Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34–40)Only Jesus could get away with this. He has just taken the entire Old Testament—the full length, breadth, diversity, and penetrating specificity of all God’s commands—and boiled it down to two. Two. Given who he is, given the witness of his own shimmering goodness, he certainly has the right to do so. But perhaps we’ve missed the brilliance of it, and the immense kindness, too.People have a way of complicating things. Look at what we’ve done to education, taxation, or marriage. We seem committed to making all things complex. The Jews of Jesus’ day had so many rules and regulations it practically immobilized them. “And you experts in the law, woe to you,” Jesus thundered, “because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them” (Luke 11:46 TM). This wasn’t what God intended. The way of holiness was never meant to be a labyrinth of complexity and eventual despair. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

The way to begin to get free of this debris, to remove these limits you’ve unknowingly placed on Jesus, is first to name what the problem is. Where are you having a hard time with Jesus? Where is your struggle with him? Do you find it hard to believe he loves you? Or that he loves you because of what you do?Do you feel like you are always disappointing him?Is he mad at you? Ignoring you?Does Jesus seem like a hard man who wants you to work harder? Does he seem distant — loving, sure, but disengaged? It would help to write this down. What do you think Jesus thinks about you? Then look at what you’ve written — do you see how this might be connected to your own brokenness? Is this how everyone else feels about you? How you feel about yourself? Ask the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of Truth — to show you how this is connected to your brokenness. Next, invite Christ into it — invite him right into the whole ugly mess. Open the door, for heaven’s sake. The incarnation ought to be proof enough that Jesus doesn’t shy away from getting down in the muck of this world. There isn’t anything you can show him he hasn’t seen before. It’s not like he’s going to be shocked. Or angry. Or disappointed. Jesus loves to come; just open the door to him here. Tell Jesus what you think he thinks of you. Ask him if it’s true. Ask him to free your heart from the wounds of your past so that you might know him and love him. This will actually turn out to be a rich part of your learning to love and experience Jesus, this shared journey into and out of your brokenness. You’ll love him more for it, too. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

This is what Jesus nearly always does when he comes to mend those rifts in our hearts. He brings his comfort and mercy to those times and places where we suffered the shattering blow, and the heart in that place often feels the same age as it was at the time of the event, even though it might have been decades ago.It might be a surprise that Christ asks our permission to come in and heal, but you may remember that famous passage from Revelation, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Rev. 3:20 NKJV). He doesn’t force his way in, and the principle remains true after we have given Christ the initial access to our hearts that we call salvation. There are rooms we have kept locked up, places he has not had access to by our own will, and in order to experience his healing, we must also give him permission to come in there.Will you let me heal you?The work of Christ in healing the soul is a deep mystery, more amazing than open-heart surgery. A friend described his experience as having Christ “holding the broken parts of my heart in his hands, and bringing them all together, holding them tenderly until his life brought a wholeness or a oneness to what was many pieces.” That idea of “binding up” our brokenness involves bringing all the shattered pieces back together into one whole heart. Reintegrating those places broken off by tragedy or assault. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

Once we begin thinking of all the deceptions the Enemy is about with regard to our lives, we have a tendency to become obsessed with him, fearful of what he is going to do next. Once we take him seriously, he switches from his tactic of “I’m not here” to one of having us worry about him day and night, which is almost a form of worship.God’s intention, on the other hand, is to use spiritual warfare to draw us into deeper communion with himself. Satan’s device is to isolate us and wear us out obsessing about what he has done and what he will do next. And he is very effective in using our particular Message of the Arrows to do it. God desires to use the Enemy’s attacks to remove the obstacles between ourselves and him, to reestablish our dependency on him as his sons and daughters in a much deeper way. Once we understand that, the warfare we are in begins to feel totally different. It is not really even about Satan anymore, but about communion with God and abiding in Jesus as the source of life. The whole experience begins to feel more like a devotional. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

We all have a way that we do life. We might call it our personality, or our natural bent — the way we handle pressure, the way we listen, the way we look for happiness, the way we control our world. We didn’t sit down one day and willfully choose to adopt it but it remains a choice nonetheless. Call it your style of relating. It is a carefully crafted approach to life — and especially to relationship — that colors the way we work and the way we love and the way we respond and the way we simply have a conversation with people. This can be quite an epiphany — you have a style of relating designed to make life work for you! Our style of relating is borne out of brokenness and sin, and it is the number one thing that gets in the way of real love and companionship, the shared adventure and all the beauty of marriage. It’s really this simple—the number one thing that gets in the way is your way. I don’t mean insisting on getting your way — that the lights be dim or finding a better parking spot. I mean your way of going about life, your style of relating.Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

Maybe the most devastating limit is simply the idea that “Jesus doesn’t act like that anymore.” (Or, “Jesus doesn’t act like that with me.”) Sure —he was amazing in the Gospels. But that was then and this is now and things have changed. Or so the idea goes. In one fell swoop, this belief shuts down just about everything and anything we could hope to experience with Jesus. It simply slams the door and leaves us standing on one side and him on the other. You wonder if this isn’t implied in the famous passage from the book of Revelation where Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (3:20). This takes place later than the Gospel stories, mind you — long after the resurrection and the ascension. Jesus is asking for intimacy with us. Who shut that door and left Christ standing in the street? It clearly wasn’t Jesus. He’s outside, asking us to let him in. So let him in. Jesus, come in. I give you total access to every aspect of my life. Come in, Lord. Reveal yourself to me. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Let me say this again: the story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it. I hope you are beginning to see that more clearly now. Otherwise, much of the Bible will not make sense to you. Much of your life will not make sense to you.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 I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. (Isa. 45:2-3)Doesn't the language of the Bible sometimes sound ... overblown? Really now — God is going to level mountains for us? We'd be happy if he just helped us get through the week. What's all that about breaking down gates of bronze and cutting through bars of iron? I mean, it sounds heroic, but, well, who's really in need of that? This isn't ancient Samaria. We'd settle for a parking place at the mall.If we are in an epic battle, then the language of the Bible fits perfectly. Things are not what they seem. We are at war. That war is against your heart, your glory. Once more, look at Isaiah 61:1:He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

You are not your sin; sin is no longer the truest thing about the man who has come into union with Jesus. Your heart is good. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you" (Ezek. 36:26). The Big Lie in the church today is that you are nothing more than "a sinner saved by grace." You are a lot more than that. You are a new creation in Christ. The New Testament calls you a saint, a holy one, a son of God. In the core of your being you are a good man. Yes, there is a war within us, but it is a civil war. The battle is not between us and God; no, there is a traitor within us who wars against our true heart fighting alongside the Spirit of God in us:A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death ... Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells ... if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus ... When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. (Rom. 8:2, 9-11 The Message)The real you is on the side of God against the false self. Knowing this makes all the difference in the world. The man who wants to live valiantly will lose heart quickly if he believes that his heart is nothing but sin. Why fight?Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Prayer sets up a terrible dilemma for us. We want to pray; it’s in our nature. We desperately want to believe that God will come through for us. But then ... he doesn’t seem to, and where does that leave us? I believe God is in the dilemma; I believe he wants us to push through to real answers, solid answers. For one thing, this reality we find ourselves in is far more dynamic than most folks have been led to believe — especially people of faith. We hold dangerously incomplete understandings of our situation, such as, God is all-powerful. He did not intervene. So it must not be his will to intervene. Yes — God is sovereign. And in his sovereignty he created a world in which the choices of men and angels matter. Tremendously. He has granted to us “the dignity of causation,” as Pascal called it. Our choices have enormous consequences. We will have much more to say about this going forward, but prayer is not as simple as, “I asked; God didn’t come. I guess he doesn’t want to.” We are embarked on the most exciting story possible, filled with danger, adventure, and wonders. There is nothing more hopeful than the thought that things can be different, we can move mountains, and we have some role in bringing that change about. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

