaps once we have kept the list long enough, we will understand.We don’t need more facts, and we certainly don’t need more things to do. We need Life, and we’ve been looking for it ever since we lost Paradise. Jesus appeals to our desire because he came to speak to it. When we abandon desire, we no longer hear or understand what he is saying. But we have returned to the message of the synagogue; we are preaching the law. And desire is the enemy. After all, desire is the single major hindrance to the goal — getting us in line. And so we are told to kill desire and call it sanctification. Or as Jesus put it to the Pharisees, “You load people down with rules and regulations, nearly breaking their backs, but never lift even a finger to help” (Luke 11:46 The Message). Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

We long for beauty, and when the biblical writers speak of heaven, they use the most beautiful imagery they can. You can almost hear the agony of the writer trying to get it right while knowing he falls far short of what he sees. In the book of Revelation, John uses the word like again and again. “And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance ... Before the throne there was ... a sea of glass like crystal” (4:3, 6 NASB). The beauty cannot be captured, only alluded to by the most beautiful things on earth.I believe the beauty of heaven is why the Bible says we shall be “feasted.” It’s not merely that there will be no suffering, though that will be tremendous joy in itself; to have every Arrow we’ve ever known pulled out and every wound dressed with the leaves from the tree of life (Rev. 22:2). But there is more. We will have glorified bodies with which to partake of all the beauty of heaven. As Edwards wrote, “Every faculty will be an inlet of delight.” We will eat freely the fruit of the tree of life and drink deeply from the river of life that flows through the city. And the food will satisfy not just our body but our soul. As C.S. Lewis said,"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it." (The Weight of Glory)And so we shall. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man. The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated, modular, nonfat, ziplock, franchised, on-line, microwavable. Where there are no deadlines, cell phones, or committee meetings. Where there is room for the soul. Where, finally, the geography around us corresponds to the geography of our heart. Look at the heroes of the biblical text: Moses does not encounter the living God at the mall. He finds him (or is found by him) somewhere out in the deserts of Sinai, a long way from the comforts of Egypt. The same is true of Jacob, who has his wrestling match with God not on the living room sofa but in a wadi somewhere east of the Jabbok, in Mesopotamia. Where did the great prophet Elijah go to recover his strength? To the wild. As did John the Baptist, and his cousin, Jesus, who is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Whatever else those explorers were after, they were also searching for themselves. Deep in a man’s heart are some fundamental questions that simply cannot be answered at the kitchen table. Who am I? What am I made of? What am I destined for? It is fear that keeps a man at home where things are neat and orderly and under his control. But the answers to his deepest questions are not to be found on television or in the refrigerator. Out there on the burning desert sands, lost in a trackless waste, Moses received his life’s mission and purpose. He is called out, called up into something much bigger than he ever imagined, much more serious than CEO or “prince of Egypt.” Under foreign stars, in the dead of night, Jacob received a new name, his real name. No longer is he a shrewd business negotiator, but now he is one who wrestles with God. The wilderness trial of Christ is, at its core, a test of his identity. “If you are who you think you are ...” If a man is ever to find out who he is and what he’s here for, he has got to take that journey for himself. He has got to get his heart back. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Let me tell you, few things can mess you up as badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is so discouraging to give all you have trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling short, sabotaging your own efforts at every turn. Discouragement and shame settle in like a long Seattle rain. And this is what most Christians experience as the Christian life. Try harder; feel worse. I spoke of cunning traps that replace the simple priority of loving Jesus. Here is a very surprising one — the trap of integrity. What I mean by this is when our attention turns to maintaining personal righteousness. This seems noble and right. Jesus told us to keep his commands. But this can be a trap because most Christians interpret this as “Try harder; do your best.” I find myself slipping back into this weekly. A handful of symptoms tip me off. Exhaustion, for one. I’ll just find myself wrung out again. Or an unnamed internal distress; my insides all twisted up. Discouragement, that old nagging cloud of “I’m totally blowing it” back over me. Irritation with needy people. These symptoms — and a host of others — are the collateral damage that results from trying my best. They let me know I’ve fallen back to thinking that to love Jesus is to give my very best in living for him. And this is a sticky business. Because on the one hand, that’s true — to love him is to obey. But out of what resources? From what fountain of inner strength? I thought it was my faithfulness. My integrity. A willingness to sacrifice, to fight well. And of course we are involved; of course our choices matter. But didn’t Jesus warn, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5)? The good news is this — you were never meant to imitate Christ. Not if by that you mean doing your best to live as he did. It ought to come as a great relief. Something inside me says, Well — that’s certainly been my experience. But without understanding that I was never meant to ”do my best”, I feel awful about it. In a biography of Christ which is good in many aspects, I ran across this terrible snare. The author describes the mission of Jesus as, a spiritual revolution, the replacement of the unreformed law of Moses by a New Testament based on love and neighborliness, which could be embraced by all classes and all peoples. ... Life on earth was to be devoted to a self-transformation in which each human soul strove to become as like God as possible, a process made easier by the existence of his son made man, thus facilitating imitation. It is an evil and crippling distortion. Jesus didn’t start the Peace Corps. The secret of Christianity is something else altogether — the life of Christ in you. Allowing his life to become your life. His revolution is not self-transformation, but his transformation of us, from the inside out, as we receive his life and allow him to live through us. Vine, branch. Anything else is madness.Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

