Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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