Twice, in the famous chapter of Romans 7, where Paul presents a first-person angst about our battle against sin, he says, "But this is not my true nature. This is not my heart."As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature ... Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it ... For in my inner being I delight in God's law." (vv. 17-18, 20, emphasis added)Paul is making a crucial distinction. This is not me; this is not my true heart. Listen to how he talks about himself in other places. He opens every letter by introducing himself as "Paul, an apostle." Not as a sinner, but as an apostle, writing to "the saints." Dump the religiosity; think about this mythically. Paul, appointed as a Great One in the kingdom, writing to other Great Allies of the kingdom. How bold of him. There is no false humility, no groveling. He says,Surely you have heard about the ... grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed [to me]. (Eph. 3:2-5)Paul is unashamed to say that he knows things no man before him knew. He even assumes they've heard about him, the mysteries revealed to him. That is part of his glory. His humility comes through clearly, in that he quickly admits that it's all been a gift, and in fact, a gift given to him for others. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Jesus is a fierce, intentional man to be sure. But his passions are neither reckless nor momentary.Could a small, unintimidating figure accomplish such a sustained riot? To pull off driving “all of them out of the temple” would require more than a few seconds and repeated blows. This is a sustained assault. If a frail man with a meek voice tried this, he’d be log-jammed by the sheer number and inertia of the traffic. Jesus is a locomotive, a juggernaut. For all practical purposes here, he is the bull in the china shop.But is this the Jesus of our worship songs? The religious fog sneaks in to obscure Jesus with lines comparing him to, “a rose trampled on the ground.” Helpless, lovely Jesus. Vegetarian, pacifist, tranquil. Oh, wait — that was Gandhi. Not Jesus.Can you picture Gandhi or Buddha storming into the polling place of a local election, shouting, overturning tables, sending the participants fleeing? Now throw a small carnival into the mix, which they also need to rout. Impossible. Whoever did this would have to be really committed to clear the building. Fierce and intentional.This is a breathtaking quality — especially when compared to our present age where doubt masquerades as humility, passivity cloaks as rest, and emasculated indecision poses as laid-back enlightenment.Oh, Jesus could be soft, and he certainly was humble, but his fierce intentionality is riveting to watch. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

When Neo is set free from the Matrix, he joins the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar — the little hovercraft that is the headquarters and ship of the small fellowship called to set the captives free. There are nine of them in all, each a character in his own way, but nonetheless a company of the heart, a “band of brothers,” a family bound together in a single fate. Together, they train for battle. Together, they plan their path. When they go back into the Matrix to set others free, each one has a role, a gifting, a glory. They function as a team. And they watch each other’s back. Neo is fast, really fast, but he still would have been taken out if it hadn’t been for Trinity. Morpheus is more gifted than them all, but it took the others to rescue him.You see this sort of thing at the center of every great story. Dorothy takes her journey with the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Lion, and of course, Toto. Maximus rallies his little band and triumphs over the greatest empire on earth. When Captain John Miller is sent deep behind enemy lines to save Private Ryan, he goes in with a squad of eight rangers. And, of course, Jesus had the Twelve. This is written so deeply on our hearts: You must not go alone. The Scriptures are full of such warnings, but until we see our desperate situation, we hear it as an optional religious assembly for an hour on Sunday mornings.Think again of Frodo or Neo or Caspian or Jesus. Imagine you are surrounded by a small company of friends who know you well (characters, to be sure, but they love you, and you have come to love them). They understand that we all are at war, know that the purposes of God are to bring a man or a woman fully alive, and are living by sheer necessity and joy in the Four Streams. They fight for you, and you for them. Imagine you could have a little fellowship of the heart. Would you want it if it were available? Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus taught (Mark 12:31), implying a direct link between one and the other. Loving our neighbor is clearly an essential to Christian faith; I think we all get that one. But the qualifier “as yourself” is lost upon most people; it confounded me for years. It almost sounds too pop psychology, something you’d see on the cover of the magazines at the checkout stand, right next to the articles on “brain superfoods” and “how to talk to your pet.” Yet Jesus is pretty matter-of-fact about the comparison: Treat people like you treat yourself. Which I think has one of his brilliant hidden exposés in it, because we quickly realize if we treated our neighbor the way we typically treat ourselves, we wouldn’t be great neighbors. Jesus thus drives home healthy self-care as tied to loving others. If that still sounds like something from Oprah, and not the New Testament, consider this: Love your neighbor as yourself is “a horrible command,” C. S. Lewis pointed out, “if the self were simply to be hated.”The difficult truth we don’t want to admit is this: the way you treat your own heart is the way you’ll end up treating everyone else’s.Most of the time we are completely unaware of how we treat our own heart. Our “way” with ourselves is simply our norm, and we’ve been at it so long we don’t notice, in the same way we don’t notice how much we bite our nails or finish our spouse’s sentences for them. The father who doesn’t allow himself his own emotions communicates so much to his children by that practice alone, and he further reinforces the lesson when he is visibly awkward and uncomfortable with the emotions of his child. He tries to hurry them through a “comforting” process: “I’m sorry sweetheart. You’ll feel better tomorrow.” Or, “How about we get some ice cream?” He is thereby trying to rush the child through their emotions to a place of resolution, teaching them to be as abrupt with their own heart as he is with his.So the fact remains: the way you treat your heart is the way you’ll end up treating everyone else’s.None of this is meant to be shaming — not one bit. It’s immensely hopeful! For one thing, you’ve picked up this book and progressed this far—that means you’re seeking more of God, and learning to care for your soul (the vessel he fills). This right here is self-kindness and it will spill over into kindness for those around you. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Every woman is in some way searching for or running from her beauty and every man is looking for or avoiding his strength. Why? In some deep place within, we remember what we were made to be, we carry with us the memory of gods, image-bearers walking in the Garden. So why do we flee our essence? As hard as it may be for us to see our sin, it is far harder still for us to remember our glory. The pain of the memory of our former glory is so excruciating, we would rather stay in the pigsty than return to our true home. We are like Gomer, wife of the prophet Hosea, who preferred to live in an adulterous affair rather than be restored to her true love.We are the ones to be Fought Over, Captured and Rescued, Pursued. It seems remarkable, incredible, too good to be true. There really is something desirable within me, something the King of the universe has moved heaven and earth to get. George Herbert reached for words to express his wonder:My God, what is a heart That thou shouldst it so eye and woo Powering upon it with all thy art As if thou hadst nothing else to do? (Mattens)King David used a similar refrain:What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. (Ps. 8:4-5) Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The longing for things to be good again is one of the deepest yearnings of the human heart. It has slumbered in the depths of our souls ever since we lost our true home. For our hearts remember Eden.Most of the time this beautiful, powerful longing flows like an underground river below the surface of our awareness — so long as we are consoled by some measure of goodness in our lives. While we are enjoying our work, our family, our adventures, or the little pleasures of this world, the longing for things to be good again seems to be placated.But when trials and heartbreaks wash in, the longing rises to the surface like a whale coming up for air, filled with momentum and force. This is especially true after times of severe testing, because during the testing we are rallying. But when the storm subsides, the longing for things to be good again rises up to demand relief.How we shepherd this longing — so crucial to our identity and the true life of our heart — how we listen to it but also guide it in right or wrong directions, this determines our fate.God has given each human soul a capacity and drive, a primal aspiration for life. This is as fundamental to you as your own survival.The epicenter of our being is the deep longing to aspire for things that bring us life, to plan for those things, to take hold of them, to enjoy them, and start the cycle over as we aspire toward new things! This is the essential craving for life given to us by God. Let’s call this capacity the Primal Drive for Life.The longing for things to be good again is the mournful cry of the Primal Drive for Life in us, like the haunting cries of whales under the sea.It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. (George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss)This hunger allows human beings to survive the most terrible ordeals; it also enables us to savor all the goodness of this world, to love, and to create works of immense beauty. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

