Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Every era has its problems when it comes to knowing Jesus. One of ours is this: Having lost all confidence in the noble, the heroic, even the consistently good, we have come to celebrate the neurotic. Really. The heroes of our novels and movies are antiheroes, broken characters riddled with addiction and self-doubt. In fact, doubt — masquerading as humility — has become a condition for acceptance in our times. People of strong conviction and bold claims are suspect. We fear them. They might be a terrorist, or a Christian. Skepticism has become a virtue.This has quietly shaped a popular version of Jesus as a man not so much heroic as humanitarian, not a warrior operating behind enemy lines but just a humble man trying to do good in a hurting world. A man stuck in his personal Gethsemane. If he is doubting and uncertain, we feel better about ourselves. Now yes, yes — Jesus had his dark night of the soul. He didn’t live there, nor did he stay there. It was an abyss through which he passed. Through which he was able to pass, because of something much deeper within him. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Your wounds brought messages with them. Lots of messages. Somehow they all usually land in the same place. They had a similar theme. “You’re worthless.” “You’re not a woman.” “You’re too much ... and not enough.” “You’re a disappointment.” “You are repulsive.” On and on they go. Because they were delivered with such pain, they felt true. They pierced our hearts, and they seemed so true. So we accepted the messages as fact. We embraced them as the verdict on us. As we said earlier, the vows we made as children act like a deep-seated agreement with the messages of our wounds. “Fine. If that’s how it is, then that’s how it is. I’ll live my life in the following way ...” The vows we made acted like a kind of covenant with the messages that came with our deep wounds. Those childhood vows are very dangerous things. We must renounce them. Before we are entirely convinced that they aren’t true, we must reject the messages of our wounds. It’s a way of unlocking the door to Jesus. Agreements lock the door from the inside. Renouncing the agreements unlocks the door to him. Jesus, forgive me for embracing these lies. This is not what you have said of me. You said I am your beloved, your cherished one. I renounce the agreements I made with [here you name the specific messages you've been living with. You know what they are.] I renounce the agreements I've been making with these message all these years. Bring the truth here, oh Spirit of Truth. I reject these lies. Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

This stream of Counseling doesn't just flow to us directly from Christ, only from him; it flows through his people as well. We need others—and need them deeply. Yes, the Spirit was sent to be our Counselor. Yes, Jesus speaks to us personally. But often he works through another human being. The fact is, we are usually too close to our lives to see what's going on. Because it's our story we're trying to understand, we sometimes don't know what's true or false, what's real or imagined. We can't see the forest for the trees. It often takes the eyes of someone to whom we can tell our story, bare our soul. The more dire our straits, the more difficult it can be to hear directly from God.In every great story the hero or heroine must turn to someone older or wiser for the answer to some riddle. Dorothy seeks the Wizard; Frodo turns to Gandalf; Neo has Morpheus; and Curdie is helped by the Lady of the Silver Moon.Having a doctrine pass before the mind is not what the Bible means by knowing the truth. It's only when it reaches down deep into the heart that the truth begins to set us free, just as a key must penetrate a lock to turn it, or as rainfall must saturate the earth down to the roots in order for your garden to grow."Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being" (Ps. 51:6 NASB). Getting it there is the work of the stream we'll call Counseling. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4–5) How do we remain in vital union with him? By loving him, by obeying him, by surrendering more and more and more of ourselves to him. This is how Jesus lived, by the way. He modeled for us a totally surrendered life, a life lived in union with the Father: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing. ... For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it” (John 5:19; 12:49). He came in part to show us how it’s done. All that dynamic life you see coursing through him, he received it as we must do — through ongoing love and dependence upon God. Now, we must give our lives over to him in order to receive his life. Not just once, but as a regular practice. Of course there is more to this than saying a prayer. It would take another book to describe the ways we make ourselves available to his life. We find those practices that help us receive the life of God. Whether it be prayer, worship, silence, sacrament, or the gift of sunshine, sitting beside a stream, music, adventure — we seek out those things that help us to receive the life of God. You have a personal guide now; ask Jesus what to take up and what to set down, so that you might receive his life. By the way, this is the bottom-line test of anything claiming to be of Jesus: Does it bring life? If it doesn’t, drop it like a rattlesnake. And you will find that the religious never, ever brings life. Ever. That is its greatest exposure.Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Who among us has not suffered betrayal at the hands of a trusted friend? Who among us has not shrunk away in response to being hurt? Which one of us has not been responsible for wounding another? We all have.We all have.We need Jesus. We need mercy. We need healing. We are not meant to live this life alone, and we won’t get very far along on our journey if we try. We don’t have the luxury of insisting we never be hurt again. We don’t get to insist on anything, really. Except maybe we can insist on continuing to press into Jesus, no matter what.He’s here. He’s waiting. He has never betrayed you, and he never will. He is the source of our true identity. He is the one we must look to first to fill us with truth, acceptance, and love. Then we can bring our hearts, be they bursting with joy or battered by life, to our friends without demanding that they fill us. We can offer ourselves, open to receive good gifts from them but vigilant to stay close to our God and screening every experience, every word, through him. He has promised to never leave you or forsake you. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is perfect love, and he loves you perfectly. And he’s not going anywhere. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming Myself today

