Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Denial is a favorite method of coping for many Christians. But not with Jesus. He wants truth in the inmost being, and to get it there he's got to take us into our inmost being. One way he'll do this is by bringing up an old memory. You'll be driving down the road and suddenly remember something from your childhood. Or maybe you'll have a dream about a long-forgotten person, event, or place. However he brings it up, go with him there. He has something to say to you.The lessons that have been laid down in pain can be accessed only in pain. Christ must open the wound, not just bandage it over. Sometimes he'll take us there by having an event repeat itself years later, only with new characters in the current situation. We find ourselves overlooked for a job, just as we were overlooked by our parents. Or we experience fear again, just as we felt those lonely nights in our room upstairs. These are all invitations to go with him into the deep waters of the heart, uncover the lies buried down there, and bring in the truth that will set us free. Don't just bury it quickly; ask God what he is wanting to speak to. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

The Evil One has basically two ploys. If he cannot get us to kill our hearts and bury our desire, then he is delighted to seduce our desire into a trap. Once we give over our desire for life to any object other than God, we become ensnared. Think of the phrase "She's a slave to fashion." We become slaves to any number of things, which at the outset we thought would serve us. In this light, repression of desire is a much less dangerous stage in the process. Addiction is far worse, for as Gerald May explains,Our addictions are our own worst enemies. They enslave us with chains that are of our own making and yet that, paradoxically, are virtually beyond our control. Addiction also makes idolaters of us all, because it forces us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly, freely loving God and one another. (Addiction and Grace)Like the rich young ruler, we find we cannot give up our treasured possessions, whatever they may be, even though God himself is standing before us with a better offer. If you think his sad story is not also your own, you are out of touch with yourself. I remember standing in the East River several summers ago. It was a gorgeous summer evening, and I was about to enjoy some great fly-fishing. I had just begun to cast when God spoke to me. Put down the rod, he said. I'd like to spend some time with you. I was irritated. Now? I replied. You want to talk to me now? Why not later on the drive home? There's plenty of time in the car. Good grief. What an addict I am! Thus the father of lies turns our most precious treasure—our longing for God and for his kingdom — into our worst enemy. It is truly diabolical. We wind up serving our desire slavishly, or resenting it, or a little of both. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

We are looking for more of God. You’re far more likely to find him in a walk through an orchard or a sit by a pond than you are in a subway terminal. Of course God is with us and for us wherever we are, but in terms of refreshment, renewal, restoration, in terms of finding God in ways we can drink deeply of his wonderful being, you’d do better to look for him in the cry of the gull than the scream of the siren. God inhabits the world he made; his vibrancy permeates all creation:The whole earth is filled with his glory! (Isaiah 6:3 NLT)Christ ... ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself. (Ephesians 4:9–10 NLT)In the most beloved of Psalms, perhaps the most beloved of all scripture, David wrote a poem to celebrate the restoration of his soul. Notice that God took him into nature to accomplish that:The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. (Psalm 23:1–3 NIV)Be careful you don’t dismiss this as something belonging to an agrarian age. God could have taken David into the palace to renew him; he could have taken him into the home of a friend or family member; he could have chosen the bustling markets of Jerusalem. In other words, there were plenty of indoor options for God to employ. But his choice for David’s resuscitation was nature, his greenhouse, filled with his own life, pulsing with his glory, unique in its ability to restore and renew his children. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Love Jesus. Let him be himself with you. Allow his life to fill yours. Every day, give him your life to be filled with his. This is part of what I now pray,every morning: Lord Jesus, I give my life to you today, to live your life. Of course, this assumes that you are willing to surrender your self-determination. You’ll find it hard to receive his life in any great measure if you as the branch keep running off on your own, leaving the Vine behind in order to do life as you please. Honestly, I think this is why we accept such a bland Jesus, or a distant Jesus — he doesn’t intrude on our plans. I said earlier that one of the most bizarre realities of the religious church is how loving Jesus is considered optional, extra credit. The same sort of madness has crept in with the idea that you can be a Christian and hold on to your self- determination. And how is that going, by the way? If you are not drawing your life from Jesus, it means you are trying to draw it from some other source. I’ll guarantee you that it’s not working. Jesus was simply stating a fact of nature when he said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matt. 16:25). Grab for life and it falls through your fingers like sand; give your life away to God, and you will be a person his life can fill. If you want the real deal, if you want to experience the lush, generous, unquenchable, unstoppable life of Jesus in you and through you, then surrender your self-determination. Lord Jesus, I give my life to you today, to live your life. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] Obviously we’ve been told to chase our dreams. Over and over again every high school and college graduation speech challenged us to reach for the stars (as though they had just stumbled upon an original metaphor). But all the while we weren’t given much on becoming the people who could handle the dream when we got there. Probably because Disney didn’t think it had the right musical ring to it. [John] As a warrior you will have to fight to hang on to your dreams. As a young man you also have to learn the discipline not to lose heart through really hard stuff. I am a successful author now, but in my early twenties I went through some pretty tough times. God is shaping us to become men who can handle life. Money actually destroys a lot of men. Money in the hands of people who are still children inside does enormous damage. So does power, fame, and influence. Mankind has an allergy to God; we find it uncomfortable to seek him, to align our desires and our way of doing things with his desires and his way of doing things. Agnosticism comes so naturally to us — to forget him, to accept the “evidence” that life is pretty much up to us. We are half-hearted creatures when it comes to God and his way of doing things. So he allows trial, confusion, and distress in hope that it will compel us to seek him. As we do, things in us are being addressed: our unbelief, our independence and self-reliance, our fear, our pride. (Better sooner than later to address these, by the way — they are the things that destroy a man’s life somewhere down the road.) Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

The question is not, Are we spiritually oppressed, but Where and How? Think of it — why does every story have a villain? Little Red Riding Hood is attacked by a wolf. Dorothy must face and bring down the Wicked Witch of the West. Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi go hand to hand against Darth Maul. To release the captives of the Matrix, Neo battles the powerful "agents." Frodo is hunted by the Black Riders. (The Morgul blade that the Black Riders pierced Frodo with in the battle on Weathertop — it was aimed at his heart). Beowulf kills the monster Grendel, and then he has to battle Grendel's mother. Saint George slays the dragon. The children who stumbled into Narnia are called upon by Aslan to battle the White Witch and her armies so that Narnia might be free.Every story has a villain because yours does. You were born into a world at war. When Satan lost the battle against Michael and his angels, "he was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him" (Rev. 12:9). That means that right now, on this earth, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fallen angels, foul spirits, bent on our destruction. And what is Satan's mood? "He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short" (v. 12). So what does he spend every day and every night of his sleepless, untiring existence doing? "Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against...those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus" (v. 17). He has you in his crosshairs, and he isn't smiling.You have an enemy. He is trying to steal your freedom, kill your heart, destroy your life.Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

