Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Then the Lord God fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature. –Genesis 2:7 (John Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary)The Breath of God, the Breath of Life. This is how we came to be, how life was imparted to us by our Creator—he gave us his own breath. This essential relationship between Creator and created, the gift of breath given and received, is repeated throughout the Scriptures:The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. (Job 33:4 KJV)O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!In wisdom you have made them all.The earth is full of your creatures. …When you give them your breath, life is created, and you renew the face of the earth. (Psalm 104:24, 30 NLT)When the tragic human story plunged all humanity into death, God had a plan for our re-creation. He showed his friend Ezekiel, prophet and mystic, a vision about the coming re-creation of humanity, the new life that God would impart to those who come to Christ, who are indeed born again.The hand of the LORD was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”I said, “Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’” (Ezekiel 37:1–6)The breath of God creates us, and it re-creates us.Want More? Order your copy of Experience Jesus. Really. today

We must come to face our style of relating, of course. As men, we look to where we are passive, and where we are domineering or harsh or violent. As women, we face where we are controlling, and where we are desperately clingy. And as God reveals these things, we make those thousand little choices to turn from our style of relating. We make deliberate choices to love. If you avoid conflict either as a passive man or a controlling woman, then you say, “Conflict is okay. Let’s talk about these things. I’ll go there with you.” If you have been avoiding intimacy, then you say, “I need you. I don’t want to be this island, this impenetrable fortress. I choose to engage.” If it’s controlling, I let go of control. If it’s hiding, I come out of hiding. If it’s anger, I set my anger aside and I choose to be vulnerable. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

The Sermon on the Mount is a revolution in holiness. Jesus takes all the external issues and makes them first and foremost internal. He begins with a few examples of the most egregious sins: murder and adultery. This is a crowd that congratulates itself on staying far from such obvious crimes. But then Jesus says, “Oh — don’t think you’ve kept the command simply because you haven’t pulled the trigger. If you hate someone, you’ve murdered them in your heart. And as for sexual integrity — just because you haven’t actually ‘done it’ doesn’t mean you’re clean — have you wanted to, in your heart? Have you desired someone who wasn’t your spouse?”Gulp.This way of looking at goodness is mighty exposing. As it should be. Holiness, he is driving at, is a matter of the heart. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

Notice that all the great stories pretty much follow the same story line. Things were once good, then something awful happened, and now a great battle must be fought or a journey taken. At just the right moment (which feels like the last possible moment), a hero comes and sets things right, and life is found again.It's true of every fairy tale, every myth, every Western, every epic — just about every story you can think of, one way or another. Braveheart, Titanic, the Star Wars series, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. They pretty much all follow the same story line.Have you ever wondered why?Every story, great and small, shares the same essential structure because every story we tell borrows its power from a Larger Story, a Story woven into the fabric of our being — what pioneer psychologist Carl Jung tried to explain as archetype, or what his more recent popularizer Joseph Campbell called myth.All of these stories borrow from the Story. From Reality. We hear echoes of it through our lives. Some secret written on our hearts. A great battle to fight, and someone to fight for us. An adventure, something that requires everything we have, something to be shared with those we love and need.There is a Story that we just can't seem to escape. There is a Story written on the human heart. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

God gives us dozens of encounters every day, opportunities to be honest about what motivates us. What we do with them is up to us. This is how he honors us. When God created each of us, he gave us a will, and that beautiful and mysterious inner life we call the soul. Just as you would want to give your growing son or daughter room to make his or her own decisions, God steps back a bit to let us make ours. These simple moments of decision are filled with significance. When I choose to avoid whatever it is God has brought up, something in me weakens. Something feels compromised. It is at least a refusal to mature. But it also feels like a refusal to step toward God. Thankfully, the opposite is true. When I choose to face the uncertain, admit the neglect, or enter into my fears, something in me grows up a little bit. I feel strengthened. The scales tip toward a closer walk with God.Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

Against the flesh, the traitor within, a warrior uses discipline. We have a two-dimensional version of this now, which we call a "quiet time." But most men have a hard time sustaining any sort of devotional life because it has no vital connection to recovering and protecting their strength; it feels about as important as flossing. But if you saw your life as a great battle and you knew you needed time with God for your very survival, you would do it. Maybe not perfectly — nobody ever does and that's not the point anyway — but you would have a reason to seek him. We give a halfhearted attempt at the spiritual disciplines when the only reason we have is that we "ought" to. But we'll find a way to make it work when we are convinced we're history if we don't.Time with God each day is not about academic study or getting through a certain amount of Scripture or any of that. It's about connecting with God. We've got to keep those lines of communication open, so use whatever helps. Sometimes I'll listen to music; other times I'll read Scripture or a passage from a book; often I will journal; maybe I'll go for a run; then there are days when all I need is silence and solitude and the rising sun. The point is simply to do whatever brings me back to my heart and the heart of God.The discipline, by the way, is never the point. The whole point of a "devotional life" is connecting with God. This is our primary antidote to the counterfeits the world holds out to us. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. The five who were foolish didn’t take enough olive oil for their lamps, but the other five were wise enough to take along extra oil. When the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight they were roused by the shout, “Look, the bridegroom is coming! Come out and meet him!” All the bridesmaids got up and prepared their lamps. Then the five foolish ones asked the others, “Please give us some of your oil because our lamps are going out.” Matthew 25:1–8I think most readers find this parable unnerving and unclear — somebody gets left out of the wedding feast in the New Eden because they ran out of olive oil?! What does that mean? How do we avoid it? In some cases, Jesus went on to interpret his parables, but not this one. The absence of interpretation is intriguing, because this is one of the parables Jesus told right after his penultimate warnings about the end of the age. Maybe he meant it to be unnerving; maybe Jesus wants us to sit up and pay attention.Whatever else the parable of the ten bridesmaids means, the lesson surely includes this: We need to renew our love and devotion to Jesus, our deep union with him. We need to make sure we don’t run out of love and devotion and the resilience God-within-us provides before he returns.Because I think the precious oil is God-within-us.Throughout the Scriptures the Holy Spirit is connected with oil. We know we are meant to be filled with the Spirit, with God’s presence. If we add to that the reality C. S. Lewis pointed out, that God is the fuel the human soul runs on, I think the parable makes sense.God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. ... Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. (Mere Christianity)But of course — God is the fountain of life. We are only empty vessels, needing a source of life. It is Jesus-within-us that gives us resilience. I think what happened to those unfortunate bridesmaids is that they ran out of God! They didn’t see to it that they were filled with God, and when things wore on through the night, they ran out. Let’s make sure we are filled with God. It requires intention; the parable is clear about that. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