The constant push in Western Christianity to “make it practical” betrays our favorite apostasy—it exposes how utterly fixated on the present moment we really are. Yes, we need to embody God’s love in the world today. The human race is not well; things fall apart. We must care for the planet and all creation; we must fight injustice. But we speak of that work so casually; we do not understand it can be the most demanding, heartbreaking work in the world. Those who serve at the front lines of social justice ministry have a tragically high burnout rate. Without a glorious hope blazing in your heart, you will be crushed by the pain of the world. “If you read history,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” If you really want to make a difference in the world, the best thing you can do is exactly what the Scriptures command you to do—grab the promised Renewal with both hands and make it the anchor of your soul: We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God. (Hebrews 6:18–19 The Message) Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Human beings need oxygen in order to live. Lots of it. So our loving God provided us a world completely engulfed in oxygen; we swim in life-giving air like fish swim in water. Put your arm out — it’s surrounded with oxygen. Look down at your feet — they’re wading through it too. God also arranged for the daily replenishment of this planet-wide ocean of oxygen, through the forest and jungles and even the algae of the seas. We take it in all day long, and all day long he renews it. Lavish. And a good thing too!He’s done the same with water. We need it daily. No human being can go without it for more than four days. Our planet is called the “blue planet” because of the amount of water we have. The oceans, of course, and the rain cycle that draws water from them and spreads it over the earth. Streams, ponds, rivers, lakes — the generosity of God can be seen here too. Without water nothing lives. Think of what happens to your lovely flowers when they are deprived of water.Now, with the same generosity and care, God also filled the world with a renewable supply of something our souls need daily: beauty. Yes, beauty. The fact that our world is so saturated with beauty, breathtaking in so many ways great and small — this ought to let you know God feels it’s something you need for your survival. We are absolutely swimming in it.But apart from the artist and poet, most people don't intentionally pursue beauty as nourishment. Notice that beauty doesn't make the typical lists of discipleship models, spiritual disciplines, or soul care. Beauty is one of the richest graces God has provided to heal our souls and absorb his goodness. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

In this world where we find ourselves living, having joy often feels both crazy and out of reach. To have joy in the midst of sorrow — or the current news feed — can seem impossible. And all on our own, it is impossible. But just as the angel Gabriel said after making his outlandish proclamation to Mary that she, a virgin, would give birth to the Savior of the world, “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37 nasb). Joy is meant to be ours, a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world. Our hearts are to echo the heartbeat of our joyous God. Now, this isn’t about skipping around in the garden singing, “I’m so happy in Jesus every day.” This is about being present to whatever may be coming our way and, in the midst of both the goodness and the grief, knowing joy. Believing that sorrow and loss do not have the final word takes defiance. It requires a strength of spirit that must be nurtured. It means engaging our lives fully but interpreting them by the highlight of heaven. Denying the truth of reality is not the answer; being fully present to it is. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

On the day Adam and Eve fell from grace, they ran off and hid in the bushes. And God came looking for them. He called to Adam, "Where are you?" (Gen. 3:9). Thus began the long and painful story of God's pursuit of mankind. Though we betrayed him and fell into the hands of the Evil One, God did not abandon us. Even a quick read of the Old Testament would be enough to convince you that rescue is God's plan. First with Noah, then with Abraham, and then with the nation Israel, you see God looking for a people who will turn to him from the heart, be his intimate allies once more.The dramatic archetype is the Exodus, where God goes to war against the Egyptian taskmasters to set his captive people free.Four hundred years they have languished in a life of despair. Suddenly — blood. Hail. Locusts. Darkness. Death. Plague after plague descends on Egypt like the blows of some unrelenting 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). God is a warrior. He has come to rescue us.Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

Yes, dear friends, we are already God's children, and we can't even imagine what we will be like when Christ returns. But we do know that when he comes we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. (1 John 3:2 NLT)We have an expression that we use to describe someone who's out of sorts, who's not acting like the person we know her to be: "She's just not herself today." It's a marvelous, gracious phrase, for in a very real way, no one is quite himself today. There is more to us than we have seen. I know my wife is a goddess. I know she is more beautiful than she imagines. I have seen it slip out, seen moments of her glory. Suddenly, her beauty shines through, as though a veil has been lifted.All of us have moments like this, glimpses of our true creation. They come unexpectedly and then fade again. Life for the most part keeps our glory hidden, cloaked by sin, or sorrow, or merely weariness. When I see an old woman, doubled over with arthritis, the hard years etched into her face, I want to cry, Eve, what happened? How truly wonderful it will be to see her in her youth again, the full flower of her beauty restored.When the disciples saw Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, they got a peek at his glory. He was radiant, beautiful, magnificent. He was Jesus, the Jesus they knew and loved — only more so. And we shall be glorious as well. Jesus called himself the Son of man to state clearly that he is what mankind was meant to be. What we see in Jesus is our personal destiny. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

But there’s something deeper that calls to me, something richer I have tasted which compels me to let go of the life I keep rebuilding in order to learn how to love. I want God. Can you name a better reason? There is simply no other fountain of life; there is no other waterfall of joy. God is the bliss we seek. This is what the Scriptures are trying to get across to us. Everyone who has known God and written about it down through the ages agrees. But it is a truth you pay dearly to finally possess for yourself. “There is no other happiness than God,” wrote Pascal, “and ourselves united to him.” But boy oh boy is there happiness once you have God. David tasted friendship with God — after trying everything else — and came to the conclusion that, “Your love is better than life” (Psalm 63:3). Better even than life. Meaning, “I would give up my life in a heartbeat in exchange for the love of God.” Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