If you'll recall, Moses put a veil over his face, first to hide his glory, then to hide the fact that it was fading away. That, too, was a picture of a deeper reality. We all do that. We all have veiled our glory, or someone has veiled it for us. Usually some combination of both. But the time has come to set all veils aside:Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? ... Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away ... 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. 3:7-8, 12-13, 18)We are in the process of being unveiled. Created to reflect God's glory, born to bear his image, he ransomed us back to reflect that glory again. Every heart was given a mythic glory, and that glory is being restored. Remember the mission of Christ: "I have come to give you back your heart and set you free." For as Saint Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is man fully alive." Certainly, you don't think the opposite is true. How do we bring God glory when we are sulking around in the cellar, weighed down by shame and guilt, hiding our light under a bushel? Our destiny is to come fully alive. To live with ever-increasing glory. This is the Third Eternal Truth every good myth has been trying to get across to us: your heart bears a glory, and your glory is needed ... now. This is our desperate hour. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

The Israelites had to fight to get to the promised land, and they had to fight to get in. Once there, they had to fight to clear it of enemies, and then fight to keep it so. David had to fight to secure his throne, and he too had to fight to keep it. God has long fought for the romance he desires with us, and he fights on even now. You needn’t be afraid of the fight. The battle can be won, and it will call forth wonderful things from you, things like courage and sacrifice, steadfastness and love. We live in a love story, set in a great and terrible war. If we will confront our battles for what they really are, against our true enemy, we can find our way back to the Love Story. It may take time, and repeated bouts. Of course the war itself on earth will not cease until the White Rider returns. Meanwhile, our hearts are created for heroic love, and you will never feel more alive than when you are loving heroically.Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

All good things come to an end. I hate that phrase. It's a lie. Even our troubles and our heartbreaks tell us something about our true destiny. The tragedies that strike us to the core and elicit the cry "this isn't the way it was supposed to be!" are also telling the truth — it isn't the way it was supposed to be. And so Pascal writes,Man is so great that his greatness appears even in knowing himself to be miserable. A tree has no sense of its misery. It is true that to know we are miserable is to be miserable; but to know we are miserable is also to be great. Thus all the miseries of man prove his grandeur; they are the miseries of a dignified personage, the miseries of a dethroned monarch … What can this incessant craving, and this impotence of attainment mean, unless there was once a happiness belonging to man, of which only the faintest traces remain, in that void which he attempts to fill with everything within his reach?Should the king in exile pretend he is happy there? Should he not seek his own country? His miseries are his ally; they urge him on. And so let them grow, if need be. But do not forsake the secret of life; do not despise those kingly desires. We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain — money, position, the approval of others, or just to get away from the discontent itself — it's not worth it. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" (Matt 16:26). Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book Becoming a King.Let’s face it, there’s nothing like marriage to allure us and at the same time make us spontaneously combust with fear or anger at a moment’s notice. In the middle years of marriage, youthful fantasies can give way to painful realities. Mike Mason spoke some of my favorite words on the disruptive power of marriage.A marriage, or a marriage partner, may be compared to a great tree growing right up through the center of one’s living room. It is something that is just there, and it is huge, and everything has been built around it, and wherever one happens to be going — to the fridge, to bed, to the bathroom, or out the front door — the tree has to be taken into account. It cannot be gone through; it must respectfully be gone around. It is somehow bigger and stronger than oneself. True, it could be chopped down, but not without tearing the house apart. And certainly it is beautiful, unique, exotic; but also, let’s face it, it is at times an enormous inconvenience.A decorated U.S. Special Forces warrior recently confessed to me, “I can handle any firefight and a three-hundred-man ambush, no problem. My role and objectives in war are clear. It is my life at home I can’t handle — my marriage, my kids, my mortgage. I’m failing. I feel like I live in Afghanistan and I’m deployed to my home in Texas.”Nothing will expose more of the unfinished places in us than our marriage. Marriage is the most difficult relationship in which to love well, because it is the one in which it is least possible to hide. She’s always there. You can’t blow the whistle, throw a flag, stop the clock. It’s real-time, live-ammo training for the masculine soul. She sees it all — or at least the results of it all.What if the disruption is actually intended by God as a personal invitation to engage in the very thing that would recover, in time, that which you most deeply desire? Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