I think even a quick read of the Old Testament would be enough to convince you that war is a central theme of God's activity. There is the Exodus, where God goes to war to set his captive people free. Blood. Hail. Locusts. Darkness. Death. Plague after plague descends on Egypt like a boxer's one-two punch, like the blows of some great ax. Pharaoh releases his grip, but only for a moment. The fleeing slaves are pinned against the Red Sea when Egypt makes a last charge, hurtling down on them in chariots. God drowns those soldiers in the sea, every last one of them. Standing in shock and joy on the opposite shore, the Hebrews proclaim, "The LORD is a warrior!" (Ex. 15:3). Yahweh is a warrior. Then it's war to get to the Promised Land. Moses and company have to do battle against the Amalekites; again God comes through, and Moses shouts, "The LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation" (Ex.17:16). Yahweh will be at war. Indeed. You ain't seen nothin' yet. Then it's war to get into the Promised Land — Joshua and the battle of Jericho, and all that. After the Jews gain the Promised Land, it's war after war to keep it. Israel battles the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Midianites, the Egyptians again, the Babylonians-and on and on it goes. Deborah goes to war; Gideon goes to war; King David goes to war. Elijah wars against the prophets of Baal; Jehoshaphat battles the Edomites. Are you getting the picture? Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

You will appreciate the mastery of Jesus only to the degree that you understand the minefield he walks. He is advancing against the prince of darkness in a bid for the human heart. The whole situation is booby-trapped. Satan already has the upper hand — he took our hearts captive when we fell, back in Eden. Some he has snared through abuse, some through seduction, others by means of religion. Oh, how hard it is to rescue the human heart, to dislodge people from their chosen means of survival without toppling them into resignation, despair, or defensiveness.Jesus won’t take the shortcut of a power play. He doesn’t force anyone to follow him. He seems rather reluctant to do his miracles. He never overwhelms anyone’s will with a fantastic display of his majesty. He woos, he confronts, he delivers, he heals, he shoots straight, and then he uses intrigue. He lives out before them the most compelling view of God, shows them an incredibly attractive holiness while shattering the religious glaze. But still, he lets them walk away if they choose. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns. God will do this, for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.–St. Paul, First Letter to the CorinthiansWe are ordinary mystics, growing and integrating into mature mystics so that we might lay hold of the provision of God in this hour—not just for ourselves but for those we love and minister to. The mystic Paul, speaking on behalf of God, promises us that we have everything we need.You might pause a moment and ask yourself, Is that what it feels like? Do I feel like I have everything I need to navigate this messed-up world?The joy of ordinary mysticism is that you come to know it to be true. Most people are waiting for God to do something remarkable in their lives. The mystic understands that all provision has been made; our job is to take hold of it. Then remarkable things will happen.Want More? Order your copy of Experience Jesus. Really. today

Some prayers just happen; they are “the Cry of the Heart.” No training is needed when it comes to this kind of prayer. I’ve uttered it thousands of times; I’m confident you have too. Like when the phone rings and the bad news starts to spill and all you can do is say, Father ... Father ... Father, your heart crying out to God. It’s a beautiful expression of prayer, rising from the deep places in us, often unbidden, always welcome to his loving ears.The Cry of the Heart just comes, if you’ll let it. These are the prayers I find myself already praying as I’m waking up in the morning. “O, God —help. Help me today, Lord.” Sometimes it’s just one word, repeated in my heart: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I think it will just flow for you, too, if you give it permission. Turn the editor off; let your heart and soul speak. In the Psalms, David is clearly unedited, unrestrained. Good grief — he’s all over the map. One moment it’s “I love you, Lord!” and the next it’s “Why have you forsaken me?”The man seems reckless, unstable; your average board of trustees would have him sent to a therapist. But remember — David is called a man after God’s own heart. It was God who made him king and canonized his prayers in the Bible. These psalms are given to the church as our prayer book, our primer, and they are beautiful. Assuring us that not only can God handle the full span of our emotional life, he invites us to bring it to him. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

We were meant to remember together, in community. We need to tell our stories to others and to hear their stories told. We need to help each other with the interpretation of the Larger Story and our own. Our regular times of coming together to worship are intended to be times of corporate remembrance. “This, God has done,” we say; “this, he will do.” How different Sunday mornings would be if they were marked by a rich retelling of the Sacred Romance in the context of real lives. This is a far cry from the fact-telling, principle listing, list keeping that characterizes much of modern worship.One of the reasons modern evangelicalism feels so thin is because it is merely modern; there is no connection with the thousands of years of saints who have gone before. Our community of memory must include not only saints from down the street, but also those from down the ages. Let us hear the stories of John and Teresa from last week, but also those of St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, to name only two. Let us draw from that “great cloud of witnesses” and learn from their journeys, so that our memory may span the story of God’s relationship with his people.Remembering is not mere nostalgia; it is an act of survival, our way of “watching over our hearts with all diligence.” In The Brothers Karamazov, the gentle Alyosha says, “And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation.” .Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Of course, small groups have become a part of the programming most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are disappointing and short-lived — by the very admission of those who try them. There are two reasons. One, you can't just throw a random group of people together for a twelve week study of some kind, and expect them to become intimate allies. The sort of devotion we want and need takes place within a shared life. Over the years our fellowship goes camping together. We play together; help one another move; paint a room; find work. We throw great parties. We fight for each other, live in the Four Streams. This is how it was meant to be.I love this description of the early church: "All the believers were one in heart" (Acts 4:32 ). There is a camaraderie being expressed there, a bond, an espri de corps. It means they all love the same thing, they all want the same thing, and they are bonded together to find it come hell or high water. And hell or high water will come, friends, and this will be the test of whether or not your band will make it: If you are one in heart. Judas betrayed the brothers because his heart was never really with them, just as Cipher betrays the company on the Nebuchadnezzar and as Boromir betrays the fellowship of the Ring. Good Lord — churches split over the size of the parking lot or the color of the carpet. Most churches are not "one in heart."God is calling together little communities of the heart, to fight for one another and for the hearts of those who have not yet been set free. That commeraderie, that intimacy, that incredible impact by a few stouthearted souls — that is available. It is the Christian life as Jesus gave it to us. It is completely normal. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. (Rom. 8:34)Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. (Heb. 7:24–25) These passages intrigue me deeply. It is a source of enormous comfort to know that Jesus is interceding for me. (Did you know that Jesus prays for you?!) But to be honest, it is also a little sobering to know that I am living in a story where Jesus needs to pray for me! Wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus is praying over your life right now? Imagine you could agree in prayer with the Son of God — that ought to add some serious firepower to your prayers! Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

“Life,” as a popular saying goes, “is not a dress rehearsal. Live it to the fullest.” What a setup for a loss of heart. No one gets all he desires; no one even comes close. If this is it, we are lost. But what if life is a dress rehearsal? What if the real production is about to begin? That is precisely what Jesus says; he tells us that we are being shaped, prepared, groomed for a part in the grand drama that is coming. In The Call, Os Guinness writes about a delightful story told by Artie Shaw, a famous clarinetist during the big band era:Maybe twice in my life I reached what I wanted to. Once we were playing “These Foolish Things” and at the end the band stops and I play a little cadenza. That cadenza — no one can do it better. Let’s say it’s five bars. That’s a very good thing to have done in a lifetime. An artist should be judged by his best, just as an athlete. Pick out my one or two best things and say, “That’s what we did: all the rest was rehearsal.”All the rest was rehearsal — not for just a few shining moments, but for an eternity of joy. Realizing this is immensely freeing. How many of your plans take an unending future into account? “Let’s see, I’m going to be alive forevermore, so ... if I don’t get this done now, I’ll get to it later.” This is so important, for no human life reaches its potential here.I was talking with a playwright several years ago. His career was not panning out the way he deeply wanted it to, and he was becoming rather depressed. It wasn’t a matter of being unqualified; he was, and is, a very gifted writer. But few playwrights achieve anything like success. Life wasn’t inviting him to be who he was — yet. He had never once considered that he would be a great writer in the coming kingdom, and that he was merely in training now. His day was yet to come. Understanding that put his life in an entirely new light. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