If you have any doubts as to whether or not God loves wildness, spend a night in the woods ... alone. Take a walk out in a thunderstorm. Go for a swim with a pod of killer whales. Get a bull moose mad at you. Whose idea was this, anyway? The Great Barrier Reef with its great white sharks, the jungles of India with their tigers, the deserts of the Southwest with all those rattle-snakes — would you describe them as "nice" places? Most of the earth is not safe; but it's good. That struck me a little too late when hiking in to find the upper Kenai River in Alaska. My buddy Craig and I were after the salmon and giant rainbow trout that live in those icy waters. We were warned about bears, but didn't really take it seriously until we were deep into the woods. Grizzly signs were everywhere — salmon strewn about the trail, their heads bitten off. Piles of droppings the size of small dogs. Huge claw marks on the trees, about head-level. We're dead, I thought. What are we doing out here?It then occurred to me that after God made all this, he pronounced it good, for heaven's sake. It's his way of letting us know he rather prefers adventure, danger, risk, the element of surprise. This whole creation is unapologetically wild. God loves it that way. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

A Story. An Epic.Something hidden in the ancient past.Something dangerous now unfolding.Something waiting in the future for us to discover.Some crucial role for us to play.Christianity, in its true form, tells us that there is an Author and that he is good, the essence of all that is good and beautiful and true, for he is the source of all these things. It tells us that he has set our hearts' longings within us, for he has made us to live in an Epic. It warns that the truth is always in danger of being twisted and corrupted and stolen from us because there is a Villain in the Story who hates our hearts and wants to destroy us. It calls us up into a Story that is truer and deeper than any other, and assures us that there we will find the meaning of our lives.What if ?What if all the great stories that have ever moved you, brought you joy or tears — what if they are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born, the Epic into which you have been cast?We won't begin to understand our lives, or what this so-called gospel is that Christianity speaks of, until we understand the Story in which we have found ourselves. For when you were born, you were born into an Epic that has already been under way for quite some time. It is a Story of beauty and intimacy and adventure, a Story of danger and loss and heroism and betrayal. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

