Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

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

Doing things for God is not the same thing as loving God.Jesus loves the poor — so, movements have arisen that make service to the poor the main thing. Even though Jesus never said that being poor was more noble or even spiritual. The latest craze is justice — so we rush off to the corners of the globe to fight for justice and leave Jesus behind. We actually come to think that service for Jesus is friendship with him. That’s like a friend who washes your car and cleans your house but never goes anywhere with you — never comes to dinner, never wants to take a walk. But they’re a “faithful” friend. Though you never talk.How many children have said, “My dad worked hard to provide for us — but all I ever really wanted was his love”?This is — yet again — one more cunning ploy of the religious to keep us from the kind of intimacy with Jesus that will heal our lives. And change the world. We are not meant to merely love his teaching, or his morals, or his kindness or his social reforms. We are meant to love the man himself, know him intimately; keep this as the first and foremost practice of our lives. It is a fact that people most devoted to the work of the Lord actually spend the least amount of time with him. First things first. Love Jesus. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Down through the ages, followers of Christ have believed that to be able to give God our attention as a regular practice was a very important thing. After vividly recounting the many challenges of faith and character before us, the author of Hebrews says,Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping [fixing] our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith (Hebrews 12:1–2 NLT).Those who look to him are radiant (Psalm 34:5 NIV) Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. (Psalm 119:97–99 NIV)I don’t think we realize how much our use of technology and its assault on our attention has made this difficult to do. You can’t give God your attention when your attention is constantly being targeted and taken captive ... and you’re cooperating.In a blog post entitled "Mobile Blindness," marketing guru Seth Godin writes,We swipe instead of click, we scan instead of read, even our personal email. We get exposure to far more at the surface, but we rarely dig in. Mobile blindness. The quick pass. The inability to linger, and dig deep. It’s just the next thing, the next thing, the next thing.Our precious attention has been groomed and taken hostage. The key is this: the rooted person is able to meditate — give sustained attention to — the revelation of God. Not swipe, not multitask. Lingering focus. So Crawford wonders, “As our mental lives become more fragmented, what is at stake often seems to be nothing less than the question of whether one can maintain a coherent self. I mean a self that is able to act according to settled purposes and ongoing projects, rather than flitting about.”Dear reader — you can’t find more of God when all you’re able to give him is a flit and flicker of your attention.The good news is that we actually have a choice. Unlike persecution, the things currently assaulting us are things we can choose not to participate in. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Any parent or lover knows this: love is chosen. You cannot, in the end, force anyone to love you.So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each person a choice. You have to allow freedom. You cannot force love. God gives us the dignity of freedom, to choose for or against him (and friends, to ignore him is to choose against him).This is the reason for what C.S. Lewis called the Problem of Pain. Why would a kind and loving God create a world where evil is possible? Doesn’t he care about our happiness? Isn’t he good? Indeed, he does and he is. He cares so much for our happiness that he endows us with the capacity to love and to be loved, which is the greatest happiness of all.He endows us with a dignity that is almost unimaginable.For this creator God is no puppeteer.“Trust me in this one thing,” God says to us. “I have given the entire earth to you, for your joy. Explore it; awaken it; take care of it for me. And I have given you one another, for love and romance and friendship. You shall be my intimate allies. But on this one matter, you must trust me. Trust that my heart for you is good, that I am withholding this for a reason. Do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil...or you will die.”And this is where our Story takes its tragic turn. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

I know I’m not alone in having a hard time believing in the love of God for me (we think he loves everyone else), or receiving the love of God, or letting it catch my heart up into life and joy, or, maybe especially, staying there for any reasonable period of time. An hour or two would be amazing. A day would be a triumph. And I’m thinking that maybe part of the reason we have a hard time believing in God’s love for us hides back in our story somewhere. I remember something Gerald May wrote years ago: we need to let ourselves tell our stories of love — how love came to us over the course of our lives, or how it did not come, or how it left. We need to tell the story so that we understand. And I remember thinking at the time, No thank you. I’d rather not go there. Thanks just the same.And I ignored the issue for years.Now I’m trying to bring my heart back to the love of God, let it heal me, and stay there. It feels sometimes like searching through a dark forest for a wounded deer and trying to coax it in so I can touch it.Our story of love is a very tangled story about the most precious thing in our lives (our longing for love). It’s a hard story to tell for two reasons. For one thing, we’re too close to it to often have any clarity at all. Can’t see the forest for the trees. More deeply, it’s a heartbreaking story, and we’re not sure we want to revisit the painful details. That’s why we’re ambivalent about love. Oh, we yearn for it. We want to be loved. But we hide from it too, building defenses against it, fortressing ourselves from being hurt again. We settle for a doughnut.Then we wonder why it’s hard for us to connect with the love of God, let it in so deep that it heals us, and remain in his love. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

