Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Remember that little guy I told you about, with the shiny boots and a pair of six-shooters? The best part of the story is that it wasn't all pretend. I had a place to live out those dreams. My grandfather, my father's father, was a cowboy. He worked his own cattle ranch in eastern Oregon. And though I was raised in the suburbs, the redemption of my life and the real training grounds for my own masculine journey took place on that ranch, where I spent my boyhood summers. Oh, that every boy should be so lucky. To have your days filled with tractors and pickup trucks, horses and roping steers, fishing in the ponds. I was Huck Finn for three wonderful months every year. How I loved it when my grandfather—"Pop" is what I called him — would look at me, his thumbs tucked in his belt, smile, and say, "Saddle up."One afternoon Pop took me into town, to my favorite store. It was a combination feed and tack/hardware/ranch supply shop. It smelled of hay and linseed oil, of leather and gunpowder and kerosene — all the things that thrill a boy's heart. That summer Pop was having a problem with an overrun pigeon population on the ranch. He hated the dirty birds, feared they were carrying diseases to the cattle. "Flying rats" is what he called them. Pop walked straight over to the firearms counter, picked out a BB rifle and a quart-sized milk carton with about a million BBs in it, and handed them to me. The old shopkeeper looked a bit surprised as he stared down at me, squinting over his glasses. "Isn't he a bit young for that?" Pop put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. "This is my grandson, Hal. He's riding shotgun for me."I may have walked into that feed store a squirrelly little kid, but I walked out as Sheriff Wyatt Earp. I had an identity and a place in the story. I was invited to be dangerous. If a boy is to become a man, if a man is to know he is one, this is not an option. A man has to know where he comes from, and what he's made of. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

You are the son of a kind, strong, and engaged Father, a Father wise enough to guide you in the Way, generous enough to provide for your journey, offering to walk with you every step.This is perhaps the hardest thing for us to believe — really believe, down deep in our hearts, so that it changes us forever, changes the way we approach each day.I believe this is the core issue of our shared dilemma. We just don't believe it. Our core assumptions about the world boil down to this: We are on our own to make life work. We are not watched over. We are not cared for. When we are hit with a problem, we have to figure it out ourselves, or just take the hit. If anything good is going to come our way, we're the ones who are going to have to arrange for it. Many of us have called upon God as Father, but, frankly, he doesn't seem to have heard. We're not sure why. Maybe we didn't do it right. Maybe he's about more important matters. Whatever the reason, our experience of this world has framed our approach to life. We believe we are fatherless.Whatever life has taught us, and though we may not have put it into these exact words, we feel that we are alone. Simply look at the way men live. If I were to give an honest assessment of my life for the past thirty years, I'd have to confess the bulk of it as Striving and Indulging. Pushing myself hard to excel, taking on the battles that come to me with determination but also with a fear-based drivenness, believing deep down inside that there is no one I can trust to come through for me. Striving. And then, arranging for little pleasures along the way to help ease the pain of the drivenness and loneliness. Dinners out, adventure gear. Indulging. A fatherless way to live. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered by God today

The resurrection of Jesus was the first of many, the forerunner of our own. He paved the way, as the saying goes.The fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again. (1 Cor. 15:20 NLT)God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. (Rom. 8:29 The Message)So we, too, shall live and never die. Creation will be restored, and we will be restored. And we shall share it together. "Today," Jesus said to the thief on the cross, "you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Imagine that. Imagine being reunited with the ones you love, and with all the great and noble hearts of this Story, in paradise.We will walk with God in the Garden in the cool of the day. We will see our Jesus face-to-face. We will hear him laugh. All that has ever stood between us will be swept away, and our hearts will be released to real loving. It begins with a great party, just as in Titanic, what the Scriptures call the "wedding feast of the Lamb" (Rev. 19:9 NLT). You'll raise a glass with Adam and Eve, with Paul and St. Patrick, with your grandmother and your grandson.Imagine the stories that you'll hear. And all the questions that shall finally have answers. And the answers won't be one-word answers, but story after story, a feast of wonder and laughter and glad tears. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

“‘For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heartsand turn, and I would heal them.’” (Matthew 13:15)Heal them. Jesus yearned for his people to turn back to him so that he could heal them! The “otherwise” means that if they weren’t so hardheaded, they would turn to him and he would heal them. This truth is essential to your view of the gospel. It will shape your convictions about nearly everything else. God wants to restore us. Our part is to “turn,” to repent as best we can. But we also need his healing. As Ephesians 1:4 says, God chose us to make us whole and holy through his love. God will make known to us the path of life if we will follow him. And as we do, we will find along that path our need for wholeness and holiness. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] I’d love to share what thirty years of marriage (and twenty counseling young people) has taught me. But let me begin with a question: What is your greatest fear, as a man? [Sam] That’s easy; I fear feeling like a fool. I fear and hate it above everything else. Hate might not even be a strong enough word; loathe may be better. I hate walking into the bank and having the teller raise an eyebrow in pity when he asks my monthly income. I hate going in to buy a suit and being chided and coddled by the staff who assume I know nothing. So what if I don’t know my measurements? I have cringed days after being caught in a bluff by someone who knows what they are talking about, and then calling me out in front of everyone. There are times when I feel Dean Koontz hit it on the head: “Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton.” More than anything else, I hate feeling like a fool around a woman. I think most guys do. The sensation afterward is something akin to a personal black hole opening up inside my chest, and I wish it would hurry up and swallow me whole. I once tried showing off on a diving board by doing a double front-flip but ended up hitting the water face-first and giving myself a bloody nose. Almost every guy I know tells stories of spectacular failed attempts at a date or an introduction or a kiss, and while the stories are told in a circle of laughter, every man’s eyes go a little dim as he relives the memory.Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