In C. S. Lewis's novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, of The Chronicles of Narnia series, four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, pass through the wardrobe's portal to find the kingdom of Narnia imprisoned under the spell of the White Witch. Aslan the lion, who is the king of Narnia, is nowhere to be found. Although rumor has it "He is on the move," he appears to have abandoned his kingdom to the White Witch, who spends her leisure time turning the inhabitants into lawn statuary.The four children set out to explore this strange and somewhat frightening new country that is locked under evil's spell. They come upon Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, a husband and wife still faithful to Aslan. The Beavers assure the children that Aslan is about to return to set things right and that prophecy suggests that they have a very important, even central part to play in the drama about to unfold. Indeed, they learn they are to actually rule with Aslan from Cair Paravel itself, Aslan's royal city.Faced with all this fearful yet exciting news, Lucy and Susan's thoughts go to what Aslan is actually like. If he is a king who is safe, they reason, that will certainly be of great comfort in light of the battle being all but lost."Is—is he a man?" asked Lucy."Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the lion, the great Lion.""Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.""That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.""Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy."Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The mistake folks are making in this rough hour is trying to figure out how to fit a little more of God into their crowded lives.We need to do the opposite. Start with God, center your life on him, and work outward from there. Our spirituality moves from something that is part of our life to the epicenter of our life — from which all other things flow, and to which all other plans yield.Plan to become the most converted person your friends and family know. So why don’t we go ahead and call this the new monasticism — rearranging our days to be centered around our life in God, drawing upon his strength for our resilience. It’s the only way we’re going to make it.[Daniel] went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God. (Daniel 6:10)“Just as he had always done” — in other words, this was his normal routine, not an exceptional moment. The resilience Daniel showed in a dark culture (and in the lions’ den) was built in his daily practices. Pausing to pray morning, noon, and night was habitual for him. And that’s the key — it’s the things that become habitual that shape our lives.If we have made God our priority and we have a history of tapping into him, then we are in a much better position to draw upon his resilience when crisis comes. If we have tinkered with our spiritual life, if it has not been a priority, troubled times wake us up and urge us to prioritize God now.We need some new habits (or the recollection of old habits) that fit within our daily routine. Let me quickly add that whatever we take on now to help with our recovery and resilience has to be realistic or we won’t sustain it. Here’s something simple and sustainable: set your phone alarm so that three times a day you stop, love God, and give him your allegiance.I love you, God. I love you, God. I love you. I give you my allegiance. I choose you over all things. Give me the strength that prevails. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

The history of a man's relationship with God is the story of how God calls him out, takes him on a journey, and gives him his true name. Most of us have thought it was the story of how God sits on his throne waiting to whack a man broadside when he steps out of line. Not so. He created Adam for adventure, battle, and beauty; he created us for a unique place in his story and he is committed to bringing us back to the original design. So God calls Abram out from Ur of the Chaldeas to a land he has never seen, to the frontier, and along the way Abram gets a new name. He becomes Abraham. God takes Jacob off into Mesopotamia somewhere to learn things he has to learn and cannot learn at his mother's side. When he rides back into town, he has a limp and a new name as well.Even if your father did his job, he can only take you partway. There comes a time when you have to leave all that is familiar and go on into the unknown with God.Saul was a guy who really thought he understood the story and very much liked the part he had written for himself. He was the hero of his own little miniseries, Saul the Avenger. After that little matter on the Damascus road he becomes Paul; and rather than heading back into all of the old and familiar ways, he is led out into Arabia for three years to learn directly from God. Jesus shows us that initiation can happen even when we've lost our father or grandfather. He's the carpenter's son, which means Joseph was able to help him in the early days of his journey. But when we meet the young man Jesus, Joseph is out of the picture. Jesus has a new teacher — his true Father — and it is from him he must learn who he really is and what he's really made of. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

We aren't meant to figure life out on our own. God wants to father us. The truth is, he has been fathering us for a long time — we just haven't had the eyes to see it. He wants to father us much more intimately, but we have to be in a posture to receive it. What that involves is a new way of seeing, a fundamental reorientation of how we look at life, and our situation in it. First, we allow that we are unfinished men, partial men, mostly boy inside, and we need initiation. In many, many ways.Second, we turn from our independence and all the ways we either charge at life or shrink from it; this may be one of the most basic and the most crucial ways a man repents. I say "repent" because our approach to life is based on the conviction that God, for the most part, doesn't show up much. I understand where the conviction came from, battle it constantly myself, but still — it's faithless, is it not? We must be willing to take an enormous risk, and open our hearts to the possibility that God is initiating us as men — maybe even in the very things in which we thought he'd abandoned us. We open ourselves up to being fathered. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King”Years ago I came across a very revealing story recounted by Gordon Dalbey. He told of a nun who worked in a men’s prison. One year she brought some Mother’s Day cards to distribute to any prisoners who were interested in sending cards to their moms. Word spread, and requests for cards began pouring in. The demand was so great that she reached out to Hallmark to see if they’d be willing to donate extra boxes of cards. That first year the warden drew numbers from a lottery to determine which inmates would receive the limited number of Mother’s Day cards. With Father’s Day quickly approaching, the nun got to work securing sufficient boxes of Father’s Day cards, and the warden announced a free giveaway to all who were interested in sending a Father’s Day card.Not a single prisoner asked for one.What are we to make of this story? What has happened to the God-intended bond between fathers and their children?Of U.S. students in grades one through twelve, 17.7 million (39 percent) live in homes absent their biological fathers.According to 72.2 percent of the U.S. population, fatherlessness is the most significant family or social problem facing America.To identify the root of fatherlessness in our soul is to begin to recover a path leading to restoration of the greatest treasure we could ever receive. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

Scripture tells us that we might at any time entertain an angel simply by welcoming a stranger. The serpent in the garden is really the Prince of Darkness. The carpenter from Nazareth — there is more to him than meets the eye as well. Things are not what they seem, and so if we would understand our lives — and especially our marriages — we must listen again to the Gospel and the fairy tales based upon it. There are larger events unfolding around us, events of enormous consequence. A lamp is lit and love is lost. A box is opened and evil swarms into the world. An apple is taken and mankind is plunged into darkness. Moments of immense consequence are taking place all around us. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

Whatever the details might be, when a man speaks of the greatest gift his father gave him — if his father gave him anything at all worth remembering — it is always the passing on of masculinity.This is essential, for life will test you. Like a ship at sea, you will be tested, and the storms will reveal the weak places in you as a man. They already have. How else do you account for the anger you feel, the fear, the vulnerability to certain temptations? You know what I speak of. And so our basic approach to life comes down to this: we stay in what we can handle, and steer clear of everything else. We engage where we feel we can or we must — as at work — and we hold back where we feel sure to fail, as in the deep waters of relating to our wife or our children, and in our spirituality.Masculine initiation is a journey, a process, a quest really, a story that unfolds over time. It can be a very beautiful and powerful event to experience a blessing or a ritual, to hear words spoken to us in a ceremony of some sort. Those moments can be turning points in our lives. But they are only moments, and moments, as you well know, pass quickly and are swallowed in the river of time. We need more than a moment, an event. We need a process, a journey, an epic story of many experiences woven together, building upon one another in a progression. We need initiation. And, we need a Guide. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