What we call “Christianity” is an invasion. The Kingdom of God is advancing into the kingdom of darkness, a campaign to ransom people and the earth God intended us to rule. For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost. All that was lost. If Christianity seems to you to be having rather less than a remarkable impact on the earth, it is because too many Christians have this idea that we are in a waiting game, that we are basically killing time until Jesus comes back and we all get to go to heaven. We’re sitting around like people waiting to catch a flight. That is not what Jesus told us to do; he didn’t say, “Now hold tight in those pews and twiddle your holy thumbs, I’ll be back soon as I can.” He said, “As the Father has sent me, I send you” (John 20:21).Let that sink in for a moment. New orders have been given. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. (Hebrews 12:22–23 NLT)That phrase “the righteous ones ... made perfect.” I can hardly speak. Finally, the totality of our being will be saturated only with goodness. Think of it — think of all that you’re not going to have to wrestle with anymore. The fear that has been your lifelong battle, the anger, the compulsions, the battles to forgive, that nasty root of resentment. No more internal civil wars; no doubt, no lust, no regret; no shame, no self-hatred, no gender confusion. What has plagued you these last many years? What has plagued you all your life? Your Healer will personally lift it from your shoulders.What tender intimacy is foretold when we are promised that our loving Father will wipe every tear from our eyes personally — not only tears of sorrow, but all the tears of shame, guilt, and remorse. That moment alone will make the whole journey worth it.Yet there is more. The armies of heaven ride in on white horses, dressed in white linen. It is a symbol of the righteousness that now radiates from their hearts, the center of their being. The radiance is character; it is goodness. You will be free, alive, whole, young, gorgeous, valiant.Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him — and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own. (1 John 3:2–3 The Messsage)We will have the character, the internal holiness, of Jesus himself.You will finally be everything you’ve ever longed to be. Not only that — it can never be taken from you again. “Eternal” life means life unending, life that never dims nor fades away. You will be in your glory to live as you were meant to live and take on the kingdom assignments God has for you.Have you ever imagined what you would be like if the Fall had never taken place? Have you wondered what an unbroken, unstained, glorious, true, unblemished version of you would be? No false self, no woundedness, nothing shaped by the broken, mad world? No? Me neither. It is almost incomprehensible.But you are going to get to know that person really well. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Our hope is meant to be the anchor of our souls, to keep us steady in the middle of the storms of life. It is set firmly within the truth that Jesus is trustworthy. He has promised us that He is returning and that, when He does, He will make all things right, all things well, and all things new.He will bring us home, to the true home our hearts long for.“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1–3) We received Christ by faith, and we are meant to enjoy Him utterly. We are meant to know and experience joy and to live with the vibrant hope of the glory that is going to be revealed when Jesus returns. Dear ones, He is returning. Say it out loud. Remind yourself.We can live with a defiant joy because our happily ever after is on its way. In Jesus our life is unending and, at the renewal of all things, the life we long for is coming.Really. Honestly. Truly.Yours is no ethereal hope of a next life spent floating in the clouds singing hymns while strumming a harp. Yours is not a future of standing at a distance among the gathering of saints crammed together in the throne room. Yours is not a future where you will be shamed by a giant movie screen replaying your every secret moment before a huge crowd who gasps at your sins. This is not an unending life where you will spend eternity doing something so other than what you now know and enjoy that you simply are unable to imagine it, let alone hope for it. When Jesus returns, you will be transformed, but you won’t be transformed into an angel. You will still be you. Only made perfect. None of the struggles you battle with here will be yours to contend with any longer. Think on that. You will be finally and fully free. You will be all that you were created to be. Your loved ones, too, will at last be utterly and completely whole and free. Let hope rise. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

God heals the earth, and he heals us. We are restored to one another. The earth waits for our healing, and we wait for the earth’s healing. I believe our healing brings about something of the healing of the earth, and I’m certain the healed earth helps to usher in our healing.Our Enemy is the Great Divider. His most poisonous work takes place at the level of fragmentation, dividing families, churches, and fomenting racial hatred. He uses pain and suffering to create deep divisions within our own beings. You see his work right there, in the beginning of our tragic story, when he slithers into Eden to divide humanity from God, from one another, and from the earth. He traumatizes human beings, then separates them from the earth that could bring about their healing. In his highly researched book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv documents how postmodern human beings suffer badly the physical and mental harms of “nature deficit disorder.” Our lives have become cut off from the Garden we were meant to flourish in.Nature heals, dear ones; nature heals. God has ordained that in the new earth it is river water that brings us life and leaves that are used for our healing:Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations. (Revelation 22:1–2 NLT)We will hear nature in full chorus. It will mingle with the laughter and music and aromas of the feast itself, and we will wander in and out, drinking it all in, practically swimming in the healing powers of creation, feeling Life permeate every last corner of our being. Happiness and joy will overcome us; sorrow and its sighing will vanish forever. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] Paralysis (masquerading as “confusion”) haunts every man when a looming decision will require a lot of us. Make note of that; don’t let it keep you from seeing the light in front of you. God is here to help us with our fears, but only once we name it as fear and do not hide behind, “I just don’t know what to do.”What do I sense God saying about this? You are friends with the brightest person in the universe — have you asked his opinion on the matter? This seems so obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of Christians who don’t ask God or give him more than a day to respond. Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick … So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere. (Luke 9:1, 6)Now this is just extraordinary — Jesus has absolutely no need to be the center of the action. He sends his friends out to do the very things he does; he gives them a major role in his campaign. “You go do it. Do everything you see me doing.” This is humble and this is extraordinarily generous; Jesus is absolutely openhanded with his kingdom. There is no need for the whole thing to be always about him. He is absolutely delighted to share his kingdom with us. He later says, “Don’t be afraid, little ones; your father is delighted to give you the kingdom.”Most men get power and then crave more; as their stars rise they can’t bear to have others in the spotlight; they typically abuse the power they have; and in the end, it winds up crushing them and everyone around them. You recall the expression “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It was a lesson learned through the long soiled history of men and power. But then we have Jesus, who walks right through the snares as if they weren’t even there, handling immense power with casual grace.Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

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? Isn’t it some version of “I’m blowing it,” in that it’s your fault, you could have done better, you could have been braver or wiser or more beautiful or something? Or “God is holding out on me,” in that you know he could come through, but he hasn’t come through — and what are you to make of that?This is The Big Question, by the way, the one every philosophy and religion and denominational take on Christianity has been trying to nail down since the dawn of time. What is really going on here? Good grief — life is brutal. Day after day it hammers us, till we lose sight of what God intends toward us, and we haven’t the foggiest idea why the things that are happening to us are happening to us. Then you watch lives going down with the Twin Towers, read about children starving in Ethiopia, and wham! If a good God is really in charge ... and all that.We need clarity and we need it badly. A simple prayer rises from my heart: Jesus, take away the fog and the clouds and the veil, and help me to see ... give me eyes to really see. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

As it was for many parents before, teaching our sons to drive was a hair-raising endeavor — merging into traffic that felt like Han Solo pushing the Millennium Falcon into light speed; sudden braking that seemed equally certain to send me through the windshield. They were giving it a go; it was terrifying and I was so proud of them. I was delighted with their efforts. But of course, I would be more than disappointed if their driving was the same now, ten years later. So it is with God — he is utterly delighted with our attempts at prayer; he loves our little prayers tucked into drawers. And, he is calling us upward to grow into the maturity we were destined for, including mature prayers. Elijah was not tucking little prayers under rocks on the mountain. I doubt very much it would have rained if he had.But here is the problem — most of us don’t quite share God’s fervent passion for our maturity. Really, now, if you stopped ten people at random on their way out of church next Sunday and polled them, I doubt very much that you would find one in ten who said, “Oh, my first and greatest commitment this afternoon is to mature!” Like Bilbo, our natural investments lie in other things — lunch, a nap, the game, our general comfort, including getting others to cooperate with our agenda.Yet there is no mistaking the theme in Scripture: God is committed to growing us up:...until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature... (Eph. 4:13)Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

