Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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