We’ve got to remember, folks, that no matter how promising an idea sounds, if God’s not in it, you don’t want to be in it either. This is true of a relationship, career change, buying or selling a house, even something as simple as a vacation. We only want what Jesus is in; we only want what our Father is giving.The key test for this moment is not only “I give you my allegiance, Jesus” but also “I only want what you are doing.”And what is Jesus doing right now?Is he trying to secure a happy little life for everyone on the planet?Or is he trying to prepare every human heart and soul for his sudden, surprising return? Only the return of Jesus will bring about the healing of this broken planet.When Jesus says things like, “Don’t be alarmed,” “Don’t let your heart be troubled,” and “See that your hearts are not weighed down,” he’s making an assumption that we play an active role in protecting our own hearts. It is we who choose not to allow our hearts to be overtaken by fear or sorrow. It is certainly in our power to choose what we give our hearts over to. The rich experience of having God come for us, speak to us, and move on our behalf can lead us to believe that it’s all up to him. But this is not the case.Where are we chasing life? We must make sure that this tender part of our heart belongs to Jesus. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

In our eagerness to see good happen, Christians often jump straight into praying, without first pausing and aligning ourselves with Jesus —l ike a trombone player who simply starts playing her part without waiting for the conductor; or an athlete who skips all his normal stretches and warm-ups and tries to hurl himself into the game from a cold start. This might be the number one error made by earnest folk. Remember — there is a way things work. We are in a collision of kingdoms, and it takes intentionality to bring things under and into the kingdom of God. The act of consecration is the fresh act of dedicating yourself — or your home, a relationship, a job, your sexuality, whatever needs God’s grace — deliberately and intentionally to Jesus, bringing it fully into his kingdom and under his rule. It seems so obvious, now that we state it, but you would be surprised how often this vital step is overlooked (and then folks wonder why their prayers don’t seem to be effective). It is the beginning of a whole new life in your wholeness. Anywhere and everywhere you want to experience the fullness of God’s protection and provision, the life and goodness of the kingdom of God, it will help you to consecrate whatever is in question. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,because the LORD has anointed meto proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,to proclaim freedom for the captivesand release from darkness for the prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1) The Hebrew for “brokenhearted” is a conjunction of two words: leb, which is the heart, and shabar, a word that means “broken,” or “to break, to rend violently.” Isaiah elsewhere uses shabar to describe dry branches that are broken into pieces, or statues that have fallen off their pedestals and shattered upon the ground. Shabar refers to a literal breaking, the shattering of the human heart. As if I had to explain this to you; a tender and compassionate look into your own soul will show you exactly what I am talking about. And our Healer will make us whole again. The little boy or girl in you who has so long hidden in fear, the angry adolescent, the heartbroken man or woman — all of “you” will be brought home to you, a fully integrated human being. “At such a time, we will be fully integrated once again — body, mind, spirit, and soul — just as we were intended to live with God at the beginning of creation.” Think of it — to be wholehearted. To be filled with goodness from head to toe. To have an inner glory that matches the glory of your new body: The LORD their God will save his people on that day as a shepherd saves his flock.They will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown.How attractive and beautiful they will be! (Zechariah 9:16–17) “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Matthew 13:43) Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

I don’t recall a worship song with the word cunning in it. “Thou Art Cunning,” or “Cunning, Cunning, Cunning.” Do we interpret his actions in our lives as perhaps part of some cunning plan? That delayed answer to prayer — is there something brilliant about the timing? Would it help us to rest if we thought so? When he answers our prayers with “No,” do we see him sparing us some unseen danger? And when it comes to our own “imitation of Christ,” do we approach our days wondering, How would Jesus have me be snakelike today? Doesn’t it sound a little unchristian?We don’t appreciate Jesus’ cunning because we insist on clinging to our naive view of the world. We just want life to be easy; we just want life to be good. We don’t want to deal with evil, so we pretend we don’t have to. We don’t want to navigate sin either. We prefer our coffeehouse chitchat, our Twitter-level engagement. We play at church. It’s as though we think our mission and our context is something other than what it was for Jesus. Even though he said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Jesus of Nazareth is given many names in Scripture. He is called the Lion of Judah. The Bright and Morning Star. The Wonderful Counselor. The Prince of Peace. The Lamb of God. There are many, many more — each one a window into all that he truly is, all that he has done, all that he will do. But one name seems to have escaped our attention, and that might help explain our misunderstanding of the gospel. Paul refers to Jesus as the Last Adam and the Second Man (1 Cor. 15:45–47). Why is this important? Because of what happened through the First Adam.Our first father, Adam, and our first mother, Eve, were destined to be the root and trunk of humanity. What they were meant to be, we were meant to be: the kings and queens of the earth, the rulers over all creation, the glorious image bearers of a glorious God. They were statues of God walking about in a garden, radiant Man and Woman, as we were to be. Our natures and our destinies were bound up in theirs. Their choices would forever shape our lives, for good or for evil. It is deep mystery, but we see something of a hint of it in the way children so often follow in the steps of their parents. Haven’t you heard it said, “He has his father’s temper,” or “She has her mother’s wit”? As the old saying goes, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. In fact, we call them family trees, and Adam and Eve are the first names on the list.Our first parents chose, and it was on the side of evil. They broke the one command, the only command, God gave to them, and what followed you can watch any night on the news. The long lament of human history. Something went wrong in their hearts, something shifted, and that shift was passed along to each of us. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

Resignation is not just the sigh that groans with something gone wrong. Such a sigh can be redemptive if it does not let go of the Haunting we have all experienced of something presently lost. Resignation is the acceptance of the loss as final. It is the condition in which we choose to see good as no longer startling in its beauty and boldness, but simply as "nice." Evil is no longer surprising; it is normal.It is from this place of heart resignation where many of us, perhaps all of us at one time or another, having suffered under the storm of life's Arrows, give up on the Sacred Romance. But our heart will not totally forsake the intimacy and adventure we were made for and so we compromise. We both become, and take to ourselves, lovers that are less dangerous in their passion for life and the possible pain that comes with it — in short, lovers that are less wild.Those of us who have been drawn to understand that God is our Father through conversion in Christ recapture the Romance again — for a while. We find ourselves again in the throes of first love. The Romance we thought we had left behind once more appears out on the road ahead of us as a possible destination. God is in his heaven and all seems right in the universe.But this side of Eden, even relationship with God brings us to a place where a deeper work in our heart is called for if we are to be able to continue our spiritual journey. It is in this desert experience of the heart, where we are stripped of the protective clothing of the roles we have played in our smaller stories, that the Message of the Arrows reasserts itself. Healing, repentance, and faith are called for in ways we have not known previously. At this place on our journey, we face a wide and deep chasm that refuses us passage through self-effort. And it is God's intention to use this place to eradicate the final heart walls and obstacles that separate us from him. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want. (John 5:39–40 The Message)The promise of life and the invitation to desire has again been lost beneath a pile of religious teachings that put the focus on knowledge and performance.History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is thought to be essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin: with wrongdoing or wrong-being and its effects. Life, our actual existence, is not included in what is now presented as the heart of the Christian message, or it is included only marginally. (The Divine Conspiracy)Thus Willard describes the gospels we have today as “gospels of sin management.” Sin is the bottom line, and we have the cure. Typically, it is a system of knowledge or performance, or a mixture of both. Those in the knowledge camp put the emphasis on getting our doctrine in line. Right belief is seen as the means to life. Desire is irrelevant; content is what matters. But notice this — the Pharisees knew more about the Bible than most of us ever will, and it hardened their hearts. Knowledge just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If you are familiar with the biblical narrative, you will remember that there were two special trees in Eden — the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. We got the wrong tree. We got knowledge, and it hasn’t done us much good. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