This is a very dangerous moment, when God seems set against everything that has meant life to us. Satan spies his opportunity, and leaps to accuse God in our hearts. You see, he says, God is angry with you. He’s disappointed in you. If he loved you he would make things smoother. He’s not out for your best, you know. The Enemy always tempts us back toward control, to recover and rebuild the false self. We must remember that it is out of love that God thwarts our impostor. As Hebrews reminds us, it is the son whom God disciplines, therefore do not lose heart (12:5–6).God thwarts us to save us. We think it will destroy us, but the opposite is true — we must be saved from what really will destroy us. If we would walk with him in our journey of masculine initiation, we must walk away from the false self — set it down, give it up willingly. It feels crazy; it feels immensely vulnerable. We simply accept the invitation to leave all that we’ve relied on and venture out with God. We can choose to do it ourselves, or we can wait for God to bring it all down.If you have no clue as to what your false self may be, then a starting point would be to ask those you live with and work with, “What is my effect on you? What am I like to live with (or work with)? What don’t you feel free to bring up with me?” In other words, you face your fears head-on. Drop the fig leaf; come out from hiding. For how long? Longer than you want to; long enough to raise the deeper issues, let the wound surface from beneath it all.Losing the false self is painful; though it’s a mask, it’s one we’ve worn for years and losing it can feel like losing a close friend. Underneath the mask is all the hurt and fear we’ve been running from, hiding from. To let it come to the surface can shake us like an earthquake. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

We all share the same dilemma — we long for life and we're not sure where to find it. We wonder if we ever do find it, can we make it last? The longing for life within us seems incongruent with the life we find around us. What is available seems at times close to what we want, but never quite a fit. Our days come to us as a riddle, and the answers aren't handed out with our birth certificates. We must journey to find the life we prize. And the guide we have been given is the desire set deep within, the desire we often overlook or mistake for something else or even choose to ignore.The greatest human tragedy is simply to give up the search. There is nothing of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose heart is to lose everything. And if we are to bring our hearts along in our life's journey, we simply must not, we cannot, abandon this desire. Gerald May writes in The Awakened Heart:There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake ... Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire.The clue as to who we really are and why we are here comes to us through our heart's desire. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist — no one dared resist him. But would she love him?She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf between them. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal. (as quoted in Soren Kierkegaard's Disappointment with God ) The king clothes himself as a beggar and renounces his throne in order to win her hand. The Incarnation, the life and the death of Jesus, answers once and for all the question, "What is God's heart toward me?" This is why Paul says in Romans 5, "Look here, at the Cross. Here is the demonstration of God's heart. At the point of our deepest betrayal, when we had run our farthest from him and gotten so lost in the woods we could never find our way home, God came and died to rescue us." Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)This is, without question, the Great Offense of Jesus Christ — his exclusivity.To make sure we understand this, what he is saying is that he alone is the means to heaven. No one comes to the one true God except through him. Offensive as the claim may be, we still have to deal with it. Either it is arrogant, or it is true.Not wanting any to perish. God does not want to lose a single human soul. In fact, those hellfires weren’t even created for man. They were created for the devil and his demons (Matthew 25:41). Jesus isn’t secretly hoping that you’ll go there.Jesus’ heart of love is not diminished by the fact that some people will actually choose hell over surrendering to God. He weeps over it. He warns, urges, pleads, performs miracles. As they nail him to the timbers, he says, “Father, forgive them, for they know do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Because if they don’t find forgiveness, it is going to be a mighty black day of reckoning. Jesus prays for them, prays they will find mercy. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Certainly, you will admit that God is glorious. Is there anyone more kind? Is there anyone more creative? Is there anyone more valiant? Is there anyone more true? Is there anyone more daring? Is there anyone more beautiful? Is there anyone more wise? Is there anyone more generous? You are his offspring. His child. His reflection. His likeness. You bear his image. Do remember that though he made the heavens and the earth in all their glory, the desert and the open sea, the meadow and the Milky Way, and said, "It is good," it was only after he made you that he said, "It is very good" (Gen. 1:31). Think of it: your original glory was greater than anything that's ever taken your breath away in nature.As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight. (Ps. 16:3)God endowed you with a glory when he created you, a glory so deep and mythic that all creation pales in comparison. A glory unique to you, just as your fingerprints are unique to you, just as the way you laugh is unique to you. Somewhere down deep inside we've been looking for that glory ever since. A man wants to know that he is truly a man, that he could be brave; he longs to know that he is a warrior; and all his life he wonders, "Have I got what it takes?" A woman wants to know that she is truly a woman, that she is beautiful; she longs to know that she is captivating; and all her life she wonders, "Do I have a beauty to offer?"Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

We usually think of the middle years of the Christian life as a time of acquiring better habits and their accompanying virtues. But inviting Jesus into the "aching abyss" of our heart perhaps has more to do with holding our heart hopefully in partial emptiness in a way that allows desire to be rekindled. "Discipline imposed from the outside eventually defeats when it is not matched by desire from within," said Dawson Trotman. There comes a place on our spiritual journey where renewed religious activity is of no use whatsoever. It is the place where God holds out his hand and asks us to give up our lovers and come and live with him in a much more personal way. It is the place of relational intimacy that Satan lured Adam and Eve away from so long ago in the Garden of Eden. We are both drawn to it and fear it. Part of us would rather return to Scripture memorization, or Bible study, or service—anything that would save us from the unknowns of walking with God. We are partly convinced our life is elsewhere. We are deceived."We are half-hearted creatures," says Lewis in The Weight of Glory, "fooling about with drink and sex and ambition [and religious effort] when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Time has come for us to forgive our fathers. Paul warns us that unforgiveness and bitterness can wreck our lives and the lives of others (Eph. 4:31; Heb. 12:15). I am sorry to think of all the years my wife endured the anger and bitterness that I redirected at her from my father. As someone has said, forgiveness is setting a prisoner free and then discovering the prisoner was you. I found some help in Bly's experience of forgiving his own father, when he said, "I began to think of him not as someone who had deprived me of love or attention or companionship, but as someone who himself had been deprived, by his father and his mother and by the culture." My father had his own wound that no one ever offered to heal. His father was an alcoholic, too, for a time, and there were some hard years for my dad as a young man just as there were for me.Now you must understand: Forgiveness is a choice. It is not a feeling, but an act of the will. As Neil Anderson has written, "Don't wait to forgive until you feel like forgiving; you will never get there. Feelings take time to heal after the choice to forgive is made." We allow God to bring the hurt up from our past, for "if your forgiveness doesn't visit the emotional core of your life, it will be incomplete." We acknowledge that it hurt, that it mattered, and we choose to extend forgiveness to our father. This is not saying, "It didn't really matter"; it is not saying, "I probably deserved part of it anyway." Forgiveness says, "It was wrong, it mattered, and I release you."And then we ask God to father us, and to tell us our true name. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