Your heart is going to grow for the kingdom, more and more as you mature, which allows us to receive more and more of God and enjoy so much more of the life he’s giving. But this can be very disorienting if you don’t understand what’s taking place within you. Just as you reach a place where you feel satisfied, it seems you need more. That’s because your soul is expanding, which is a very good thing.Some of the old habits, even the old comforts, just won’t work anymore; some of your old relationships won’t either, nor will certain religious associations. You no longer fit. We can think there’s something wrong with us, when what’s happening is that we are being healed towards heaven, towards Eden. As our soul is restored, it will fit less and less into the madness of this world and this hour, which, sadly, has infected Christianity quite deeply. No judgments, no need to make a scene. But you’re not a moral failure because you don’t fit; you’re being healed. Time to move on.The second caution comes to us through the Old Testament story of manna. The entire nation of Israel is ransomed from Egypt “with a strong hand and powerful arm, with overwhelming terror, and with miraculous signs and wonders” (Deuteronomy 26:8 NLT). Stepping through the sundered waters of the Red Sea, the people find themselves in a roundabout trek, zigzagging across the arid desert of the Sinai Peninsula (with no annual rainfall to speak of). Masses of people wandering barren wasteland are going to die for lack of food and water in a matter of weeks, maybe days. Forty years is out of the question. So God provides his people with the bread of angels every morning. They couldn’t store it, they couldn’t hoard it. They had to go out each morning and gather it. And it was always there, delivered silently, gently.Now, why did God give us this unforgettable parable?Because no matter how much of God we’ve finally been able to partake of, the surprising “ah ha” is that we need it again tomorrow. I always thought that for some reason, I could get to a place where I was tapped into God in such a way I didn’t run out. But we need to sleep again every night; we need to drink water every day; we need to breathe again every single moment. Our life is a beautifully dependent existence, like the tree and the forest. You’re not failing because you need God again tomorrow. You’re not a spiritual disaster because you need so much more of him. This is the nature of things. We simply come and ask. “Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King”The context of the journey of deliverance from the false self and restoration of the true self is unique, but the process is universal. It begins with awareness. The first step to becoming true is becoming aware of the false.Who am I in my false self?What version of myself do I present to the world as a mask to self-protect?What is my effect on people?What do people feel when they are around me?You’ll want to get to know the false self and get very familiar with him. We must become students of the person — the self — we have become. We must watch the false self at work and see how he expresses his self-protection by avoiding shame and acting out of fear through his predominant style of relating. We must become keen observers of his impact on others and how that relates to the story of their souls, so we might allow God to continually expose the parts of our heart and our soul that have yet to be integrated into wholeness. Only by coming to know the false self can you engage in the slow and steady process of putting him to death so that the true man might be resurrected in his place. It is only in consenting to the excavation of the masculine soul that we can become the kind of man and the kind of king within whom God can build a lasting kingdom.To put to death the false self and invite God to restore the true self is the gate along the narrow path that can lead us deeper to coming to know the man God made us to be. Let us venture around the next turn along the ancient path and wonder together about this hidden treasure that can be found only through participating in God’s excavation of our masculine soul. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

I am haunted by the stories of people who make the summit of Everest. Such incredible devotion is required, such total focus of body, soul, and spirit. Reaching the top of the world's tallest mountain becomes for those who try the central driving force of their lives. The goal is so remarkable and the journey so uncertain. Many climbers have been lost on the mountain. Those who reach the summit and return safely are among a rare and elite group of mountaineers in the world. Why do they do it? How do they do it?John Krakauer recounted the desperate tale of the ill-fated '96 expedition in his book Into Thin Air: "There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility." It is a feat begun in desire that can be accomplished only through desire. Krakauer explained how one of his climbing partners attained the summit: "Yasuko had been propelled up the mountain by the unwavering intensity of her desire."Desire — it's the only way you will ever make it. Take marriage, for instance. Or singleness. Either makes for a far more difficult and arduous ascent than Everest, in large part because it does not seem so. The struggles are not heightened and focused into one month of do or die; rather, they stretch on across a lifetime. So it is with any act of faith or of hope — anything, in other words, that makes a life worth living. How can we possibly sustain such an intrinsically irrational act as love if we've killed our desire? Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

In our psychological age, we have come to call our affairs "addictions," but God calls them "adultery." Listen again to his words to the Israelites through Jeremiah:You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in [your] craving— in [your] heat [how can I] restrain [you]? Any males that pursue [you] need not tire themselves; at mating time they will find [you]. Do not run until your feet are bare and your throat is dry. (Jer. 2:23-25)God is saying, "I love you, and yet you betray me at the drop of a hat. I feel so much pain. Can't you see we're made for each other? I want you to come back to me." And Israel's answer, like that of any addict or adulterer, is: "It's no use! I love foreign gods, and I must go after them" (Jer. 2:25).Perhaps we can empathize with the ache God experienced as Israel's "husband" (and ours when we are living indulgently). Having raised Israel from childhood to a woman of grace and beauty, he astonishingly cannot win her heart from her adulterous lovers. The living God of the universe cannot win the only one he loves, not due to any lack on his part, but because her heart is captured by her addictions, which is to say, her adulterous lovers. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