What does it mean to be defiantly joyful in this moment when I am dwelling on the ancient path of shame and disappointment in myself? Those paths are made of quicksand. I need a Savior. I have one. My friend Lisa Beck says that God planned our rescue before we even knew we were in trouble. I’m in trouble. I know it now. And the temptation is to hate myself for it. Do you know this place sometimes? Did you get irritated with your spouse this morning over some silly thing and speak to them with a stinging contempt no one deserves? Did you buy that alluring thing when you had pledged to stay within your budget? In fact, left alone, the little hard kernel of self-judgment grows like an aggressive cancer, wreaking havoc in my life. The small stone becomes a massive rock that is too large for me to move. But God — still two of my favorite words — but God is in the business of moving stones. There is no ancient, grave-sealing, love-blocking weight that He cannot overcome. And I have a part to play. So do you. The core of my heart needs to align with the truth that judging myself harshly is neither my right nor even remotely godly. God has asked me to renounce self-judgment, so, as valid as it feels, I am obeying. Renouncing judgment breaks the painful claim of hatred I’ve imposed upon myself and allows love to come in. It allows grace to come in—both for me and for others. Rather than becoming prickly and defensive, I give up my position as judge and hand it over to the One who is the rightful Judge, Jesus Christ. If He can forgive me and love me, well then, who am I to withhold love and forgiveness? I must choose again in this moment to surrender to God. I have to choose to believe Him and all the incredibly marvelous things He says about me and feels toward me. And with that, my heart rises. The chains of self-contempt are shattered by His never-changing grace and give way to the holy chords of singing repentance. Conviction takes the place of condemnation, and I walk into the joy of the prodigal being embraced by the Father. He has not turned His face away. He has been waiting, waiting and watching with keen eyes that have beckoned my return all along. I choose to return and raise the gaze of my soul to His ever-kind face. He has not been judging me. He has been wooing me out of my sin. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

Now, I know my fellow evangelicals will rush to protest that it is the cross of Jesus Christ alone that opens the way to heaven for any person. No amount of personal righteousness could ever suffice. I believe this. It is grace alone — the unmerited and undeserved forgiveness of God — that opens the way for any of us to know God, let alone come into his kingdom. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9) Thank God for that.However, you also find in Jesus and throughout the scriptures a pretty serious call to a holy life.Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14)For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. (1 Thessalonians 4:7)As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:14–16)In fact, one of the most stunning things about Jesus is how such a gracious, kind, patient, and forgiving man holds — without so much as wavering — such a high standard of holiness. On the one hand, we have the beautiful story of a woman caught in the act of adultery — and how horrifying and humiliating would that be? The mob drags her before Jesus, ready to stone her (they actually did this sort of thing, and not that long ago; it still happens in some Muslim countries today).It is brilliant, and poignant. The town square is now deserted; only the woman and Jesus remain. She is probably wrapped in nothing but a bed sheet and her shame. He rescues her from a terrible death, and then forgives her. It feels as if the scene could not be more powerfully reported. What more could be said? But wait, Jesus has one last word for her:“Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.”Yes, grace reigns in the Kingdom of God. But right there alongside it is an unflinching call to holiness. Go and sin no more. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

The thing you are made for is the renewal of all things. God has given you a heart for his kingdom—not the wispy vagaries of a cloudy heaven, but the sharp reality of the world made new. This is one of the most important things you can know about yourself. Did you know this about yourself? When was the last time you told yourself, as you looked in the mirror in the morning, Good morning; you have a heart for the kingdom. This explains so much; it will be such an enormous help to you. It explains your anger and all of your addictions. It explains your cry for justice, and it also explains the growing hopelessness, resignation, cynicism, and defeat. If we will listen with kindness and compassion to our own souls, we will hear the echoes of a hope so precious we can barely put words to it, a wild hope we can hardly bear to embrace. God put it there. He also breathed the corresponding promise into the earth; it is the whisper that keeps coming to us in moments of golden goodness. But of course. “God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT). The secret to your unhappiness and the answer to the agony of the earth are one and the same—we are longing for the kingdom of God. We are aching for the restoration of all things. That is the only hope strong enough, brilliant enough, glorious enough to overcome the heartache of this world. One morning you will wake, and sunlight will be coming in through the curtains. You will hear the sound of birds singing in the garden; delicious scents of summer will waft in on the breeze. As you open your eyes you realize your body feels young and whole. No tormenting thoughts will rush in to assault you; you realize that your soul feels young and whole too. As you sit up to look around the bedroom filled with light, you hear the sounds of laughter and running water outside and you will know—it is going to be a wonderful day. Only this hope can serve as the anchor for our souls: We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline. (Hebrews 6:19 The Message) So let us chase it now with all of our being. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] Either we have God or we don’t. Either he is our ally, or we are on our own. What you believe about this affects everything else. If you don’t have God—and I mean as an intimate ally, right by your side—you must do your best to figure out a path for your life. This is of course how most men live. The entire world is based upon this assumption—universities, markets, career fields, economies. I have no counsel to give you here, for I have rejected that view of the world and cannot tell you much of how it works or how to outwit it. I reject the premise the whole house of cards is built on. “There is a God; he is our Father” changes everything. Now, let me add quickly that when I say “believing in God” I’m not referring to a casual acknowledgment of his existence. If you do have God, you must act like it. For he does not lend his help to those who take him casually—just as you don’t offer the treasures of your friendship to those who take you casually. You must seek him with all your heart so that you might discover his help, align yourself with where and how he is moving, and take advantage of all he is bringing you. God promised us, “But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 4:29). However, there is a condition in that promise: if you seek him with all your heart and soul. Most Christians forget that part, and then wonder why God doesn’t seem to be more present in their lives. Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