We are invited to become followers of Jesus. Not just believers. Followers. There is a difference. Follower assumes that someone else is doing the leading. As in “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ...He goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10:3–4). The Bible invites us to an intimacy with God that will lead us to the life we are meant to live. If we will follow him. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; / I will counsel you and watch over you” (Psalm 32:8). God promises to guide us in the details of our lives. In fact, the psalm continues, “Do not be like the horse or the mule, / which have no understanding / but must be controlled by bit and bridle / or they will not come to you” (v. 9). What would it be like to yield to Christ in the details of our lives? What would it be like to follow his counsel and instruction in all the small decisions that add up to the life we find ourselves living? It would be ... amazing. I think we would find ourselves saying, as David did, “You have made known to me the path of life” (Psalm 16:11). This is the privilege and the joy of sheep that belong to a good shepherd. He leads them well. He leads them to life. So, back to the question, What is the life you want me to live? It is a good question — maybe one of the most important questions we could ever bring to God. He created us, after all. He knows why. He knows what is best for each of us. If we could learn from him the life he wants us to live — the details, the pace of life, the places we are to invest ourselves and the places we are not to — we would be in his will. And there we would find life. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

“What people think of me” is a very powerful motivator. It is still shaping us more than we’d like to admit. It shapes our theology, our politics, our values.Do any of us go through one entire day being utterly true no matter how many different environments we move through? Do you even know the true you? Is there a true you? Whether it is born of fear or longing or uncertainty or cunning or wickedness, it is so natural for us to shape ourselves according to the moment we scarcely notice how much we do it. Now, toss in the promise of reward — wealth, power, success, the adoration of others—and boy, oh boy, is it hard to be true.Only when you have taken an honest look inside yourself, and seen what really fuels the things you do, will you appreciate how utterly remarkable it is to be true. And how utterly desirable. We are given the story of Jesus’ wilderness trial to help us understand that Jesus has been tried—and proven true. Remember now, Jesus wasn’t cheating; it was a genuine test of his character, so profoundly terrible, to be seduced by the evil one himself, that Jesus needed angels to minister to him afterward.We typically think of integrity as the ability to resist temptation by resolve. And that’s a good thing; self-discipline is a good thing. But there is another level of integrity, the kind where you don’t even want the seduction that is being presented to you. Goodness runs so deep, so pervasive through your character and your being that you don’t even want it. We respect the man who is able to reject sexual temptation. But how much more the man whose soul is such that he does not want any woman but the woman he loves and is married to. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

There is nothing so inspiring to a man as a beautiful woman. She’ll make you want to charge the castle, slay the giant, leap across the parapets. Or maybe, hit a home run.A man wants to be the hero to the beauty. Young men going off to war carry a photo of their sweetheart in their wallet. Men who fly combat missions will paint a beauty on the side of their aircraft; the crews of the WWII B-17 bomber gave those flying fortresses names like Me and My Gal or the Memphis Belle. What would Robin Hood or King Arthur be without the woman they love? Lonely men fighting lonely battles. Indiana Jones and James Bond just wouldn’t be the same without a beauty at their side, and inevitably they must fight for her. You see, it’s not just that a man needs a battle to fight; he needs someone to fight for. Remember Nehemiah’s words to the few brave souls defending a wall-less Jerusalem? “Don’t be afraid ... fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.” The battle itself is never enough; a man yearns for romance. It’s not enough to be a hero; it’s that he is a hero to someone in particular, to the woman he loves. Adam was given the wind and the sea, the horse and the hawk, but as God himself said, things were just not right until there was Eve.Yes, there is something passionate in the heart of every man. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