We have dissected God, and man, and the gospel, and we have thousands, if not millions, of facts — all of it quite dead. It’s not that these insights aren’t true; it’s that they no longer speak. I could tell you a few facts about God, for example. He is omniscient, omnipotent, and immutable. There — don’t you feel closer to him? All our statements about God forget that he is a person, and as Tozer says, “In the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.” How do we get to know a person? Through stories. All the wild and sad and courageous tales that we tell—they are what reveal us to others. We must return to the Scriptures for the story that it is and stop approaching it as if it is an encyclopedia, looking for “tips and techniques.”Reminders of the Story are everywhere — in film and novels, in children’s fairy tales, in the natural world around us, and in the stories of our own lives. In fact, every story or movie or song or poem that has ever stirred your soul is telling you something you need to know about the Sacred Romance. Even nature is crying out to us of God’s great heart and the drama that is unfolding. Sunrise and sunset tell the tale every day, remembering Eden’s glory, prophesying Eden’s return. These are the trumpet calls from the “hid battlements of eternity.” We must capture them like precious treasures, and hold them close to our hearts. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

The world does become too complicated, too overwhelming, too filled with pain so much of the time. As children, we don’t have the capacity to make sense of it, let alone process it. If our lives become too filled with trauma, a part of us disappears. We push down what we can’t understand or resolve and instead go looking for greener grass to distract us from the ache. But that doesn’t really work. At least not in the long-term. We need to stop our running. We need to tend our hearts. One of the best ways we can do that is by honoring the story of our lives, by letting that part of us and our past that has been tamped down rise back to the surface, and then inviting Jesus into it. If we are to find our way to an authentic life characterized by joy, one that isn’t constantly looking for something better elsewhere, we will need to face the truth about our lives with merciful honesty and choose to linger in it long enough for the Holy Spirit to do His gentle yet persistent redemptive work. I haven’t always walked in this kind of Spirit-filled honesty myself. For a long time, I didn’t know I needed to own my story—really own it and not run from the reality of it and, in my own way, tell it—in order to facilitate healing of the very real damage done to my soul. Because of my embarrassment and fear, as well as a lack of understanding of how healing works, when I told the story of my life in the past, I left the most impactful parts on the editing-room floor. I am only now beginning to skim the surface of telling my full story. I recently told it in more depth to a small group of trusted people in a covenant of confidentiality. But even then I could not tell all. I cannot tell all now. But I can tell more. And I can tell you that what I’ve found on the other side of all that redemptive telling is an open door to healing. The more honest we are able to be about our lives, the more healing and life we will know.And healing, while it can be a longer process than we’d hoped, is a grace-filled one that always brings joy. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

We haven’t yet seen anyone in their true glory. Including you. Yes, Mozart did start writing symphonies as a child, and Picasso could draw before he could talk. But most human beings are profoundly thwarted in their “calling” here because of wounding, assault, envy, or circumstances that would never let them fly. For most human beings on this planet, work ranges from disappointing to oppressive. What does the kingdom offer those men who work the Indonesian sulfur mines or the tens of millions of modern slaves upon the earth? This is not what God intended. How many Mozarts are there right now, hidden in slums and huts across the globe? All your creativity and gifting will be restored and then some when you are restored. All of that latent potency inside of you—so damaged here, marred, frustrated, never given the opportunity to grow and develop and express itself—all of it completely restored, including your personality. From there you are able to act in the new world in ways far greater than Adam and Eve were able to act the first time around (and look at what humanity has been able to do with “be fruitful ... rule” [Genesis 1:28] in a broken world!). You will have absolute intimacy with Jesus Christ, and his life will flow through your gifts unhindered. Imagine what we will be capable of, how vast our powers in the new earth! We know we shall walk on water, for Peter did on this earth at Jesus’ bidding. How far do our creative and artistic capacities reach? When we are in our home, our natal home, When joy shall carry every sacred load,And from its life and peace no heart shall roam, What if thou make us able to make like thee— To light with moons, to clothe with greenery,To hang gold sunsets o’er a rose and purple sea!(George McDonald, Diary of an Old Soul) What will you do in the life to come? Everything you were born to do. Everything you’ve always wanted to do. Everything the kingdom needs you to do. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

And then the long story of God's pursuit of humanity begins. Satan wanted center stage: He wanted to be the main character, he wanted to be the point. His plan now is to ruin the Sacred Romance, to get us all caught up in our own little sociodramas by telling us that we are the point. You can see how humanity goes along with this. Cain murders Abel; Lamech threatens to murder everyone else. Humanity grows worse and worse until God says in pain, "I'm sorry I ever made them." But he doesn't give up. First with Noah, then Abraham, then Israel, we see God pursuing a people whose hearts will be for him, with whom he can share the joy of the larger story. But their faithfulness lasts about as long as the morning dew.How is God feeling by this point? When we reach the prophets, we get a glimpse at what it feels like to be God. Reading the prophets, says Yancey, is like hearing a lovers' quarrel through the apartment wall. Eavesdrop on the argument and catch a glimpse of his heart:I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me. ... What fault did you find in me that you strayed so far from me? You are a swift she-camel running here and there, sniffing the wind in her craving-in her heat who can restrain her? Should I not punish them for this? Should I not avenge myself? I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. What have I done to make you hate me so much? (From Jeremiah)I long to be gracious to you. You are precious and honored in my sight, because I love you. But you — come here, you ... you ... offspring of adulterers. You have made your bed on a high and lofty hill, forsaking me, you uncovered your bed, you climbed into it and opened it wide. You have been false to me. Yet ... I will take delight in you, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will I rejoice over you. (From Isaiah)I will answer you according to your idols [your false lovers] in order to recapture your heart. (From Ezekiel) Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