The heart is the connecting point, the meeting place between any two persons. The kind of deep soul intimacy we crave with God and with others can be experienced only from the heart. I know a man who took his daughter to dinner; she was surprised, delighted. For years she had been hoping he would pursue her. When they had been seated, he pulled out his Day Timer and began to review the goals he had set for her that year. "I wanted to burst into tears and run out of the restaurant," she said. We don't want to be someone's project; we want to be the desire of their heart. Gerald May laments, "By worshiping efficiency, the human race has achieved the highest level of efficiency in history, but how much have we grown in love?"We've done the same to our relationship with God. Christians have spent their whole lives mastering all sorts of principles, done their duty, carried on the programs of their church ... and never known God intimately, heart to heart. The point is not an efficient life of activity — the point is intimacy with God. "You will find me," God says, "when you seek me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13). As Oswald Chambers said, "So that is what faith is — God perceived by the heart."What more can be said, what greater case could be made than this: to find God, you must look with all your heart. To remain present to God, you must remain present to your heart. To hear his voice, you must listen with your heart. To love him, you must love with all your heart. You cannot be the person God meant you to be, and you cannot live the life he meant you to live, unless you live from the heart. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Some of the sentences the Enemy accuses each of us with have been there since we were young; others were added in the ensuing years as Satan saw opportunity to strengthen our fear and cynicism through “interpreting” those events in our lives that seem to verify our particular Message of the Arrows. His purpose is to convince us that we need to create a story to live in that is not as dangerous as the Sacred Romance. As long as we do not admit that the deep things of our heart are there — the rejection and hurt, the shame and sorrow, the anger and rage —these rooms of our heart become darkened and the Enemy sets up shop there to accuse us.I am not just speaking metaphorically or poetically when I refer to the Enemy accusing us. Each of us, Christians included, is oppressed directly and specifically by the Enemy in the way I am describing. This attack happens in the spiritual realm, using the sentences and voices we are familiar with from the past. We feel as if we are simply speaking to ourselves in our heads. And this is the Enemy’s first deception: “I am not here. It’s just you struggling with all these things.” Many of us live our whole lives being defeated by this accusation. And indeed, deep in our hearts, the anxiety, shame, and self-contempt we often feel are like the attack of a roaring lion no matter what calmness or other personality device we learn to cover it with on the outside. We hide the lion’s roar because he has convinced us that it is just us and we would be roundly scorned if we were to admit these things to others. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

I’ve often wondered at the long lists found many places in the Bible that recount a roster of men as “the son of so-and-so, who was the son of so-and-so.” You’ll find many of these rosters in the Scriptures, and elsewhere in ancient literature. Perhaps these accounts reveal something we hadn’t noticed before—a father-view of the world held by those who wrote them, shared by those who would read them. Perhaps they saw in the father-son legacy the most significant of all legacies, that to know a man’s father was in great part to know the man. And then, if you step back further to have a look, you’ll see that the God of the Bible is portrayed as a great Father — not primarily as mother, not merely as Creator — but as Father. It opens a new horizon for us.Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

