Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

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

I continue to be stunned by the level of deadness that most people consider normal and seem to be content to live with. It had been more than a year since Diane and Ted first came to see me for counseling. As with most marriages, the real issues lay buried under years of just getting by, hidden beneath the way we’ve learned to live with each other so as not to rock the boat. Sadly, this way involves killing large regions of our hearts. And so their struggle toward intimacy required a lot of pain and hard work. But they stuck with it until they began to taste the true life of a real marriage. At this point Diane asked Ted about his deepest desires: “If I could be more of what you wanted in a woman, what do you secretly wish I would offer you?” It’s a question that most men are dying to be asked. His response? Clean socks. That’s all he could come up with. Life would be better, his marriage would be richer, if Diane would keep his drawer filled with clean socks. I wanted to throw him out the window.I wasn’t angry with Ted because his answer was unbelievably shallow, or because it mocked all that his wife was seeking to offer him. I was angry because it’s just not true. We are made in the image of God; we carry within us the desire for our true life of intimacy and adventure. To say we want less than that is to lie. Ted may believe that clean socks would satisfy him, but he is deceived. His satisfaction comes at the price of his soul.When I brought up this very issue with a colleague, he sort of dismissed it all with the comment, “Not everyone longs like you do.” I had to admit that much. But we were meant to. I thought of The Weight of Glory, where Lewis says that “when we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.” Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

Where would we be today if Abraham had carefully weighed the pros and cons of God’s invitation and decided that he’d rather hang on to his medical benefits, three weeks paid vacation, and retirement plan in Ur? What would have happened if Moses had listened to his mother’s advice to “never play with matches” and lived a careful, cautious life steering clear of all burning bushes? You wouldn’t have the gospel if Paul had concluded that the life of a Pharisee, while not everything a man dreams for, was at least predictable and certainly more stable than following a voice he heard on the Damascus road. After all, people hear voices all the time, and who really knows whether it’s God or just one’s imagination. Where would we be if Jesus was not fierce and wild and romantic to the core? Come to think of it, we wouldn’t be at all if God hadn’t taken that enormous risk of us in the first place.Most men spend the energy of their lives trying to eliminate risk, or squeezing it down to a more manageable size. Their children hear “no” far more than they hear “yes”; their employees feel chained up and their wives are equally bound. If it works, if a man succeeds in securing his life against all risk, he’ll wind up in a cocoon of self-protection and wonder all the while why he’s suffocating. If it doesn’t work, he curses God, redoubles his efforts and his blood pressure. When you look at the structure of the false self men tend to create, it always revolves around two themes: seizing upon some sort of competence and rejecting anything that cannot be controlled. As David Whyte says, “The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears.” Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Even Jesus endured assault — not the open accusation that he had a wicked heart, but the more subtle kind, the seemingly "innocent" Arrows that come through "misunderstanding."After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus' brothers said to him, "You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world." For even his own brothers did not believe in him. (John 7:1-5)I think we can relate to that. Did your family believe in you? Or did they believe in the person they wanted you to be? Did they even notice your heart at all? Have they been thrilled in your choices, or has their disappointment made it clear that you just aren't what you're supposed to be? At another point in his ministry, Jesus' family shows up to collect him. "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you" (Luke 8:19). They think he's lost it, and they've come to bring him home, poor man. Misunderstanding is damaging, more insidious because we don't identify it as an attack on the heart. How subtly it comes, sowing doubt and discouragement where there should have been validation and support. There must be something wrong with us. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Many people think the theme of war ends with the Old Testament. Not at all. Jesus says, "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34). In fact, his birth involved another battle in heaven (Rev. 12:1-5, 7-8, 17). The birth of Christ was an act of war, an invasion. The Enemy knew it and tried to kill him as a babe (Matt. 2:13). The whole life of Christ is marked by battle and confrontation. He kicks out demons with a stern command. He rebukes a fever and it leaves Peter's mother-in-law. He rebukes a storm and it subsides. He confronts the Pharisees time and again to set God's people free from legalism. In a loud voice he wakes Lazarus from the dead. He descends to hell, wrestles the keys of hell and death from Satan, and leads a train of captives free (Eph. 4:8-9; Rev. 1:18). And when he returns, I might point out, Jesus will come mounted on a steed of war, with his robe dipped in blood, armed for battle (Rev. 19:11-15).War is not just one among many themes in the Bible. It is the backdrop for the whole Story, the context for everything else. God is at war. He is trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored. And what is he fighting for? Our freedom and restoration. The glory of God is man fully alive. In the meantime, Paul says, arm yourselves, and the first piece of equipment he urges us to don is the belt of truth (Eph. 6:10-18). We arm ourselves by getting a good, solid grip on our situation, by getting some clarity on the battle over our lives. God's intentions toward us are life; those intentions are opposed. Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Suffering will try to separate you from Jesus. You must not let it.The worst part of suffering is the damage it can do to your view of God, your relationship with him. Feelings of abandonment creep in: Why did he let this happen? Anger. A loss of hope. Mistrust. Forsakenness. At the very time you need him most, you will feel most compelled to pull away from Jesus, or feel that he has pulled away from you. This is what Hebrews was trying to prevent.There is a popular theology out there that says a Christian can avoid suffering. (You can understand why it’s popular. Most of us have embraced it without even knowing — simply notice your reaction when life turns on you.) It is a devastating heresy because suffering will come, and then what will you do? The ground heaves beneath you, shaking your faith in God because you thought it wouldn’t come, shouldn’t come. It gets you scrambling; it can level you for a long time if you thought you’d escape it.Be very, very careful and pay attention to how you interpret your suffering. Don’t jump to conclusions. Interpretation is critical. Beware the agreements that you make. This is where the enemy can destroy you. Agreements such as God has abandoned me; it’s my fault; I’ve done something wrong, and a host of others. If you’ve been making these agreements, you will want to break them. They allow a chasm to form between you and your Jesus.By all means, seek a breakthrough. Too many Christians simply fold under hardship and give way to the feelings of abandonment. Pray against it; pray hard. If it is an attack from the enemy, much of that can be shut down through prayer. Much healing is available, too, through the life of Jesus in us. Do not simply surrender. But when breakthrough does not seem to come, when the pain lingers on, remember this:Just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. (2 Corinthians 1:5)Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Indeed, part of God's victory over the enemy of our souls, which we will be invited to take part in, will be an open mocking of Satan and his forces in view of all the peoples of the earth along with the angelic hosts. We are given a picture of the enemy's defeat, which is the culmination of Act III of the Sacred Romance, by Isaiah:Those who see you stare at you [Satan], they ponder your fate: "Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a desert, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?" (14:16-17)"You're the one we've been scared of all this time? You're the one we've been believing?" we will ask incredulously. And we will turn and walk away into the embrace of the Prince, never to speak Satan's name again. But in the meantime, our adversary will continue to use our Message of the Arrows, along with doubts about the goodness of the Prince, to lure us to spend our lives with less-wild lovers than God. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