This is a world at war. We live in a far more dramatic, far more dangerous story than we ever imagined. The reason we love The Chronicles of Narnia or Star Wars or The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings is that they are telling us something about our lives that we never, ever get on the evening news. Or from most pulpits. This is our most desperate hour. Without this burning in our hearts, we lose the meaning of our days. It all withers down to fast-food and bills and voice mail and who really cares anyway? Do you see what has happened? The essence of our faith has been stripped away. The very thing that was to give our lives meaning and protect us — this way of seeing — has been lost. Or stolen from us. Notice that those who have tried to wake us up to this reality were usually killed for it: the prophets, Jesus, Stephen, Paul, most of the disciples, in fact. Has it ever occurred to you that someone was trying to shut them up?Things are not what they seem. This is a world at war. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

I am sitting on the beach this evening, watching the swells roll in toward me. Each wave builds as it approaches, ascending, taking shape, deep greens below sweeping upward into translucent aquamarine. A sculpture in motion, curling forth like shavings from a jade carving. The sheer elegance is enough to take my breath away.An artist is revealed in the work he or she creates, and in the abundance of the work created. Think of the ocean. Picture it in your mind. Tonight the breakers are thundering on the reef a hundred yards out, and beyond that open ocean. What does this tell us about Jesus? What words come to mind? Majestic, powerful, wild, dangerous. Yes, tempestuous, like the clearing of the temple. “His eyes like the grey o’ the sea,” as Ezra Pound wrote, “the sea that brooks no voyaging.” But also gently playful as it laps at your feet, swirling round your toes, pulling the sand away from beneath you as Jesus ever so gently pulls the rug out from under us.I look down. Scattered at my feet lie a thousand shells, delicate, intricate, the work of a jeweler. An artist with very small tools and exceptional eyesight. If all this is the work of an artist’s hand, what does it tell us about the artist? Creation is epic and intimate. He is epic and intimate. Everywhere around me, an obsession with beauty and attention to detail.But most of all, I am thunderstruck by the abundant generosity strewn around, constantly rolling in. It’s as if someone took the family silver and ran down the beach, tossing handfuls here and there like a madman. How do you describe this extravagance? What kind of person acts like this? Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Identity is not something that falls on us out of the sky. For better or for worse, identity is bestowed. We are who we are in relation to others. But far more important, we draw our identity from our impact on those others — if and how we affect them. We long to know that we make a difference in the lives of others, to know that we matter, that our presence cannot be replaced by a pet, a possession, or even another person. The awful burden of the false self is that it must be constantly maintained.We think we have to keep doing something in order to be desirable. Once we find something that will bring us some attention, we have to keep it going or risk the loss of the attention.And so we live with the fear of not being chosen and the burden of maintaining whatever it is about us that might get us noticed and the commitment never to be seen for who we really are. We develop a functional self-image, even if it is a negative one. The little boy paints his red wagon a speckled gray with whatever Father left in the can after putting a new coat on the backyard fence. "Look what I did!" he says, hoping for affirmation of the wonderful impact his presence has on the world. The angry father shames him: "What do you think you're doing? You've ruined it." The boy forms an identity: My impact is awful; I foul good things up. I am a fouler. And he forms a commitment never to be in a place where he can foul things up again. Years later, his colleagues wonder why he turned down an attractive promotion. The answer lies in his identity, an identity he received from the impact he had on the most important person in his world and his fear of ever being in such a place again. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

You will be wounded. Just because this battle is spiritual doesn't mean it's not real; it is, and the wounds a man can take are in some ways more ugly than those that come in a firefight. To lose a leg is nothing compared to losing heart; to be crippled by shrapnel need not destroy your soul, but to be crippled by shame and guilt may. You will be wounded by the Enemy. He knows the wounds of your past, and he will try to wound you again in the same place. But these wounds are different; these are honor-wounds.Blaine was showing me his scars the other night at the dinner table. "This one is where Samuel threw a rock and hit me in the forehead. And this one is from the Tetons when I fell into that sharp log. I can't remember what this one was from; oh, here's a good one — this one is from when I fell into the pond while chasing Luke. This one is a really old one when I burned my leg on the stove camping." He's proud of his scars; they are badges of honor to a boy...and to a man. We have no equivalent now for a Purple Heart of spiritual warfare, but we will. One of the noblest moments that await us will come at the wedding feast of the Lamb. Our Lord will rise and begin to call those forward who were wounded in battle for his name's sake and they will be honored, their courage rewarded. I think of Henry V's line to his men,He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian ... Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day." Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages What feats he did that day; then shall our names ... Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor. 4:16-18)The first line grabs me by the throat. "Therefore we do not lose heart." Somebody knows how not to lose heart? I'm all ears. For we are losing heart. All of us. Daily. It is the single most unifying quality shared by the human race on the planet at this time. We are losing — or we have already lost — heart. That glorious, resilient image of God in us is fading, fading, fading away. And this man claims to know a way out.So, how, Paul — how? How do we not lose heart?So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. (2 Cor. 4:18)What? I let out a sigh of disappointment. Now that's helpful. "Look at what you cannot see." That sounds like Eastern mysticism, that sort of wispy wisdom dripping in spirituality but completely inapplicable to our lives. Life is an illusion. Look at what you cannot see. What can this mean? Remembering that a little humility can take me a long way, I give it another go. This wise old seer is saying that there is a way of looking at life, and that those who discover it are able to live from the heart no matter what. How do we do this? By seeing with the eyes of the heart. Later in life, writing from prison to some friends he was deeply concerned about, Paul said, "I pray...that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened" (Eph. 1:18).Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

