Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

We do need more of God, much more. Little sips between long droughts will not sustain us. We need more of God in our bodies, our souls, our relationships, our work, everywhere in our lives. But when you live in a culture of the incessant upgrade of everything, the sensational, it gives the impression that if you’re going to have a deeper, richer, amazing experience of God, it’s going to have to come in some sensational way.I have some wonderful news for you: Nope. Not even close.Life is built on the dailies. Consider love, friendship, and marriage.Love, friendship, and marriage are not built on skydiving together, trips to Paris, kayaking the Amazon. They’re not. Perhaps once in your life you might do something like that, but the fantastic is not your daily. Love, friendship, and marriage are nurtured in the context of simple things like coffee together, hanging out, getting a burrito, holding hands, taking a walk, doing the dishes, reading to one another, or just reading different things while you’re together in the same room. It’s the little things that build a beautiful life.I love adventure. I love the ocean. I love rock climbing, canoeing, mountaineering, and motorcycle riding. But here’s the deal–if you want to go to Yosemite and fulfill a lifelong dream of being a big wall climber, your daily doesn’t look dramatic at all; it looks like doing pull-ups at home. If you want to take a motorcycle adventure trip through Scotland, the daily looks like getting on your bike and riding around town. Just going out and getting used to it. Dodging the neighborhood dog that always runs in front of you and stopping when the old lady brakes without warning. You’re making it second nature, so that when you do go out, you can handle the big wall climbing, the remarkable trips.This is how life with God works, dear friends.I think God has amazing things for us, I really do. I’ve been part of some extraordinary experiences with God. I’ve had global adventures with him. But I don’t live there. Getting there, just like getting to love or anything else that’s wonderful in this life, is in the dailies. It’s back here in the little things we do. That is how we practice kindness towards ourselves — in the dailies. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

In our own times of severe testing, we want to be made “holy in every way,” our entire “spirit and soul and body ... kept blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT). Let me be quick to add, I think much of the testing and the Falling Away takes place very subtly in the heart. It’s the small turns from God toward our other comforters, the quiet feelings of being disappointed with him, the early stages of Desolation — this is how most of the testing plays out. But it has momentum like an avalanche.C. S. Lewis’s personal secretary was a man named Walter Hooper. He described the Oxford professor and creator of Narnia as “the most thoroughly converted man I ever met.” (God in the Dock) What a wonderful thing to be said about you. Lewis was a man whose entire being — heart, soul, mind, and strength — had become almost thoroughly inhabited by Jesus Christ. His fragmented self was nearly fully reintegrated in Christ. (Nearly, because none of us are utterly whole until Christ returns. But my goodness — nearly is fabulous.) Many people fell in love with the presence of Dallas Willard for the same reason.Let me pause on that thought for a moment, because while this is known to the saints, the Comfort Culture framed within us other goals. Does your heart tell you that it agrees with this — that the goal of your life is to become the most converted person your friends and family know?Or does your heart prefer the goal to be something else? Perhaps, “I just want things to be good again, and let somebody else live through the end of the age”? Ouch. That hits close to home.The battle taking place over the human heart can be described as Satan using every form of seduction and threat to take our hearts captive and our loving Jesus doing everything he can to form single-heartedness in us. This often plays out in thousands of small, daily choices. Which is kind, really; we want to develop single-heartedness before the severe testing comes. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

Do we form no friendships because our friends might be taken from us? Do we refuse to love because we may be hurt? Do we forsake our dreams because hope has been deferred? To desire is to open our hearts to the possibility of pain; to shut down our hearts is to die altogether. The full proverb reads this way: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and joy.” The road to life and joy lies through, not around, the heartsickness of hope deferred. A good friend came to this realization recently. As we sat talking over breakfast, he put words to our dilemma:I stand at the crossroads, and I am afraid of the desire. For forty-one years I’ve tried to control my life by killing the desire, but I can’t. Now I know it. But to allow it to be, to let it out is frightening because I know I’ll have to give up the control of my life. Is there another option?The option most of us have chosen is to reduce our desire to a more manageable size. We allow it out only in small doses — just what we can arrange for. Dinner out, a new sofa, a vacation to look forward to, a little too much to drink. It’s not working. The tremors of the earthquake inside are beginning to break out. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

The most essential gift you have to give is yourself. When you aren’t entirely true about that, you aren’t true. But we’ve all grown accustomed to committing dozens of little white lies about ourselves every day.Except this man. He is Faithful and he is True.Having given this some thought, perhaps we are better prepared now to understand why God answered Moses the way he did when he spoke from the burning bush. In the midst of the very unnerving encounter, Moses asks him, “Who are you?” God simply says, “I Am.” In other words, Me. Myself. An answer that is holy and full of integrity, wry and dumbfounding all at the same time. But it is the best possible answer he could have given. God is utterly himself. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Who is this God who is so determined that we know His presence that He is willing to allow so much that hinders us to be stripped away, including at times our health and well-being? Where do my beliefs of what well-being actually is not align with my Father’s? It makes me wonder. It also fills me with wonder that our God is so determined, so cunning, so persevering, and so good that He will fight for our hearts through every moment and situation of our days that we might know Him. For it is not in health that we find joy. It is not in living without pain of any kind. No. It is in His presence that we will know the fullness of joy. As Graham Cooke said, “The Father does not give us joy. He gives us himself. He is absolute joy personified.” (Graham Cooke; Joy Is Who God Is) Let that sink in. God doesn’t merely give us joy. He gives us Himself. Joy incarnate. And we are able to receive more of His presence when our hands and hearts have been uncluttered and purified by fire. Oftentimes that purifying hurts. But none of it is without a greater good. And whatever is going on within our lives or around them, we can live with a heart that is expectantly waiting. A heart that is grounded in hope. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13). Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

Ask Jesus to show you his kingdom.Sanctify your imagination to him, all your spiritual gifting, and ask him to reveal to you pictures of the coming kingdom. Be specific — if you want to see the city, ask to see the city. If you want to see those waterfalls, ask to see them. You will need to be open to being surprised; do not “script” what you think you “should” see. I dreamed of ships last night—great, three-masted sailing ships. The day was clear and bright, and we were tacking into the trade winds, driving our prow through the surf at a wonderful speed. I saw other ships to my right and left, and I realized we were racing. The ocean was aquamarine, clearer than usual; I could see marine life below us, keeping pace with us. It helped to shatter my lingering religious fears that heaven is going to be boring!Stay open to surprises; keep asking for glimpses of the kingdom any way God wants to bring them. This is how we reach into the future to take hold of the hope that is our anchor. The more our imaginations seize upon the reality, the more we will have confident expectation of all the goodness coming to us.And if you want to take a really big risk, for an even more beautiful and encouraging picture, ask Jesus to show you as he sees you, as you are, in his kingdom. That one might take a little waiting for, because we are so fearful, but wait for it. It will be worth it. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