What did Jesus mean when he promised us life? I go back to the source and what I find is just astounding.I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and, in the age to come, eternal life" (Luke 18:29-30).Jesus doesn't locate his offer to us only in some distant future, after we've slogged our way through our days here on earth. He talks about a life available to us in this age. So does Paul: "[G]odliness has value for all things, holding promise both for the present life and the life to come" (1 Timothy 4:8). Our present life, and the next. When we hear the words "eternal life," most of us have tended to think, "a life that waits for me in eternity." But eternal means unending, not later. The scriptures use the term to mean you can never lose it. It's a life that can't be taken from you. The offer is life and that life starts now.And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives (Romans 6:4 NLT).The glory of God is man fully alive? Now? Hope unbidden rose at the thought that God's intentions towards me might be better than I thought. His happiness and my happiness are tied together? My coming fully alive is what he's committed to? That's the offer of Christianity?The offer is life. Make no mistake about that. Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

How much of what we do is motivated by fear of man? Think of it — to be entirely free of false guilt, free from pressure, from false allegiances. It would be absolutely extraordinary.This is what gives Jesus the ability to say such startlingly honest things to people.It is what enables him to be so scandalous.This is the secret of his ability to navigate praise and contempt.Neither success nor opposition have power over him. One day the crowds love him, the next they are shouting for his crucifixion. Jesus is the same man — the same personality — through the whole swirling tempest. Jesus is free from the fear of man. It is something more than integrity, though it certainly encompasses that. He is true to himself, true to his Father, true to what the moment most requires, true to love. In this forest of fig leaves, where you are never sure you are getting the true person, there is nothing false about Jesus.Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. (Psalm 23:1-3).He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise. (Jeremiah 17:14)But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. (Malachi 4:2)He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing. (Luke 9:11) For some reason this has been lost in the recent offerings of the church. Perhaps it has been our pride, which has kept us from admitting that we are broken. Lord knows I've done that for years — probably am still doing it now. Perhaps it is our fear of getting our hopes up; it seems too good to be true. Perhaps it's been the church's almost total focus on sin and the cross. But the Scripture is abundant and clear: Christ came not only to pardon us, but to heal us. He wants the glory restored. So, put the book down for just a moment, and let this sink in: Jesus can, and wants, to heal your heart. What does that rouse in you?Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

When Jesus speaks of the Restoration, he does so in very tangible terms, pointing to the recovery of normal things like houses and lands:“Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne ... everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:28–29)There is no bait and switch here. The renewal of all things simply means that the earth you love—all your special places and treasured memories — are restored and renewed and given back to you. Forever. Nobody seems to have heard this or paid much attention to it, because, for one thing, nobody I know is fantasizing about it. When was the last time you eavesdropped on a conversation at Starbucks about the restoration of all things? And for another thing, everybody I talk to still has these anemic, wispy views of heaven, as a place up there somewhere, where we go to attend the eternal-worship-service-in-the-sky.Meanwhile we fantasize about that boat we’d love to get or the trip to Italy, the chocolate éclair or the girl in the cubicle next door. Of course we do — we are made for utter happiness.But the restoration of all things — now that would change everything. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

One of the strangest quirks of life here on this planet is the fact that the one face we hardly ever see is the one closest to us: our own. As we move about in the world every day, our face is always right before us and always just beyond us. Somebody could write a fairy tale about that. It would be an allegory for how rarely we see ourselves, who we truly are, the good and the bad. But in unexpected moments we get a sideways glance, as when passing by a plate glass window downtown, and most of the time we don’t like much what we see.Notice how we are in elevators: No one makes eye contact. No one wants to acknowledge that we are seeing and being seen. In a moment of forced intimacy, almost claustrophobic intimacy, we pretend we aren’t even there. The reason? Most times we just don’t know what to do with what we see. About ourselves, I mean. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner to see that something dreadful has happened to the human race. So we look at the ceiling or our shoes; we watch the numbers report the passing floors; we hide. This is how most of us approach our entire lives — we hide what we can, work on what we feel is redeemable, and despise the rest.There is a better way. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

Learn to hear the voice of God. Yep. It’s the simplest, most helpful, least practiced treasure and it will literally rescue you in countless ways. The secret of the Christian life — and Christian marriage — is that you don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to figure life out, you don’t have to figure each other out, you don’t have to figure parenting out, or money or family. You have a counselor, you have a guide, you have God. What a relief that we don’t have to figure it all out. We get to walk with God. That’s the beauty of Christian spirituality. This isn’t about mastering principles; it’s about an actual relationship with an actual person who happens to be the wisest, kindest, and okay, wildest person you will ever know. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

Right above my bed I think I shall hang a sign that says, GOD EXISTS. You see, I wake most mornings an unbeliever. It seems that during the night, I slip into forgetfulness, and by the time the new day comes, I am lost. The deep and precious truths that God has brought to me over the years and even just yesterday seem a thousand miles away. It doesn't happen every morning, but enough to make it an ongoing reality. And I know I am not alone in this. As George MacDonald confessed in Diary of an Old Soul:Sometimes I wake, and lo, I have forgot, And drifted out upon an ebbing sea! My soul that was at rest now resteth not, For I am with myself and not with thee; Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn, Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity.Forgetting is no small problem. Of all the enemies our hearts must face, this may be the worst because it is insidious. Forgetfulness does not come against us like an enemy in full battle formation, banners waving. Nor does it come temptingly, seductively, the lady in red. It works slowly, commonly, unnoticed. My wife had a beautiful climbing rose vine that began to fill an arbor in her garden. We enjoyed the red blossoms it produced every summer. But last year, something happened. The vine suddenly turned brown, dropped its flowers, and died within the course of a week. After all that loving care we couldn't figure out what went wrong. A call to the nursery revealed that a worm had gotten into the stalk of the vine and eaten away at the life from the inside. Such is the work of forgetfulness. It cuts us off from our life so slowly, we barely notice, until one day the blooms of our faith are suddenly gone. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