When we were young, most of us loved adventure. There is something about the unknown that draws us, which is why we like stories so much. But I like to leave the theater at the end of the play, knowing that the dilemma of evil has been resolved by the characters on the stage or screen. Like Peter, Susan, Lucy, and Edmund, to find ourselves not as spectators but as central characters in the play itself is somewhat daunting. The stakes are truly high, sometimes literally life or death, and God rarely if ever yells, "Cut!" just as the dangerous or painful scene descends upon us. No stunt doubles come onto the set to take our places. Many of us feel that we have been playing these kinds of scenes ever since we were children. We wonder if the hero will ever show up to rescue us.We would like to picture goodness as being synonymous with safety. When we think of God being good, we perhaps picture someone like Al on the popular TV program Home Improvement. He is someone who carefully plans out each task ahead of time and has all the proper tools and safety equipment in place; someone who has thought out every possible danger ahead of time and made allowances to ensure our safety as his workmate; someone who goes to bed early, gets plenty of rest, and wears flannel shirts as a mark of his reliability.Being in partnership with God, though, often feels much more like being Mel Gibson's sidekick in the movie Lethal Weapon. In his determination to deal with the bad guy, he leaps from seventh-story balconies into swimming pools, surprised that we would have any hesitation in following after him. Like Indiana Jones's love interests in the movies, we find ourselves caught up in an adventure of heroic proportions with a God who both seduces us with his boldness and energy and repels us with his willingness to place us in mortal danger, suspended over pits of snakes.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

God is not “out there somewhere” in some dramatic way, waiting to commune with us by earthquake or fire or signs in the sky. Instead, he desires to talk with us in the quietness of our own heart through his Spirit, who is in us. It is his voice that has whispered to us about a Sacred Romance. What do you hear when you listen for that gentle, quiet voice?What I so often hear, or feel, is a restlessness, a distractedness where it seems that dozens if not hundreds of disconnected or scattered thoughts vie for my attention. Bits and pieces of my smaller story, and sometimes major edifices, flash onto the screen: what other people think of me and what I need to do to win them. Anger, ego, lust, and simply blankness of spirit all take turns occupying my heart.Indeed, when I first listen to my heart, what I often hear is the language and clatter of my old “lovers” and not much else. There seems to be no stillness or rest. If I try to hold still, my soul reacts like a feather in the afternoon breeze, flitting from place to place without purpose or direction. I almost seem invisible in the noise or blankness. Theologians refer to this condition as “ontological lightness,” the reality that when I stop “doing” and simply listen to my heart, I am not anchored to anything substantive. I become aware that my very identity is synonymous with activity.Our whole American culture is infected with ontological lightness, celebrities and pro athletes being the most dramatic examples of this victimization of our souls that ruins us for any substantive love relationship. They are anchored only to their performances, and out of their performances come their identities — and ours who worship them. As soon as they stop performing, their identities — and ours — disappear.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

In the years that followed the Fall and our exile from Eden, mankind got worse and worse. Cain killed Abel; Lamech threatened to kill everybody else. The wickedness of the human heart seemed out of control and unstoppable, even by the curses. People were living for seven, eight, even nine hundred years. Can you imagine the arranging that one person could accomplish with that sort of time on his hands? Stubbornness seems to come with old age. Haven't you heard your grandmother sigh and say of your grandfather, "He's set in his ways"? Multiply that by a factor of eight or nine, and you get the picture. So God dealt the ultimate blow. "Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years'" (Gen. 6:3). He cut our life short; nobody gets to pass 120. However clever we might be in our ability to conjure Paradise, we can never get around death. It is the final thwarting.You must follow me very carefully now. We can never fully explain the reasons surrounding someone's death. We've come to accept it for the aged, and we try to console ourselves with thoughts like, He's had a full life. But death is never natural; it was not meant to be. This is why those left behind experience such excruciating pain. The agony is only worsened when the death is what we call "premature," when it takes a life in full bloom, or just as the bud begins to open. Each death can begin to be understood only within the Larger Story God is telling. Much of that story remains for the moment a mystery. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

This is exactly what Christ promised: eternal life, real life! (1 John 2:25 The Message)Jesus’ offer of eternal life has gotten “interpreted” by well-meaning people to say, “Oh, well. Yes, of course ... God intends life for you. But that is eternal life, meaning, because of the death of Jesus Christ you can go to heaven when you die.” And that’s true ... in a way. And in the meantime? Isn’t there a whole lot more to the relationship in the meantime? (It’s in the meantime that we’re living out our days, by the way.) What did Jesus mean when he promised us life?Jesus talks about a life available to you, a glorious, unending life that begins in this age. So does Paul: “Godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8). Your present life, and the next. When we hear the words eternal life, most of us have tended to think, A life that waits for me in eternity. But eternal means unending, not later. The Scriptures use the term to mean you can never lose it. It’s a life that can’t be taken from you. The offer is life and that life starts now. The Renewal begins now.———————————O Jesus — I pray for every bit of renewal and restoration that can come to me now, while I rest in the promise I will have all I want very soon. Want more? Order your copy of Restoration Year today

I love being happy. But happiness is unpredictable; it feels vulnerable because it is tied to my circumstances. And don’t we all know it. One day you’re up; next day you’re down. Circumstantial happiness is an emotional roller coaster; it can really take you for a ride. It makes us heartsick in the way rolling seas and careening decks make us seasick. Joy is something else altogether. It feels firmer, richer, less vulnerable somehow. I’m happy when my family goes out for ice cream, but it seems a little overblown to say I was filled with joy because of it. I was joyful at the weddings of my three sons. I was filled with joy over the birth of our granddaughters. Joy flooded my heart when a dear friend was cleared of cancer. I don’t think it was merely happiness; the joy felt rooted in the presence of God. His hand was so evident. Joy is not happiness on steroids. It is not happiness squared. Every healthy human being has the capacity to feel happiness, but joy is something entirely different, made up of its own unique substance. It doesn’t come with the price of admission. Joy is connected to God and reserved for those who are tapping into His reservoir, who are connected to His life. Joy is rooted in God and His kingdom, in the surety of His goodness, His love for us. It is immovable. Unshakable. Joy is available at all times, day and night, because God and His kingdom are always available to us. I’m ready to get off the roller coaster of happiness; I want my heart grounded in the higher place of joy. I bet you do too. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