When the religious (spirit) is operating, knowing about God substitutes for knowing God. And therefore, teaching is exalted. Church feels like a seminar — could be intellectual, could be motivational. Good content is what matters. Doctrine is fiercely defended. Members can explain to you theories of the atonement, or seven steps to success, but can’t name one intimate encounter they’ve had with Jesus. Not once in their lives have they heard him speak to them. I’ve met heads of Christian education departments, chaplains, and seminary faculty who by their own admission don’t know Jesus personally.You can talk about sunshine and live your life underground; you can even go to the sea but never dive in. A great deal of what is adamantly taught about Jesus is taught by people who frankly don’t know him very well.Question: Are your leaders close friends of God? People who actually know and experience this Jesus, helping you to know and experience him? Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Jesus ran because he wanted to, not simply because he had to or because the Father told him to. He ran "for the joy set before him," which means he ran out of desire. To use the familiar phrase, his heart was fully in it. We call the final week of our Savior's life his Passion Week. Look at the depth of his desire, the fire in his soul. Consumed with passion, he clears the temple of the charlatans who have turned his Father's house into a swap meet (Matt. 21:12). Later, he stands looking over the city that was to be his bride but now lies in the bondage of her adulteries and the oppression of her taskmasters. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," he cries, "... how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing" (Matt. 23:37, emphasis added). As the final hours of his greatest struggle approach, his passion intensifies. He gathers with his closest friends like a condemned criminal sitting down to his last meal. He alone knows what is about to unfold. "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you," he says, "before I suffer" (Luke 22:15, emphasis added). Then on he presses, through the intensity of Gethsemane and the passion of the Cross. Is it possible he went through any of it halfheartedly? Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The exodus of the people of Israel and their journey through the Sinai desert is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. More than two million people wandering through a land of sand and barren rock, homeless, looking for the land of abundance, a place to call home. When will life be good again? There were no real sources of food in that desert. Water was about as scarce as it is on the surface of the moon. A “barren wilderness — a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought and death, where no one lives or even travels” (Jeremiah 2:6 NLT).This is more than a moment in Jewish history. It is recorded for us as one of the great analogies of human experience, our journey from bondage to freedom, from barrenness to the promised land. Ultimately, it is the precursor to our journey of salvation, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God.It is a story about the Primal Drive for Life — where will we take our thirst?This is the choice, the test. Always has been, always will be.This Primal Drive for Life was so compelling it caused thousands of those rescued slaves to mount a rebellion to go back to bondage in Egypt just to have their familiar ways back. Sobering.“The heavens are shocked at such a thing and shrink back in horror and dismay,” says the LORD. “For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me— the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!” (Jeremiah 2:12-13 NLT)The great alarm the Scriptures are sounding is that our longing for life to be good again will be the battleground for our heart. How you shepherd this precious longing, and if you shepherd it at all, will determine your fate in this life and in the life to come.We must lovingly shepherd our famished thirst back to the source of life.Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

There is wisdom, and there is revelation. They go together, hand in hand. “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17). From the Spirit come both wisdom and revelation. We need them both to walk with God, need them in generous doses to navigate the dangerous waters of this world. If you’re the sort of person who tends to lean toward revelation (just asking God for direct guidance), then you need to balance your approach with wisdom. If you lean toward a wisdom approach to life, you must deliberately and consciously include revelation. Ask God.And if you operate for the most part with neither, you are in real trouble. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

You don't need to travel far to find beauty. God has strewn beauty across the globe in such generous portions we have only to stop and notice, paying particular attention to the intimate. Yes, epic beauty is worth traveling to see–the Himalaya, the Maasai Mara, Yosemite, any tropic island. But intimate beauty is just as healing, perhaps more so, and available everywhere. (I shared the St. Albans story to remind my urban readers beauty can be found even in noisy, congested cities.)Really — beauty is all around us. In the shimmering shadows sunlight creates through any foliage. The intricate pattern and color of tree bark (stop and look; touch it). The way sunlight falls on your kitchen table in the morning. The grain of wood. Songbirds in your neighborhood. Fabric. Candlelight. The infinitely creative patterns of frost. The frost on the stalks of dried grasses this morning looked like tiny gladiolas made of glass or the calligraphy of fairies. Water in almost any form. Water on a blade of grass. Water drops on leaves. Leaves themselves — their shape, texture, the lacelike patterns running through them. A field of grass, especially as the wind plays through it. Fields of corn, wheat, any crop. The stars, the moon in all its phases. Rainwashed streets in the city at night, drops of water on your windshield. Human faces are infinitely beautiful. And I have not even mentioned flowers, vases, music, fine art, and the beautiful things we use to decorate our homes.Given beauty’s healing effects, given how it soothes the soul and opens us up to the goodness of God, I hope you will intentionally do two things:Receive it for the gift it is! Pause, and let the beauty minister to you. I receive this into my soul. Too often we just notice and go on, like a pedestrian who steps over a hundred-dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. Stop and pick it up! In these moments you open yourself and receive the beauty, the gift, the grace — receive it into your being. Let it bring to you God’s love, his tenderness, his rich goodness. We live so braced, not openly, but quite subtly — braced for the day, braced by the assault on our attention, braced by the noise around us.Pause when you are offered beauty and make the conscious decision, I receive this grace. We open our clenched soul to let it in. To find God in it. I will often pray, Thank you for this beauty. I receive it into my soul. And with it I receive you, in it, by it, through it — your love, your goodness, your life.That receiving part is key.Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

The child who cries out in the dark feels very differently when mother comes in and switches on a light. What felt so real and inevitable vanishes. Let us be careful we don’t embrace the pain in such a way that we forbid God to turn on the light and draw near. Watch how David handles the stormy waters of his own soul:My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God,with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Ps. 42:3–5)He admits it, he pours it all out with raw honesty, but he does not allow himself to stay there. Don’t you love it that David talks to himself (“Why are you downcast, O my soul?”)? That makes me feel a little more sane, because I talk to myself all the time. He reminds his own soul that things have not always been like this — and isn’t that where we begin to make the fatal shift? When we are in the darkness, we begin to feel like we have always been there. But it is not true. David reminds himself that God has been faithful in the past; God will be faithful again. He urges himself to put his hope in God, because the morning will come.The Cry of the Heart is a beautiful and precious form of prayer. But there is a danger to it (just as romance and friendship have their dangers). The honest release of emotion can at times become a whirlpool that sucks you in. I’m trying to keep you from making agreements while you give yourself permission to have a full, emotional life with God. “I feel forsaken!” is very, very different from, “I am forsaken!” “I feel overcome” is much different than “I am overcome.”Notice how David escapes the shipwreck of the soul: he turns his attention from the debris of his life in a much healthier direction; he turns his gaze toward God.Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

Emasculation happens in marriage as well. Women are often attracted to the wilder side of a man, but once having caught him they settle down to the task of domesticating him. Ironically, if he gives in he'll resent her for it, and she in turn will wonder where the passion has gone. Most marriages wind up there. A weary and lonely woman asked me the other day, "How do I get my husband to come alive?" "Invite him to be dangerous," I said. "You mean, I should let him get the motorcycle, right?" "Yep." She shrank back, disappointment on her face. "I know you're right, but I hate the idea. I've made him tame for years."Think back to that great big lion in that tiny cage. Why would we put a man in a cage? For the same reason we put a lion there. For the same reason we put God there: he's dangerous. To paraphrase Dorothy Sayers, we've also pared the claws of the Lion Cub of Judah. A man is a dangerous thing. Women don't start wars. Violent crimes aren't for the most part committed by women. Our prisons aren't filled with women. Columbine wasn't the work of two young girls. Obviously, something has gone wrong in the masculine soul, and the way we've decided to handle it is to take that dangerous nature away ... entirely.Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