God sets his own image on the earth. He creates a being like himself. He creates a son. The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)It is nearing the end of the sixth day, the end of the Creator's great labor, as Adam steps forth, the image of God, the triumph of his work. He alone is pronounced the son of God. Nothing in creation even comes close. Picture Michelangelo's David. He is ... magnificent. Truly, the masterpiece seems complete. And yet, the Master says that something is not good, not right. Something is missing ... and that something is Eve.The Lord God cast a deep slumber on the human, and he slept, and He took one of his ribs and closed over the flesh where it had been, and the Lord God built the rib He had taken from the human into a woman and He brought her to the human. (Gen. 2:21-23 Alter)She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master's finishing touch. How we wish this were an illustrated book, and we could show you now some painting or sculpture that captures this, like the stunning Greek sculpture of the goddess Nike of Samothrace, the winged beauty, just alighting on the prow of a great ship, her beautiful form revealed through the thin veils that sweep around her. Eve is ... breathtaking.Given the way creation unfolds, how it builds to ever higher and higher works of art, can there be any doubt that Eve is the crown of creation? Not an afterthought. Not a nice addition like an ornament on a tree. She is God's final touch, his pièce de résistance. She fills a place in the world nothing and no one else can fill. Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

I knew a man who was fired from his job at a Christian high school because one of the church elders saw him purchasing cigarettes at the local grocery store. They canned him, even though he was the best teacher they had. Now, first off, the Bible does not prohibit smoking. But this has become a favorite of the technical morality police in certain churches. What is even more diabolical about the story is the pleasure these Pharisees had in firing the young teacher. Their judgment was swift and severe; their self-righteous smugness was far sicker than this guy smoking a cigarette. Jesus calls this straining gnats but swallowing camels (Matthew 23:23-24).The poison of technical rule-keeping is that it shifts the focus from serious issues to ridiculous peccadilloes, thus allowing the legalist to live what he believes is a “righteous life” when in fact he is failing at the very things God majors in. Take as an example a man who hates his wife; he resents her. But he has never committed adultery; he is “faithful” to her. He prides himself on his selective morality — keeping the letter of the law while ignoring massive problems in his heart. Is this holiness?Ask yourself what it would take for a person to get fired from your church, your Christian school or ministry. What is your church’s understanding of holiness? What are the categories they are thinking in? It is a very revealing test. The scriptures say that the way you treat people is a little more important than whether you smoke, for heaven’s sake. Pride and arrogance are far more serious issues than swearing; idolatry and hatred are far more serious than how fast you drive. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

I have a practice that has become an absolute lifesaver: The One Minute Pause.I simply take sixty seconds to be still and let everything go.As I enter the pause, I begin with release. I let it all go—the meetings, what I know is coming next, the fact I’m totally behind on everything, all of it. I simply let it go. I pray, Jesus—I give everyone and everything to you. I keep repeating it until I feel like I’m actually releasing and detaching. I give everyone and everything to you, God. All I’m trying to accomplish right now is a little bit of soul-space. I’m not trying to fix anything or figure anything out. I’m not trying to release everything perfectly or permanently. That takes a level of maturity most of us haven’t found. But I can let it go for sixty seconds. (That’s the brilliance of the pause—all we are asking ourselves to do is let go for sixty seconds.) And as I do, even as I say it out loud—I give everyone and everything to you–—my soul cooperates a good bit. I’m settling down. I even sigh, that good sigh.Then I ask for more of God: Jesus—I need more of you; fill me with more of you, God. Restore our union; fill me with your life.You’ll be surprised what a minute can do for you. Even more so as you get practiced at it. Honestly, you can do this pause nearly anytime, anywhere—in your car, on the train, after you get off your phone. I know it seems small, but we have to start somewhere. This pause is accessible; it’s doable.As David wrote in the Psalms, “I have calmed and quieted myself” (131:2). Or, “I’ve cultivated a quiet heart.” This is the world we live in, raise our kids in, navigate our careers in, and so we need to find things that are simple and accessible to begin to take back our souls. The One Minute Pause is within reach. The practice itself is wonderful, and it opens space in your soul for God to meet you there.---------------The Pause app is available for iPhone and Android for FREE. Look for the One Minute Pause by Wild at Heart, then share it with everyone you know! Your soul will thank you every day.Download for iPhoneDownload for Android Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

It's the great company at the party in Titanic that brings such happy tears. It's the boys making it safely home in Apollo 13. It's Maximus reunited with his family. So the fellowship finds Gandalf alive — no longer Gandalf the Grey, fallen beyond recovery in the mines of Moria, but Gandalf the White, whom death can never touch again. So Frodo and Sam are rescued from the slopes of Mount Doom, and when they wake, it is to a bright new morn. This is our future.After he laid down his life for us, Jesus was laid in a tomb. He was buried just like any other dead person. Family and friends mourned. Enemies rejoiced. And most of the world went on with business as usual, clueless to the Epic around them. Then, after three days, also at dawn, his story took a sudden and dramatic turn.Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples ... 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'" (Mark 16:2-7)Jesus came back. He showed up again. He was restored to them. He walked into the house where they had gathered to comfort one another in their grief and asked if they had anything to eat. It was the most stunning, unbelievable, happiest ending to a story you could possibly imagine. And it is also ours. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