The deepest convictions of our heart are formed by stories and reside there in the images and emotions of story. As a young boy, around the time my heart began to suspect that the world was a fearful place and I was on my own to find my way through it, I read the story of a Scottish discus thrower from the nineteenth century. He lived in the days before professional trainers and developed his skills alone, in the highlands of his native village. He even made his own iron discus from the description he read in a book. What he did not know was that the discus used in competition was made of wood with an outer rim of iron. His was solid metal and weighed three or four times as much as those being used by his would-be challengers. This committed Scotsman marked out in his field the distance of the current record throw and trained day and night to be able to match it. For nearly a year, he labored under the self-imposed burden of the extra weight. But he became very, very good. He reached the point at which he could throw his iron discus the record distance, maybe farther. He was ready.My Scotsman (I had begun to closely identify with him) traveled south to England for his first competition. When he arrived at the games, he was handed the official wooden discus—which he promptly threw like a tea saucer. He set a new record, a distance so far beyond those of his competitors that no one could touch him. He thus remained the uncontested champion for many years.Something in my heart connected with this story. So, that's how you do it: Train under a great burden and you will be so far beyond the rest of the world you will be untouchable. It became a defining image for my life, formed in and from a story.…As Eugene Peterson said, "We live in narrative, we live in story. Existence has a story shape to it. We have a beginning and an end, we have a plot, we have characters." Story is the language of the heart. …So if we're going to find the answer to the riddle of the earth — and of our own existence — we'll find it in story. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Now—is Jesus more like Mother Teresa or William Wallace? The answer is ... it depends. If you're a leper, an outcast, a pariah of society whom no one has ever touched, if all you have ever longed for is just one kind word, then Christ is the incarnation of tender mercy. On the other hand, if you're a Pharisee, one of those self-appointed doctrine police ... watch out. On more than one occasion Jesus "picks a fight" with those notorious hypocrites.One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are healed of your sickness!" Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised and thanked God! But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. "There are six days of the week for working," he said to the crowd." Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath." But the Lord replied, "You hypocrite! You work on the Sabbath day! Don't you untie your ox or your donkey from their stalls on the Sabbath and lead them out for water? Wasn't it necessary for me, even on the Sabbath day, to free this dear woman from the bondage in which Satan has held her for eighteen years?" This shamed his enemies. And all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did. (Luke 13:10-17 NLT)Does Jesus tiptoe around the issue, so as not to "rock the boat"? Does he drop the subject in order to "preserve church unity"? Nope. He walks right into it, he baits them, he picks a fight. Christ draws the enemy out, exposes him for what he is, and shames him in front of everyone. The Lord is a gentleman??? Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