During a long layover at O'Hare, I studied the man who sells popcorn from a little stand in one of the terminal hallways. He sat silently on a stool as thousands of people rushed by. Occasionally, every fifteen minutes or so, someone would stop and buy a bag. He would scoop the popcorn from the bin, take the money, and make change-all without a word being spoken between them. When the brief encounter was over, he would resume his place on the stool, staring blankly, his shoulders hunched over. I wondered at his age; he seemed well past fifty. How long had that been his profession? Could he possibly make a living at it? His face wore a weary expression of resignation tinged with shame. Adam, I thought, what happened? Did he know how far his situation was from his true design? Somehow he knew, even if he didn't know the Story. His sadness was testimony to it.Some people love what they do. They are the fortunate souls, who have found a way to link what they are truly gifted at (and therefore what brings them joy) with a means of paying the bills. But most of the world merely toils to survive, and no one gets to use his gifts all the time. On top of that, there is the curse of thorns and thistles, the futility that tinges all human efforts at the moment. As a result, we've come to think of work as a result of the Fall. You can see our cynicism in the fact that we've chosen the cartoon character Dilbert as the icon of our working days. His is a hopeless life of futility and anonymity in the bowels of some large corporation. We don't even know what he does-only that it's meaningless. We identify with him, feeling at some deep level the apparent futility of our lives. Even if we are loved, it is not enough. We yearn to be fruitful, to do something of meaning and value that flows naturally out of the gifts and capacities of our own soul. But of course — we were meant to be the kings and queens of the earth. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] “We live in the age of information,” says the old recording of an announcer in my head; so why does finding direction feel like a parade of hopeless metaphors? I’m drinking from a fire hose and snorkeling through mud. I’ve been handed a spyglass and told it holds the key, only to gaze through and find the chaos of a kaleidoscope. More information doesn’t seem to help. I feel like I’m drowning in it. I just learned how to tie a shemagh, found the best noodle bar in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul airport (Shoyu), and discovered twelve tips to the ultimate workout (it always involves buying something, which is weird). When I look for a job or try to map out my dreams, or some other future-oriented activity, somehow it almost always feels futile eventually. [John] Yes, it feels that way. The twenties sure feel like the decade of decision making, don’t they? Money, jobs, women, love, revolutions, dreams—everything we have been talking through is going to require some serious and sometimes constant decision making on your part. And though I feel our decisions are weighty, they aren’t nearly as overwhelming as they feel when we are faced with them. I have never found pressure a good motivator for making decisions, nor found decisions made under pressure to be particularly good ones. So let me first try and lift some of the pressure off the decision-making process. The truth is, the options before you are limited and that is a great relief. The open ocean is beautiful to look at, but terrifying if you have to navigate it in a small boat. But you are not facing the open ocean. God puts us within a context, with a limited gifting and limited resources, and that is immensely kind. Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

Lest we overlook the obvious, let me take a moment’s pause here to suggest that in your search for more of God, do remember to ask for it.Such a simple thought, but so helpful. Sometimes we get so caught up in the process we forget to ask. We have not because we ask not (James 4:2). Ask and you shall receive — that’s the promise (Matthew 7:7).So throughout my day, and over the course of a week, I will pray for the very thing I need most:Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit — I need more of you, God. I need so much more of you. My soul cries out for you. O Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit — fill me with more of you, God. I need more of you; I pray for so much more of you. Saturate me. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

John Spillane is a para-rescue jumper sent into the North Atlantic, into the worst storm of the twentieth century, the perfect storm, as the book and film called it, to rescue a fisherman lost at sea. When his helicopter goes down, he is forced to jump into pitch blackness from an unknown height, and when he hits the water, he’s going so fast it’s like hitting the pavement from eighty feet above. He is dazed and confused — just as we are when it comes to the story of our lives. It’s the perfect analogy. We have no idea who we really are, why we’re here, what’s happened to us, or why. Honestly, most days we are alert and oriented times zero. Dazed. Sleepwalking through life.Has God abandoned us? Did we not pray enough? Is this just something we accept as “part of life,” suck it up, even though it breaks our hearts? After a while, the accumulation of event after event that we do not like and do not understand erodes our confidence that we are part of something grand and good, and reduces us to a survivalist mind-set. I know, I know — we’ve been told that we matter to God. And part of us partly believes it. But life has a way of chipping away at that conviction, undermining our settled belief that he means us well. I mean, if that’s true, then why didn’t he _______? Fill in the blank. Heal your mom. Save your marriage. Get you married. Help you out more.Either (a) we’re blowing it, or (b) God is holding out on us. Or some combination of both, which is where most people land. Think about it. Isn’t this where you land, with all the things that haven’t gone the way you’d hoped and wanted? Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Let’s come back to Zacchaeus and the town harlot who crashed the party to weep at Jesus’ feet. They were, both of them, very keenly aware of their failures. They knew they had fallen way short of God’s goodness. And not only did they know it, but so did everyone else. So they bore the double weight of their own personal shame and the contempt of their communities. And yet, when they encountered Jesus — a man whose goodness shone like the sun — they ran toward him. How could it be?They knew he was merciful. They knew they would find forgiveness.As will you. God’s promise to us is total forgiveness if we will come to him and ask for it: If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)This offer is for everyone. It is for you and for me. And it is our only hope. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

A good king brings order to the realm. God brings order out of chaos at the beginning of creation, and then he hands the project over to Adam to rule in the same way. Not as a tyrant or micro-manager, but offering his strength to bring order to the realm. The reason we depict a king on his throne is to convey order, well-being.A good king also fights for the security of his kingdom, battling assault from without and sedition from within. That's why he must be a Warrior first. Look at how tireless David is in bringing security to Israel's borders:In the course of time, David defeated the Philistines and subdued them…David also defeated the Moabites … Moreover, David fought Hadadezer son of Rehob, king of Zobah … when the Arameans of Damascus came to help Hadadezer king of Zobah, David struck down twenty-two thousand of them (2 Samuel 8:1-5).Think of a Churchill, unyielding to the Nazis, and the pacifists in his own government that would not hold fast. Or Lincoln, and his unrelenting efforts to preserve the Union. A family with a good father feels protected. Spiritually, emotionally, financially, physically, he is the one to bring peace and covering to his family.All this in order to bring blessing to his people. "From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another" (John 1:16). Nehemiah discovers that his people are being fleeced by their own officials, and demands their grain, oil and lands be restored. He refuses even to take the booty allotted to his role. David insists that the plunder from the Amalekites be shared among every man, those who guarded the baggage and those who fought. A good king wants his people to share in the prosperity of the realm. Bad kings build their own off-shore bank accounts. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

After God fashioned this dazzling earth, he gave it to us. Which is a bit like giving your fifteen year old the keys to a Maserati. But, he has his ways of doing things. When God gave us the earth he also gave us all the adventures that lay ahead. No one had yet climbed a mountain, or sailed the sea. No one had yet written a song or a novel. No one had yet discovered that strawberries make wonderful jam. God has “hidden” joys innumerable in the earth he gave us, like Easter eggs waiting to be found in the tall grass. Someone will figure out you can milk that cow, and if you let the milk sit you can skim cream off the top and someone else will discover that the cream goes wonderfully in coffee. The earth is rigged for adventure, like a sailboat. And our hearts have adventure written deep within, like sailors hear the call of the sea.A good story has adventure to it. An unknown terrain explored. A wilderness survived. A mountain won. A destination reached. And the story of how it all unfolded — or unraveled — told over and over again. Sometimes risk is involved. Sometimes danger. Often deep beauty. Adventures can be had on our own or with a group. They can entail discovering a new city or acquiring a new talent. The right kind of adventures help us to become more the person we long to be. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