We need to look into what has damaged our union with God.I realize this is a very poignant thing I’m raising, and I want to proceed tenderly. Do you know what’s damaged your soul’s union with God?Suffering in all its forms will slowly erode union, if we’re not careful. As will chronic disappointment. Satan will use your suffering, or the suffering of those you love, to introduce mistrust between you and the God you love. You see, he whispers, you are on your own. God’s not here for you. He didn’t do a thing to help. The suffering or disappointment alone is enough to make us pull back, like a sea anemone does when you touch it. But these insidious words poison the relationship, and our union withers. We still might hang onto belief, but as we’ve seen, belief is not the same as saturated union. Has your suffering caused you to pull away? If we name it, we are able to come back towards God. We can choose to open up again, and ask him to heal our hearts, heal our union. We must be intentional to seek the restoration of our union.So I’ve found it very important to ask God to heal my union with him on a fairly regular basis, certainly after I’ve gone through something that felt traumatizing. Knowing I have a role to play (the door opens from the inside), I will pray something like this:Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit — I need you to heal our union. Heal our union, God. I give myself to you, to be one with you in everything. I pray for union and I pray for oneness. I present my entire being to you, to be one life with you. I invite your healing love and presence into the things that have hurt our union. [Be specific if you can: The loss of my daughter. The betrayal at work. My chronic back pain.] I invite your Spirit into the places where our union has been assaulted. Come and heal me here. Cleanse these places with your blood, dear Jesus. Let your blood wash all wounding, wash away evil, cleanse every form of trauma in me. Bring your love here. I invite the light of your presence to bring healing here. I pray your glory would heal our union. May the glory of God come into the harm and damage, and restore our union. I pray to be one heart and mind again, one life, one complete union. [I will linger a moment to see if the Holy Spirit wants to show me anything specific I need to pray.] Heal our union, God; restore and renew our union. I pray for a deeper union with you, a deeper and more complete oneness. Restore our union, in Jesus’s name.(By offering this prayer I don’t mean to imply that our souls are healed of trauma in one simple pass. I have seen God do this a number of times, but we need to be gracious and allow that we might need to see a counselor or seek some healing prayer ministry. This prayer is offered as a beginning. In the day-to-day wearing down of our union with God, this will restore it. In cases of more severe harm, more help is recommended.)Remember, God works gently. He doesn’t answer trauma with a forceful response; he heals through gentleness. Sometimes it can feel dramatic, but maybe only 5 percent of the time. Most of the time the union of our soul with God is something that is very gentle and life-giving. And therefore you have to be gentle and tuned-in to be aware of it. Cultivating the pause, and the other practices in this book, will certainly allow you to be in places that deepen union. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