Our thoughts flow downhill like water. If we aren’t aware of what we are thinking, our thoughts wander, leading us down windy ways through dark woods. We lose perspective; we start speculating; we come to terrible conclusions in about seven seconds. The Scripture urging us to "take every thought captive to Christ” is vital (2 Corinthians 10:5). What we think matters; our thoughts and imagination pave the way for our beliefs, and then our actions are soon to follow. I know I’m not alone in giving way to speculation. But I want to mature in this area, to grow up. Don’t you? What I’ve learned the hard way is first of all not to judge motives. You don’t really know another’s motives. You can speculate, but you don’t know why he didn’t call. You don’t know why they forgot to invite you to the party. When we assume motives we usually assume bad motives — right? You’re already mad before he walks in the door; you’re already hurt before something is actually said; yet nine times out of ten there isn’t a real reason behind it. You jumped to conclusions. You speculated. He didn’t hang up on you — his cell battery died. They didn’t invite you because you told them you were going to be out of town. It’s hard, but I’m trying these days to assume the best. Assume their heart is good, and your heart is good. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

And they lived happily ever after. Stop for just a moment, and let it be true. They lived happily ever after.These may be the most beautiful and haunting words in the entire library of mankind. Why does the end of a great story leave us with a lump in our throats and an ache in our hearts? If we haven't become entirely cynical, some of the best endings can even bring us to tears.Because God has set eternity in our hearts. Every story we tell is our attempt to put into words and images what God has written there, on our hearts. Think of the stories that you love. Remember how they end.This is written on the human heart, this longing for happily ever after.You see, every story has an ending. Every story. Including yours. Have you ever faced this? Even if you do manage to find a little taste of Eden in this life, even if you are one of the fortunate souls who find some love and happiness in the world, you cannot hang on to it. You know this. Your health cannot hold out forever. Age will conquer you. One by one your friends and loved ones will slip from your hand. Your work will remain unfinished. Your time on this stage will come to an end. Like every other person gone before you, you will breathe your last breath.And then what? Is that the end of the Story?If that is the end, this Story is a tragedy. Macbeth was right. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Sooner or later, life will break your heart. Or rather, death will break your heart. Perhaps you have to lose someone you love to be shaken from denial. The final enemy is death. It will come. Is there no way out? Do we have a future? Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

In heaven, things are not stained or broken; everything is as it was meant to be. Think for a moment of the wonder of this. Isn't every one of our sorrows on earth the result of things not being as they were meant to be? And so when the kingdom of God comes to earth, wonderful things begin to unfold. Look at the evidence; watch what happens to people as they are touched by the kingdom of God through Jesus. As he went about "preaching the good news of the kingdom," Jesus was also "healing every disease and sickness among the people" (Matt. 4:23). When he "spoke to them about the kingdom of God," he "healed those who needed healing" (Luke 9:11).What happens when we find ourselves in the kingdom of God? The disabled jump to their feet and start doing a jig. The deaf go out and buy themselves stereo equipment. The blind are headed to the movies. The dead are not at all dead anymore, but very much alive. They show up for dinner. In other words, human brokenness in all its forms is healed. The kingdom of God brings restoration. Life is restored to what it was meant to be. "In the beginning," back in Eden, all of creation was pronounced good because all of creation was exactly as God meant for it to be. For it to be good again is not for it to be destroyed, but healed, renewed, brought back to its goodness.Those glimpses we see in the miracles of Jesus were the first-fruits. When he announces the full coming of the kingdom, Jesus says, "Look, I am making all things new!" (Rev. 21:5 NLT, emphasis added). He does not say, "I am making all new things." He means that the things that have been so badly broken will be restored and then some. "You mean I'll get a new pair of glasses?" my son Sam asked. "Or do you mean I'll get a new pair of eyes, so I won't need glasses?" What do you think? Jesus didn't hand out crutches to help the disabled. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

We are each created to accomplish a work worthy of God; it is one of our deepest yearnings. And we will, in the kingdom; not just once, but many, many times over. Are we employed in the actual restoration itself? I don’t know for certain. “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated” certainly hints at it. And we know our God is a God of process — look at how long your sanctification is taking. You might think I am merely daydreaming about what we actually do in the kingdom. But, friends — God creates us to be creators like he is. We are promised we will reign; we are given estates; we are told we will have vital roles in the coming kingdom. “After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’” (Matthew 25:19–21 The Message) Come and “be my partner” — that’s the perfect way to put it. The idea behind the parable is promotion. And notice that the servants are promoted in the very things they are good at! God puts his renewed sons and daughters — creators like he is — in a re-created world and tells us to do exactly what he told Adam and Eve to do in the beginning. N. T. Wright therefore says, In Revelation and Paul’s letters we are told that God’s people will actually be running the new world on God’s behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it’s a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Imagine what it would be like if you were never, ever able to wake from your nightmares. Like being tumbled under the waves and never able to find the surface again. That there is a reality for us to wake to is a gift beyond words. Whether or not we choose to face that reality is quite up to us. Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful. We can revise our maps only when we have the discipline to overcome that pain. To have such discipline, we must be totally dedicated to truth. That is to say we must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort. Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth. Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs. (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled) Thus the startling, disruptive, sometimes brutal honesty of Jesus. The world is stone drunk, and raging at Jesus because he’s trying to keep us from taking the car. Who is being unreasonable? The spirit of our day is a soft acceptance of everything — except deep conviction in anything. This is where Jesus will suddenly confront the world as a great rock confronts the river flowing ever downhill. He is immovable. The cry used to be for “tolerance,” by which we meant, “We have very strong differences, but we will not let those be the cause of hatred or violence between us.” Now it is something else, where all convictions are softened to second or third place while we all agree to enjoy the world as much as we can. But truth is not like conviction. Conviction might be a matter of personal opinion, but truth is like a great mountain, solid and immovable whether we like it or even acknowledge it. Christianity is not a set of convictions — it is a truth. The most offensive thing imaginable. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

I thought of the last story we have from the life of the prophet Elisha. Jehoash was king of Israel at the time, and he went to visit Elisha on his sickbed. He knew that without the help of this great prophet, the future of Israel was looking dim. Enemies were closing in on every side, waiting for the kill. Elisha told the king to take in hand some arrows.And the king took them. Elisha told him, "Strike the ground." He struck it three times and stopped. The man of God was angry with him and said, "You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated [your enemies] completely ... But now you will defeat [them] only three times." Elisha died and was buried. (2 Kings 13:18-20)That's it? What a strange story! Why was the old prophet so angry? Because the king was nonchalant; he was passionless, indifferent. He gave the ground a whack or two. His heart wasn't in it. God says, in effect, "If that is how little you care about the future of your people, that is all the help you will get." In other words, if your heart's not in it, well then, neither is mine. You can't lead a country, let alone flourish in a marriage, with an attitude like that. To abandon desire is to say, "I don't really need you; I don't really want you. But I will live with you because, well, I'm supposed to." It is a grotesque corruption of what was meant to be a beautiful dance between desire and devotion. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