God and Satan each have a design, a battle plan, to capture our heart's devotion. The intimacy, beauty, and adventure of the Sacred Romance are placed and nurtured in the deepest longings of our heart by God himself. God's grand strategy, birthed in his grace toward us in Christ, and nurtured through the obedience of disciplined faith, is to release us into the redeemed life of our heart, knowing it will lead us back to him even as the North Star guides a ship across the vast unknown surface of the ocean.If we were to find ourselves living with total freedom, Jesus informs us through his summary of the law in Luke 10:26-28, we would find ourselves loving God with all of our heart and our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus said further, "You will know the truth [me], and the truth will set you free."The Enemy knows this as well, and his strategy to capture us is simply the opposite: to disconnect us from our heart and the heart of God toward us by any means possible. It is what he no doubt had to do to his own heart to bear the loss of heaven. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. (Eph. 4:17–19)The loss of sensitivity that Paul is referring to here is the dullness that most people accept as normal. It actually leads us into sin, to sensuality and lust. The deadened soul requires a greater and greater level of stimulation to arouse it. This is, of course, the downward spiral of any addiction. What began as an attraction to Playboy ends up for the porn addict in some really horrific stuff. Just look at the progression of television drama over the past thirty years. What we have now would have been considered shocking, even repulsive, to an earlier audience. Networks have to keep adding more sex, more violence, to keep our attention. We have become so sensual. This is why holiness is not numbness; it is sensitivity. It is being more attuned to our desires, to what we were truly made for and therefore what we truly want. Our problem is that we’ve grown quite used to seeking life in all kinds of things other than God.“For example, God wants to be our perfect lover, but instead we seek perfection in human relationships and are disappointed when our lovers cannot love us perfectly. God wants to provide our ultimate security, but we seek our safety in power and possessions and then we find we must continually worry about them. We seek satisfaction of our spiritual longing in a host of ways that may have very little to do with God.” (Addiction and Grace)And so, Gerald May says, “The more we become accustomed to seeking spiritual satisfaction through things other than God, the more abnormal and stressful it becomes to look for God directly.” Our instrument is out of tune from years of misuse. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] You know, I was really good at thinking only about myself pre-marriage, but sacrificing for the Other really has become a joy. If you had told me that a couple of years ago, I might have rolled my eyes at you. It seems to be something I could only learn through experience, kind of the rule for marriage thus far. Susie has been looking at grad school for a while now, and her program will require all of her time, which means I would need to be working to support both of us. This actually got me really excited. I know it would be a sacrifice of my time to work more while Susie pursues the education she needs to reach her dream, but it doesn’t feel like wasted time to me. I need purpose in my work, and supporting both of us for a couple of years would put work into a larger context. Another example that comes to mind is church. I don’t always feel the strongest pull to go every Sunday morning (how’s that for political phrasing?), but I know Susie really loves it. So we go. And the joy she feels after having been is something I get to share in. By sacrificing my wants for hers I experience the joy of doing something for her, not to mention how happy she is when she gets to go. Choosing to sacrifice for her sake has become a love language in its own way. I want the best for Susie, and sometimes the best isn’t something I would have chosen were I single. But man, loving her by laying down something of my own and seeing her light up (especially if she doesn’t know it was a sacrifice) is one of the greatest joys there is. Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

Every mythic story shouts to us that in this desperate hour we have a crucial role to play. This is an Eternal Truth, and it happens to be the one we most desperately need if we are ever to understand our days. For most of his life, Neo sees himself only as Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer for a large software corporation. As the drama really begins to heat up and the enemy hunts him down, he says to himself, "This is insane. Why is this happening to me? What did I do? I'm nobody. I didn't do anything." A very dangerous conviction ... though one shared by most of you, my readers. What he later comes to realize-and not a moment too soon-is that he is "the One" who will break the power of the Matrix.Frodo, the little Halfling from the Shire, young and naive in so many ways, "the most unlikely person imaginable," is the Ring Bearer. He, too, must learn through dangerous paths and fierce battles that a task has been appointed to him, and if he does not find a way, no one will. Dorothy is just a farm girl from Kansas, who stumbled into Oz not because she was looking for adventure but because someone had hurt her feelings and she decided to run away from home. Yet she's the one to bring down the Wicked Witch of the West. Joan of Arc was also a farm girl, illiterate, the youngest in her family, when she received her first vision from God. Just about everyone doubted her; the commander of the French army said she should be taken home and given a good whipping. Yet she ends up leading the armies in war.You see this throughout Scripture: a little boy will slay the giant; a loudmouthed fisherman who can't hold down a job will lead the church; and a whore with a golden heart is the one to perform the deed that Jesus asked us all to tell "wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world" (Mark 14:9). Things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

If you learned about Eden in Sunday school, with poster board and flannel graphs, you missed something. Imagine the most beautiful scenes you have ever known on this earth — rain forests, the prairie in full bloom, storm clouds over the African savanna, the Alps under a winter snow.Then imagine it all on the day it was born.It's Tolkien's Shire in its innocence, Iguazu Falls in the garden of The Mission, the opening scene of The Lion King.And it doesn't stop there.Into this world God opens his hand, and the animals spring forth. Myriads of birds, in every shape and size and song, take wing — hawks, herons, warblers. All the creatures of the sea leap into it — whales, dolphins, fish of a thousand colors and designs. Thundering across the plains race immense herds of horses, gazelles, buffalo, running like the wind. It is more astonishing than we could possibly imagine. No wonder "the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy" (Job 38:7). A great hurrah goes up from the heavens!We have grown dull toward this world in which we live; we have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is fairy tale through and through. Really now. Elephants? Caterpillars? Snow? At what point did you lose your wonder at it all?Even so, once in a while something will come along and shock us right out of our dullness and resignation.We come round a corner, and there before us is a cricket, a peacock, a stag with horns as big as he. Perhaps we come upon a waterfall, the clouds have made a rainbow in a circle round the sun, or a mouse scampers across the counter, pauses for a moment to twitch its whiskers, and disappears into the cupboard. And for a moment we realize that we were born into a world as astonishing as any fairy tale.A world made for romance. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

Our need for attachment, mother-love, and the assurance of abundance opens up for us new levels of joyful experience, even in passages that have been familiar to us for years: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).You are a “branch.” Branches have no unending source of resilience in themselves. They need to draw all of their life and all of their resources from another — they need to receive nourishment just as a child does at its mother’s breast. God is the fountain of life. The only fountain of life. His glorious life is meant to flow through us every day — healing us, filling us with creativity, courage, joy, playfulness, and resilience. It comes through attachment, bonded love, the soul’s union with God.The goal of Christian faith is so much more than church attendance or holding certain doctrinal beliefs. The destiny of every human soul is union with God. As the Scottish Puritan Henry Scougal wrote, “[Christians] know by experience that true religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation of the divine nature.” (from The Life of God in the Soul of Man) Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