We cannot control what God, the Romancer, is up to, but there is a posture we can take. There is an openness to this stage that will enable us to recognize and receive the wooing. So let me ask—are you willing to let go of your insistence to control, meaning, to allow for a life that exists beyond the realm of analysis, to let some portions of your life be impractical, to cease evaluating all things based on their utility and function? Coming closer to the heart, are you willing to let passion rise in you, though undoubtedly it may unnerve you? To permit the healing of some of your deepest wounds? To let yourself be run through as with a rapier by Beauty itself? Are you willing, at some level, to be undone? Then we may proceed. To enter into the Romance we must slow down, or we will miss the wooing. Turn off the news and put on some music. Take a walk. Take up painting, or writing or reading poetry. Better still, what was it that stirred your heart over the years? Go and get it back. This is hard to do, especially for men who are out conquering the world. But remember — what the evil one does to a good warrior if he cannot keep him in the battle is to bury him with battles. Wear him down with fight after fight. But life is not all about the battle. The Romance is always central. Listen again to David: Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear;though war break out against me, even then will I be confident.One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. (Ps. 27:3–4 NIV) He knows battle, knows what it is to have God come through for him. He does not fear it; he is confident as a seasoned warrior is confident. But, he does not make it his heart’s desire. What he seeks is not battle — what he seeks is the romance with God. “To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.” For we must remember: the battle is for the Romance. What we fight for is the freedom and healing that allow us to have the intimacy with God we were created to enjoy. To drink from his river of delights. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered By God today

The coming of Jesus of Nazareth was like the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan. A dangerous mission, a great invasion, a daring raid into enemy territory, to save the free world, but also to save one man.Jesus told a story like that in order to shed light on his own coming: "If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one?" (Matt. 18:12). In the midst of the great invasion, like the storming of the beaches at Normandy, God yet sets his eye on one lost soul. On you.Historically speaking, Jesus of Nazareth was betrayed by one of his followers, handed over to the Romans by the Jewish religious leaders, and crucified. But there was a Larger Story unfolding in that death. He gave his life willingly to ransom us from the Evil One, to pay the price for our betrayal, and to prove for all time and beyond any shadow of a doubt that the heart of God is good. And that your heart matters to him, matters more than tongue can tell.He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:13-14) Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man. (1 Corinthians 15:49 NLT)You’ll be made perfect. Finally, the totality of your being will be saturated only with goodness. Think of all that you’re not going to have to wrestle with anymore. The fear that has been your lifelong battle, the anger, the compulsions. No more internal civil wars; no doubt, no lust, no regret; no shame. What has plagued you these last many years? What has plagued you all your life? Your Healer will personally lift it from your shoulders.What tender intimacy is foretold when you’re promised that your loving Father will wipe every tear from your eyes personally — not only tears of sorrow, but all the tears of shame, guilt, and remorse. That moment alone will make the whole journey worth it.Yet there’s more. You will be free, alive, whole, young, valiant. You’ll have the character, the internal holiness, of Jesus himself.You’ll finally be everything you’ve ever longed to be. Not only that — it can never be taken from you again. “Eternal” life means life unending, life that never dims nor fades away. You’ll be in your glory to live as you were meant to live and take on the kingdom assignments God has for you.———————————It is so good for our hearts and souls just to linger a moment with these beautiful promises. Think of all that you’re not going to have to wrestle with anymore. Let the relief of it lift your heart today. Want more? Order your copy of Restoration Year today

“The sorrows of our lives are in great part his weaning process. We give our hearts over to so many things other than God. We look to so many other things for life. I know I do. Especially the very gifts that he himself gives to us — they become more important to us than he is. That’s not the way it is supposed to be. As long as our happiness is tied to the things we can lose, we are vulnerable.” This truth is core to the human condition and to understanding what God is doing in our lives. We really believe that God’s primary reason for being is to provide us with happiness, give us a good life. It doesn’t occur to us that our thinking is backward. It doesn’t even occur to us that God is meant to be our all, and that until he is our all, we are subhuman. The first and greatest command is to love God with our whole being. Yet, it is rare to find someone who is completely given over to God. And so normal to be surrounded by people who are trying to make life work. We think of the few who are abandoned to God as being sort of odd. The rest of the world — the ones trying to make life work — seem perfectly normal to us. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