One of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. (Luke 7:36–38)Whoa. This “fallen woman” is wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair, and kissing them. A very intimate encounter. She obviously has lost her capacity to care what the “nice people” think, and Jesus doesn’t seem to have ever bothered trying that capacity on. He is no “respecter of persons.” Not, at least, as it is with most folks in this world, especially leaders. This is utterly remarkable in the society of the religious, for the fear of man rules that world. “What good people might think” is a very, very powerful motivator and the raison d’être for most of the ridiculous policies.The man is free — free from what people think, free from religion, free from false obligation. People won’t like it, won’t understand it; they’ll draw false conclusions, point fingers, and worse. He is free from that as well. Oh to be so free.The more you fall in love with Jesus’ genuine goodness, which is true goodness, the more you will absolutely detest the counterfeit of a false piety and a shallow morality. As he did. Jesus has a wild freedom born out of a profound holiness. Which makes him the most remarkable person I have ever known. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

What do all the great stories and myths tell us? What do they have in common? What are they trying to get across? Wherever they may come from, whatever their shape might be, they nearly always speak to us Three Eternal Truths. First, these stories are trying to remind us that things are not what they seem. There is a whole lot more going on here than meets the eye. Much more. After the tornado sets her down, Dorothy wakes and steps out of her old farmhouse to find herself in a strange new world, a land of Munchkins and fairies and wicked witches. The Land of Oz. How brilliant for the filmmakers to have waited for this moment to introduce color in the movie. Up till now the story has been told in black and white; when Dorothy steps out of the house, the screen explodes in color, and she whispers to her little friend, "Toto... I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."Isn't this the very lesson of the Emmaus Road? You recall the story — two followers of Christ are headed out of town after the Crucifixion, as dejected as two people can be, with every reason in their minds to be so and more. Their hopes have been shattered. They staked it all on the Nazarene, and now he's dead. As they slump back toward their homes, Jesus sort of sneaks up alongside, very much alive but incognito, and joins their conversation, feigning ignorance — and they not seeing it is him.We live in two worlds — or better, in one world with two parts, one part that we can see and one part that we cannot. We are urged, for our own welfare, to act as though the unseen world (the rest of reality) is, in fact, more weighty and more real and more dangerous than the part of reality we can see. The lesson from the story of the Emmaus Road—the lesson the whole Bible is trying to get across — begins with this simple truth: There is more going on here than meets the eye. Far more. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] You have entered the Warrior Stage of a young man’s life. Young men have been at the center of most of history’s revolutions. Deep in your marrow lies a passion to bring down tyrants, overthrow oppression, and fight for a better world — to be part of something big. And why did God give you such hearts? Isn’t that fascinating — why you and all your peers have a heart to change the world? Was that placed in you simply to be killed? Never! I know older folks love to look down at you over their reading glasses and say something dismissive about “the idealism of youth” and how it’s high time you settle down to real life, but that is not my opinion. I don’t think it’s God’s opinion either. That counsel comes from folks who have killed their heart and soul in order to “get along” in the world. Christianity is all about revolution — is a revolution to its core — and that is why God gives young men and women passion to change the world. God gave you that heart in order that you might discover both the joy of being part of his revolution and your own unique place within it. There is a lot of wrong to be set right in the world. Everywhere you look, the planet is bleeding, children are trafficked, slavery is on the rise, and truth itself has all but shattered. This is a time for revolution, and one of the great wonders of Christianity is the idea that you are born into your times, to set your times aright. What could be more exciting? Frederick Buechner believed that, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” What could be more hopeful? Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

The loss of personality confounds our imitation of Christ. What happens is, our particular brand of church seizes upon one or two of his virtues as the essence of Christ for us to follow. Justice. Mercy. Righteousness. Whatever. You cannot live a life on one quality any more than you can speak intelligently using one word. Meanwhile, we continue to sound on about the love and compassion of Jesus, like the village idiot banging one note on a piano. After a while the world turns away. Can you blame them? Alas — if only Jesus’ followers shared his personality. That one shift alone would correct so many of the ridiculous and horrifying things that pass for popular Christianity.What is missing in our Gospel reading — and in our attempts to “read” what Jesus is saying and doing in our own lives right now, this week — is his personality, undraped by religion. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

There is an overlooked passage late in the New Testament that is going to begin to connect some dots for us in a wild way. It comes from the book of James, and he brings us back around to the old man, Elijah, praying on the mountain: “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops” (5:16–18). The brother of Jesus is giving his readers a tutorial on the subject of prayer. (He had seen some serious demonstrations of prayer, we might recall, growing up around the man who turned a boy’s lunch into an all-you-can-eat buffet for five thousand.) James points to the famous drought story I just cited, then makes a staggering connection — you are no different than Elijah. That’s his purpose in using the phrase, “Elijah was a man just like us.” James is trying to disarm that religious posture that so often poisons the value of biblical stories: Well, sure, that was so-and-so [in this case Elijah] and they were different than us. Nope. Not the case. Actually, James makes it very clear: Elijah was a human being just like you. In other words, you can do it too. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

How quickly do betrayal and slavery fall upon Joseph after his father gives him the coat of many colors, the symbol of his delight. We don’t know exactly how much time has passed, but those events are told in the same chapter in Genesis, barely verses apart. The result is a stark contrast, the time of being the beloved son cut short by a betrayal. A boy’s heart is wounded in many ways. He is wounded when he does not live in a world made safe by his father, when he is not free to explore and dare and simply be a boy, when he is forced to grow up too soon. He is wounded when he does have that world, but it ends with a sudden loss of innocence. And most especially, a boy is wounded to the core when he does not know that he is the beloved son. Sometimes the wounding is intentional, oftentimes it is not, but this is the story of many, living in the world we have, so far from the Garden. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