When the curtain goes up on the story of humanity, we see God in a flurry of breathtaking, dramatic actions that we rather blandly call “creation.” Remember, we’re looking for the motives of his heart. Why is he doing all this? We know he already had the perfect relationship and that he has suffered a betrayal in the heart of heaven simply for the offense of sharing it. Now we see him preparing to woo our hearts with a world that is beautiful and funny and full of adventure. Don’t rush ahead to the Fall. Stay here a moment and feel God’s happiness with it all. Yosemite and Yellowstone and Maui and the Alps; mangoes and blackberries and cabernet grapes; horses and hummingbirds and rainbow trout. “The morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7).God creates man and woman and sets them in Paradise. How long had he been planning this? Are we merely the replacement for the angels he lost, the first date he can find on the rebound? The first chapter of Ephesians gives a look into God’s motives here:"Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son ... Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living." (vv. 4–6, 11 The Message)Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

I am deep in the jungle of the assault, and the only verse I can even remember to hang on to is, “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). I repeat it to myself. Over and over. It gives me strength to fight the distress, contempt, and judgment.The enemy seems to be weakening.I have to remember this: the issue is never the presenting sin. The issue is the surrender, however subtle, of our hearts. The open door, the agreement. What follows is the enemy’s real goal — our separation from God and from our true selves. I think most Christians never see the battle. They think they crave evil things, and they embrace the resulting contempt for their own hearts as true conviction. Then they assume that, of course, God is going to be distant and they live under all of that for years. “My heart is evil. I am such a wretch. Of course God is distant.” They think that’s the Christian life.But it’s not.Or at least, it doesn’t have to be. Remember Christian in the valley of the burning pits. Remember where this stuff really comes from. This isn’t your true heart — this is your enemy. Fight back. Guard your heart. The assault will lift, if you hold fast. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

God begins our courtship with a surprise. Taking the blindfold off, he turns us around and reveals his handmade wedding present. “Here,” he says. “It’s yours. Enjoy yourselves. Do you like it? Take it for a spin.” A lavish gift indeed. What’s he up to? Flowers, chocolates, exotic vacations, dinners at the finest restaurants — any person would feel pursued. But what are his intentions? Surprisingly, we see in the first glimpse of God’s wildness the goodness of his heart — he gives us our freedom. In order for a true romance to occur, we had to be free to reject him. In Disappointment with God, Philip Yancey reminds us that the powers of the Author aren’t sufficient to win our hearts. Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love ... In a concentration camp, the guards possess almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then bury your closest friend or even your own mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle — the kind we may secretly long for — do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, “God’s problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God’s problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life.” The wildness of giving us freedom is even more staggering when we remember that God has already paid dearly for giving freedom to the angels. But because of his grand heart he goes ahead and takes the risk, an enormous, colossal risk. The reason he didn’t make puppets is because he wanted lovers. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today.

The family is … like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy.Chesterton could have been talking about a little fellowship (our true family, because it is the Family of God). It is a royal mess. I will not whitewash this. It is disruptive. Going to church with hundreds of other people to sit and hear a sermon doesn't ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That's why most folks prefer it. Because community will. It will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known and therein lies the power and therein lies the danger. Aren't there moments when all those little companies, in all those stories, hang by a thread? Galadriel says to Frodo, "Your quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true."We've experienced incredible disappointments in our fellowship. We have, every last one of us, hurt one another. Sometimes deeply. Last year there was a night when Stasi and I laid out a vision for where we thought things should be going — our life-long dream for redemptive community. We hoped the Company would leap to it with loud "Hurrahs! Hurrah for John and Stasi!" Far from it. Their response was more on the level of blank stares. Our dream was mishandled — badly. Stasi was sick to her stomach; she wanted to leave the room and throw up. I was … stunned. Disappointed. I felt the dive towards a total loss of heart. The following day I could feel my heart being pulled towards resentment. It's moments like that which usually toll the beginning of the end for most attempts at community. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

We know a time will come for us to look back with our Lord over the story of our lives. Every hidden thing shall be made known, every word spoken in secret shall be uttered. My soul shrinks back; how will this not be an utter horror? The whole idea of judgment has been terribly twisted by our enemy. One evangelistic tract conveys the popular idea that at some point shortly upon our arrival in heaven the lights will dim and God will give the signal for the videotape of our entire life to be played before the watching universe: every shameful act, every wicked thought. How can this be so? If there is "now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1), how is it possible there will be shame later? God himself shall clothe us in white garments (Rev. 3:5). Will our Lover then strip his beloved so that the universe may gawk at her? Never.However God may choose to evaluate our lives, whatever memory of our past we shall have in heaven, we know this: It will only contribute to our joy. We will read our story by the light of redemption and see how God has used both the good and the bad, the sorrow and the gladness for our welfare and his glory. With the assurance of total forgiveness we will be free to know ourselves fully, walking again through the seasons of life to linger over the cherished moments and stand in awe at God's grace for the moments we have tried so hard to forget. Our gratitude and awe will swell into worship of a Lover so strong and kind as to make us fully his own.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

We exercise because we want to grow stronger; we take vitamins in the hope of being healthy; we attend language classes expecting to learn a new language. We travel for adventure; we work in the hope of prospering; we love partly in the hope of being loved. So why Christianity? What is the effect Christianity is intended to have upon a person who becomes a Christian, seeks to live as a Christian?The way you answer that question is mighty important. Your beliefs about this will shape your convictions about nearly everything else. It will shape your understanding of the purpose of the Gospel; it will shape your understanding of what you believe God is up to in a person’s life. The way you answer this one question will shape your thoughts about church and community, service and justice, prayer and worship. It is currently shaping the way you interpret your experiences and your beliefs about your relationship with God.What is Christianity supposed to do to a person? Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

Life is not a list of propositions, it is a series of dramatic scenes. 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. Our souls speak not in the naked facts of mathematics or the abstract propositions of systematic theology; they speak the images and emotions of story. Contrast your enthusiasm for studying a textbook with the offer to go to a movie, read a novel, or listen to the stories of someone else’s life. Elie Wiesel suggests that “God created man because he loves stories.” 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.For hundreds of years, our culture has been losing its story. The Enlightenment dismissed the idea that there is an Author but tried to hang on to the idea that we could still have a Larger Story, life could still make sense, and everything was headed in a good direction. Western culture rejected the mystery and transcendence of the Middle Ages and placed its confidence in pragmatism and progress, the pillars of the Modern Era, the Age of Reason. But once we had rid ourselves of the Author, it didn’t take long to lose the Larger Story. In the Postmodern Era, all we have left are our small stories. The central belief of our times is that there is no story, nothing hangs together, all we have are bits and pieces, the random days of our lives. Tragedy still brings us to tears and heroism still lifts our hearts, but there is no context for any of it. Life is just a sequence of images and emotions without rhyme or reason.So, what are we left to do? Create our own story line to bring some meaning to our experiences. Our heart is made to live in a Larger Story; having lost that we do the best we can by developing our own smaller dramas. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