I’ll tip my hand to one assumption I am making. I assume that an intimate, conversational walk with God is available, and is meant to be normal. I’ll push that a step further. I assume that if you don’t find that kind of relationship with God, your spiritual life will be stunted. And that will handicap the rest of your life. We can’t find life without God, and we can’t find God if we don’t know how to walk intimately with him. A passage from the gospel of John will show you what I’m getting at. Jesus is talking about his relationship with us, how he is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep. Listen to how he describes the relationship:I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 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.”...“Whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:1–4, 9–10)The sheep live in dangerous country. The only way they can move securely in and out and find pasture is to follow their shepherd closely. Yet most Christians assume that the way to find the life God has for us is to (A) believe in God, (B) be a good person, and (C) he will deliver the rest. A + B = C. But Jesus says no, there’s more to the equation. I do want life for you. To the full. But you have to realize there is a thief. He’s trying to destroy you. There are false shepherds too. Don’t listen to them. Don’t just wander off looking for pasture. You need to do more than believe in me. You have to stay close to me. Listen to my voice. Let me lead. Now there’s a thought: if you don’t hold the same assumptions Jesus does, you haven’t got a chance of finding the life he has for you. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, it's how we think of it. "I go to First Baptist." "We are members of St. Luke's." "Is it time to go to church?" Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses the term. Not at all. When the Scripture talks about church, it means community. The little fellowships of the heart that are outposts of the kingdom. A shared life. They worship together, eat together, pray for one another, go on quests together. They hang out together, in each other's homes. When Peter is sprung from prison, "he went to the house of Mary the mother of John…where many people had gathered and were praying" (Acts 12:12).Anytime an army goes to war or an expedition takes to the field, it breaks down into little platoons and squads. And every chronicle of war or quest will tell you that the men and women who fought so bravely fought for each other. That's where the acts of heroism and sacrifice take place, because that's where the devotion is. You simply can't be devoted to a mass of people; devotion takes place in small units, just like a family.We have stopped short of being an organization; we are an organism instead, a living and spontaneous association of individuals who know one another intimately, care for each other deeply, and feel a kind of respect for one another that makes rules and bylaws unnecessary. A group is the right size, I would guess, when each member can pray for every other member, individually and by name.This is the wisdom of Brother Andrew, who smuggled Bibles into communist countries for decades. It's the model, frankly, of the church in nearly every country but the U.S. Now, I'm not suggesting you don't do whatever it is you do on Sunday mornings. I'm simply helping you accept reality — that whatever else you do, you must have a small fellowship to walk with you and fight with you and bandage your wounds. This is essential. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought that following Christ around and watching how he did it would make things clear, you'd wind up pretty frustrated. He never does it the same way twice. He spits on one guy; for another, he spits on the ground and makes mud and puts that on his eyes. To a third he simply speaks, a fourth he touches, and for a fifth he kicks out a demon. There are no formulas with God. The way in which God heals our wound is a deeply personal process. He is a person and he insists on working personally. For some, it comes in a moment of divine touch. For others, it takes place over time and through the help of another, maybe several others. As Agnes Sanford says, "There are in many of us wounds so deep that only the mediation of someone else to whom we may 'bare our grief' can heal us."So much healing took place in my life simply through my friendship with Brent. We were partners, but far more than that, we were friends. We spent hours together fly-fishing, backpacking, hanging out in pubs. Just spending time with a man I truly respected, a real man who loved and respected me — nothing heals quite like that. At first I feared that I was fooling him, that he'd see through it any day and drop me. But he didn't, and what happened instead was validation. My heart knew that if a man I know is a man thinks I'm one, too, well then, maybe I am one after all. Remember — masculinity is bestowed by masculinity. But there have been other significant ways in which God has worked — times of healing prayer, times of grieving the wound and forgiving my father. Most of all, times of deep communion with God. The point is this: Healing never happens outside of intimacy with Christ. The healing of our wound flows out of our union with him. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

This moment is yours, as sure and certain as God himself. Sure as the renewal of heaven and earth. How else could we enjoy the fierce beauty of a renewed creation unless we, too, are renewed and made strong, stronger than we ever were here? How could we possibly play in the fields of a new earth or fulfill our roles in the kingdom of God unless we are, well — glorious?He wraps you in goodness — beauty eternal. He renews your youth — you’re always young in his presence. (Psalm 103:4–5 The Message)Death is utterly swept away at the Great Restoration. And not only death, but every other form of sorrow, assault, illness, and harm we’ve ever known. You will be completely renewed — body, soul, and spirit. How do we even imagine this? Take it in small steps; think of some recovery you have experienced. A piercing headache can be debilitating; you know the sweet relief when it vanishes. Surely you have had some nasty flu, and you know what a joy it was to get your strength and appetite back. These little glimpses of our restoration are taking place all the time, hints of what is coming.Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Think about it — what daily radiance is showered upon us, what immense golden goodness. Every single day, over so much of the planet. It saturates our world, warming the earth, raising the crops in the fields by silent resurrection, unfolding flowers, causing birds to break out in song with the dawning of each day. It bathes everything else in light, which then enables us to behold and enjoy, to live and work and explore. What a gift sunlight is — coming and going. I love getting up in the darkness of early morning and praying through the dawn. As I find myself drawing nearer to God, the room begins to grow lighter and lighter while the spiritual air clears around me. With a final amen, the golden glowing light of sunrise fills the room like the presence of God.We get hours of it, every day. Hundreds and hundreds of gallons.Remember — the heart of the artist is revealed in their work. Here and there and everywhere, the creations of Jesus explode like fireworks from a fairy tale over the earth. Dragonflies? Porcupines? Musk ox, their great shaggy kilts hanging round them and mighty horns swooping down, look like creatures if not from Norse mythology then certainly from ancient times. Not something walking around this moment just north of us. Really now — what do we have here? Who do we have here? The whole earth is filled with his glory. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

A sower went out to sow some seed ... A man fell into the hands of robbers ... Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one ... There were ten virgins with ten lamps ...Think of it. You are the Son of the living God. You have come to earth to rescue the human race. It is your job to communicate truths without which your precious ones will be lost ... forever. Would you do it like this? Why doesn’t he come right out and say it — get to the point? What’s with all the stories?We children of the Internet and the cell phone and the Weather Channel, we think we are the enlightened ones. We aren’t fooled by anything — we just want the facts. The bottom line. So proposition has become our means of saying what is true and what is not. And proposition is helpful ... for certain things. Sacramento is the capital of California; water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But proposition fails when it comes to the weightier things in life. While it is a fact that the Civil War was fought between the years of 1861 and 1865, and while it is also a fact that hundreds of thousands of men died in that war, those facts hardly describe what happened at Bull Run or Gettysburg. You don’t even begin to grasp the reality of the Civil War until you hear the stories, see pictures from the time, visit the battlefields yourself.How much more so when it comes to the deep truths of the Christian faith. God loves you; you matter to him. That is a fact, stated as a proposition. I’ll bet most of you have heard it any number of times. Why, then, aren’t we the happiest people on earth? It hasn’t reached our hearts. Facts stay lodged in the mind. Proposition speaks to the mind, but when you tell a story, you speak to the heart.And that’s why when Jesus comes to town, he speaks in a way that will get past all our intellectual defenses and disarm our hearts.Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Learning to recognize the voice of God is something we learn and grow into over a lifetime. But we are trying to be frank and realistic about our situation in the world, and so this needs to be said as clearly and honestly as can be:Hearing the voice of God is essential to Christian discipleship.It is not optional.It is not for a select few.For one thing, Scripture teaches it on nearly every page, whether by the example of saints past or by direct command to all who believe.What would we think of a father or mother who never spoke to their children? Imagine that these parents provided for their children’s needs and spent time with them but never spoke a word to them. We would call it child abuse, neglect, or abandonment. It would be terribly traumatizing. Nor would we be satisfied with an occasional word; we would insist that the relationship involve regular, intimate communication. The same would be true for any marriage, any friendship. How could you call someone your friend if they met you for coffee and spent an hour with you but never spoke a word? Never asked you how you were doing? Never laughed together over shared stories?Friends, we are created in the image of a highly relational Being, a God who is triune in relationship! That is why we are highly relational beings ourselves. It is absurd and blasphemous to accept a theology that makes hearing the voice of God exceptional or occasional.The gatekeeper 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. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice. (John 10:3–5)If this isn’t central to the scriptural witness, nothing is.I’m saying this with great emphasis because I know too many dear, dear lovers of God who have, for one reason or another, written this off for themselves. Sometimes because they found it difficult to learn the practice and concluded it wasn’t for them. Or perhaps more frequently because they saw it abused by others and withdrew from it. Or because their spiritual leaders told them it isn’t available, which is of course poor theology and completely detached from reality.Let no one steal this from you, friends. It is too essential in an hour like this one.Want More? Order your copy of Experience Jesus. Really. today