There is nothing like stepping out your door into a bright and beckoning world. This is why people vacation in beautiful places. It is also the secret to the stories you love — that magical moment when the hero or heroine steps into a "brave new world". You might still remember that lovely catch of breath and skip of heartbeat the first time you followed Lucy through the back of the wardrobe into a snowy wood. Older readers may recall a scene from the first Star Wars film, when young Luke Skywalker steps out of his home in the deserts of Tatooine to watch not one but two suns setting into the horizon. Two suns brilliantly evoked in a moment that sense of “otherness” and wonder. Personally, I love the moment in The Alchemist when Santiago embarks with the caravan across the Sahara. We are preparing our hearts to receive the hope that alone can be the anchor of our souls. One day soon you will step into a renewed earth, a young earth, sparkling like an orchard of cherry trees after a rain shower. Joy will be yours. How do we open our hearts to this after so much pain and disappointment? We have lost many things as we’ve passed through the battlefields of this war-torn world; our humanity has been stripped of such essential goodness. One of our greatest losses is the gift of wonder, the doorway into the kingdom heart. But each of us has special places and favorite stories that are still able to awaken it. Sometimes even a single phrase like “they strode away far into the night” can awaken in us a sense of longing that almost pierces. There are parts of us, no matter how deeply buried, that still remember we were made for this. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Let’s name the “levels” of our being:You have fleeting thoughts throughout the day, most of which are insignificant.You also have longings, hopes, and dreams that are far more important.Deep within you, you have experienced the cry for love, hope, and joy, which feels almost primal to your being.I call these layers of our being the Shallows, Midlands, and Depths.The Shallows of our being are characterized and ruled by the distractions of life. In the Shallows we flit from thought to thought, distraction to distraction almost unpredictably. You know how this goes — you’re driving down the road listening to a podcast on the intelligence of dogs when the host makes a passing reference to his birthday. Your brain seizes on this little inconsequential remark, and you suddenly remember you forgot your mother’s birthday, which leads to some panicked thoughts about how to make up for it and where you can buy a birthday card today. You think of the store that might have a card, and you recall that it’s next to a great taco joint, which causes you to realize how much you love carnitas, and in a matter of a few nanoseconds you are miles from the actual topic of the podcast.This is most people’s mental life nowadays — a fluttering array of randomly distracting thoughts flitting along like a thousand butterflies. Those are the Shallows of your existence.The Midlands are characterized and ruled by what I, echoing Jesus’ words, would call “the cares of life,” the deeper worries, heartaches, longings, and aspirations that occupy the human heart (see Luke 21:34 and Matthew 4:19). Things like the health of your aging parents, the learning struggles of your children, the status of a troubled relationship, the progress of your career or lack thereof. Your finances, your own health, your hopes and fears for your future or the future of your loved ones.I hope this helps you distinguish between the Midlands and the Shallows. The Midlands are deeper down in our being because they are the terrain of weightier matters. When Jesus said, “Watch yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with ... the cares of this life” (Luke 21:34), this is the geography of heartache and fear he was referring to.Distractions keep you in the Shallows for much of your day. They burn mental energy and take your focus on a roller coaster ride. But it is the pressures of the Midlands that keep you up at night — those are the things that cause us to pray, the things that give us ulcers. The Midlands, not the Shallows, tend to be the place of our tears.Deeper still, down in the “depths of your being,” is the essence of your existence, and the dwelling place of God (now that you have invited him to live in you!). The Depths are characterized and ruled by eternal things like faith, hope, love, and joy, to name a few. The prisoner sentenced to solitary confinement, the patient living out the final days of life in a lonely hospital room, and the castaway stranded on a remote island all discover that what once seemed so important now pales in the light of their longing to see their loved ones one more time.We all have a deep inner life, whether we pay attention to it or not. This is very hopeful, because we can learn to access it. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

In order to learn who we really are, we must have a place in our lives where we are removed from the materialism, entertainment, diversion, and busyness that the Vanity Fair of our society and culture immerse us in. The things sold at the booths in the Fair are tranquilizers that separate us, and protect us, from the emptiness and need of our heart. As we leave these less-wild lovers behind and enter into solitude and silence in our own desert place, the first thing we encounter is not rest, but fear, and a compulsion to return to activity.In The Ascent to Truth, Thomas Merton says: "We look for rest and if we find it, it becomes intolerable. Incapable of the divine activity which alone can satisfy [rest] ... fallen man flings himself upon exterior things, not so much for their own sake as for the sake of agitation which keeps his spirit pleasantly numb ... [The distraction] diverts us aside from the one thing that can help us to begin our ascent to truth ... the sense of our own emptiness."Our emptiness is often the first thing we find when we face honestly the story going on in our heart. It is the desert’s gift to us. George MacDonald encourages us to embrace it as a friend by “leaving the heart an empty cup,” and proceeding. But what do we do with our emptiness if we stay with our heart? If we try to pray, our minds fill with busy, disconnected petitions that start with the words, “God, help me to do this or that better, have more faith, read the Bible more.” The busy petitions of our minds seem to leave something inside our chest cavity unexpressed, something that is trying to tell us about the way things are. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Be very careful how you interpret “unanswered prayer.” Our hearts are so vulnerable in these moments. It’s just too easy to lose heart. The conclusions come rushing in — God isn’t listening; he doesn’t care; I’m not faithful enough; prayer doesn’t really work. Catch yourself! Don’t let your heart go there! Ask Jesus to help you interpret what is going on. Jesus — catch my heart, is the first thing I always pray. Catch my heart, Lord. Help me interpret what is going on here. Beware those nasty, soul-killing agreements. The disappointment is real. I appreciate that the scripture admits deferred hope makes the heart sick, because that sure is true in my experience; it assures me that God knows it does too. He said so. The disappointment of unanswered prayer can be devastating. We need to invite the love of God into the disappointment; we need his ministry there. We may need to shed some tears; we may need to grieve; we might need to take a baseball bat to a trash can. However we express our heartsickness, we must invite Jesus there — just like we do with inner healing prayer — to comfort, heal, and restore. I have had to add another phrase to my journal on who God is, and who I am: God is not a betrayer — he does not betray and he has never betrayed me. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

You shall know them, Jesus said, by their fruit. The principle holds true for anything in life. It is especially helpful in diagnosing what the enemy might be up to. What is the fruit of what you’re experiencing? What is its effect? If it continues, what will the results of that be? What will be lost? Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it abundantly. He also warned that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Is something being stolen? That’s not from God. He called Satan the accuser of the brethren. Are you under accusation, that feeling of “I’m such an idiot”? (I’m using polite language here.) Look at the fruit — it will give you a good idea of the tree it came from. Paul says that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). I’m not feeling real joyful at the moment. In fact, the longer whatever this oppression is hangs around, the more discouraged I get. There’s not a lot of peace here either. Not like a river. Not even a rivulet. Whatever this cloud is I’m under, it isn’t bringing with it the fruit of the Spirit. I can’t get back to the clear air I normally have when I’m writing. Something is in the way. It’s vague, I can’t quite name it yet, but I sure can see the fruit of it. I can't write. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

We’re going to want our souls strong and ready for the days ahead, filled with God, not fried and empty. So we must practice soul care.I’m not suggesting you go on a witch hunt for every neglected place in your soul. There’s way too much loss in there to take on all at once. Many people are afraid to feel any of it, fearing that if they start crying, they’ll never stop. It isn’t true, but let’s be kind; let’s approach this realistically. Pick one thing you would call a loss or disappointment that you feel you’ve had to put aside because there wasn’t time or space to deal with it when it happened.Has a movie or song brought you to tears recently (perhaps there’s a song that always brings a few tears?). Play it again, and pay attention — why? What is this awakening in you? Put some words to it. The neglected losses are in there; give them a voice.Then what? Allow your soul to feel. Don’t tell it what to feel; it knows what to do. Just give it permission. It might be anger at first, or it might be sadness, loneliness, why bother? You might find yourself shouting some profanities — that’s okay. Your losses matter. Don’t edit yourself into silence.Anger is a pretty common first reaction to unattended loss. Let it out. Grab a kitchen spatula and start whacking the pillows on your couch, all the while naming why you are so angry over this loss.What you’re doing through this practice is becoming present to your own soul, to places that were left behind.The next step is to invite Jesus in. Invite his love, his comfort, his presence into this specific loss, for his presence brings mercy and healing. I find it important to ask, “What do you have to say about this, God? What are you saying to me about my losses?” His comforting words of interpretation, or promise, are part of the healing.Sometimes what I need is a walk to my little stream. I just need to sit, and sitting by water really helps. Beauty heals; beauty contains within it the promise of restoration.In the past, when I became aware of something in my soul needing his touch, mercy, or deep healing, I would bring it to Jesus in prayer and ask him to do so. The results were mixed. Sometimes it seemed to work, sometimes not. During my road trip to Montana, Jesus began to show me something quite helpful — we can’t stand at a distance from our own soul and ask Christ to “go in there and deal with it.” This isn’t hostage negotiation; we don’t hide a block away and hope God takes care of business. This is your own soul we’re talking about; the door opens from the inside. “I stand at the door and knock,” Jesus explained. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in” (Revelation 3:20). We open the door to our soul from the inside. This is the purpose of naming the loss, feeling it, allowing ourselves to return to the place in our own being that we walked away from. We must enter these places ourselves — the memory, the emotion, whatever it is we are aware of. We inhabit our own soul again. Jesus insists on it. Once there, we open the door from the inside, inviting Christ in, which he is always so eager to do. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