When things get hard, it can feel like the foundations of your life are giving way. It is good to remember that our foundation is firm, based on the finished work of Jesus Christ for us. There are some things that remain true, at all times and for all of God’s children no matter what. It’s good to let your mind and your heart rest in these truths. Read these aloud. Remember: I am loved. (Jeremiah 31:3) I am secure. (John 10:28-29) I am forgiven. (Colossians 2:13) God is with me. (Hebrews 13:5) Type these up and keep them handy for when the storms come. Paste them in your journal. Tape them to the bathroom mirror. For the storms will come beloved. The wind will howl and the waters will rise. And Jesus, who calmed the storm, who is indeed able to calm all storms, is now and ever will be your ever present help in times of trouble. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

Some years into our spiritual journey, after the waves of anticipation that mark the beginning of any pilgrimage have begun to ebb into life's middle years of service and busyness, a voice speaks to us in the midst of all we are doing. There is something missing in all of this, it suggests. There is something more.The voice often comes in the middle of the night or the early hours of morning, when our hearts are most unedited and vulnerable. At first, we mistake the source of this voice and assume it is just our imagination. We fluff up our pillow, roll over, and go back to sleep. Days, weeks, even months go by and the voice speaks to us again: Aren't you thirsty? Listen to your heart. There is something missing.We listen and we are aware of ... a sigh. And under the sigh is something dangerous, something that feels adulterous and disloyal to the religion we are serving. We sense a passion deep within; it feels reckless, wild.We tell ourselves that this small, passionate voice is an intruder who has gained entry because we have not been diligent enough in practicing our religion. Our pastor seems to agree with this assessment and exhorts us from the pulpit to be more faithful. We try to silence the voice with outward activity, redoubling our efforts at Christian service. We join a small group and read a book on establishing a more effective prayer life. We train to be part of a church evangelism team. We tell ourselves that the malaise of spirit we feel even as we step up our religious activity is a sign of spiritual immaturity, and we scold our heart for its lack of fervor.Sometime later, the voice in our heart dares to speak to us again, more insistently this time. Listen to me — there is something missing in all this. You long to be in a love affair, an adventure. You were made for something more. You know it. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Paul speaks of different glories — the glory of the sun, as compared to the glory of the moon. There are different humilities as well. You have the humility of setting aside an office — the king takes off his crown to become a pauper in the street. But there is the greater humility of setting aside the power — the Son of God lays down his glory to become a human being. It is the humility of utter dependence. Jesus wept, he prayed, he learned obedience. So that we might learn to do the same. What we are witnessing when Jesus “disciples” his followers is something like the emperor stepping down in the arena to face the lions with us, show us how it’s done, using only the tools available to us. Staggering. And so hopeful. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

When we first think of being in a relationship with God, we probably picture him as somewhat flashy, even as many of us tried to be (at least us guys) when we were dating. He gave Jacob visions of angels descending and ascending to heaven; he parted the Red Sea for Moses and made the sun stand still for a day so the Israelites could win a battle. He definitely makes an impression. But you kind of wonder what he’s like when you’re alone with him. Would he just stay the life of the party, still playing to the crowd?An image from the Scriptures shows us a very different side of God. A picture of the way God desires to commune with us is found in 1 Kings 19, where we find the prophet Elijah worn out and afraid, fleeing from Jezebel. She has been trying to kill him ever since he did the same to her prophets. God tenderly ministers to Elijah, twice bringing him food and water. Elijah, strengthened, travels forty days and forty nights until he reaches Mt. Horeb, where he goes to sleep in a cave. The Lord wakes him and listens to his lament about what it is like to be God’s prophet. Elijah is worn out from “doing” and badly in need of restoration of spirit. A great wind strikes the mountain, followed by an earthquake and a fire. And God is in none of these. Finally, Elijah hears a “gentle whisper.” And it is in the gentle whisper that he finds God. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Revelation 20:7–10)A moment of silence, please.Pause and let this be true: evil is judged and utterly destroyed. Forever and ever. Not just in the fairy tale, but here in reality, in our Story. Satan, his armies, and every form of evil are destroyed with a punishment that never ends, under justice unrelenting.It feels like a ten-ton weight being lifted off my being.What will it be like to no longer be assaulted? To be utterly free from accusation; to look in the mirror and hear no accusing thoughts or voices. To be completely free of all temptation and the sabotage of your character — not because you are successfully resisting it in a moment of great resolve, but because it is no longer in existence, anywhere in the world. What will it be like to have the dark clouds lifted between us and our beloved Jesus, that veil that so often clouds our relationship with him? Imagine when all the physical affliction, emotional torment, abuse — all the evil in this world has vanished.Think of it — what evils will you no longer have to live with personally? Oh, the joy we will experience when we get to watch with our own eyes the Enemy brought down for good, cast into his eternal torment! Oh, the hope that begins to rise at the thought of a world where the Enemy no longer gets to do what he does. To see our loved ones released from their lifelong battles. To be released from our own lifelong battles, knowing with utter surety that the kingdom of death and darkness is forever destroyed. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

In all of our hearts lies a longing for a Sacred Romance. It will not go away in spite of our efforts over the years to anesthetize or ignore its song, or attach it to a single person or endeavor. It is a Romance couched in mystery and set deeply within us. It cannot be categorized into propositional truths or fully known any more than studying the anatomy of a corpse would help us know the person who once inhabited it.Philosophers call this Romance, this heart yearning set within us, the longing for transcendence; the desire to be part of something larger than ourselves, to be part of something out of the ordinary that is good. Transcendence is what we experience in a small but powerful way when our city's football team wins the big game against tremendous odds. The deepest part of our heart longs to be bound together in some heroic purpose with others of like mind and spirit.Indeed, if we reflect back on the journey of our heart, the Romance has most often come to us in the form of two deep desires: the longing for adventure that requires something of us, and the desire for intimacy — to have someone truly know us for ourselves, while at the same time inviting us to know them in the naked and discovering way lovers come to know each other on the marriage bed. The emphasis is, perhaps, more on adventure for men and slightly more on intimacy for women. Yet, both desires are strong in us as men and women. In the words of friends, these two desires come together in us all as a longing to be in a relationship of heroic proportions. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