The single most significant decision that has changed my prayer life more than any other, the one step that has brought about greater results than all others combined is this (drum roll, please)...Asking Jesus what I should pray.So simple, and so revolutionizing! Utterly obvious once we consider it, but something we so rarely practice. That is probably one of the side effects of the “prayer is just asking God to do something” view; no doubt it is also more of the negative consequences of the orphan and slave mentality. But if prayer is in fact a partnership, then I want to be in alignment with God! For here is his promise to us: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14–15). Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

Jesus’ manner can be appreciated only in light of a deeper river flowing in him, this fierce intentionality. Otherwise, you get those popular and ridiculous portraits of Jesus as the wandering storyteller, no more controversial or dangerous than a clerk in a health-food store.“The life of Jesus went as swift and straight as a thunderbolt,” wrote Chesterton in The Everlasting Man, “almost in the manner of a military march; certainly in the manner of the quest of a hero moving to his achievement or his doom.” And in the most beautiful turn of events, the hunted becomes the Hunter indeed, as Jesus crucified descends into hell personally, to demand the keys from Satan. What was that journey like? Far more than a twilight walk to a cottage. He faces a creature way more terrifying than anything you’ve met in your nightmares and makes him bend the knee. Then Jesus simply turns and walks back out again, leading a train of rescued captives with him. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Our hearts long to recover a sense of wonder; it is one of the reasons only the child-heart can receive the kingdom. Remember now — we shall be as children again:“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:14–15)The adult in us says, How touching, and dismisses it the next moment in order to go on with our very grown-up lives. But Jesus is being utterly serious, and thank God. For it is the child-heart still in us that loves Mos Eisley, Middle Earth, Narnia — these fairy-tale worlds that in hope-beyond-hope we long to be lost in ourselves. (Thus the allure of video games that let us do so, in an artificial way.) I believe it is right here that we can discern the longing for the kingdom most clearly — the child in us longing for wonder and a “new world”; the promise of the earth in its wildest and most radiant moments whispering back, It is coming; it’s just around the corner.This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us — an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. (Romans 8:15–21 The Messsage)“What’s next, Papa?” indeed. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

I have in my files a copy of a letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou, a Union officer in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry Regiment. He writes to his wife on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run, a battle he senses will be his last. He speaks tenderly to her of his undying love, of "the memories of blissful moments I have spent with you." Ballou mourns the thought that he must give up "the hope of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood around us." Yet in spite of his love the battle calls and he cannot turn from it. "I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter ... how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution ... Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break" and yet a greater cause "comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistably on with all these chains to the battle field."A man must have a battle to fight, a great mission to his life that involves and yet transcends even home and family. He must have a cause to which he is devoted even unto death, for this is written into the fabric of his being. Listen carefully now: You do. That is why God created you — to be his intimate ally, to join him in the Great Battle. You have a specific place in the line, a mission God made you for. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

So much of the journey forward involves a letting go of all that once brought us life. We turn away from the familiar abiding places of the heart, the false selves we have lived out, the strengths we have used to make a place for ourselves and all our false loves, and we venture forth in our hearts to trace the steps of the One who said, "Follow me." In a way, it means that we stop pretending: that life is better than it is, that we are happier than we are, that the false selves we present to the world are really us. We respond to the Haunting, the wooing, the longing for another life. Pilgrim begins his adventure toward redemption with a twofold turning: a turning away from attachment and a turning toward desire. He wanted life and so he stuck his fingers in his ears and ran like a madman ("a fool," to use Paul's term) in search of it. The freedom of heart needed to journey comes in the form of detachment. As Gerald May writes in Addiction and Grace:Detachment is the word used in spiritual traditions to describe freedom of desire. Not freedom from desire, but freedom of desire ... An authentic spiritual understanding of detachment devalues neither desire nor the objects of desire. Instead, it "aims at correcting one's own anxious grasping in order to free oneself for committed relationship to God." According to Meister Eckhart, detachment "enkindles the heart, awakens the spirit, stimulates our longings, and shows us where God is."With an awakened heart, we turn and face the road ahead, knowing that no one can take the trip for us, nor can anyone plan our way. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

To make room for God to fill the vessel of our soul, we have to begin moving out some of the unnecessary clutter that continually accumulates there like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Everybody has a junk drawer, that black hole for car keys, pens, paper clips, gum, all the small flotsam and jetsam that accumulates over time. Our souls accumulate stuff, too, pulling it in like a magnet. And so Augustine said we must empty ourselves of all that fills us, so that we may be filled with what we are empty of. Over time I’ve found no better practice to help clear out my cluttered soul than the practice of benevolent detachment. The ability to let it go, walk away — not so much physically but emotionally, soulfully.Allow me to explain. We are aiming for release, turning into the hands of God whatever is burdening us and leaving it there. It’s so easy to get caught up in the drama in unhealthy ways, and then we are unable to see clearly, set boundaries, respond freely. When this happens in relationships, psychologists call it enmeshment.Mature adults have learned how to create healthy distance between themselves and the thing they have become entangled with. Thus the word “detachment.” It means getting untangled, stepping out of the quagmire; it means peeling apart the Velcro by which this person, relationship, crisis, or global issue has attached itself to you. Or you to it. Detachment means getting some healthy distance. Social media overloads our empathy. So I use the word “benevolent” in referring to this necessary kind of detachment because we’re not talking about cynicism or resignation. Benevolent means kindness. It means something done in love. Jesus invites us into a way of living where we are genuinely comfortable turning things over to him: Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. (Matthew 11:28–30 The Message)Now, pay attention here — Jesus said there is a way “to live freely and lightly.” Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