God wants to come to us and restore our lives. He really does. But if our soul is not well, it’s almost impossible to receive him. Dry, scorched ground can’t absorb the very rain it needs.As C. S. Lewis explained, “The soul is but a hollow which God fills.” In place of hollow I like the word vessel, something beautiful and artistic. Our souls are exquisite vessels created by God for him to saturate. I picture the round, curved basin at the top of an elegant fountain, with water spilling down all sides, running over with unceasing life. Wasn’t that the promise? “As Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:38).And so it follows that if we can receive help for restoring and renewing our weary, besieged souls, we’ll enjoy the fruits (which are many and wonderful) of happy souls and also be able to receive more of God (which is even more wonderful). We’ll find the vibrancy and resiliency we crave as human beings, living waters welling up from deep within. And then — we’ll get our lives back!But the process needs to be accessible and sustainable. We’ve all tried exercise, diets, Bible study programs that began with vim and verve but over time got shoved to the side, lost in the chaos. I have a gym membership; I rarely use it. There’s those books I haven’t finished, loads of podcasts too. Rest assured — the graces I am offering here are within reach of a normal life. I think you’ll find them simple, sustainable, and refreshing.God wants to strengthen and renew your soul; Jesus longs to give you more of himself. Come, you weary and heavy laden. “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life ... and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matthew 11:28–30 THE MESSAGE). You can get your life back; you can live freely and lightly. The world may be harsh, but God is gentle; he knows what your life is like. What we need to do is put ourselves in places that allow us to receive his help. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Having abandoned desire, we have lost hope. C. S. Lewis summed it up: "We can only hope for what we desire." No desire, no hope. Now, desire doesn't always translate into hope. There are many things I desire that I have little hope for. I desire to have lots more money than I do, but I see little reason to think it will come. But there isn't one thing I hope for that I don't also desire. This is Lewis's point. Bland assurances of the sweet by-and-by don't inflame the soul. Our hopes are deeply tied to our real desires, and so killing desire has meant a hopeless life for too many. It's as if we've already entered Dante's Inferno, where the sign over hell reads, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."The effect has been disastrous, not only for individual Christians, but also for the message of the gospel as a whole. People aren't exactly ripping the roofs off churches to get inside. We see the Enemy's ploy: drain all the life and beauty and adventure away from the gospel, bury Christians in duty, and nobody will want to take a closer look. It's so very unappealing.David Whyte calls this the "devouring animal of our disowned desire." It is the reason behind most affairs in the church. The pastor lives out of duty, trying to deny his thirst for many years. One day, the young secretary smiles at him and it's over. Because he has so long been out of touch with his desire, it becomes overwhelming when it does show up. The danger of disowning desire is that it sets us up for a fall. We are unable to distinguish real life from a tempting imitation. We are fooled by the impostors. Eventually, we find some means of procuring a taste of the life we were meant for. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

There is just enough goodness to rouse our hearts with expectation, and plenty enough sadness to cut us back down. When the cutting down exceeds the rising up, you wonder if you shouldn’t just stay down. “I wept when I was borne,” wrote the Anglican poet George Herbert, “and every day shows why.” Yes, life can also be beautiful. I am a lover of all the beautiful things in life. But may I point out that the movie by that name — Life Is Beautiful — takes place in a Nazi concentration camp. The story is precious in the way the father loves and protects his little boy from the ghoulish realities all around. But the father is killed at the end. Many, many people die horrible deaths at the end.We need more than a silver-lining outlook on life. Much, much more. We need an unbreakable, unquenchable hope.Standing at the window for my morning vigil, the amber light of dawn was turning every fall color an even richer hue. It looked like something from a painting — transcendent, mythic. And for a moment it all felt brimming with promise. You’ve probably felt that promise too, as you stood in some favorite spot, watching the beauty of the waves, spring flowers in the desert, walking the streets of Paris at night, sitting in your garden with a cup of coffee. Something keeps whispering to us through the beauty we love.“Many things begin with seeing in this world of ours,” wrote British artist Lilias Trotter. “There lies before us a beautiful, possible life.” I savor those moments; they are among my most treasured memories. But whatever it is that speaks such promise, it seems to slip through our fingers every time we reach for it. I know that simply wanting this year to be over isn’t the answer, because who really knows what next year will bring? “Each day has enough trouble of its own,” said the most compassionate man ever. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

This will open up wonders for you about the personality of Jesus — look at his works of art.I was sitting out back yesterday morning sipping coffee, watching the young chipmunks chase one another at breakneck speeds across the deck. One clever daredevil, hoping to get the advantage, jumped up on the fence rail and continued the chase from above, leaping at the last moment upon his littermate like a Hollywood stuntman. This morning one of them adopted a new strategy. The little rascal found an ambush spot, clinging from the side of the house, where he waited for his playmate to wander by unawares; he then pounced, and the two somersaulted off the deck and into the grass, squealing. Only to dash off and do it again. And again.Now — what does this tell us about the personality of Jesus, who created these little dynamos with striped masks and boundless enthusiasm? What do they say about his heart? Polar-bear cubs will hurl themselves down snowy hillsides headfirst and upside down, just for fun. Spinner dolphins love to romp in the bow-wake of a boat, cavorting, leaping into the air and, well, spinning. Otters play tag. Our horses play tug-of-war with a stick — which is really quite funny when you think of how nobly a horse normally likes to carry himself.Who gave your puppy his impishness, as he snatches your slipper and races round the house with you in tow? God is more playful than we are.Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Heaven is the beginning of an adventure in intimacy, "a world of love," as Jonathan Edwards wrote, "where God is the fountain." The Holy Spirit, through the human authors of Scripture, chose the imagery of a wedding feast for a reason. It's not just any kind of party; it is a wedding feast. What sets this special feast apart from all others is the unique intimacy of the wedding night. The Spirit uses the most secret and tender experience on earth — the union of husband and wife — to convey the depth of intimacy that we will partake with our Lord in heaven. He is the Bridegroom and the church is his bride. In the consummation of love, we shall know him and be known. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Freedom comes only as we bring these unsanctified and unholy places under the rule of Jesus Christ, so that he can possess these very places deeply and truly. Therefore, part of this first step involves sanctifying the place of bondage to Christ. If it’s sexual, you sanctify your sexuality to Christ; if its emotional (as with rage) you sanctify your emotions; if it involves addiction you sanctify your appetite, your obsession, and your body. At the retreats we do, we walk through this process in prayer, and many people are shocked to realize that they have never taken the first, simple step of sanctifying their sexuality (or emotions, or appetites) to Jesus Christ. But if you want to be free in this place, it must come under the total, intimate, ongoing rule of God.Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:12–14 emphasis mine)There is hope of freedom because of what Christ has done. Now we have an option. But we do have to stop presenting ourselves over to sin as best we can. Our choices matter. We need to renounce the ways we have presented ourselves to sin, and re-present ourselves to Christ. It is only a beginning, but this is very important. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