All sorts of awful things can seem to issue from your heart — anger, lust, fear, petty jealousies. If you think it's you, a reflection of what's really going on in your heart, it will disable you. It could stop your journey dead in its tracks. What you've encountered is either the voice of your flesh or an attempt of the Enemy to distress you by throwing all sorts of thoughts your way and blaming you for it. You must proceed on this assumption: your heart is good. If it seems that some foul thing is at work there, say to yourself, Well then — this is not my heart. My heart is good. I reject this. Remember Paul in Romans 7? This is not me. This is not me. And carry on in your journey. Over time you'll grow familiar with the movements of your heart, and who is trying to influence you there.We do the same with any counsel or word that presents itself as being from God, but contradicts what he has said to us in his written Word. We walk with wisdom and revelation. When I hear something that seems really unwise, I test it again and again before I launch out. The flesh will try to use your "freedom" to get you to do things you shouldn't do. And now that the Enemy knows you are trying to walk with God and tune in to your heart, he'll play the ventriloquist and try to deceive you there. Any "word" or suggestion that brings discouragement, condemnation, accusation — that is not from God. Neither is confusion, nor any counsel that would lead you to disobey what you do know. Reject it all, and carry on in your journey. Yes, of course, God needs to convict us of sin, warn us of wrong movements in the soul — but the voice of God is never condemning (Rom. 8:1), never harsh or accusing. His conviction brings a desire for repentance; Satan's accusation kills our hearts (2 Cor. 7:10). Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Jesus is everywhere. But let me give you a grace that will help you see him: He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.” (Matthew 13:52) This is such a beautiful, gracious, and stabilizing verse. It is immensely kind; it is also immensely cunning. So very like Jesus. Think of it — Jesus was shaking some of his listeners’ most cherished assumptions, while inviting them into very new ways of understanding God. The veil was coming down — forever. It was a moment ripe for diminishment. Or defensiveness. He moved quickly to dismantle the overreactions. On one hand, some of those present are leaping to, All these years I have been wrong?! (It will help to add a Jewish accent.) So much time in Hebrew school and for what? I am such a schmutz. They throw ashes on their heads, toss their tallith in the ash can. Diminishment. Certain personalities tend this direction. I know I can. For years, whenever I’d hear one of those dramatic stories reported by missionaries — the ones where Jesus appears in the midst of a kidnapping or attempted execution, blinds the group of machete-wielding rebels and the would-be martyr walks out unharmed, then leads the village to Christ and becomes best friends with the witchdoctor — I would think to myself, Geez. I’m such a loser when it comes to Jesus. I don’t have anything like that to share. That’s the real stuff. I’m playing with blocks on the kindergarten floor. Something I haven’t experienced eclipses all that I have known of God. Jesus is trying to prevent that plunge into diminishment by saying that our “old” treasures are treasures.Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

"The spiritual life cannot be made suburban,” said Howard Macey. “It is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed.” The greatest obstacle to realizing our dreams is the false self’s hatred of mystery. That’s a problem, you see, because mystery is essential to adventure. More than that, mystery is the heart of the universe and the God who made it. The most important aspects of any man’s world— his relationship with his God and with the people in his life, his calling, the spiritual battles he’ll face — every one of them is fraught with mystery. But that is not a bad thing; it is a joyful, rich part of reality and essential to our soul’s thirst for adventure.There are no formulas with God. Period. So there are no formulas for the man who follows him. God is a Person, not a doctrine. He operates not like a system — not even a theological system — but with all the originality of a truly free and alive person. “The realm of God is dangerous,” says Archbishop Anthony Bloom. “You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.” Take Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. The Israelites are staged to make their first military strike into the Promised Land and there’s a lot hanging on this moment — the morale of the troops, their confidence in Joshua, not to mention their reputation that will precede them to every other enemy that awaits. This is their D-Day, so to speak, and word is going to get around. How does God get the whole thing off to a good start? He has them march around the city blowing trumpets for a week; on the seventh day he has them do it seven times and then give a big holler. It works marvelously, of course. And you know what? It never happens again. Israel never uses that tactic again. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. (John 16:12-13)There's more that Jesus wants to say to you, much more, and now that his Spirit resides in your heart, the conversation can continue. Many good people never hear God speak to them personally for the simple fact that they've never been told that he does. But he does—generously, intimately. "He who belongs to God hears what God says" (John 8:47).The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice...I am the good shepherd. (John 10:2-4, 11)You don't just leave sheep to find their way in the world. They are famous for getting lost, being attacked by wild animals, falling into some pit, and that is why they must stay close to the shepherd, follow his voice. And no shepherd could be called good unless he personally guided his flock through danger. But that is precisely what he promises to do. He wants to speak to you; he wants to lead you to good pasture. Now, it doesn't happen in an instant. Walking with God is a way of life. It's something to be learned; our ability to hear God's voice and discern his word to us grows over time. As Brother Lawrence said it, we "practice the presence of God." Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Something awful has happened, something terrible. Something worse, even, than the fall of man. For in that greatest of all tragedies, we merely lost Paradise — and with it, everything that made life worth living. What has happened since is unthinkable: we've gotten used to it. We're broken in to the idea that this is just the way things are. The people who walk in great darkness have adjusted their eyes.Regardless of our religious or philosophical beliefs, most of us live as though this life is pretty much the way things are supposed to be. We dismiss the whispers of joy with a cynical "Been there, done that." That way we won't have to deal with the Haunting. I was just talking with some friends about summer vacations, and I recommended that they visit the Tetons. "Oh, yeah, we've been there. Nice place." Dismissal. And we deaden our sorrows with cynicism as well, sporting a bumper sticker that says, "Life sucks. Then you die." Then we try to get on with life. We feed the cat, pay the bills, watch the news, and head off to bed, so we can do it all again tomorrow. Standing before the open fridge, I'm struck by what I've just watched. Famine in Africa. Genocide...where? Someplace I can't even pronounce. Corruption in Washington. Life as usual. It always ends with the anchor folding his notes and offering a pleasant "Good night." Good night? That's it? You have nothing else to say? You've just regaled us with the horrors of the world we live in, and all you can say is "Good night"? Just once I wish he would pause at the close of his report, take a long, deep breath, and then say, "How far we are from home," or "If only we had listened," or "Thank God, our sojourn here is drawing to an end." It never happens. I doubt it ever will. And not one of us gives it a second thought. It's just the way things are.Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