An old saint who first taught me to pray — may he be blessed forever — would often say, “When you think you are finished praying, you are probably just getting warmed up.”Often when we first turn to prayer we are coming in out of the Matrix — that whirling, suffocating Mardi Gras of this world — and it takes us some time to calm down and turn our gaze to Jesus, fix our gaze on him. We begin to tune in and align ourselves with God as his partners. That itself takes some time. Much of the early stages of our praying involves not so much interceding but getting ourselves back into alignment with God and his kingdom. Once in that place we can begin to be aware of what the Spirit is leading us to pray.Furthermore, as we “press into” prayer, we are not simply begging God to move, but partnering with him in bringing his kingdom to bear on the need at hand. Enforcing that kingdom often requires much “staying with it,” and repetition.This is so important, and hopeful, because many dear folks have given up on prayer, having concluded it doesn’t really work, when in fact quick prayers often don’t work; simple little prayers aren’t sufficient to the needs of this world. There is a way things work. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

The Greek of Revelation 21:1 speaks of one world “passing away” so that a remade world may take its place. Therefore Eugene Peterson in The Message translates the passage, “I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.” Gone only in the sense of the old passing, so the renewed can take its place.The eagles carried Sam and Frodo to safety; Gandalf rode them several times. What if? A large golden eagle in our world can lift a sheep and carry it away. What load can a renewed eagle bear? I would love to ride a golden eagle, with their permission of course. And, friends — I have not even mentioned the angels. Heaven comes to earth, and the angels shall walk in fellowship with man. What do the angels have to teach us? What sort of games do they play? The entire earth will be our playground. I see massive games like lacrosse being played by angels and men across vast landscapes.This is why you don’t need a bucket list. It’s all yours, and you can never lose it. Oh, how I long to wander the beautiful places, without a curfew, without the end of vacation always looming. You’ve longed to see the fjords of Norway? Done. You’ve secretly hoped to wander the jungles of Africa? Yours too. What next? The Amazon? Antarctica? And I am only touching on the earth. What of the microscopic world? It is as vast as the world we call our own, and we shall explore its mysteries. What of the heavens? They, too, shall be ours. Good thing we have all the time in the world that has no time to explore and come home and tell the tales. To take up new adventures with those who want to sail the seven seas or climb the peaks of the Andes or range the universe itself.You think I am being fanciful. I am being utterly serious. I am being as serious as Jesus when he warned that only the child-heart can receive the kingdom. Do you really want to suggest sinful man can create stories and worlds that outshine the worlds God will remake? Careful there. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9 NLT). It was our creative Father who gave us our imaginations; the “visions” we tell in story are often prophetic glimpses into his wondrous realms, and his creative majesty will certainly do ours one better in the world to come.Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

In the mythic story of The Lion King, the lion cub Simba is separated in his youth from his father through a murder engineered by his uncle, Scar, the character symbolizing the evil one in our story. Scar arranges for the cub to be caught in a stampede of wildebeests, knowing that his father, Mufasa, will risk his life to save his son. He does, and Simba is saved, but Mufasa is killed. Scar then turns on Simba and accuses him, at such a vulnerable and desperate moment, of causing his father's death. Brokenhearted, frightened, racked with guilt, Simba runs away from home.This is the enemy's one central purpose — to separate us from the Father. He uses neglect to whisper, You see — no one cares. You're not worth caring about. He uses a sudden loss of innocence to whisper, This is a dangerous world, and you are alone. You've been abandoned. He uses assaults and abuses to scream at a boy, This is all you are good for. And in this way he makes it nearly impossible for us to know what Jesus knew, makes it so very, very hard to come home to the Father's heart toward us. The details of each story are unique to the boy, but the effect is always a wound in the soul, and with it separation from and suspicion of the Father.It's been very effective.But God is not willing to simply let that be the end of the story. Not in any man's life. Remember what Jesus taught us about the Father's heart in the parable of the lost son: "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him" (Luke 15:20 NIV). Filled with compassion, our Father God will come like a loving Father, and take us close to his heart. He will also take us back to heal the wounds, finish things that didn't get finished. He will come for the boy, no matter how old he might now be, and make him his Beloved Son. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered By God today