It seems that much of what Christians believe they are called to these days is a cluster of activities that include regular church attendance, Bible study, prayer, giving, concern for justice, and attending the annual men or women’s retreat. Now — what is all that activity for? What are those things supposed to do to us, or in us? If it’s not restoring the whole man, it may not be in line with what God is doing. Because that’s clearly what he’s up to. Back to Jesus’ argument with the Pharisees. He says,“These peoples’ heart has become callused. They hardly hear with their ears. They have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”Do you hear the offer? Do you see what he is so upset about? They have completely missed the point of what God is up to, what he is after in a person’s life: to heal him as a human being. This is so essential to your view of the Gospel and your own approach to Christianity. Really — it will shape your convictions about everything else. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

If you want to get to know someone, you need to know their story. Their life is a story. It, too, has a past and a future. It, too, unfolds in a series of scenes over the course of time. Why is Grandfather so silent? Why does he drink too much? Well, let me tell you. There was a terrible battle in World War II, in the South Pacific, on an island called Okinawa. Tens of thousands of American men died or were wounded there; some of them were your grandfather's best friends. He was there, too, and saw things he has never been able to forget."But in order to make you understand," explained novelist Virginia Woolf, "to give you my life, I must tell you a story."I expect all of us, at one time or another, in an attempt to understand our lives or discover what we ought to do, have gone to someone else with our stories. This is not merely the province of psychotherapists and priests, but of any good friend. "Tell me what happened. Tell me your story, and I'll try to help you make some sense of it."We humans share these lingering questions: "Who am I really? Why am I here? Where will I find life? What does God want of me?" The answers to these questions seem to come only when we know the rest of the story.As Neo said in The Matrix Reloaded, "I just wish I knew what I am supposed to do." If life is a story, what is the plot? What is your role to play? It would be good to know that, wouldn't it? What is this all about? Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

We are now in the late stages of the long and vicious war against the human heart. I know — it sounds overly dramatic. I almost didn't use the term "war" at all, for fear of being dismissed at this point as one more in the group of "Chicken Littles," Christians who run around trying to get everybody worked up over some imaginary fear in order to advance their political or economic or theological cause. But I am not hawking fear at all; I am speaking honestly about the nature of what is unfolding around us ... against us. And until we call the situation what it is, we will not know what to do about it. In fact, this is where many people feel abandoned or betrayed by God. They thought that becoming a Christian would somehow end their troubles, or at least reduce them considerably. No one ever told them they were being moved to the front lines, and they seem genuinely shocked at the fact that they've been shot at.Hello? That's what happens in war — you get shot at. Have you forgotten? We were born into a world at war. This scene we're living in is no sitcom; it's bloody battle. Haven't you noticed with what deadly accuracy the wound was given? Those blows you've taken — they were not random accidents at all. They hit dead center.On and on it goes. The wound is too well aimed and far too consistent to be accidental. It was an attempt to take you out; to cripple or destroy your strength and get you out of the action. Do you know why there's been such an assault? The Enemy fears you. You are dangerous big-time. If you ever really got your heart back, lived from it with courage, you would be a huge problem to him. You would do a lot of damage ... on the side of good. Remember how valiant and effective God has been in the history of the world? You are a stem of that victorious stalk. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

If the way to avoid the murderous rage and deceptive allures of desire is to kill it, if deadness is next to godliness, then Jesus had to be the deadest person ever. But he is called the living God. "It is a dreadful thing," the writer of Hebrews says, "to fall into the hands of the living God ... For our 'God is a consuming fire'" (10:31; 12:29). And what is this consuming fire? His jealous love (Deut. 4:24). God is a deeply, profoundly passionate person. Zeal consumes him. It is the secret of his life, the writer of Hebrews says. The "joy set before him" enabled Jesus to endure the agony of the Cross (Heb. 12:2). In other words, his profound desire for something greater sustained him at the moment of his deepest trial. We cannot hope to live like him without a similar depth of passion. Many people find that the dilemma of desire is too much to live with, and so they abandon, they disown their desire. This is certainly true of a majority of Christians at present. Somehow we believe that we can get on without it. We are mistaken.Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

We come into the world with a longing to be known and a deep-seated fear that we aren't what we should be. We are set up for a crisis of identity.And then, says Frederick Buechner, the world goes to work: Starting with the rather too pretty young woman and the charming but rather unstable young man, who together know no more about being parents than they do the far side of the moon, the world sets in to making us what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. That is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us hardly end up living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather. (Telling Secrets) Think about the part you find yourself playing, the self you put on like a costume. Who cast you in this role? Most of us are living out a script that someone else has written for us. We've not been invited to live from our heart, to be who we truly are, so we put on these false selves hoping to offer something more acceptable to the world, something functional. We learn our roles starting very young and we learn them well.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

I think if we could recover a vision of what holiness actually is, we would be absolutely captured by it. I think we would see it as not only completely desirable, but attainable as well. King David was a man who knew well his character flaws, felt the anguish of regret, spent many a tormented night wrestling with his failings. And yet, in Psalm 119, David wrote this:“I run in the path of your commands, because you have set my heart free.”Have you ever put those two things together — freedom of heart and the passionate pursuit of God’s commands? The two go hand in hand. Genuine holiness restores human beings; restored human beings possess genuine holiness. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