The devil no doubt has a place in our theology, but is he a category we even think about in the daily events of our lives? Has it ever crossed your mind that not every thought that crosses your mind comes from you? We are being lied to all the time. Yet we never stop to say, "Wait a minute ... who else is speaking here? Where are those ideas coming from? Where are those feelings coming from?" If you read the saints from every age before the Modern Era — that pride-filled age of reason, science, and technology we all were thoroughly educated in — you'll find that they take the devil very seriously indeed. As Paul says, "We are not unaware of his schemes" (2 Cor. 2:11). But we, the enlightened, have a much more commonsense approach to things. We look for a psychological or physical or even political explanation for every trouble we meet. Who caused the Chaldeans to steal Job's herds and kill his servants? Satan, clearly (Job 1:12, 17). Yet do we even give him a passing thought when we hear of terrorism today? Who kept that poor woman bent over for eighteen years, the one Jesus healed on the Sabbath? Satan, clearly (Luke 13:16). But do we consider him when we are having a headache that keeps us from praying or reading Scripture? Who moved Ananias and Sapphira to lie to the apostles? Satan again (Acts 5:3). But do we really see his hand behind a fallout or schism in ministry? Who was behind that brutal assault on your own strength, those wounds you've taken? As William Gurnall said, "It is the image of God reflected in you that so enrages hell; it is this at which the demons hurl their mightiest weapons."There is a whole lot more going on behind the scenes of our lives than most of us have been led to believe. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

[My] labor pains for you ... will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives. (Galatians 4:19 NLT)And so you’ve celebrated Christmas, the coming of Jesus to this world. And what a thing to celebrate! The entire pageant comes down to this: Jesus took on a genuine humanity.And of course, this late in the Story, I hope it’s nearly impossible for you to celebrate Christmas without your heart turning toward his return. One day soon, Jesus will return to this earth, with his army, to make a final end of evil and to usher in the coming of a Golden Age. This is referred to as the “Second Coming.”But what struck me this Christmas was this: the Second Coming is actually ... the Third Coming. Christ came to Bethlehem. And then he comes to dwell in you. The Second Coming is actually in you—right now.Christ was first formed in Mary’s womb; now he’s being formed in you. It’s a truth unique to Christianity and no other religion. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27 nasb). Jesus made his first invasion into Bethlehem. His second great act of indwelling happens when you open your heart to him.Think of it—Jesus Christ is inside of you this very moment. The incarnation didn’t finish but continues ... in you.———————————I receive it, Lord! I receive Jesus Christ into every part of my life and my being! Yes, Lord—come and be formed in me today! Want more? Order your copy of Restoration Year today

There is of course a story to tell, a wild and redemptive story that has at its center the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For if it is anything at all, the Gospel of Christianity is an offer of restoration. God knows that the human race is in bad shape. He knows our lives are nowhere near what we once dreamed of. He knows what it’s like, living as we all do now, so far from Eden. It breaks his heart. So he comes himself to planet earth, this vale of tears, comes to do for us what none of us could accomplish on our own. He comes as Immanuel — God with us — and look what begins to happen. The blind receive their sight, the outcast is brought home, families are reconciled, the lame walk, and the dead are raised. These aren’t just Bible stories; they are illustrations. God is demonstrating his power and his intentions.He comes to heal. He comes to save.“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10) Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

Life wins. Sometimes now, especially if we will pray. But life wins fully, and very soon.Just as we must fix our eyes on Jesus when we pray, we must also fix our hearts on this one undeniable truth: life will win. When you know that unending joy is about to be yours, you live with an unshakable confidence it will almost be a swagger. You can pray boldly, without fear, knowing that, “If this doesn’t work now, it will work totally and completely very soon.” We can have that kingdom attitude of Daniel’s friends, who said, “God is able to deliver, and he will deliver. But if not ...” we will not lose heart. Period. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

The gift of presence is a rare and beautiful gift. To come — unguarded, undistracted — and be fully present, fully engaged with whoever we are with at that moment. Have you noticed in reading the Gospels that people enjoyed being around Jesus? They wanted to be near him — to share a meal, take a walk, have a lingering conversation. It was the gift of his presence. When you were with him, you felt he was offering you his heart. When we offer our unguarded presence, we live like Jesus. And we invite others to do the same. Whenever we are with our friend Jan, there is always an offer and an invitation. She really wants to know how we are, what battles we’ve been facing, what God is doing in our lives. And she truly offers herself. Sometimes it’s her laughter and a wry joke. Sometimes it’s her tears from an old sorrow. She offers herself, her beauty, to us. She invites us to live above the striving of the world. She gives something of God. Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT)I absolutely love this verse; I love the hope of my entire being made pure by the Spirit of God.I realize that holiness is a word with a lot of baggage for many people, but we can get past all that if we look at the gorgeous life and character of Jesus — he was simply good through and through. His character is so alluring, so win- some, and whenever you see him relating to people you are watching true holiness in action. Women who everyone had used and abused came to Jesus, threw themselves at his feet, and he was only loving toward them. Sometimes the crowds loved him, other times they shouted for his head, but he didn’t let it faze him. Jesus’ goodness in the Gospels is captivating.When his own time of severe testing came, that goodness was his shield. Just before the secret police came for him, before the grisly scenes that follow, Jesus told his disciples, “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30 NKJV).The enemy tried every angle he could find on Jesus— seduction, rejection, threat, the fear of not having enough, even torture. Nothing worked, because Satan had nothing “in” Jesus to use as his hook. Imagine the sheer relief of it.It probably feels like obtaining even a fraction of that goodness is beyond you, but the promise of the Christian faith is that God will reproduce Jesus’ goodness in you: “I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives” (Galatians 4:19 NLT).The goal of God’s work in us is Jesus taking up residence in every part of us. Nothing left out. No little pockets of resistance. (And did you notice? Paul, with the Holy Spirit through him, is “mothering” these dear followers of Christ toward the beautiful goal. He is “in labor” with them, for them!) Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