This isn’t complicated. We simply start saying, “I love you” as we turn our attention towards him for a moment or two. As I do so I find it helpful to recall some reason I love God: his goodness, the beauty of the world (ninety thousand caribou stacked up for a river crossing), a kindness I recently received. “God is the creator of everything I love.” Just repeat that to yourself, “God is the creator of everything I love.”Reminding yourself that God is the one who brought into existence the very things you love is a wonderful reminder to your soul of the intimacy between God’s heart and yours. You love the same things! Did you know that? Close friends love the same things; lovers love the same things. Go on and think of something else that delights your heart — laughter, beauty, your favorite things in nature, a childhood fairytale. Beginning with the things we love is the way back towards God. As you go through your normal day, practice saying “I love you” to God. Not once, but repeating it as you turn your heart toward him. Saying “I love you” — either out loud or quietly in the sanctuary of our inner life — causes our heart to follow; our being begins to enter into the act of loving. We turn our thoughts towards him — our Father, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. We turn towards him in the pauses of our day.In loving him, we are able to receive him. As we receive him, we realize again how wonderful he truly is. Our heart enlarges for him, our union is strengthened, and we can receive more of him. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Most of us have been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. "I think I'm just trying to get God to make my life work easier," a client of mine confessed, but he could have been speaking for most of us. We're asking the wrong questions. Most of us are asking, "God, why did you let this happen to me?" Or, "God, why won't you just ________" (fill in the blank—help me succeed, get my kids to straighten out, fix my marriage — you know what you've been whining about). But to enter into a journey of initiation with God requires a new set of questions: What are you trying to teach me here? What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this? What is it you want me to see? What are you asking me to let go of? In truth, God has been trying to initiate you for a long time. What is in the way is how you've mishandled your wound and the life you've constructed as a result."Men are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is shameful," notes Robert Bly in Iron John. Like a man who's broken his leg in a marathon, he finishes the race even if he has to crawl and he doesn't say a word about it. A man's not supposed to get hurt; he's certainly not supposed to let it really matter. We've seen too many movies where the good guy takes an arrow, just breaks it off, and keeps on fighting; or maybe he gets shot but is still able to leap across a canyon and get the bad guys. And so most men minimize their wound. King David (a guy who's hardly a pushover) didn't act like that at all. "I am poor and needy," he confessed openly, "and my heart is wounded within me" (Ps. 109:22).Or perhaps they'll admit it happened, but deny it was a wound because they deserved it. Suck it up, as the saying goes. The only thing more tragic than the tragedy that happens to us is the way we handle it. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

There is the story of subduing the storm and immediately after, the encounter with Legion. In all three synoptic Gospels, these two stories are linked—a frightening storm, and then a frightening demoniac. In all three accounts, Jesus — who was sleeping in the stern of the sinking boat — rises to confront the tempest like a drill sergeant: “Quiet! Be still!” Now, why does he need to rebuke the storm? The word — epitimao — is the same used when Jesus commands foul spirits to come out of people. Fascinating — the storm needed to be rebuked. The very next episode in all three synoptics finds Christ stepping on shore to confront Legion.He frees the man, the locals rage against Jesus, and he gets rights back in the boat and returns to the other side. Did he go to all that effort for one man? It ended up that way. And Jesus did say something about leaving the ninety-nine to find the one. It certainly is an awe-inspiring doubleheader, and fearsome, too. That is, Jesus is fearsome. Everything else trembles before him. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Christians are designed to live in and enjoy the benefits of two ecosystems, two realities — the physical and the spiritual, the earth and the heavens. Each world offers graces for human flourishing. The natural world is saturated with beauty, and beauty nourishes the human soul. That’s why we vacation in lovely places — when we’re looking to be renewed, we choose walks in the woods, swimming in the ocean, biking through vineyards, music, and dinner on the patio under the stars. There are many natural graces that nourish and strengthen the heart and soul — beauty is one, stillness is another, and so are nature and disentangling from technology, but I wrote about those in my book Get Your Life Back, so I won’t go into them here. We are also created to live comfortably in the spiritual world, to draw upon the supernatural graces available to us through the rest of God’s wonderful kingdom. If you’ve ever experienced the comfort of God, or the love of God, that was heaven coming to you here on earth. You tapped into the rest of God’s kingdom for the help, strength, and sustenance you needed. Prayer is reaching into the heavens for what we need. If you have had the joy of hearing Jesus speak to you, if he brings to you scriptures, songs, things that stir your heart, that’s the heavens coming into your natural world. You are tapping into the resources of God’s kingdom. And there is so much more to discover! For some reason I’m thinking of penguins. They aren’t technically amphibians, but they move comfortably between two worlds. Like most mammals that live on land — they nest on land, sleep on land, mate on land, raise their chicks on land. But they are wonderfully adept in the ocean. Penguins are, in fact, awkward on land, but they are so graceful, even elegant, as they swim and dive in the water. We are meant to be the same: not only adept but even elegant in our ability to swim in the rest of God’s kingdom. Our created nature is designed to live in two worlds, drawing our strength from two worlds; that’s why I call us amphibians. But most of us are not tapping into the supernatural graces. We can’t ignore these and hope to thrive in an hour like this one. If you place a frog — a true amphibian — in a tank of water with no dry place to crawl onto, it will die. If you place it in a terrarium with no water, it will die. Amphibians need both realms to thrive. We cannot hope to find resilience while we ignore the provision God has for us in the fullness of his beautiful kingdom. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today

One of the most profound surprises that has come about through walking with God has been with regard to people. People make up a very large part of our lives. We’re surrounded by people. We deal with others every day, from the driver in front of us, to the waitress in the café, to the gal in the next office, to those who share our homes. And they are nearly always, one way or another, in some sort of need. Or crisis. Or self-inflicted drama. And one of the great dangers for the person who has begun to desire to please Christ is that we simply let our conscience be our guide in relating to others. We tend to jump in, as opposed to walking with God. Either we give too much or too little, or we offer what is needed, but at the wrong time. It would be a revealing study to look at the way Jesus relates to people in the Gospel stories. Sometimes he stops mid-stride to offer a word or a kindness to what seems to me to be a pretty minor character, someone I think I would have ignored. Other times he ducks for cover, dodges an encounter completely (see Luke 5:12–16). He possesses a freedom toward others I find myself longing for. What would happen if we began to ask Jesus what he is saying when it comes to the people in your life? Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