We are looking to find the presence of God in our inmost being, to experience him and commune with him there. By tapping into his actual presence within us, we are able to receive the strength that prevails. It begins with simply giving him your attention. As Theophan the Recluse instructed, “One must descend with the mind into the heart, and there stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing, within you.” (The Art of Prayer)This is one of those quotes that sounds all profound and spiritual ... but we don’t really know what he’s talking about. It seems beyond our experience, but I don’t think it needs to be. The key idea here is the descending part. We learn to drop down into the presence of God within us, tap into his strength there.When Theophan instructed us to “descend with the mind into the heart,” I think by our “mind” he was referring to our conscious attention, and by “heart” he meant our inmost being, the Depths.The psalmist cried out to God from his innermost being; he then gave the fullness of his attention to God: Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. ... I wait for the lord, my whole being waits ... I wait for the lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Psalm 130:1–2, 5–6)We set aside a time to give God our undivided attention (the battle is always for your attention). The new thought is that we are giving our attention to God-who-lives-within-us. As we tune out the world around us and tune in to our hearts, we become aware of the presence of Jesus-within-us. Take the experience of being comforted by God. Most of the time, nearly all of the time, that comfort is something we experience within. It might be facilitated by a comforting word or a passage of Scripture, but the comfort itself is taking place within us. There you go — you are tuning in to the work of God within you.Finding God always begins with loving him.As we commune with God’s presence within us, we are able to receive the strength that prevails. His glorious resilience is always available to us. Simply lingering in the presence of Jesus-within-us strengthens us. The communion is the point. Remember, just because these are supernatural graces doesn’t mean they are dramatic. Don’t look for fireworks and explosions. God is gentle. Receiving his love and strength is often a gentle experience. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

Start with something you love. The laughter of your child. Sunlight on the ocean. Your beloved dog. A favorite song, music itself. Perhaps a photo, like my caribou. A favorite spot — your garden, the cliffs at the sea, the family cabin. Someone dear to you. We begin with the things we love; this is the way back, the path home. For we don’t always draw the connection — God made these specifically for you, and he gave you the heart to love them. You’ll be out for a bike ride in the very early morning, cool breeze in your face, all the sweet, fresh aromas it brings, the exhilaration of speed, and your heart spontaneously sings, I love this! The next step is to say, So does God. He made this moment; he made these things. He is the creator of everything I love. Your heart will naturally respond by opening towards him.It’s like throwing your faith a lifeline: Every wonderful thing in your life is a gift from God, an expression of his heart towards you. All your precious memories, each and every one — your eighth birthday, when you got that little red bike that awakened your love of riding, which carried right on into your adult life. That perfect powder day, when you and your fiancé skied run after run, then warmed up by the fire in the lodge. The vacation you still think about, how fun it was, how carefree you felt. Your wedding reception: the dancing, the inextinguishable joy of it all. Every moment you have ever been happy, thrilled, comforted, hopeful ... that was God loving you. Such gifts come from no other source. “You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. ... Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father” (Psalm 145:16; James 1:17).No other act will bring you a greater measure of God than loving him, actively engaging your heart and soul in loving him. Because as we do, the flower of our being opens up to the sunshine of his presence and all the goodness he longs to breathe into us. The best way to get there is to think upon the things we love and remind ourselves, “This is from God; this is his true heart.” Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King”George MacDonald posed this question in his brilliant book Unspoken Sermons: “How have you learned the Father?”If we were to be honest and dive into our own inner world (and that of most men), we would discover that the story of fatherlessness is not the exception but the norm. If we were to pause, let that soak in, and be honest, it might help us unearth a core assumption obscured below the surface of our masculine heart. What comes to mind, emotionally and unedited, when you think of your full experience and observations of “father” in our culture? Look at the examples of many of the men you grew up around — coaches, teachers, fathers of friends, the men in your masculine heritage — in these specific places in your story. I’m asking you to pause and take stock honestly. Write down the first ten words. Here’s why this is so significant to grasp: the primary place we establish our core beliefs about God as Father is our experience of our earthly father, the way “father” has been expressed in our story. This is why MacDonald went on to say that it’s better not to have known the Father than to have learned him wrong.The single greatest factor that will shape our freedom, our strength, and our ability to become a king is receiving a spirit of sonship and allowing our understanding of our true Father to be reformed in every facet where it was harmed, lost, or learned wrong. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

This is, after all, a love story. Why else would love be the deepest yearning of our hearts? Isn’t love the greatest joy of human existence? And the loss of love our greatest sorrow? Do not the two great commands confirm this? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart ... and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Love, for this is your destiny. Love God, and love each other. The banners that fly over God’s kingdom are the banners of love. It’s not about Bible study and faithful church attendance, not even dutiful marriage. Take the heart out of all that and it will absolutely kill you. This story is meant to be a passionate love affair. “I have loved you,” God says, “with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3). We live in a love story, a romance written before the foundations of the earth. Aren’t the most impassioned pleas of the Bible directed toward love? “Love one another sincerely, from the heart.” (1 Peter 1:22) “Beloved, let us love one another.” (1 John 4:7) “A new command I give you — love one another.” (John 13:34) You begin to get the sense that love is central to this story. We are urged to love, commanded to love, warned to love, implored to love. With abandon. Over and over and over again. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

A curious warning is given to us in Peter's first epistle. There he tells us to be ready to give the reason for the hope that lies within us to everyone who asks (3:15). Now, what's strange about that passage is this: no one ever asks. When was the last time someone stopped you to inquire about the reason for the hope that lies within you? You're at the market, say, in the frozen food section. A friend you haven't seen for some time comes up to you, grasps you by both shoulders and pleads, "Please, you've got to tell me. Be honest now. How can you live with such hope? Where does it come from? I must know the reason." In talking with hundreds of Christians, I've met only one or two who have experienced something like this.Yet God tells us to be ready, so what's wrong? To be blunt, nothing about our lives is worth asking about. There's nothing intriguing about our hopes, nothing to make anyone curious. Not that we don't have hopes; we do. We hope we'll have enough after taxes this year to take a summer vacation. We hope our kids don't wreck the car. We hope our favorite team goes to the World Series. We hope our health doesn't give out, and so on. Nothing wrong with any of those hopes; nothing unusual, either. Everyone has hopes like that, so why bother asking us? It's life as usual. Sanctified resignation has become the new abiding place of contemporary Christians. No wonder nobody asks. Do you want the life of any Christian you know? Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

The mighty victory is staying true to God. It is maintaining a mature perspective — where God means everything to you — through glorious breakthrough and in the midst of terrible affliction. If you do not hold fast to this, you will be shaken when your prayers do not seem to prevail; you will fall prey to feelings of failure or despair. Or, you will be grasping at promises of unending victory, looking down on those who do not see things as you do. You will be forced to ignore the sufferings of Christ, and our honor in sharing in them. And you will miss the goal of this life, which is not unending breakthrough, but something far more beautiful and everlasting — the beauty of Jesus Christ, which your Father is committed to forming in you: “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him” (Rom. 8:29 The Message). Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