When he left Rivendell, Frodo didn't head out with a thousand Elves. He had eight companions. Jesus didn't march around backed by legions of angels, either. He had twelve men—knuckleheads, every last one of them, but they were a band of brothers. This is the way of the kingdom of God. Though we are part of a great company, we are meant to live in little platoons. The little companies we form must be small enough for each of the members to know one another as friends and allies.Who will fight for your heart?How can we offer the stream of counseling to one another, unless we actually know one another, know each other's stories? The reason counseling became a hired relationship between two people was largely because we couldn't find it anywhere else; we haven't formed the sort of small fellowships that would allow the stream to flow quite naturally. Is it possible to offer rich and penetrating words to someone you barely know, in the lobby of your church, as you dash to pick up the kids?Where will you find the Four Streams?The Four Streams are something we learn, and grow into, and offer one another, within a small fellowship. We hear each other's stories. We discover each other's glories. We learn to walk with God together. We pray for each other's healing. We cover each other's back. This small core fellowship is the essential ingredient for the Christian life. Jesus modeled it for us for a reason. Sure, he spoke to the masses. But he lived in a little platoon, a small fellowship of friends and allies. His followers took his example and lived this way, too. "They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts" (2:46). "Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house" (1 Cor 16:19). "Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house" (Col 4:15). Want more? Order your copy of Waking The Dead today

The time has come for us to quit playing chess with God over our lives. We cannot win, but we can delay the victory, dragging on the pain of grasping and the poison of possessing. You see, there are two kinds of losses in life. The first is shared by all mankind — the losses that come to us. Call them what you will — accidents, fate, acts of God. The point is that we have no control over them. We do not determine when, where, what, or even how. There is no predicting these losses; they happen to us. We choose only how we respond. The second kind is known only to the pilgrim. They are losses that we choose. A chosen loss is different from repentance, when we give up something that was never ours to have. With a chosen loss, we place on the altar something very dear to us, something innocent, whose only danger is in its goodness, that we might come to love it too much. It is the act of consecration, where little by little or all at once, we give over our lives to the only One who can truly keep them.Spiritual surrender is not resignation. It is not choosing to care any longer. Nor is it Eastern mysticism, an attempt to get beyond the suffering of this life by going completely numb. As my dear friend Jan describes, "It is surrender with desire, or in desire." Desire is still present, felt, welcomed even. But the will to secure is made subject to the divine will in an act of abandoned trust. Think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

When God comes to call Jeremiah to be his prophet of hard sayings to Judah, Jeremiah protests, saying, "'Ah, Sovereign LORD ... I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.' But the LORD said to me, 'Do not say, "I am only a child." You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,' declares the LORD" (Jer. 1:6-8). God is saying that these things will be done through Jeremiah's dependence on his strength and provision, and that he will rescue him.Yet there is something about God's rescues that make them a little less timely than dialing 911. He leaves Abraham with his knife raised and ready to plunge into Isaac's heart, and Isaac waiting for the knife to descend; he leaves Joseph languishing for years in an Egyptian prison; he allows the Israelites to suffer four hundred years of bondage under the Egyptians and leaves those same Israelites backed against the Red Sea with Pharaoh's chariots thundering down on them. He abandons Jesus to the cross and does not rescue him at all. And then there are those of us who, along with the saints under heaven's very altar, are groaning under the weight of things gone wrong, waiting for that same Jesus to return and sweep us up with him in power and glory. "How long, O Lord?" we whisper in our weariness and pain.Indeed, God calls us to battles where the deck appears stacked in favor of those who are his enemies and ours, just to increase the drama of the play. And there is the clear picture, even from God himself, that he does so to enhance his own glory. 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”The first doorway we must travel through on our path toward becoming a king is to choose sonship. It is a choice.Are we willing to become our Father’s sons again?Will you open your heart to unlearn the Father as you have learned him and instead learn him as he truly is? The Father is pursuing you. He is opening up his heart and his kingdom and his treasures to you. He is asking, Son, are you ready to become who you were born to be? We can finish this together.If we are ever to become the kind of men to whom God can entrust his kingdom, the journey must begin in the most unlikely of places. We must choose a spirit of sonship, taking the place set before us as the greatest gift of God’s heart, receiving the identity against which every war has been waged by our enemy, who knows who we are and fears who we could become.In many ways, to consent to being a son is the hardest and the easiest of the narrow gates through which we must enter. It is easy, because all it requires is a genuine turning of our souls to receive the lavish love of the Father. Yet it is the hardest, as it will require us to begin forsaking the many other places in which our wounded hearts have sought the independent and self-sufficient life for so many years.It will require relearning everything, throwing out our former map and receiving a new one that outlines a reality more dangerous and more joy-filled than we have ever dared to dream. Want more? Order your copy of Becoming a King today

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. —Henri J. M. Nouwen When I was young, I thought that following God and being a Christian would lead to a life that was kind of easy, filled only with happiness and free from pain and sorrow. Silly me. I’m not even sure where I got that idea, except maybe from teachings spouted by TV evangelists who espoused a prosperity “name it and claim it” doctrine that was popular when I first chose to follow Jesus. It tickles the ears, doesn’t it? It’s so appealing, this thought that if you are a true believer you are spared suffering and gifted only with a positive existence. It is also completely contrary to what the Scriptures teach. If Jesus was perfected through His suffering, who are we to think we won’t be perfected through the same means? (Hebrew 2:10). Now, don’t get me wrong, Jesus came that we might have life and life to the full (John 10:10), and it’s the joy of the Lord that is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10). It’s just that this promised joy and life come to us in the midst of the easy and the hard, the triumphs and the travails. The key, then, is to intentionally cultivate that joy in our hearts—to choose it—no matter what season we’re in, the easy or the hard. And life is hard a lot of the time. This world we live in is not Eden. We are not in heaven. Not yet. But, in the middle of this often difficult journey, God “has taken great measures to preserve our freedom of choice.” We have the freedom to choose to grow in joy or to retreat from it. Said another way, life will inevitably be hard, and as maturing believers with our eyes set on Jesus, we will constantly be presented with opportunities to make choices that will either lead to a deeper joy or not. Want more? Get your copy of Defiant Joy today