In order to understand what compels Jesus, you must keep in mind the distinction between the laws of God and the laws of men, and furthermore, that magnificent difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.Jesus sets before us a deeper, truer view of holiness. The issues are first and foremost internal, before they are ever external. You can murder someone without ever pulling a trigger. You break the Sabbath if come Sunday night you’re exhausted. Especially if you’ve been exhausted by church. Letter, and spirit. All those external “rules of men” do nothing to promote a genuine holiness. But they do make people Pharisees. By the truckload. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

"The glory of God is man fully alive." (Saint Irenaeus)When I first stumbled across this quote my initial reaction was ... You’re kidding me. Really? I mean, is that what you’ve been told? That the purpose of God — the very thing he’s staked his reputation on — is your coming fully alive? Huh. Well, that’s a different take on things. It made me wonder, What are God’s intentions toward me? What is it I’ve come to believe about that? Yes, we’ve been told any number of times that God does care, and there are some pretty glowing promises given to us in Scripture along those lines. But on the other hand, we have the days of our lives, and they have a way of casting a rather long shadow over our hearts when it comes to God’s intentions toward us in particular. I read the quote again, “The glory of God is man fully alive,” and something began to stir in me. Could it be?I turned to the New Testament to have another look, read for myself what Jesus said he offers. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Wow. That’s different from saying, “I have come to forgive you. Period.” Forgiveness is awesome, but Jesus says here he came to give us life. Hmmm. Sounds like ol’ Irenaeus might be on to something. “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48). “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:38). The more I looked, the more this whole theme of life jumped off the pages. I mean, it’s everywhere.“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Prov. 4:23).“You have made known to me the path of life” (Ps. 16:11).“In him was life, and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4).“Come to me to have life” (John 5:40).“Tell the people the full message of this new life” (Acts 5:20). Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

As a wise old sage was praying with me through some of the painful memories of my life, I was immediately reminded of the time in middle school when my first girlfriend broke my heart. These wounds can linger for a lifetime if you let them — the first cut is the deepest, and all that. We asked Jesus to take me back to the memory. I saw us, the girl and me; it was that fateful summer day. We were in the living room, just as it happened. Then I saw Jesus enter the room. He was quite stern with her, and it surprised me. That mattered to you? I wondered. Very much, he said. Then Jesus turned to me. I felt his love. I realized I could let the whole thing go. It was so healing. To understand that Jesus is angry about what happened to you is very, very important in understanding his personality but also in your relationship with him and for your healing. What I love about these encounters is that every time — every time — Jesus is so true to his real personality. Sometimes fierce, sometimes gentle, always generous, and often very playful. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

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