Being unable to defeat God through raw power, Satan’s legions decide to wound God as deeply as possible by stealing the love of his Beloved through seduction. And having “seduced them to his party,” to ravish them body and soul; and having ravished them, to mock them even as they are hurled to the depths of hell with God himself unable to save them because of their rejection of him. This is Satan’s motivation and goal for every man, woman, and child into whom God ever breathed the breath of life. Like a roaring lion, he “hungers” for us.Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. (1 Peter 5:8–9)God could have given up on the love affair with mankind. He could have resorted to power and demanded our loyalty, or given us a kind of spiritual lobotomy that would take away our choice to love him. Even now, he could easily obliterate our Enemy and demand the allegiance of our hearts, but the love affair that began in the laughter of the Trinity would be over, at least for us. And Satan’s accusation that the kingdom of God is established only through raw power would be vindicated. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

When Jesus died, that most holiest of curtains was ripped in half. Torn, top to bottom. And who was it that did that? Surely not the priests. It was God himself. He took that veil and ripped it in two.So why do we insist on stitching it back up?A whole lot of what passes for worship, sacrament, and instruction in Christian circles is sewing lessons — hanging that veil again. Done in the same spirit that says, “God is too holy for us to approach.” I’ve read it countless places, written by popular theologians. I’ve heard it said many times from the pulpit. We must not be too familiar with God. Do not presume to come too close.Said who?They are trying to re-create the Holy of Holies in the name of reverence. Except, it was God who ripped that curtain forever with his own two hands. That is clearly over. Understanding this truth will open up new realms for you in relating to Jesus, and enable your heart to love him. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

We live in a world filled with beauty and wonder, adventure and laughter, but also too often filled with difficulty, fear, danger, and pain. Courage is the quality of spirit that enables one to face danger, pain, difficulty, or fear with confidence. We can have confidence! Not based on our own ability to manage life but based on the faithfulness of Jesus. Confidence is from the Latin words con and fide, which mean “with faith.” Our confidence rests in the strength and goodness of God. Living a life of courage is not about striving to become something or someone else. It is resting by faith in the God who says, I have called you, and I will do it! (1 Thess. 5:24)...The secret is you can’t. You can’t. But Jesus can. Christ in you can. He is the secret! There is nothing that makes God tremble. Jesus who died on the cross for you entered into the worst nightmare imaginable and demanded that Satan hand over the keys to hell. Jesus rose triumphantly and is seated at the right hand of God… Jesus is alive today and living his life through you. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming Myself today

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Ps. 147:3)Yes, we have all been wounded in this battle. And we will be wounded again. But something deeper has also happened to us than mere wounds.I expect that all of us at one time or another have said, "Well, part of me wants to, and another part of me doesn't." You know the feeling — part of you pulled one direction, part of you the other. Part of me loves writing and genuinely looks forward to a day at my desk. But not all of me. Sometimes I'm also afraid of it. Part of me fears that I will fail — that I am simply stating what is painfully obvious, or saying something vital but incoherent. I'm drawn to it, and I also feel ambivalent about it. Come to think of it, I feel that way about a lot of things. Part of me wants to go ahead and dive into friendship, take the risk. I'm tired of living alone. Another part says, Stay away — you'll get hurt. Nobody really cares anyway. Part of me says, Wow! Maybe God really is going to come through for me. Another voice rises up and says, You are on your own.Don't you feel sometimes like a house divided?Take your little phobias. Why are you afraid of heights or intimacy or public speaking? All the discipline in the world wouldn't get you to go skydiving, share something really personal in a small group, or take the pulpit next Sunday. Why do you hate it when people touch you or criticize you? And what about those little "idiosyncrasies" you can't give up to save your life? Why do you bite your nails? Why do you work so many hours? Why do you get irritated at these questions? You won't go out unless your makeup is perfect — why is that? Other women don't mind being seen in their grubbies. Something in you "freezes" when your dad calls — what's that all about? You clean and organize; you demand perfection — did you ever wonder why? Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