To wait is to learn the spiritual grace of detachment, the freedom of desire. Not the absence of desire, but desire at rest. St. John of the Cross lamented that “the desires weary and fatigue the soul; for they are like restless and discontented children, who are ever demanding this or that from their mother, and are never contented.” Detachment is coming to the place where those demanding children are at peace. As King David said, “I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Ps. 131:2). Such a beautiful picture, a young one leaning against her mother’s breast. There is no fussing, no insistent tears.She has learned to wait. The word detachment might evoke wrong impressions.It is not a cold and indifferent attitude; not at all. May writes, “An authentic spiritual understanding of detachment devalues neither desire nor the objects of desire.” Instead, it “aims at correcting one’s own anxious grasping in order to free oneself for committed relationship to God.”As Thomas à Kempis declared, “Wait a little while, O my soul, wait for the divine promise, and thou shalt have abundance of all good things in heaven.” In this posture we discover that, indeed, we are expanded by longing. Something grows in us, a capacity if you will, for life and love and God. I think of Romans 8:24–25: “That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy” (The Message). There is actually a sweet pain in longing, if we will let it draw our hearts homeward. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'""You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:1-6)Evil was lurking in that Garden. The mighty angel had once been glorious as well, more glorious than we. He was, if you recall, captain of the Lord's armies, beautiful and powerful beyond compare. But he rebelled against his Creator, led a great battle against the forces of heaven, and was cast down. Banished but not destroyed, he waited in the shadows for an opportunity to take his revenge.You must understand: the Evil One hates God, hates anything that reminds him of the glory of God... wherever it exists. Unable to overthrow the Mighty One, he turned his sights on those who bore his image.Satan came into the Garden and whispered to Adam and Eve — and in them, to all of us — "You cannot trust the heart of God...he's holding out on you... you've got to take matters under your control." He sowed the seed of mistrust in our hearts; he tempted us to seize control.It's the same lie he is using in your life today, by the way: "Trusting God is way too risky. You're far too vulnerable. Rewrite the Story. Give yourself a better part. Arrange for your own happiness. Disregard him." Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

Lately, the surge is toward “justice Christianity” — intervening to prevent human trafficking or slavery, caring for indigenous cultures or for the planet itself. And it is right and it is wrong. My goodness, yes, of course God cares about justice. But to be frank, it is actually not the central theme of the Bible. Christianity isn’t simply a religious version of the Peace Corps.All of these “camps” are Christianity — sort of. Like elevator music is music — sort of. Like veggie burgers are hamburgers — sort of. Think gas fireplaces, wax fruit, frozen burritos. They look like the real thing, but…It all comes down to this: What is Christianity supposed to do to a person?Long before he laid down earth’s foundations God had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love to be made whole and holy with his love. (Ephesians 1:4 TM)God is restoring the creation he made. What you see in Jesus is what he is after in you. This is a really core assumption. Your belief about this will affect the rest of your life. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

Why don’t I wake with a joyful heart? Joy was just here. Where did it go?I began to realize that what I’ve done for most of my life is resign myself to this idea: I’m really not going to have any lasting joy. And from that resignation, I’ve gone on to try and find what I could have. Women do this in marriage. They see that they are not going to have any real intimacy with their husbands, so they lose themselves in soaps or tabloids or romance novels. Men find their work a sort of slow death, so they get a little something in the bar scene each night. Have a few beers with the boys, watch the game. Joy isn’t even a consideration. Settle for relief.Now, to be fair, joy isn’t exactly falling from the sky these days. We don’t go out to gather it each morning like manna. It’s hard to come by. Joy seems more elusive than winning the lottery. We don’t like to think about it much, because it hurts to allow ourselves to feel how much we long for joy, and how seldom it drops by.But joy is the point. I know it is. God says that joy is our strength. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). I think, My strength? I don’t even think of it as my occasional boost. But yes, now that I give it some thought, I can see that when I have felt joy I have felt more alive than at any other time in my life. Pull up a memory of one of your best moments. The day at the beach. Your eighth birthday. Remember how you felt. Now think what life would be like if you felt like that on a regular basis. Maybe that’s what being strengthened by joy feels like. It would be good. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

We are not what we were meant to be, and we know it. If, when passing a stranger on the street, we happen to meet eyes, we quickly avert our glance. Cramped into the awkward community of an elevator, we search for something, anything to look at instead of each other. We sense that our real self is ruined, and we fear to be seen. But think for a moment about the millions of tourists who visit ancient sites like the Parthenon, the Colosseum, and the Pyramids. Though ravaged by time, the elements, and vandals through the ages, mere shadows of their former glory, these ruins still awe and inspire. Though fallen, their glory cannot be fully extinguished. There is something at once sad and grand about them. And such we are. Abused, neglected, vandalized, fallen — we are still fearful and wonderful. We are, as one theologian put it, “glorious ruins.” But unlike those grand monuments, we who are Christ’s have been redeemed and are being renewed as Paul said, “day by day,” restored in the love of God.Could it be that we, all of us, the homecoming queens and quarterbacks and the passed over and picked on, really possess hidden greatness? Is there something in us worth fighting over? The fact that we don’t see our own glory is part of the tragedy of the Fall; a sort of spiritual amnesia has taken all of us. Our souls were made to live in the Larger Story, but as G.K. Chesterton discovered, we have forgotten our part:We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is ... We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. (Orthodoxy) Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] Our adolescent culture really does play into our confusion; with so many answers supposedly on the other side of our keyboards, we often won’t ask for counsel, and even more often don’t want to ask anyway. I have found myself swinging between being impulsive and being immobilized, and from what I’ve seen I’m not alone. If the choice is up to us and no other guidance is forthcoming, the only natural response in a culture of “instant gratification” (read, impatience) is either to jump at something, anything, or to never jump at all. Those that don’t jump usually have found some kind of escapism by creating a small world that they feel safe in or by sinking into the imaginary worlds of TV shows and video games. Avoiding that, we might hitch our wagon to the latest revolution, simply wanting to catch some of the momentum and meaning it seems to offer. If all we are doing is spending time and energy on a product, not stepping into something we believe is right for us, it is only a matter of time before all that is left is buyer’s remorse.Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