Is there any doubt that the God John beheld (Rev. 4:3, 6) was beautiful beyond description? But of course. God must be even more glorious than this glorious creation, for it "foretells" or "displays" the glory that is God's. John said God was as radiant as gemstones, richly adorned in golds and reds and greens and blues, shimmering as crystal. Why, these are the very things that Cinderella is given — the very things women still prefer to adorn themselves with when they want to look their finest. Hmmm. And isn't that just what a woman longs to hear? "You are radiant this evening. You are absolutely breathtaking."Saints from ages past would speak of the highest pleasures of heaven as simply beholding the beauty of God, the "beatific vision."The reason a woman wants a beauty to unveil, the reason she asks, Do you delight in me? is simply that God does as well. God is captivating beauty. As David prays, "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may...gaze upon the beauty of the LORD" (Ps. 27:4). Can there be any doubt that God wants to be worshiped ? That he wants to be seen, and for us to be captivated by what we see? (Wild at Heart)But in order to make the matter perfectly clear, God has given us Eve. The crowning touch of creation. Beauty is the essence of a woman. We want to be perfectly clear that we mean both a physical beauty and a soulful/spiritual beauty. The one depends upon and flows out of the other. Yes, the world cheapens and prostitutes beauty, making it all about a perfect figure few women can attain. But Christians minimize it too, or over-spiritualize it, making it all about "character." We must recover the prize of Beauty. The church must take it back. Beauty is too vital to lose.Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

Because of Jesus, we have every reason to be known as people of deep hope and joy. But does that mean we are going to be running around singing and dancing and smiling every moment of our lives? Are you able to? Am I? Is that what it means to “rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice”? (Phil. 4:4 esv). I hope by now that you know I don’t think so. If we were only doing that, skipping around with glee, we would be a people whose character is an inch deep, refusing to live with honesty and integrity. Remember, hard times come, and you must be willing to be present in them and feel the sorrow they bring in order to have joy. Your capacity to feel the one affects your capacity to experience the other. The two are connected. A soul deadened to the pain of the world and to your own life is numb to the joy available to you as well. As George MacDonald wrote, “Beauty and sadness always go together.” (Within and Without)These days, I am experiencing joy increasingly. It sometimes feels like a fire in my chest. I have known my sorrows, just as you have. My temptation is to run from them, fearing that allowing myself to fully experience them will overwhelm me. They are a tidal wave, and I don’t know how to swim. But then the sorrow refuses to be ignored or stuffed or numbed or run from any longer. I must stop and give it space, allow the sorrow and sadness a voice. To feel it. Here’s a secret: our feelings have a life span. When we allow ourselves to fully feel our grief—to embrace it rather than shun it—the feeling of relief and release comes more quickly than we could imagine. The wave shrinks. We are buoyed by it. The sea calms. And we realize we did not drown. It won’t destroy us. We were created for Eden, yet we live in the valley of the shadow of death. Of course we ache. That’s normal. There is a sadness that tinges even the best of moments. It is a sadness that is real and not to be ignored. It is a sadness that can point us home. Yes, there will be sorrow in the living. But even there, we will have many choices to make: either to let our lives be defined by sorrow or to dig into joy. It is as Ann Voskamp said, “The secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.” (One Thousand Gifts) How do we cultivate a heart of joy even amid shades of sadness? How do our hearts develop their rhythm, becoming increasingly synced with the heartbeat of heaven? By cultivating a heart that is thankful. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. (1 Corinthians 3:10–14) We know our every sin is forgiven; we know we live under mercy. We know there is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1). No condemnation, ever. We will be cloaked in righteousness, and it will emanate from our very being. So if we can remove all fear of exposure from our hearts, if we can set this safely within the context of our Father’s love, it helps us toward a great, great moment in the kingdom: the time for every story to be told rightly. How wonderful it will be to see Jesus Christ vindicated, after so many eons of mockery, dismissal, and vilification. Our Beloved has endured such slander, mistrust, and, worst of all, such grotesque distortion by the caricatures and religious counterfeits paraded in his name. All the world will see him as he is, see him crowned King. Every tongue will be silenced, and his vindication will bring tremendous joy to those who love him! But, friends — that vindication is also yours. You probably have a number of stories you would love to have told rightly — to have your actions explained and defended by Jesus. I know I do. I think we will be surprised by what Jesus noticed. The “sheep” certainly are when their story is told: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?” (Matthew 25:37). What a lovely surprise — all our choices great and small have been seen, and each act will be rewarded. All those decisions your family misinterpreted and the accusations you bore, the many ways you paid for it. The thousands of unseen choices to overlook a cutting remark, a failure, to be kind to that friend who failed you again. The things that you wish you had personally done better, but at the time no one knew what you were laboring under—the warfare, the depression, the chronic fatigue. The millions of ways you have been missed and terribly misunderstood. Your Defender will make it all perfectly clear; you will be vindicated.Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

The meadowlark has long been my favorite songbird. I love its song because it evokes so many summer days out in the fields and streams of the West. Its song means summer, hay meadows, long lazy days, fly-fishing. More than anything else, it has become for me a symbol of hope. The meadowlark returns to Colorado in the early spring, and as I’ve mentioned, that typically means it arrives about the same time our major snowstorms hit. What courage; if it were me, I’d wait until June when the weather warms up. But they come in spite of the snow, and take their place on fence posts and the tops of small trees, and begin singing. Hearing a midsummer song almost seems out of place when the flurries are whipping about your face. But that is exactly when we need it.I heard two meadowlarks again this spring, calling and responding to each other on a cold and windy day. God began to speak through them. I heard him urging me to keep my own summer song, even though life’s winter tries to throw into my spring cold wind and snow. Do not throw away your confidence, he said. Do not budge from your perch, but sing your song, summer confident, sure of my great goodness toward you. You did not bring this spring, dear child; you do not have to arrange for the summer to follow. They come from thy Father’s will, and they will come.Brent was buried on a Thursday afternoon. As we gathered by the graveside, Craig read these words: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25–26). He closed his Bible and we all stood in silence, not really knowing what to say or do; no one wanted to leave; no one really wanted to stay. It seemed so final. At that moment, a meadowlark sang.This is my song in return. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about – He is looking for us. —Simon TugwellCan it possibly get any more uncertain than this? We so long for life to be better than it is. We wish the beauty and love and adventure would stay and that someone strong and kind would show us how to make the Arrows go away. We hope that God will be our hero. Of all the people in the universe, he could stop the Arrows and arrange for just a little more blessing in our lives. He can spin the earth, change the weather, topple governments, obliterate armies, and resurrect the dead. Is it too much to ask that he intervene in our story? But he often seems aloof, almost indifferent to our plight, so entirely out of our control. Would it be any worse if there were no God? If he didn't exist, at least we wouldn't get our hopes up. We could settle once and for all that we really are alone in the universe and get on with surviving as best we may.This is, in fact, how many professing Christians end up living: as practical agnostics. Perhaps God will come through, perhaps he won't, so I'll be hanged if I'll live as though he had to come through. I'll hedge my bets and if he does show up, so much the better. The simple word for this is godlessness. Like a lover who's been wronged, we guard our heart against future disappointment. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The shriveled figure lay in the sun like a pile of rags dumped there by accident. It hardly appeared to be human. But those who used the gate to go in and out of Jerusalem recognized him. He was disabled, dropped off there every morning by someone in his family, and picked up again at the end of the day. A rumor was going around that sometimes (no one really knew when) an angel would stir the waters, and the first one in would be healed. Sort of a lottery, if you will. And as with every lottery, the desperate gathered round, hoping for a miracle.It had been so long since anyone had actually spoken to him, he thought the question was meant for someone else. Squinting upward into the sun, he didn't recognize the figure standing above him. The misshapen man asked the fellow to repeat himself; perhaps he had misheard. Although the voice was kind, the question felt harsh, even cruel."Do you want to get well?"He sat speechless, blinking into the sun. Slowly, the words seeped into his consciousness, like a voice calling him out of a dream. Do I want to get well? Slowly, like a wheel long rusted, his mind began to turn over. What kind of question is that? Why else would I be lying here? Why else would I have spent every day for the past thirty-eight seasons lying here? He is mocking me. But now that his vision had adjusted to the glare, he could see the inquisitor's face, his eyes. The face was as kind as the voice he heard. Apparently, the man meant what he said, and he was waiting for an answer. "Do you want to get well? What is it that you want?"It was Jesus who posed the question, so there must be something we're missing here. He is love incarnate. Why did he ask the paraplegic such an embarrassing question? Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