Zechariah’s visions are recorded in a short book bearing his name toward the end of the Old Testament portion of your Bible. I want to focus on one mighty, mighty promise found in chapter 2:Then I looked up, and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand. I asked, “Where are you going?”He answered me, “To measure Jerusalem, to find out how wide and how long it is.”While the angel who was speaking to me was leaving, another angel came to meet him and said to him: “Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it. And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will be its glory within.’” (Zechariah 2:1–5)God promises to be a wall of fire around his people, and within that shield, his Glory. Talk about refuge! Who could possibly assault us through the Fire and Glory of the Almighty?I do think we should be careful as we claim promises from the Scriptures that are extrapolated from vague references, especially Old Testament references. Isaiah 45:2–3 would be a good example:I will go before youand will level the mountains;I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron.I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places,so that you may know that I am the LORD,the God of Israel, who summons you by name.A wonderful promise, and one any son or daughter of the Most High would want to lay hold of!But verse 1 makes it very clear that this promise was given to a specific individual at a specific moment in history: Cyrus, the last king of Anshan and founder of the Persian Empire.This is what the LORD says to his anointed,to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold ofto subdue nations before himand to strip kings of their armor,to open doors before himso that gates will not be shut:I will go before you.Does this mean we are barred from laying hold of this promise in Isaiah 45:2–3? By no means! Despite the specific person and historical context in this passage, it reveals the kinds of things our God does. If we walk with humility, we, too, can ask God to do those kinds of things for us. The mystic reads and understands passages like this with a childlike heart and says, This is my God! This is the kind of thing he does! I’m going to ask him to do it for me! Our family and team have prayed Isaiah 45:2–3 into many circumstances needing breakthrough, with wonderful results. Humbly, with childlike faith.Why would our loving God, who promises to be our refuge and shield, limit this beautiful promise from Zechariah 2:5 to a single moment in time? He’s not like that, for the simple reason that his Fire and Glory are essential to his nature, his very being. So when we take refuge in him, Fire and Glory will of course surround us because he surrounds us!Want More? Order your copy of Experience Jesus. Really. today

Every man wants a battle to fight. It's the whole thing with boys and weapons. And look at the movies men love — Braveheart, Gladiator, Top Gun, High Noon, Saving Private Ryan. Men are made for battle. (And ladies, don't you love the heroes of those movies? You might not want to fight in a war, but don't you long for a man who will fight for you? To have Daniel Day-Lewis look you in the eyes and say, "No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you"? Women don't fear a man's strength if he is a good man.)Men also long for adventure. Adventure is a deeply spiritual longing in the heart of every man. Adventure requires something of us, puts us to the test. Though we may fear the test, at the same time we yearn to be tested, to discover that we have what it takes.Finally, every man longs for a Beauty to rescue. He really does. Where would Robin Hood be without Marian, or King Arthur without Guinevere? Lonely men fighting lonely battles. You see, it's not just that a man needs a battle to fight. He needs someone to fight for. There is nothing that inspires a man to courage so much as the woman he loves. Most of the daring (and okay, sometimes ridiculous) things young men do are to impress the girls. Men go to war carrying photos of their sweethearts in their wallets — that is a metaphor of this deeper longing to fight for the Beauty. This is not to say that a woman is a "helpless creature" who can't live her life without a man. I'm saying that men long to offer their strength on behalf of a woman.Now — can you see how the desires of a man's heart and the desires of a woman's heart were at least meant to fit beautifully together? A woman in the presence of a good man, a real man, loves being a woman. His strength allows her feminine heart to flourish. His pursuit draws out her beauty. And a man in the presence of a real woman loves being a man. Her beauty arouses him to play the man; it draws out his strength. She inspires him to be a hero. Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

Life is the offer, friends. Let us not forget that.For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)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 10:10)This is the way to have eternal life — to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. (John 17:3 NLT)There is no simpler or more beautiful way to say it than this: Act Four is the restoration of life as it was always meant to be.It is the return of the beauty, the intimacy, and the adventure we were created to enjoy and have longed for every day of our lives. And yet, better, for it is immortal. We can never lose it again. It cannot be taken away. Sunrise and sunset tell the tale every day, remembering Eden's glory, foretelling Eden's return.And what adventures shall unfold when we are given the kingdom that was always meant to be ours? Listen to this:Then the King will say to those on his right, "Come,you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world." (Matt. 25:34, emphasis added)Adam and Eve, and all their sons and daughters after them, were created to reign over the earth — to explore and discover and create and do all those things you see people do when they are at their very best.That is our destiny. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

You do know what God is after in your own life, don’t you? Maybe that’s why we stay so busy — to avoid knowing, so we can avoid dealing with it.And you do know that the “quick fix” doesn’t ever work. Simply telling myself, “You are too busy, John. You’ve got to slow down,” is about as effective as telling an addict to quit. (Has it worked for you?)There are forces driving the way I live, reasons and compulsions written deep in my soul. I know where my pushing and striving come from. They come from unbelief, from some deep fear that it’s all up to me. Life is up to me. I’ve got to make as much headway as I can before the bottom drops out. Make hay while the sun shines ’cause it isn’t always going to shine and what’s that underlying dread? God is not just after behavior modification (as in, stop it), but real and deep and lasting change.And that brings me to another assumption that we must hold if we would walk with God — true holiness requires the healing of our souls.How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. (Ephesians 1:3–4 The Message)Whole and holy. The two go hand in hand. Oh, how important this is. You can’t find the holiness you want without deep wholeness. And you can’t find the wholeness you want without deep holiness. You can’t simply tell the meth addict to quit. She does need to quit, but she requires profound healing to be able to quit. You can’t just tell a raging man to stop losing his temper. He would love to stop. He’d give anything to stop. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know all the forces within him that swell up and overwhelm him with anger. Telling him to stop raging is like telling him to hold back the sea.For too long there have been two camps in Christendom. One is the holiness, or “righteousness,” crowd. They are the folks holding up the standard, preaching a message of moral purity. The results have been ... mixed. Some morality, and a great deal of guilt and shame. Very little lasting change comes from this approach. Hey, I’m all for purity. It’s just that you can’t get there without the healing of your soul.God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

Eve is given to Adam as his ezer kenegdo — or as many translations have it, his "help meet" or "helper." Doesn't sound like much, does it? It makes me think of Hamburger Helper. But Robert Alter says this is "a notoriously difficult word to translate." It means something far more powerful than just "helper"; it means "lifesaver." The phrase is only used elsewhere of God, when you need him to come through for you desperately. "There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens to help you" (Deut. 33:26). Eve is a life giver; she is Adam's ally. It is to both of them that the charter for adventure is given. It will take both of them to sustain life. And they will both need to fight together.Eve is deceived...and rather easily, as my friend Jan Meyers points out. In The Allure of Hope, Jan says, "Eve was convinced that God was withholding something from her." Not even the extravagance of Eden could convince her that God's heart is good. "When Eve was [deceived], the artistry of being a woman took a fateful dive into the barren places of control and loneliness." Now every daughter of Eve wants to "control her surroundings, her relationships, her God." No longer is she vulnerable; now she will be grasping. No longer does she want simply to share in the adventure; now she wants to control it. And as for her beauty, she either hides it in fear and anger, or she uses it to secure her place in the world. "In our fear that no one will speak on our behalf or protect us or fight for us, we start to recreate both ourselves and our role in the story. We manipulate our surroundings so we don't feel so defenseless." Fallen Eve either becomes rigid or clingy. Put simply, Eve is no longer simply inviting. She is either hiding in busyness or demanding that Adam come through for her; usually, an odd combination of both. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