I’ve come to the place where I have had to stop telling people, “I’ll pray for you.” I simply know that despite my good intentions — and these promises are almost always spoken with good intent — I know that nine times out of ten I just don’t remember to follow through. Not until maybe a week or two later, and then I feel guilty that I forgot. I don’t like promising something I probably won’t live up to. You know how these stories go: someone you care about tells you of their pain, need, or struggle, and you respond with, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that; I’ll pray for you.” But then, most of the time, we never do. If all the prayers that were promised were actually prayed, this would be a different world by now.So instead of promising future prayer, what I try to do nowadays is stop, right there in the moment, and pray. Right then and there. It’s funny how many Christians this actually throws off guard. “You mean, right now?” “Yes — absolutely. Let’s pray.” In the restaurant, in the car, on the plane, wherever. If it’s a text or e-mail request, I’ll start praying as I type my response, typing out a prayer for them right then and there. Not only does it help me follow through, but it helps them to agree right along with what I have prayed, and agreement is mighty powerful as we know. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

The only person that can satisfy the aching abyss of the human heart is Jesus Christ. —Oswald Chambers I hate Valentines Day. There, I said it. Most of the guys reading this just thought, Yes! I can’t believe he said that. Most of the women just thought, What a jerk! I can’t believe he said that. But it’s true. I hate Valentine's Day. And Stasi loves it; it’s one of her favorite holidays. (God, what are you thinking?!). I hate being told, “Today, you will be romantic. Today, you will be amazing. Today, you will get it all right. And tonight, you will arrange for one of the most romantic evenings you two will have this year. Tonight, sex will be on a level with the Hallelujah chorus. Hollywood will have wished they had filmed this day.” Who wants to live under that kind of pressure? Real romance doesn’t work like that. Romance seems to happen not because we’ve turned our google-eyed attention to romance, but because we are focused on other things—a beautiful fall day, and a spontaneous walk in the woods. An evening out “just because,” and we stumble on a great little restaurant and it all just becomes lovely. Or maybe the two of you simply rent a movie and watch it in your sweats, but it stirs both your hearts deeply and afterwards you have an amazing conversation and the intimacy makes you want to rip each other’s clothes off. Romance requires free hearts. Pressure, on the other hand, kills everything it touches. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

John Wesley was thirty-five when he experienced the now famous "warming" of his heart — not his mind — toward Christ, and knew in that moment he had become not merely a Christian, but something more — a lover of God. Shortly after, he penned the hymn "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," whose first verse goes like this: "Jesus, Lover of my soul/Let me to thy bosom fly." Down through the years the hymn has left many a hymnologist reaching for a more palatable translation, "the difficulty," as John Julian said, "is the term Lover as applied to our Lord." Revisions now in hymnbooks read, "Jesus, Savior of my soul" or, "Jesus, Refuge of my soul," which are touching but nothing close to what Wesley meant. He meant Lover.You'll notice how dominant the "reason and knowledge are everything" approach has been by noticing that men who have fallen in love with God are often referred to in the church as "mystics," a term that gives a sort of honor while at the same time effecting a dismissal. Mystic, meaning "inexplicable," which devolves into "unreasonable." Mystic, meaning also "exceptional, as opposed to perfectly normal." Odd, even. Difficult to analyze.David would have had no problem at all understanding this. The poetry that flowed from the heart of this passionate Lover is filled with unapologetic emotion toward God. He speaks of drinking from God's "river of delights" (Ps. 36:8 NIV), how his Lover has filled his heart "with greater joy" (4:7 NIV) than all the wealth other men have found, and he writes in many of his love songs how his heart sings to God. He cries through the night, aches to be with God, for he has found, really found, his life in God: "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence" (16:11 NIV) to such a degree that his heart and soul "pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God" (42:1-2 NIV), his body even longing for God. These are not the words of a dry theologian or moralist. These are not the words of even your average pastor. For him, God's love "is better than life" (63:3 NIV). David is captivated by the Beauty he finds in God. On and on it goes. The man is undone. He is as smitten as any lover might be, only — can we begin to accept this? do we even have a category for it? — his lover is God. Want more? Order your copy of Fathered By God today