When the going gets rough, we're going nowhere without desire. And the going will get rough. The world, the minions of darkness, and your own double-mindedness are all set against you. Just try coming alive, try living from your heart for the Sacred Romance and watch how the world responds. They will hate you for it and will do everything in their power to get you to fall back into the comfort of the way things were. Your passion will disrupt them, because it sides with their own heart which they've tried so hard to put away. If they can't convince you to live from the safer places they have chosen, they will try intimidation. If that fails, they'll try to kill you — if not literally, then at the level of your soul.Jeremiah lived the struggle of desire. He knew the deep ambivalence of living for the Sacred Romance. His decision to trust in the love of God and join the battle for the hearts of his people made him an outcast, a pariah. Like the Master he served, he was "despised and rejected by men." After years of opposition, getting tossed naked into the bottom of wells, plots against his life, the shame of false accusations and the loneliness of isolation, Jeremiah has had it. He is ready to throw in the towel. He lets the passion of his soul forth, directly at God:O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me... So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. (20:7-9)He says, in effect, "You put this Romance in my heart, you drew me out on this wild adventure — how could I keep from following? But now that I have, it has only brought me the fury of my community. And what's worse, I cannot walk away. I'm trapped by my desire for you." Jeremiah may have become a prophet initially out of a sense of duty, but now he is caught up in the Sacred Romance because he can't help it. When the going gets rough, ought is not enough to keep you going. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).The Greek word here for “the world” we are crucified to is kosmos. It is quite an encompassing term, including all the inhabitants of the earth; mankind; the human race. It also refers to the ungodly; the mass of mankind alienated from God. You are crucified to that controlling mother, or angry boss; you are crucified to that church holding to arrogant sin or false humility.You will therefore find it very helpful to bring the cross of Christ between you and others, especially when you feel their warfare is trying to jump on you, or, in cases of unhealthy emotional and spiritual ties:I bring the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ between me and ____. I have been crucified to ___ and they have been crucified to me. By the cross I break all unhealthy ties and every unholy bond with ___. I command their sin, warfare, and corruption back to the throne of Christ over their life, and I forbid it to transfer to me, in Jesus’ name. I allow only the love of God, the Spirit of God, and the kingdom of God between us. In Jesus’ mighty name, and by his authority.The beauty is, the cross never prevents love from passing between us, never prevents the Spirit of God from coming between us. The cross only cuts off unhealthy things, so there is never any fear in bringing it between you and the kosmos. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

It's undeniable: the new covenant, accomplished through the work of Christ, means that we have new hearts. Our hearts are good. Or God's a liar. Until we embrace that stunning truth, we will find it really hard to make decisions, because we can't trust what our hearts are saying. We'll have to be motivated by external pressure since we can't be motivated by our hearts. In fact, we won't find our calling, our place in God's kingdom, because that is written on our hearts' desires. We'll have a really hard time hearing God's voice in a deeply intimate way, because God speaks to us in our hearts. We'll live under guilt and shame for all sorts of evil thoughts and desires that the Enemy has convinced us were ours. God will seem aloof. Worship and prayer will feel like chores.Of course, I just described the life most Christians feel doomed to live.Now listen to Jesus:Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. (Luke 6:44-45, emphasis added)Later, explaining the parable of the sower and the seed, Jesus says,The seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. (Luke 8:15, emphasis added)Jesus himself teaches that the heart can be good and even noble. That somebody is you, if you are his. God kept his promise. Our hearts have been circumcised to God. We have new hearts. Do you know what this means? Your heart is good. Let that sink in for a moment. Your heart is good.What would happen if you believed it, if you came to the place where you knew it was true? Your life would never be the same. My friend Lynn got it, and that's when she exclaimed, "If we believed that ... we could do anything. We would follow him anywhere!" Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Where has Jesus come through for you? Really. Take a moment and remember. And then write it down. Remembering fertilizes our hope. It makes our faith burgeon and bloom. It strengthens our belief in the promises of God that He is good and He is for us. Remembering fuels our joy even when surrounded by thieves who want to steal it. Sometimes being a joyful person amid this crazy world seems impossible. Well then, let the impossible commence. Because one of the secrets to being defiantly joyful is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the circumstances going on in your life or your world. Defiant joy does not depend on feeling happy. Defiant joy is solely based on the victory of Jesus Christ and all that He has won for you. It rests on the fact that you are completely and utterly loved and cared for. In Christ your life is inextinguishable. Undefeatable. Victorious. Worry, fear, panic, and dread do not get to hold your heart hostage in their viselike grip. Your heart is safely held in the hands of your faithful God who promises that a life of unending joy is your inheritance. It is coming. Jesus led the way. And though the way often includes disappointment, pain, betrayal, and sorrow, none of them get to have the final say. Only God has the final say over your life. Your future is secure. Your Father is faithful. His promises are true. The unseen world is a far more reliable anchor than the seen one. Your trustworthy God holds you and all you love. You can choose to be immensely and deeply grateful for that, always. And gratitude is the breeding ground of joy. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] When we moved into our first place, Susie started having some intense nightmares, something that isn’t common for her. After a couple of nights of this, we figured praying against it couldn’t hurt, so we tried it. I felt like an idiot at first, speaking out loud and commanding things to leave. I imagined myself as the blindfolded kid swinging at a piñata. But then the craziest thing happened: she stopped having nightmares. [John] Exactly. You gave that thing a good, solid whack and the result was wonderful — no more nightmares. This is enormously practical. We aren’t speculating on theological nuances; we are trying to protect those we love, find the guidance we need, fight for our dreams, bring some genuine relief to the suffering in this world. Not only does Christianity provide the clearest and truest explanation for evil, it also provides us with weapons to fight it and see genuine results. This was absolutely central to Jesus’ worldview. He neither obsessed over the presence of an enemy nor did he ignore it; he directly dealt with it when he needed to and then moved on. Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