I was thumbing through a Williams-Sonoma catalog. It calls itself "a catalog for cooks," but really, it's a catalog of the life we wish we had. Everything is beautiful, delicious, elegant. The kitchens portrayed are immaculate — there are no messes. Cooking there would be a joy. The tables are sumptuous with their beautiful china place settings, wine glasses brimming with nectar, gourmet foods deliciously prepared, invitingly presented. Fresh flowers abound. The homes are lovely and spacious; the view out the windows is always a mountain lake, a beach, or perhaps an English garden. Everything is as it ought to be. Glancing through its pages, you get a sense of rest. Life is good. You see, the images whisper, it can be done. Life is within your grasp. And so the quest continues. But of course. Our address used to be Paradise, remember?And oh, how we yearn for another shot at it. Flip with me for a moment through the photo album of your heart, and collect a few of your most treasured memories. Recall a time in your life when you felt really special, a time when you knew you were loved. The day you got engaged perhaps. Or a childhood Christmas. Maybe a time with your grandparents.Hold your memory while you gather another, a time of real adventure, such as when you first learned to ride a bike, or galloped on a horse, or perhaps did something exciting on a vacation. Now, we were meant to live in a world like that — every day. Just as our lungs are made to breathe oxygen, our souls are designed to flourish in an atmosphere rich in love and meaning, security and significance, intimacy and adventure. But we don't live in that world anymore. Far from it. Though we try to resolve the dilemma by disowning our desire, it doesn't work. It is the soul's equivalent of holding our breath. Eventually, we find ourselves gasping for air. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

One of the most remarkable things about human beings is how resilient we can be. The Primal Drive for Life can accomplish impressive things. Saint John took his suffering and brought forth beauty; Nelson Mandela survived twenty-seven years of imprisonment and brought forth forgiveness.Yet one of the most surprising things about human beings is how all that resilience can evaporate in a moment. One day the resources we have to sustain the Primal Drive for Life simply run out. The mother who for decades pours and pours into her family, and then one day up and has an affair with her best friend’s husband. The minister who for decades served up banquets from the Word of God suddenly decides he doesn’t believe in Jesus anymore.It has to do with reserves.We tap into our deep reserves to endure years of suffering and deprivation. Then one day our heart simply says, I don’t care anymore; I’m done. We abandon the fight and go off to find relief. I fear this is what’s happening now on a global scale.Human beings are at the same time both resilient and unpredictably fragile, like camels. A better test for how vulnerable we may actually be is to check on our reserves. For we can rally, and we have rallied. Way to go, everybody! But every time you rally, you tap into your reserves, and though you might feel like you’re doing pretty well on any given day, you’re still burning through precious resources and your reserve tank is precariously low … like the drip, drip, dripping water bags of Wilfred Thesiger’s party, way out in the middle of the desert.This is the trauma cycle. We rally in the face of harm, and when the harm subsides, we live in denial of it and go off in search of some taste of Eden. When our efforts are thwarted, rage surfaces — which is common to trauma responses.This is why rallying can actually be deceptive. Reserves tell the true story. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

On a visit to London, I had the opportunity to visit the National Gallery. Loving art, and being with two of my sons — one of whom was an art major — I was excited to spend hours there. I loved the Van Gogh, the Monet, the Rembrandt paintings and more. But there was one massive disappointment. No, it was more than disappointment. Massive frustration. I did not see one portrait of Christ, in all the famous works of him, that came anywhere close to depicting Jesus as he really is. Not one. They are all of a wispy, pale Jesus, looking haunted, a ghostlike figure floating along through life making strange gestures and undecipherable statements.The Nativity scenes were particularly ridiculous.The classic art depicting the infant — themes now repeated on Christmas cards and in the crèche scenes displayed in churches and on suburban coffee tables — portrays a rather mature baby, very white, radiantly clean as no baby is ever clean, arms outstretched to reassure the nervous adults around him, intelligent, without need, halo glowing, conscious with an adult consciousness. Superbaby. This infant clearly never pooped his diapers. He looks ready to take up the prime ministership.Why did it make me angry?Because when we lose his personality, we lose Jesus. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

I had an old desk lamp with a wiggly switch, picked up for spare change at a garage sale. It had this annoying habit of turning on and off without rhyme or reason. One moment the room would be lit; next moment I’d be sitting in total darkness. Now this old lamp was cunning. It wouldn’t do it often enough to incite replacing. Most of the time — just enough to ensure its survival — the lamp stayed on. Then it would shut off, unannounced, as if a toddler had sneaked in and found the switch. Click. This quirky personality trait was particularly irritating during nighttime reading. I’d be caught up in something good, enjoying myself, lost in the story when suddenly ... darkness. The page was gone, the book vanished; I was yanked right out of the experience, startled away as if by magic.Of course the book didn’t actually vanish. The light simply turned off. It had to do with an unreliable switch; it was explicable.So how do we explain this on-again, off-again experience most people have in their search for God? Sometimes God seems so near, but not always. Other times he seems to have gone elsewhere. It’s hard on the heart and soul. I do say seems to, for God never really vanishes, no more than the book I was reading. He’s always, always near:Be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:20 NLT)Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5 NIV)In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28 NIV)God surrounds us; we swim in God like we swim in oxygen. He is by your side right this very moment, as you read this sentence. Despite this reality — and what a wonderful reality it is — we don’t always feel him near; don’t have a consistent experience of his presence (some people rarely experience his presence). It can be so disheartening; I hate that rollercoaster.But I don’t think we understand what’s happening. We think God either presents himself to us or doesn’t, according to some rules of the spiritual game we aren’t entirely sure of. So we go about our days waiting for the next appearance, like people who missed the 5:15 train and are milling about till another one arrives. Like stargazers waiting for the next shooting star.Yet God is always here — not only around us but within us:I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit ... he lives with you now and later will be in you ... you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. (John 14:16–20 NLT, emphasis added)Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him (Ephesians 3:17 NLT, emphasis added)And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. (Colossians 1:27 NLT, emphasis added)We are never apart from God. He is both around us, and within us. How much closer can he get? Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

I’ll let you in on a little secret: your heart is made for the kingdom of God. This might be the most important thing anyone will ever tell you about yourself: your heart only thrives in one habitat, and that safe place is called the kingdom of God. Stay with me now.Jesus Christ gave his life to give each of us a hope above and beyond all former hopes. Every action and teaching of his brilliant life were very intentionally directed at unveiling this hope to us. Late in the gospel of Matthew he described it with breathtaking clarity:Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne ... everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. (Matthew 19:28–29)At the renewal of all things?! God’s intention for us is the renewal of all things? This is what the Son of God said; that is how he plainly described it. I can hardly speak. Really?The Greek word used here for “renewal” is palingenesia, which is derived from two root words: paling, meaning “again,” and genesia, meaning “beginning,” which of course hearkens back to Genesis. Genesis again. Eden restored. Could it possibly be? Sometimes comparing the work of various translators gets us even closer to the meaning of a passage; let’s look at two more:Jesus replied, “Yes, you have followed me. In the re-creation of the world, when the Son of Man will rule gloriously, you who have followed me will also rule, starting with the twelve tribes of Israel. And not only you, but anyone who sacrifices home, family, fields — whatever — because of me will get it all back a hundred times over, not to mention the considerable bonus of eternal life.” (THE MESSAGE)Jesus replied, “I assure you that when the world is made new and the Son of Man sits upon his glorious throne, you who have been my followers will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life.” (NLT)The re-creation of the world. When the world is made new. A promise so breathtaking, so shocking and heartbreakingly beautiful I’m stunned that so many have missed it. Oh yes, we’ve heard quite a bit about “heaven.” But Jesus is clearly not talking about heaven here — he is talking about the re-creation of all things, including the earth we love. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today