The life we have is so far from the life we truly want, and it doesn’t take us long to find someone to blame. In order for our longings to be filled, we need the cooperation of others. I long for a loving embrace and a kind word when I get home. I long for my boys to listen attentively when I talk about important life lessons. I want my work to be appreciated. I want my friends to be there for me in hard times. “No man is an island,” wrote John Donne, and he could have been speaking of desire. We need others—it’s part of our design. Very few of our desires are self-fulfilling; all our deepest longings require others to come through for us. Inevitably, someone stands in the way.At its best, the world is indifferent to my desires. The air traffic controllers aren’t the least affected when I’ve been traveling for a week and the flight they’ve chosen to cancel is my last chance to get home to my family. So long as it doesn’t affect them, they couldn’t care less. We suffer the violation of indifference on a daily basis, from friends, from family, from complete strangers. We think we’ve grown to accept it as part of life, but the effect is building inside us. We weren’t made to be ignored. And though we try to pretend it doesn’t really matter, the collective effect of living in a world apathetic to our existence is doing damage to our souls. Events such as bad traffic or delayed flights are merely the occasions for our true desperation to come out. As our desires come into direct conflict with the desires of another person, things get downright hostile. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

When the Bible tells us that Christ came to “redeem mankind” it offers a whole lot more than forgiveness. To simply forgive a broken man is like telling someone running a marathon, “It’s okay that you’ve broken your leg. I won’t hold that against you. Now finish the race.” That is cruel, to leave him disabled that way. No, there is much more to our redemption. The core of Christ’s mission is foretold in Isaiah 61: The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,because the LORD has anointed meto preach good news to the poor.He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,to proclaim freedom for the captivesand release ... for the prisoners. (v. 1) The Messiah will come, he says, to bind up and heal, to release and set free. What? Your heart. Christ comes to restore and release you, your soul, the true you. This is the central passage in the entire Bible about Jesus, the one he chooses to quote about himself when he steps into the spotlight in Luke 4 and announces his arrival. So take him at his word — ask him in to heal all the broken places within you and unite them into one whole and healed heart. Ask him to release you from all bondage and captivity, as he promised to do. As MacDonald prayed, “Gather my broken fragments to a whole ... Let mine be a merry, all-receiving heart, but make it a whole, with light in every part.” But you can’t do this at a distance; you can’t ask Christ to come into your wound while you remain far from it. You have to go there with him. Lord Jesus, I give my life to you — everything I am, everything I have become. I surrender myself to you utterly. Come and be my Lord. Be my healer. I give you my wounded heart. Come and meet me here. Enter my heart and soul, my wounds and brokenness, and bring your healing love to me in these very places. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, "Friends, haven't you any fish?" "No," they answered. He said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some." When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" ... When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread ... Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." (John 21:4-12)Now think about this for a minute. You're the Son of God. You've just accomplished the greatest work of your life, the stunning rescue of mankind. You rose from the dead. What would you do next? Have a cookout with a few friends? It seems so unspiritual, so ordinary. Do you see that eternal life does not become something totally "other," but rather that life goes on — only as it should be?Jesus did not vanish into a mystical spirituality, becoming one with the cosmic vibration. Jesus has a body, and it's his body. His wounds have been healed, but the scars remain — not gruesome, but lovely, a remembrance of all he did for us. His friends recognize him. They share a bite to eat. This is our future as well — our lives will be healed and we shall go on, never to taste death again. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

Here’s what I am learning: A grateful heart is a heart that is free. An ungrateful heart is a heart that is bound. Gratitude inevitably leads to freedom. The root of the word gratitude is the Latin word gratis, which means free. If gratitude and freedom are connected etymologically, wouldn’t it make sense that the two are connected spiritually as well? When we cultivate hearts bent toward seeing the good we’ve been given, it frees us from the sludge of negativity so we can experience joy. God created us to be a thankful and joyful people. He formed us so intentionally that joy will only flourish in a soil rich with gratitude. In fact, without gratitude, we do not have the capacity for joy. God wired our brains in such a way that it is impossible to feel joy without a posture of thankfulness preceding it. According to research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, gratitude primes the brain for positive emotions: it “stimulates the hypothalamus (a key part of the brain that regulates stress) and the ventral tegmental area (part of our ‘reward circuitry’ that produces the sensation of pleasure).” We are called to be thankful in everything. Not for everything, but in everything. And we must be if we are to experience the deep joy that is meant to dwell in the very center of our being. Thankfulness is the key that opens the door to the joy we are meant to walk in. A grateful heart is a heart that is free. An ungrateful heart is a heart that is bound. I’m picturing Eeyore here. Or Puddleglum. Neither sees the good but only the possibility for the worst. To them, disaster not only looms but is probably coming in the next moment. Their fictional feet are chained to the ground with a heaviness that binds. I recognize myself in them. To be free, I need to look back at my life and the lives of others and remember the faithfulness of God. Though sometimes it may feel as though it would take a miracle to be lifted out of the mire of worry and transferred to a place of gratefulness, the choice is ours to make. Remember: “Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle.” (Voskamp; One Thousand Gifts)Gratitude is the key, friends. Gratitude unlocks joy. And to be grateful, we need to remember the reason for our gratitude—we are grateful because we have been rescued. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