We cannot know the plans of God for us beyond His promises that He is working for our good at all times. And often we are far from comfortable as we wait. But, just as David wrote in the psalm, we, too, can remember God’s great love and faithfulness and trust that our King is forging something beautiful in us even as we wait. He is making us into a people who will be able to fully partake of the feast He is preparing. He is making us into a people who will worship Him in the waiting, saying, “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth!”In our waiting God often deepens our hunger as well. A fabulous hors d’oeuvre is meant to awaken the appetite, not to quench it. It cultivates hunger by offering a hint of what is coming. There’s a taste, a promise of being satisfied. Jesus awakens our longing for Him by using all kinds of things. He offers aromas of His goodness through His Word. He awakens our hunger through laughter, through beauty, joy, and connection. He quickens our longing in silence and solitude. He even increases our hunger through pain. Through sorrow and suffering, our longing for Jesus grows. He enlarges our hearts’ capacity to wait with expectant hope through encounters with His loving presence as well as through times of loneliness and ache. We come to know Jesus in the waiting, not as one who is teasing out our time for some unknown sadistic reason but as the One who is sharing the experience of waiting with us, creating a union between His heart and our own. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

You might think that keeping Jesus all mysterious and heavenly is the proper thing to do, but consider this: When he came, he came as presented in the Gospels — very much human, a person, a man, with a very distinct personality. This is the primary witness we have of him, recorded for all who would know him. This is how he chooses to make himself known. This is the “self” he presents to us. Be careful you don’t push him away with your religious delicacies.“Jesus was so obviously human,” notes Eugene Peterson, “but this has never been an easy truth for people to swallow. There are always plenty of people walking around who will have none of this particularity: human ordinariness, bodily fluids, raw emotions of anger and disgust, fatigue and loneliness.” Did you think Gethsemane was the only time he sweat? Or maybe we assume his sweat smelled like lilies? And what is with the snowy white robe? Every movie I’ve seen costumes Jesus in an immaculate white robe. He never got dirty? Those were not paved roads he walked for miles. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Most of you have heard of the famous Cross, the assurance of forgiveness (and Lord knows we’ll need buckets of that as we go along). In the Cross God undergoes utter forsakenness so that we will never be forsaken. He understands sorrow, pain, rejection, misunderstanding, and abandonment. But what follows is for some reason, less well-known or at least less understood — the Resurrection, the triumph of the life of God. This is as central to Christianity as the Cross, perhaps even more so. Because it is that life he offers to us.George MacDonald explains that “the whole history is a divine agony to give divine life to creatures. The outcome of that agony ... will be radiant life, whereof joy unspeakable is the flower.” Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

I never assume I know what the new prayer need before me requires. If someone asks me, “Pray that my mother and my father reconcile,” I don’t simply start praying that. For one thing, I do not know with any sort of certainty that reconciliation is what God is doing in this moment. It may well be the will of God that her parents reconcile, but it may also be that first he wants to address something in their character. God doesn’t just put Band-Aids on things; it would be far more like him to first deal with the sin that was poisoning the marriage, and then bring about reconciliation.I want to live and pray like God’s intimate ally, so I turn my gaze toward God and ask, What do you want me to pray for her mother and father? Show me what to pray. Those prayers are far more effective because they are aligned with his will. They are aligned with what he is doing in the situation at this particular moment.Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

Satan has an ace up his sleeve — even if his captives want out of the POW camp, he has a legal claim to them. A claim that can be broken only by blood. These prisoners can be ransomed, but only at a terrible price.It appears the evil one doesn’t understand Jesus’ next move. He sees an opportunity to finish what he started back in the massacre of the innocents. The authorities grab Jesus at night, bring him in under false charges, bribe witnesses, then get a weary, cynical Roman puppet to execute him because the mob is about to riot. Jesus seems to have run out of options, lost his ability to maneuver. Yet this plays right into his plan — his secret plot to overthrow the rule of the evil one on earth. Apparently, Satan did not know that by sacrificing Jesus he would pull the one pin that would crumble his entire kingdom, fall into the very scheme God the Father had carefully, ever so carefully arranged for the undoing of evil:“We speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:7–8). Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

You will be tested. Like Jesus’ desert trial, the enemy comes, probing the perimeter. He knows your story, knows where the weak spots are. But this is our training. This is the spiritual equivalent of, “Take a high guard, like this. Strike from high. Like this. Do it. Blade straighter. Leg back. Bend your knees. Sword straighter. Defend yourself.” This is how we develop a resolute heart. We make no agreements with whatever the temptation or accusation is. We repent the moment we do stumble, repent quickly, so that we don’t get hammered. We pray for strength from the Spirit of God in us. We directly — and this is the one thing so many fail to do — we directly resist the enemy, out loud, as Jesus did in the desert. We quote Scripture against him. We command him to flee.By the time it’s over, you’ll wish a few angels would drop in and minister to you as well. I pray they do. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

At one point in the long, arduous campaign of delivering to Judah the bad news of coming judgment and futile calls for repentance, Jeremiah explodes with thoughts that have apparently been building in him for a while with regard to God's use of him:O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. (Jeremiah 20:7-9 NIV)Jeremiah complains that not only has God written a play that casts him in a devastating role, but that he has also placed a fire in his heart that will not let him leave the play even if he wants to.…Faced with the Message of the Arrows and a part too big that God the Cosmic Playwright insists is ours, with little clarity on the meaning and relationship of our scenes and character to the larger play, it appears more than sensible to opt out and go off-Broadway. Even though the smaller plays we write are often just pieces of stories, becoming our own directors and playwrights at least promises a level of control over the script. We hope we can eliminate most of the relational unknowns along with the villain and live in our smaller stories with some modicum of peace and quiet.What is this drama God has dropped us into the middle of? What act of the play are we in and what do our scenes have to do with the larger story being told? Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King”Whatever else we observe about the life of Jesus, we know this to be true: at every moment, Jesus modeled what it looks like to live as God’s Son. It was the bedrock of his life that allowed him to become the cornerstone of restoration for all of mankind. It’s amazing to think that even Jesus needed to receive the validation of his Father before he launched into his life’s mission. I wonder what it was like for him to hear those words from his Father: “Son, you are the real deal. You have what it takes. I delight in you” (Matt. 3:17, my paraphrase). His Father’s constant validation was a holy reservoir from which Jesus drew strength for the rest of his days.What might it be like, deep in our masculine soul, to live in an atmosphere of abundance? To live with an abiding expectation of goodness now and goodness around the corner? To know a profound sense of robust well-being, a sense of being provided for, protected, and fed? To experience a union with God that nothing could dissolve? What would it be like to be so restored as a son that we could become our true self? To become the kind of king, like Paul, who over time was able to live energetically rooted in God, even in the midst of hunger, shipwreck, and torture?Now that I have been so immersed in the true nature of God and his kingdom,now that I have thoroughly put to death the self-sufficiency and self- preservation of the false self,now that I have been resurrected and restored to my true self,now that I have become in my essence what God meant when he meant man,now that I have become uniquely who God meant, when he meant me,now that I have trained and become practiced in living a life in experiential union with God himself,now that it is no longer the separate-I who lives but the very breath, strength,and life of God-with-me who lives in me, I am ready for anything, anywhere.Imagine what it would be like to receive that validation from the Father, to have that reservoir from which to drink daily. To be integrated in our masculine soul. To live in ever-increasing union with the Father.We would become unstoppable. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