It might help you to ask, How is my hope these days? Where is my hope these days? To shepherd your first hope for the treasure it is, you need to be aware of what you are currently doing with hope right now. Have you attached precious hopes to causal things, your first hope to just about anything? Several years ago I had a dream come true, a lifelong dream to bow hunt moose in the wilds of the Yukon. We were as remote in the wilderness as I’ve ever been. After our floatplane dropped us off to make the farther trek into the Jennings River valley, our guide told us the wildlife we encountered would probably never have seen a human being. Wolves. Grizzly bears. Moose so large they stand eight feet at the shoulder. It was a breathtaking experience, and I had so much hope set on it. It was the trip of a lifetime. But like so many things in this life, the reality fell short of my expectations. The weather wasn’t good; we didn’t sleep well; the moose weren’t around. As those precious I-will-never-do-this-again-in-my-life days ticked by, the emotional roller coaster was miserable: hope and despair, hope and despair, every day. Hiking back to camp the night of day six, cold and dejected, I finally prayed, Jesus, you’ve got to catch my heart. Suddenly this verse from 1 Peter came to my heart: “Set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1:13). It was not what I wanted to hear; I wanted to hear, Your moose is coming! But Jesus knew exactly what I needed. Set my hope fully on his return? I don’t think at the moment my hopes were even set partially there. Not in practicality; not in day-to-day living. I believe in the kingdom; I believe everything I have written here. But I keep giving my kingdom heart to things like that dream trip; I keep putting my ultimate hopes in places they shouldn’t be. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”Mark 9:23–24 NKJV Faith has always been a fragile thing in the human heart. Precious, lifesaving, but fragile, in the way a coral reef is fragile, or a fawn in the woods. It is something to be protected.Your faith is the key that opens the door to access Jesus, and having found him, you gain access to his help and the riches of his entire Kingdom! Without that key we are adrift on a gray, endless sea. This is why faith is your most valuable possession, worth more than all the wealth you could possibly accumulate.But do you really think much about protecting your faith?I marvel at how something so powerful could at the same time be so fragile, so easily shaken. But I suppose love is like that too—it can be undercut with a single devastating sentence from someone you trusted. My concern is that our faculty of faith—the ability to trust and believe—has been secretly eroded by something most of us are completely unaware of. It has to do with the fact that we are, all of us, Disciples of the Internet. If that seems unfair, if you repel the idea that you might be a Disciple of the Internet, consider this: You are a disciple of the system that tutors you, where you turn on a daily basis for guidance on living. For most people, that makes them Disciples of the Internet, even if they call themselves disciples of Christ. If you have a question, you go look it up—new developments for children with ADHD; how often normal married couples have sex; memory care for aging parents; the proper temperature to bake a potato. We do this all day, every day. However, I’m not referring to whatever content it is you search for online.I’m talking about what we have learned from years of the process itself.For one thing, the Internet has discipled your soul to expect immediate answers. You inquire and you are answered— immediately. Three million results in 0.003 seconds; there is no waiting. The saints of ages past would be aghast at that. Waiting was considered formational for the soul. They planted crops in the spring and harvested in the fall; there was no rushing things. If you wanted something from the market, you walked there and then you walked back, moving at a pace of about three miles an hour. But now, when you turn to Jesus and you are not answered in the way the Internet answers, you feel he isn’t listening or that you can’t hear from him. You sadly believe the two of you are distant from one another, because your soul has been programmed for immediate responses. The notion of lingering before God doesn’t fit with the pace we’ve come to expect.Want More? Order your copy of Experience Jesus. Really. today

Communion with God is replaced by activity for God. There is little time in this outer world for deep questions. Given the right plan, everything in life can be managed ... except your heart. The inner life, the story of our heart, is the life of the deep places within us, our passions and dreams, our fears and our deepest wounds. It is the unseen life, the mystery within — what Buechner calls our "shimmering self." It cannot be managed like a corporation. The heart does not respond to principles and programs; it seeks not efficiency, but passion. Art, poetry, beauty, mystery, ecstasy: These are what rouse the heart. Indeed, they are the language that must be spoken if one wishes to communicate with the heart. It is why Jesus so often taught and related to people by telling stories and asking questions. His desire was not just to engage their intellects but to capture their hearts.Indeed, if we will listen, a Sacred Romance calls to us through our heart every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We've heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the shimmer of a sunset on the ocean. The Romance is even present in times of great personal suffering: the illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend. Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure.This longing is the most powerful part of any human personality. It fuels our search for meaning, for wholeness, for a sense of being truly alive. However we may describe this deep desire, it is the most important thing about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that calls to us in this place is none other than the voice of God.We cannot hear this voice if we have lost touch with our heart. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

It seems at times that God will go to any length to thwart the very thing we most deeply want. We can’t get a job. Our attempt to find a spouse never pans out. The doctors aren’t able to help us with our infertility. Isn’t this precisely the reason we fear to desire in the first place? Life is hard enough as it is, but to think that God himself is working against us is more than disheartening. As Job cried out, “What do you gain by oppressing me? ...You hunt me like a lion and display your awesome power against me” (10:3, 16 NLT).I want to state very clearly that not every trial in our life is specially arranged for us by God. Much of the heartache we know comes from living in a broken world filled with broken people. But there are times when God seems to be set against us. Unless we understand our desperate hearts and our incredible tenacity to arrange for the life we want, these events will just seem cruel.When we lived in Eden, there was virtually no restriction on the pleasure around us. We could eat freely from any tree in the Garden. Our desire was innocent and fully satisfied. We had it all, but we threw it away. By mistrusting God’s heart, by reaching to take control of what we wanted, Adam and Eve set in motion a process in our hearts, a desperate grasping that can be described only as addiction. Desire goes mad within us. Gerald May observes, “Once they gave in to that temptation, their freedom was invaded by attachment. They experienced the need for more. God knew that they would not — could not — stop with just the one tree.”Our first parents are banished from Paradise as an act of mercy. The thought of the human race gaining immortality — eating from the Tree of Life — in a fallen state is too horrible to imagine. We would be evil forever.Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

It's better to stay in the safety of the camp than venture forth on a wing and a prayer. Who knows what dangers lie ahead? This was the counsel of the ten faithless spies sent in to have a look at the Promised Land when the Jews came out of Egypt. Only two of the twelve, Joshua and Caleb, saw things differently. Their hearts were captured by a vision of what might be and they urged the people to press on. But their voices were drowned by the fears of the other ten spies and Israel wandered for another forty years. Without the anticipation of better things ahead, we will have no heart for the journey.One of the most poisonous of all Satan's whispers is simply, "Things will never change." That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to "make all things new." Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean "we have no clue so don't even try to imagine," but rather, you cannot outdream God. Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation. We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.Julia Gatta describes impatience, discouragement, and despair as the "noonday demons" most apt to beset the seasoned traveler. As the road grows long we grow weary; impatience and discouragement tempt us to forsake the way for some easier path. These shortcuts never work, and the guilt we feel for having chosen them only compounds our feelings of despair. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The awakening of his heart is essential if a man would truly love a woman. Look at things from her point of view. What does she long for in a man? Every little girl dreams of the day her prince will come. Look at the movies women love — the hero is a romancer. He pursues her, wins her heart, takes her into a great adventure and love story. And notice — what is the great sorrow of every woman in a disappointing marriage? Isn’t it that he no longer pursues, no longer romances her? Life has been reduced to function and problem solving. What she longs for is what you are meant to become.So when it comes to loving a woman, the great divide lies between men as lovers and men as consumers. Does he seek her out, long for her, because really he yearns for her to meet some need in his life — a need for validation (she makes him feel like a man), or mercy, or simply sexual gratification? That man is a Consumer, as my friend Craig calls him. The lover, on the other hand, wants to fight for her — he wants to protect her, make her life better, wants to fill her heart in every way he can. It is no chore for him to bring flowers, or music, spend hours talking together. Having his own heart awakened, he wants to know and love and free her heart. The sexual difference between lover and consumer is revealing — read Song of Songs and ask yourself, “Does this sound like our bedroom?” The lover wants to “make love” to her. The consumer —well, there are any number of crass phrases men use to talk about getting into bed with her.Of course the stage of the lover brings with it great pain and suffering, because we are speaking of the heart, and the heart, as we all know, is vulnerable like nothing else. Resilient, thank God, but vulnerable. The heights of joy this stage ushers in are greater than any other, but with them comes the potential for sorrow as deep as the heights are high. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered By God today