“He is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.” (2 Samuel 23:4) What makes your heart awaken? For what awakens your heart is worth paying attention to.Think about sunshine — what daily radiance is showered upon you through it, what immense golden goodness. Every single day, over so much of the planet. It saturates the world, warming the earth, raising the crops in the fields by silent resurrection, causing birds to break out in song with the dawning of each day. It bathes everything 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 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.———————————Pause, and simply be still for a moment. Let the presence of God surround you, for he is always here with us. Let his love come to you again, as you simply quiet yourself in his presence. His love is like sunshine in our hearts. Want more? Order your copy of Restoration Year today

Can you imagine if on your honeymoon one of you sneaked off for a rendezvous with a perfect stranger? Adam and Eve kicked off the honeymoon by sleeping with the Enemy. Then comes one of the most poignant verses in all Scripture: "What is this you have done?" (Gen. 3:13). You can almost hear the shock, the pain of betrayal in God's voice. The fall of Adam and Eve mustn't be pictured as a crime like theft, but as a betrayal of love. In love God creates us for love, and we give him the back of our hand. Why? Satan gets us to side with him by sowing the seed of doubt in our first parents' minds: "God's heart really isn't good. He's holding out on you. You've got to take things into your own hands." And Paradise was lost.Yet there was something about the heart of God that the angels and our first parents had not yet seen. Here, at the lowest point in our relationship, God announces his intention never to abandon us but to seek us out and win us back. "I will come for you." Grace introduces a new element of God's heart. Up till this point we knew he was rich, famous, influential, even generous. Behind all that can still hide a heart that is less than good. Grace removes all doubt. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] You simply cannot neglect the heart and get away with it. The mind is a beautiful instrument, one we certainly want to develop all our lives and not only in the college years. But God gave us the mind to protect the heart, not usurp it. As Walker Percy said, “You can get all A’s and still flunk life.” So let’s think about identity and the heart for a moment. All men, young or old, have within them a famished craving for validation. It will not be denied. We will chase validation wherever we can and we learn pretty quickly what our world rewards, what it shames, what it cares nothing about. So the athletes seek validation by being fast, strong, and winning, while the valedictorians throw themselves into papers, exams, and maintaining their GPAs. The “spiritual leader” latches on to the praise coming from their giftings, and they give their hearts and souls over to that dance, while the “cool” kids go barefoot and wear dreadlocks. We are all looking for the same thing. When a young man doesn’t know who he is and what he’s made of, resisting those “scripts” that are being handed out is about the same as defying gravity. “Let’s see — I gotta do my laundry, move my car, and oh yeah, I think I’ll fly today.”Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

The Religious Man or Woman is a popular story option in which we try to reduce the wildness of life by constructing a system of promises and rewards, a contract that will obligate God to grant us exemption from the Arrows. It really doesn't matter what the particular group bargain is — doctrinal adherence, moral living, or some sort of spiritual experience—the desire is the same: taming God in order to tame life. Never mind those deep yearnings of the soul; never mind the nagging awareness that God is not cooperating. If the system isn't working, it's because we're not doing it right. There's always something to work on, with the promise of abundant life just around the corner. Plenty of churches and leaders are ready to show you how to cut a deal.These stories comprise what James McClendon calls the "tournament of narratives" in our culture, a clash of many small dramas competing for our heart. Through baseball and politics and music and sex and even church, we are searching desperately for a Larger Story in which to live and find our role. All of these smaller stories offer a taste of meaning, adventure, or connectedness. But none of them offer the real thing; they aren't large enough. Our loss of confidence in a Larger Story is the reason we demand immediate gratification. We need a sense of being alive now, for now is all we have. Without a past that was planned for us and a future that waits for us, we are trapped in the present. There's not enough room for our souls in the present. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

We now are going to war. This is the beginning of the end.The hour is late, and you are needed. We need your heart.If there were something more I could do to help you see, I wish to God I could have done it. Tears fill my eyes for fear I have not done enough. You must turn, then, back to myth — tomorrow and the next day and the next. Read the battle of Helm’s Deep; it’s chapter seven of The Two Towers. Watch any of the trilogy of those films. And the opening of Gladiator. That is where we are now. Or, if you can bear it, watch the battle of the Ia Drang Valley in We Were Soldiers. It is so deeply true to what we must face, will face. Linger over the climax of The Prince of Egypt, where God goes to war against Egypt to set his people free. If the images of the Exodus do not move you, I don’t know what will.We are now far into this epic story that every great myth points to. We have reached the moment where we, too, must find our courage and rise up to recover our hearts and fight for the hearts of others. The hour is late, and much time has been wasted. Aslan is on the move; we must rally to him at the stone table. We must find Gepetto lost at sea. We must ride hard, ride to Helm’s Deep and join the last great battle for Middle Earth. Grab everything God sends you. You’ll need everything that helps you see with the eyes of your heart, including those myths, and the way they illumine for us the words God has given in Scripture, to which “you will do well to pay attention ... as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

Imagine, friends, a world without evil. Every demon has been swept away. Simply imagine a world without evil people, where everyone loves God and overflows with his holy love. You look to your right and left, and you only see people you can trust completely. Lot’s torment will no longer be ours; holiness will permeate all things. No wonder joy is the constant mood of the kingdom! Not to mention massive relief and vindication too. Our age cries out for justice, especially the younger generations. I believe in those justice movements; I support them. But I fear a great heartbreak is coming unless we understand the timing of things. Until the evil one is bound and cast into the lake of fire, our efforts here will be only partially successful. “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11). A dear, dear man just e-mailed me; he and his wife run an orphanage for abused and trafficked girls in Guatemala. He aches because he has to turn away girls every week. They simply have no room to take them all in. This is a terrible reality: our best efforts must be carried on, but they will not achieve justice on the earth until our Lord’s return. I can hardly bear it; how do we carry on? Only with the anchor of the soul; only with the sure and firm hope that this Day is coming. Justice is coming. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today