The crisis of hope that afflicts the church today is a crisis of imagination. Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft writes: Medieval imagery (which is almost totally biblical imagery) of light, jewels, stars, candles, trumpets, and angels no longer fits our ranch-style, supermarket world. Pathetic modern substitutes of fluffy clouds, sexless cherubs, harps and metal halos (not halos of light) presided over by a stuffy divine Chairman of the Bored are a joke, not a glory. Even more modern, more up-to-date substitutes — Heaven as a comfortable feeling of peace and kindness, sweetness and light, and God as a vague grandfatherly benevolence, a senile philanthropist — are even more insipid. Our pictures of Heaven simply do not move us; they are not moving pictures. It is this aesthetic failure rather than intellectual or moral failures in our pictures of Heaven and of God that threatens faith most potently today. Our pictures of Heaven are dull, platitudinous and syrupy; therefore, so is our faith, our hope, and our love of Heaven. (Everything You Wanted to Know About Heaven)If our pictures of heaven are to move us, they must be moving pictures. So go ahead — dream a little. Use your imagination. Picture the best possible ending to your story you can. If that isn't heaven, something better is. When Paul says, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9), he simply means we cannot out-dream God. What is at the end of our personal journeys? Something beyond our wildest imagination. But if we explore the secrets of our heart in the light of the promises of Scripture, we can discover clues. As we have said, there is in the heart of every man, woman, and child an inconsolable longing for intimacy, for beauty, and for adventure. What will heaven offer to our heart of hearts? Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

What exactly are you perfectly clear on these days? How about your life — why have things gone the way they have? Where was God in all that? And do you know what you ought to do next, with a deep, settled confidence that it will work out? Neither do I. Oh, I'd love to wake each morning knowing exactly who I am and where God is taking me. Zeroed in on all my relationships, undaunted in my calling. It's awesome when I do see. But for most of us, life seems more like driving along with a dirty windshield and then turning into the sun. I can sort of make out the shapes ahead, and I think the light is green.Wouldn't a little bit of clarity go a long way right now?Let's start with why life is so dang hard. You try to lose a little weight, but it never seems to happen. You think of making a shift in your career, maybe even serving God, but you never actually get to it. Perhaps a few of you do make the jump, but it rarely pans out the way you thought. You try to recover something in your marriage, and your spouse looks at you with a glance that says, "Nice try," or "Isn't it a little late for that?" and the thing actually blows up into an argument in front of the kids. Yes, we have our faith. But even there — maybe especially there — it all seems to fall rather short of the promise. There's talk of freedom and abundant life, of peace like a river and joy unspeakable, but we see precious little of it, to be honest. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life. Rescue me from my enemies, Lord, for I hide myself in you. (Psalm 143:8–9)David wrote this—the man who could often be found hiding in the desert, in the forest, on the mountain. He was no coward. He was no fool. Nor was Jesus, who practically begs you to hide yourself in him. Six times in the opening lines of John 15 he urges us to “remain in me,” then caps it off a seventh time with “Remain in my love” (v. 9).As men and women warriors we must not always live at war. Your enemy will first try to prevent you from embracing the warrior within. If he fails at that, he will then try to bait you into battles that you should not take on or bury you in battle after battle. There is a time to take refuge.It’s a choice, a posture of heart, a prayer, and a practice. We pray to receive him as our refuge. We bring reality into being. God is ever present to be our refuge, but he never forces it upon anyone. As soon as our hearts turn his direction for refuge, he is there to become so to us.———————————I give myself to you, Father. I consecrate my life to you again, body, soul, and spirit. I take refuge in you. I take refuge in your love. Want more? Order your copy of Restoration Year today

Once we come to accept that we can never find or hang on to the life we have been seeking, what then? As Dallas Willard writes, it matters for all the world to know that life is ahead of us.I meet many faithful Christians who, in spite of their faith, are deeply disappointed in how their lives have turned out. Sometimes it is simply a matter of how they experience aging, which they take to mean they no longer have a future. But often, due to circumstances or wrongful decisions and actions by others, what they had hoped to accomplish in life they did not ... Much of the distress of these good people comes from a failure to realize that their life lies before them...the life that lies endlessly before us in the kingdom of God. (The Divine Conspiracy)Blaise Pascal also observed, "We are never living, but hoping to live; and whilst we are always preparing to be happy, it is certain, we never shall be so, if we aspire to no other happiness than what can be enjoyed in this life."Desire cannot live without hope. Yet, we can only hope for what we desire. There simply must be something more, something out there on the road ahead of us, that offers the life we prize. To sustain the life of the heart, the life of deep desire, we desperately need to possess a clearer picture of the life that lies before us. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

If you want to turn your children off to Jesus, ignore holiness (or choose the technical rule-keeping impostor). Be a jerk and then insist the family pray at mealtimes; let them see you lie to your boss or your aging parents and then insist you all go to church. Want to turn your neighbors off to Christianity? Let them see you yell something nasty at your dog, then head off all dressed up for Sunday morning service. It is the lack of holiness that has clouded our “witness” in this world. Thank God the opposite holds true as well: the beauty of the lives of God’s true friends is the sweetest and most winsome argument for Jesus there could ever be.I love the people I get to work with at Wild at Heart. They are some of the finest people I have ever had the honor of knowing. What joy it brings me to hear from the folks who attend our events that it was the lives of my friends that brought them to Jesus Christ. “I saw the beauty of their marriage.” “I saw the beauty of their walk with God.” “They were so kind to me.” “They are so filled with integrity and strength.” “It was their generosity.” Wow. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that just how it should be? I feel like David, who wrote, “As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight” (Psalm 16:3). We are meant to be the glorious ones, friends. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

The Evil One lied to us about where true life was found ... and we believed him.God gave us the wondrous world as our playground, and he told us to enjoy it fully and freely. Yet despite his extravagant generosity, we had to reach for the one forbidden thing.And at that moment something in our hearts shifted. We reached, and in our reaching we fell from grace.So Helen betrayed Menelaus and her native Greece, and ran off to Troy with her lover. So Edmund betrayed his brothers and sisters, and all Narnia, and joined sides with the White Witch. So Cypher betrayed Neo and Morpheus and the last of the free world. So Cora fell into the hands of Magua. So Boromir betrayed the fellowship. So the Titanic struck an iceberg.Our glory faded, as Milton said, "faded so soon."Something has gone wrong with the human race, and we know it. Better said, something has gone wrong within the human race. It doesn't take a theologian or a psychologist to tell you that. Read a newspaper. Spend a weekend with your relatives. Pay attention to the movements of your own heart in a single day. Most of the misery we suffer on this planet is the fruit of the human heart gone bad. This glorious treasure has been stained, marred, infected. Sin enters the story and spreads like a computer virus.By the sixth chapter of Genesis, our downward spiral had reached the point where God himself couldn't bear it any longer.The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. (Genesis 6:5-6)Any honest person knows this. We know we are not what we were meant to be. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today