Have we forgotten that God relocated the temple? In a stunning shift of geography, God changed the playing field. He moved the temple from a physical building to the hearts of his people: Don’t you know you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? (1 Corinthians 3:16) God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3:17) For we are the temple of the living God. (2 Corinthians 6:16) Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? (1 Corinthians 6:19) You, dear child of God, follower of Jesus, are now the temple. The New Testament makes that clear. Follow this closely, because it is so very holy, so deeply encouraging, and it will bring you vital resilience for this hour. Your heart is the dwelling place of the Almighty! (If you’ve invited him in, which is easy to do. You simply say, “Lord Jesus — I need you. I really do. I open the temple of my heart to you; I ask you to come and dwell within me. I surrender my life to you in every way. Come and be my saving God, dwelling in my heart.”) In the Old Testament first came the tabernacle and then the temple. These were holy places where God came to be among his people: Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the lord filled the tabernacle. (Exodus 40:34) Then the temple of the lord was filled with the cloud … for the glory of the lord filled the temple. (2 Chronicles 5:13–14) No wonder Satan tried on multiple occasions to defile, desecrate, and ultimately destroy both tabernacle and temple—for here was the epicenter of the life of Israel with their saving God. Here God met with his people. But at the coming of Jesus Christ — Immanuel, God with us — the abiding place of the Holy One shifted in a breathtaking way. When Christ died upon the cross, the veil of the temple in Jerusalem was torn top to bottom; the Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost; and now the temple has moved location to the human heart, because that is where God comes to dwell “that Christ may dwell in your hearts” (Ephesians 3:17). Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

Early on in the fanfare of his public appearances, Jesus gives what will become known as the famous Sermon on the Mount. This is a “big moment” for Jesus. He has laid out in detail his understanding of a life that pleases God; he has, so to speak, driven a stake in the ground. His star is ascending, crowds are growing, and the religious leaders are watching his every move. Watch what Jesus does next:Large crowds followed Jesus as he came down the mountainside. Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. “Lord,” the man said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared. (Matthew 8:1–3 NLT)Clothed in rags, bandanna over the face, hair dirty and matted. Talk about ostracism. In Israel at that time, to get within a stone’s throw of someone so diseased was to jeopardize your own righteousness and reputation.So, that is the danger Jesus is faced with. The man comes near Jesus — but not too near. What does Jesus do? He reaches out and touches him. Jesus doesn’t need to come in contact with the man in order to heal him. There are many accounts where all he does is say the word and people are healed, even people a county away. Yet he touches him. Why?! Because this is the one thing the man needs. No one has touched him for a very long time.The kindness of Jesus in this one act is enough to make me fall in love with him. But so is his scandalous freedom. Jesus doesn’t seem to care. Or better, he cares very deeply about the right things. The risks Jesus is willing to take with his reputation are simply stunning. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Guys are unanimously embarrassed by their emptiness and woundedness; it is for most of us a tremendous source of shame, as I've said. But it need not be. From the very beginning, back before the Fall and the assault, ours was meant to be a desperately dependent existence. It's like a tree and its branches, explains Christ. You are the branches, I am the trunk. From me you draw your life; that's how it was meant to be. In fact, he goes on to say, "Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). He's not berating us or mocking us or even saying it with a sigh, all the while thinking, I wish they'd pull it together and stop needing me so much. Not at all. We are made to depend on God; we are made for union with him, and nothing about us works right without it. As C. S. Lewis wrote, "A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. 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. There is no other."This is where our sin and our culture have come together to keep us in bondage and brokenness, to prevent the healing of our wound. Our sin is that stubborn part inside that wants, above all else, to be independent. There's a part of us fiercely committed to living in a way where we do not have to depend on anyone—especially God. Then culture comes along with figures like John Wayne and James Bond and all those other "real men," and the one thing they have in common is that they are loners; they don't need anyone. We come to believe deep in our hearts that needing anyone for anything is a sort of weakness, a handicap. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said. But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.” He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!” After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.” Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!” Immediately a rooster crowed. (Matthew 26:69–74)Survival situations bring out the best and the worst in people.Who we are, what we love, and how far we are willing to trust God are revealed when we are truly hard-pressed.There is poor Peter, of course, and the call of the rooster. But another revealing story — especially in terms of the fear of not having enough — comes to us from the life of the young church. Things are still turbulent. Revival is happening, but so is persecution. The infamous Ananias and Sapphira sell some real estate, and the problem isn’t that they kept part of the cash for themselves; the issue is they pretend they are sharing it all with the poor. They want to look sacrificial while living selfishly. The duplicity is the issue. I think the fear of not having enough causes them to hoard, but they lie to the apostles and say they aren’t. Things don’t go so well after that.Pressure brings it all to the surface.Military training is designed to do exactly this — strip away all pretense and expose what’s really in you, see what you’re made of. All those popular outdoor leadership programs have a similar goal but take a less severe approach. They simply drop people into the backcountry—far beyond the Comfort Culture—push them past their normal limits, and see what comes out.Most of the time what comes out is not something we wanted the world to see.Marriage and parenting do this too, famously so, but it takes place over years not weeks, and less publicly, so the exposure isn’t as immediate. But you are revealed for who you are nevertheless. How you respond to these challenges is one of your most important tests. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

God interferes with us a lot. He interferes with our inner diatribes; He interferes with our style of relating; He blocks the paths we wrongly think will lead to life. He interferes to bring us up short so that we might see where we are taking the wrong turn. He wants us to truly know Him and enjoy Him. He wants us to live lives that will lead us more deeply into His wonderful heart.Oftentimes God’s interference feels painful, but we need to see the mercy and compassion in our Father’s eyes. We need to breathe and consider the possibility that God understands, that He’s not holding a whip to make us run faster or a ledger to keep track of our sins. No, He is holding out His arms to gather us in and invite us into deeper repentance and life. He interferes because He loves us, and He wants us to know who we are as people and who we are to Him. And that’s where the healing begins.Here is the truth we must remember in the middle of this sometimes painful healing process: we matter to the heart of God. He hasn’t taken His eyes off us. He thinks of us constantly. He has hopes and dreams for us. God planned on us before He made the stars, and He planned on us being His. He planned on us sharing our lives with Him on this wild adventure. And His plans are good. Just like all the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ who have gone before us and who surround us now, we are uniquely and wonderfully made, and the world needs us. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today