Certainly storytelling is one of the great pleasures in the kingdom. God clearly takes it very seriously—he made reality in the shape of a story. Would you like to write? Illustrate? Act? Produce? Perhaps we get to take workshops from the great artists! These things are not obliterated when we step into the life to come; God renews all things. Willard assures us, We will not sit around looking at one another or at God for eternity but will join the eternal Logos, “reign with him,” in the endlessly ongoing creative work of God. It is for this that we were each individually intended, as both kings and priests (Exod. 19:6; Rev. 5:10). ... A place in God’s creative order has been reserved for each one of us from before the beginnings of cosmic existence. His plan is for us to develop, as apprentices to Jesus, to the point where we can take our place in the ongoing creativity of the universe. (Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy) Just as Adam and Eve were commissioned to, only this time around on a higher level, with greater powers, creatively engaged in very real and tangible things. We know we eat in the city; surely the joy of eating doesn’t end with the feast. Who grows the food? Who brings it to market? What chefs prepare it? It is unlike God to just “zap” these things into existence while we sit around doing nothing, bored to death. He creates us to create. Jesus linked the promise of the Restoration directly to familiar things like fields and lands, confirming the earlier prophetic visions of the Old Testament: “See, I will createnew heavens and a new earth.The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create,for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.I will rejoice over Jerusalemand take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of cryingwill be heard in it no more ... They will build houses and dwell in them;they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”(Isaiah 65:17–19, 21) Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

The gospel says that we, who are God's beloved, created a cosmic crisis. It says we, too, were stolen from our True Love and that he launched the greatest campaign in the history of the world to get us back. God created us for intimacy with him. When we turned our back on him he promised to come for us. He sent personal messengers; he used beauty and affliction to recapture our hearts. After all else failed, he conceived the most daring of plans. Under the cover of night he stole into the enemy's camp incognito, the Ancient of Days disguised as a newborn. The Incarnation, as Philip Yancey reminds us, was a daring raid into enemy territory. The whole world lay under the power of the evil one and we were held in the dungeons of darkness. God risked it all to rescue us. Why? What is it that he sees in us that causes him to act the jealous lover, to lay siege both on the kingdom of darkness and on our own idolatries as if on Troy—not to annihilate, but to win us once again for himself? This fierce intention, this reckless ambition that shoves all conventions aside, willing literally to move heaven and earth. We've been offered many explanations. From one religious camp we're told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to the right doctrines, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self-actualization, or something else along those lines. He is concerned about all these things, of course, but they are not his primary concern. What he is after is us—our laughter, our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts. Remember his lament in Isaiah, that though his people were performing all their duties, "their hearts are far from me" (29:13 italics added). How few of us truly believe this. We've never been wanted for our heart, our truest self, not really, not for long. The thought that God wants our heart seems too good to be true. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

This is the world [God] has made. This is the world that is still going on. And he doesn't walk away from the mess we've made of it. Now he lives, almost cheerfully, certainly heroically, in a dynamic relationship with us and with our world. "Then the Lord intervened" is perhaps the single most common phrase about him in Scripture, in one form or another. Look at the stories he writes. There's the one where the children of Israel are pinned against the Red Sea, no way out, with Pharaoh and his army barreling down on them in murderous fury. Then God shows up. There's Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who get rescued only after they're thrown into the fiery furnace. Then God shows up. He lets the mob kill Jesus, bury him ... then he shows up. Do you know why God loves writing such incredible stories? Because he loves to come through. He loves to show us that he has what it takes.It's not the nature of God to limit his risks and cover his bases. Far from it. Most of the time, he actually lets the odds stack up against him. Against Goliath, a seasoned soldier and a trained killer, he sends ... a freckle-faced little shepherd kid with a slingshot. Most commanders going into battle want as many infantry as they can get. God cuts Gideon's army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred. Then he equips the ragtag little band that's left with torches and watering pots. It's not just a battle or two that God takes his chances with, either. Have you thought about his handling of the gospel? God needs to get a message out to the human race, without which they will perish ... forever. What's the plan? First, he starts with the most unlikely group ever: a couple of prostitutes, a few fishermen with no better than a second-grade education, a tax collector. Then, he passes the ball to us. Unbelievable. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today