We’ve lived in Colorado now for more than twenty years, but I’ve never really learned to snowboard. I mean, I’ve tried. But it was always a messy, hazardous, hesitant affair. Like a dog on roller skates. There wasn’t a lot of joy in it for me. I was tense, apprehensive. My basic problem was this: I couldn’t get myself to commit, to lean into it. You have to lean forward; you have to lean down slope. If you fight that, you end up constantly battling gravity and balance and the downward pull of things. The good riders just go for it — they commit, they lean into it, and off they go. Then comes the joy. I’ve never known that joy.I’ve watched friends who are surfers, and it’s the same dynamic. There is a moment when you have to commit; you have to go with the wave or not. Yes, there is some paddling on your part, but when the wave picks you up, your choice is to let it, to go with it, to accept its power and let it hurl you forward. You don’t create the wave; the power is utterly beyond you. Once it has you in its mighty grip, your part is to cooperate. Then the beauty comes.Holiness works the same way.What I mean is this: The power is not ours. The power comes from God, from the presence of the living Jesus Christ inside us. He is the wave. If we think we have to paddle fast enough to create the entire experience, we will end up frustrated and exhausted from all the striving. The name for that is Religion. God offers something far better: “Let me be the wave.”"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed — not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence — continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." (Philippians 2:12–13)Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

John the Beloved, also called John the Seer because of his authorship of the book of Revelation, was taken into the Kingdom of God by the Spirit. He visited the city of God, and there he saw the River:Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:1–2)The City of God is a real thing, certainly; the Tree of Life is real; the River is real.It is critical for the ordinary mystic to understand the availability of the River in this current life:On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7:37–38)It is an invitation as powerful as when Christ said, “If anyone opens the door, I will come in.” Jesus comes, really; the River comes too.We also have the wonderful promise of Psalm 1, which links our humanity to the Tree of Life planted by the River in the City of God:That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in seasonand whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:3)A human life can only be evergreen if it is drawing upon the River of Life!Want More? Order your copy of Experience Jesus. Really. today

The story of Cinderella turns upon an invitation. Up until the moment that the courier from the palace arrives at her door, Cinderella’s life seems set in stone. She will always be a washerwoman, a cellar girl. Her enemies will forever have the upper hand. She will live a life of enduring disappointments, though she will suffer them nobly. No other life seems possible. This is her fate. Then, word from the prince arrives—an invitation to a ball. It is at this point that all hell breaks loose. Her longings are awakened. Her enemies become enraged. And her life is never the same. How gracious that it comes by invitation. As a woman, you don’t need to strive or arrange; you don’t need to make it happen. You only need to respond. Granted—Cinderella’s response took immense courage, courage that came only out of a deep desire to find the life her heart knew it was meant for. She wanted to go. But it took steadfastness to press through her fears just to get to the ball. It took courage not to abandon all hope even after she danced with the prince. (She ran back to the cellar, as we all do.) But she became the woman she was born to be, and the kingdom was never the same. It is a beautiful parable. The same holds true for Mary, the mother of Jesus—only it’s far, far more weighty. Her life also turned upon an invitation. The angel came as the courier of the King. But still, she needed to say yes. He would not force the whole thing upon her. Her heart needed to be willing. She would need her heart through all that followed. Accepting God’s invitation required remarkable courage, and once again all hell broke loose. Her Enemy raged. She nearly lost her marriage. She and Joseph certainly lost their standing in the synagogue. Her life became an incredible story. Mary needed a steadfastness of heart to keep saying yes to God. But she became the woman she was born to be, and the Kingdom was never the same. It all started with an invitation. The invitations of our Prince come to us in all sorts of ways. Your heart itself, as a woman, is an invitation. An invitation delivered in the most intimate and personalized way. Your Lover has written something on your heart. It is a call to find a life of Romance and to protect that love affair as your most precious treasure. A call to cultivate the beauty you hold inside, and to unveil your beauty on behalf of others. And it is a call to adventure, to become the ezer the world desperately needs you to be. Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. (Isa. 45:2-3)God's imagery of going before us lets us know that he desires us to go on a journey. This is not so frightening. Most of us are aware that the Christian life requires a pilgrimage of some sort. We know we are sojourners. What we have sometimes not given much thought to is what kind of a journey we are to be taking.Not realizing it is a journey of the heart that is called for, we make a crucial mistake. We come to a place in our spiritual life where we hear God calling us. We know he is calling us to give up the less-wild lovers that have become so much a part of our identity, embrace our nakedness, and trust in his goodness.As we stand at this intersection of God's calling, we look down two highways that appear to travel in very different directions. The first highway quickly takes a turn and disappears from our view. We cannot see clearly where it leads, but there are ominous clouds in the near distance. Standing still long enough to look down this road makes us aware of an anxiety inside, an anxiety that threatens to crystallize into unhealed pain and forgotten disappointment. We check our valise and find no up-to-date road map but only the torn and smudged parchment containing the scribbled anecdotes and travelers' warnings by a few who have traveled the way of the heart before us. They encourage us to follow them, but their rambling journals give no real answers to our queries on how to navigate the highway.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Of course we are nearing the end of the age. Jesus seemed pretty frustrated at his contemporaries’ refusal to understand their times. “Fools,” he called them. Because knowing your moment matters. Knowing where you are in the story is critical for your survival. Every moment is not like another.Living at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings is different from living at the end of the story. In the early stages we are in the happy Shire; we have an invitation to Bilbo’s birthday party. But the story races on, picking up momentum toward the end where we find ourselves in the battle before the gates of Mordor — the great fight at the gates of hell itself. Do you see the difference and why Jesus wants you to know where you are?The world keeps trying to get back to Bilbo’s party, but the story doesn’t stay there. No story does. You have to go forward to get to the party!Look — the closest and dearest friends of Jesus thought the end of the age was drawing near:Dear children, this is the last hour. (1 John 2:18)The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind. (1 Peter 4:7)You either have to write this off by thinking, Well, those guys were obviously wrong. Or adopt a little humility and start with the fact that the Scriptures are from God, that Peter and John were speaking by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and maybe it is we who don’t see clearly. It’s quite possible that their moment was the “last hour,” and therefore we are in the last seconds of the age! There is good reason to think so.Now, this is not a book on prophecy. Some folks find strength in prophecy. Most people are rather confused by it and leave it for others to sort out. Nevertheless, there are clear signs we ought to be paying attention to. One of the most significant signs was given to us by Jesus in what is known as the Olivet Discourse, where Christ laid out the signs of his coming and his counsel for living through the end of the age:And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14)The gospel of Jesus Christ needs to reach every nation, and then Christ will return. That’s fairly straightforward; that’s a sign we can recognize. First this, then that.Guess what — there’s growing consensus among missionary leaders that every nation will have received the testimony of the gospel in the next decade or two. This sign, given to us by Jesus himself, is about to be fulfilled. As the leader of a missions organization network reported,Even as recently as 2015, there were still more than 1,400 groups with no known Christians. But today, there are only a few hundred unengaged groups remaining, and hundreds of people groups are being engaged with the gospel each year. By God’s grace ... the church will reach all of the remaining groups by the end of 2022, or shortly thereafter. We’re very close to the finish line. (Edward Dolnick, Down the Great Unknown)It’s possible that by the time you read this sentence, the gospel will have reached all nations. That ought to get your attention! It isn’t the only sign Christ gave us, but it’s one of the most significant. Which means the promised return is near. Very near. I am not predicting dates, folks. I’m simply pointing out that the story of God is sweeping toward a climax.Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

We must open our hearts to all the other ways God is bringing beauty into our lives. The beauty of a flower garden or moonlight on water, the beauty of music or a written word. Our souls crave Beauty, and if we do not find it we will be famished. We must take in Beauty, often, or we will be taken out by beauty.Learning to be loved, and learning to love, learning to be romanced, and learning to romance — that is what this stage is all about. Not duty. Not merely discipline. But an awakening of our hearts to the Beauty and Love of God, and at the same time (we cannot wait until some later time), we offer our hearts as well — to God, to the women in our lives, to our sons and daughters, to others. This is a love story, after all. As William Blake said, “And we are put on earth a little space / To learn to bear the beams of love.” Or, in Paul’s words, “Be imitators of God ... and live a life of love” (Eph. 5:1–2 NIV). He is a great Romancer. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered By God today

Every great story involves a quest. In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins ran from the door at a quarter till eleven without even so much as a pocket handkerchief and launched on an adventure that would change his life forever. Alice stepped through the looking glass into Wonderland; Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter stumbled through the wardrobe into Narnia. Abraham left his country, his people, and his father's household to follow the most outlandish sort of promise from a God he'd only just met, and he never came back. Jacob and his sons went to Egypt for some groceries and four hundred years later the Israel nation pulled up stakes and headed for home. Peter, Andrew, James, and John all turned on a dime one day to follow the Master, their fishing nets heaped in wet piles behind them. The Sacred Romance involves for every soul a journey of heroic proportions. And while it may require for some a change of geography, for every soul it means a journey of the heart.The choice before us now is to journey or to homestead, to live like Abraham, the friend of God, or like Robinson Crusoe, the lost soul cobbling together some sort of existence with whatever he can salvage from the wreckage of the world. Crusoe was no pilgrim; he was a survivor, hunkered down for the duration. He lived in a very, very small world where he was the lead character and all else found its focus in him. Of course, to be fair, Crusoe was stranded on an island with little hope of rescue. We have been rescued, but still the choice is ours to stay in our small stories, clutching our household gods and false lovers, or to run in search of life.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Giving up has always been a struggle for frail humanity. But when Jesus urges us to ask for strength to escape, he has something particular in mind, something he sees coming: “At that time many will turn away from the faith” (Matthew 24:10).Saint Paul was deeply troubled by this as he wrote his friends living in Thessalonica: “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day [the day Christ returns] will not come unless the falling away comes first” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 NKJV). Prior to the climax of this story, and the wonderful return of Jesus to make everything new, there will be some sort of global Falling Away. The Greek word here is apostasia, and that is why some translations put it this way: “No one is to deceive you in any way! For it will not come unless the apostasy comes first” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 NASB).But the word apostasy conjures up more zombie apocalypse imagery, and that’s not helpful in our effort to understand our situation. I don’t think we’re going to see millions of people tattooing “I hate God; I love Satan” on their chests, or marches in every major city blaspheming Jesus Christ. Satan is much cleverer than all that. I believe what we will see — what we see happening now — is simply people giving up on God in large numbers. Which is why I think the New Life Version has it right: “For the Lord will not come again until many people turn away from God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).I believe we may be witnessing the Great Falling Away. Let me be quick to say that there isn’t a simple explanation nor simplistic solution. Some people are fed up with religion. But much of the turning from God is born out of heartache and disappointment — God did not seem to help. He did not seem to hear. These are the deepest hurts of the human heart. We will explore what to do with those hurts as we go along, but let me say here that giving up your faith is like finding yourself in a desert, your weary legs throbbing with pain. You can’t find your way out by cutting your legs off. God can handle your anger, disappointment, even bitterness. But walking away from Jesus is forsaking your only hope out of the heartache.I bring this up because the enemy is wickedly skilled at pouncing on our vulnerabilities. He is using these trying times to cloud our hearts with unbelief. If in fact the Falling Away is sweeping the earth, we want to have advance warning. It gets in the air like poison, and we don’t want to slowly succumb to it ourselves. It gains a social momentum, and since we are social creatures, we can get swept up in it without a conscious decision on our part.But this is our moment, and Jesus offers us strength, so let us seize it now with both hands while we still can.Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

As we explore the many beautiful and intimate ways Jesus comes to heal our inner being, keep in mind that whatever the damage may be, in any realm of your inner being, the essence of healing prayer is always to facilitate the presence of Jesus into the specific places of damage. Whatever else might be involved, it always begins with, “Jesus, come into this and heal.”Oswald Chambers, a man who wrote profoundly and elegantly on prayer, made a radical statement when he said, “The idea of prayer is not in order to get answers from God.” Good heavens — it’s not? What then is the purpose? “Prayer is perfect and complete oneness with God.” A mighty truth is being uncovered here.Oneness with God is the goal of our existence. It’s not merely to believe in God, although that is better than not believing in him. It is not merely to trust in God, though that is far better than simply believing in God. It is not even to worship God, which is higher still.The destiny of the human soul is union with God. The same oneness that Jesus talked about with his Father is our destiny as well. That’s what we were made for. Prayer is one of his primary means of doing it, drawing us to himself, getting us to pour out our hearts before him so that we can receive his heart toward us. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

Your sin has been dealt with. Your Father has removed it from you "as far as the east is from the west" (Ps. 103:12). Your sins have been washed away (1 Cor. 6:11). When God looks at you he does not see your sin. He has not one condemning thought toward you (Rom. 8:1). But that's not all. You have a new heart. That's the promise of the new covenant: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws" (Ezek. 36:26 -27). There's a reason that it's called good news.Too many Christians today are living back in the old covenant. They've had Jeremiah 17:9 drilled into them and they walk around believing my heart is deceitfully wicked. Not anymore it's not. Read the rest of the book. In Jeremiah 31:33, God announces the cure for all that: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." I will give you a new heart. That's why Paul says in Romans 2:29, "No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit." Sin is not the deepest thing about you. You have a new heart. Did you hear me? Your heart is good.What God sees when he sees you is the real you, the true you, the man he had in mind when he made you. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

The Ephesians passage warns about spiritual strongholds created in our lives when we let “the sun go down” on something. Note that in this case that something isn’t necessarily sin. Paul says, “in your anger do not sin,” so anger does not equal sin. Anger can be a very appropriate reaction to life’s injustices. Nonetheless, failure to deal with that anger (letting the sun go down on it) clearly gives our enemy an opportunity to create footholds or places of bondage in our lives. (By the way, this is a letter written to Christians; it is therefore quite clear that Christians can have demonic strongholds in their lives.) If you let the sun go down on these unresolved issues in your life — the emotional issues, wounds, pain, and the sin that goes with them — you are going to create a mess for yourself down the road. And so a genuine pursuit of holiness requires going back into those places to deal with them now. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today