There are three desires that I have found essential to a woman’s heart, which are not entirely different from a man’s and yet they remain distinctly feminine. Not every woman wants a battle to fight, but every woman yearns to be fought for. Listen to the longing of a woman’s heart: She wants to be more than noticed — she wants to be wanted. She wants to be pursued.Every woman also wants an adventure to share. “I want to be Isabo in Ladyhawk,” confessed a female friend. “To be cherished, pursued, fought for — yes. But also, I want to be strong and a part of the adventure.” So many men make the mistake of thinking that the woman is the adventure. But that is where the relationship immediately goes downhill. A woman doesn’t want to be the adventure; she wants to be caught up into something greater than herself.And finally, every woman wants to have a beauty to unveil. Not to conjure, but to unveil. Most women feel the pressure to be beautiful from very young, but that is not what I speak of. There is also a deep desire to simply and truly be the beauty, and be delighted in.The world kills a woman’s heart when it tells her to be tough, efficient, and independent. Sadly, Christianity has missed her heart as well. Walk into most churches in America, have a look around, and ask yourself this question: What is a Christian woman? Again, don’t listen to what is said, look at what you find there. There is no doubt about it. You’d have to admit a Christian woman is...tired. All we’ve offered the feminine soul is pressure to “be a good servant.” No one is fighting for her heart; there is no grand adventure to be swept up in; and every woman doubts very much that she has any beauty to unveil. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

His ability to live with all these qualities we’ve seen, in such a way that no one quality dominates—as is so often the case in our personalities—eclipsing the richness of the others. To live in such a way that there is always something of an element of surprise, and yet, however he acts turns out to be exactly what was needed in the moment. Oh, his brilliance shines through, but never blinding, never overbearing. He is not glistening white marble. He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road. Reclining at a meal, laughing with friends, and then going to the cross. That is what we mean when we say that Jesus is beautiful. But most of all, it is the way he loves. In all these stories, every encounter, we have watched love in action. Love as strong as death; a blood, sweat, and tears love, not a get-well card. You learn a great a deal about the true nature of a person in the way they love, why they love, and, in what they love.But it takes a beautiful heart to recognize the beauty in a scandalous act, and to love it as he does. This is why we say Jesus is beautiful. A Beautiful Outlaw. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

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? As C. S. Lewis wrote, “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male...to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes of her own delightfulness.”This is far too simple an outline, I admit. There is so much more to say, and these are not hard and rigid categories. A man needs to be tender at times, and a woman will sometimes need to be fierce. But if a man is only tender, we know something is deeply wrong, and if a woman is only fierce, we sense she is not what she was meant to be. If you’ll look at the essence of little boys and little girls, I think you’ll find I am not far from my mark. Strength and beauty. As the psalmist says,One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving. (Ps. 62:11–12) Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. (Revelation 19:1–2)Evil judged and utterly destroyed. Forever and ever. Not just in the fairy tale, but in your story. Satan, his armies, and every form of evil are destroyed with a punishment that never ends.What will it be like to no longer be assaulted? To look in the mirror and hear no accusing thoughts or voices? To be completely free of all temptation and the sabotage of your character—not because you are successfully resisting it in a moment of great resolve, but because it no longer exists? Imagine having the dark clouds lifted between you and your beloved Jesus, that veil that clouds your relationship with him. Imagine when all the physical affliction, emotional torment, abuse—all the evil in this world has vanished.Oh, the joy you’ll experience when you get to watch with your own eyes the enemy brought down for good, cast into his eternal torment! What hope rises at the thought of a world where the enemy no longer gets to do what he does? To see your loved ones released from their lifelong battles? To be released from your own lifelong battles? The kingdom of death and darkness is forever destroyed.You long for this day, and you long for it in very particular ways. Someday, it will come.———————————Think of it—what evils will you no longer have to live with personally? What will this moment mean for you? Want more? Order your copy of Restoration Year today

In [Christ] you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ. (Col. 2:11)It’s not just that the Cross did something for us. Something deep and profound happened to us in the death of Christ. Remember — the heart is the problem. God understands this better than anyone, and he goes for the root. God promised in the new covenant to “take away your heart of stone.” How? By joining us to the death of Christ. Our nature was nailed to the cross with Christ; we died there, with him, in him. Yes, it is a deep mystery — “deep magic” as Lewis called it — but that does not make it untrue. “The death he died, he died to sin once for all ... In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin” (Rom. 6:10–11). Jesus was the Last Adam, the end of that terrible story.You’ve been far more than forgiven. God has removed your heart of stone. You’ve been delivered of what held you back from what you were meant to be. You’ve been rescued from the part of you that sabotages even your best intentions. Your heart has been circumcised to God. Your heart has been set free. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

I always felt it strange that God needed to command us to love him. (It is the first and greatest of all the commandments.) Now I see better. When God calls us to love him as our “first love,” it is not only because he deserves to hold that place in our hearts, but also because he knows what pain will come when we get that out of order. If you give the part of your soul that is meant for God to lesser things, they will break your heart because they cannot possibly come through for you in the ways God can. Only he will never leave you or forsake you. The command is a rescue from disaster.Many of you have begun to discover the joy and freedom loving God brings to the rest of your life. Keeping God as our first love, we are not destroyed when others fail to love us well; we are able to weather criticism, loneliness, and rejection. Our other loves are able to find their whole and wholesome expression, and we are able to flourish as human beings. Anchored in True Love, our hearts can go on to love. Because we have first things first, as the saying goes. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Choosing love will open spaces of immense beauty and joy for you, but you will be hurt. You already know this. You have retreated from love countless times in your life because of it. We all have. We have been and will be hurt by the loss of loved ones, by what they have done to us and we to them. Even in the bliss of love there is a certain exquisite pain: the pain of too much beauty, of overwhelming magnificence. Further, no matter how perfect a love may be, it is never really satisfied ... In both joy and pain, love is boundless. (Gerald May, The Awakened Heart)Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointments—sometimes deep and devastating disappointment. One storm claimed the lives of eight of Krakauer's companions in the Everest disaster of 1996. Should they not have tried? Many have said they were foolish even to begin. Do we reach for nothing in life because our reaching opens us up to tragedy? Because of its vulnerable nature, desire begins to feel like our worst enemy. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today

We are now far into this Epic that every great story points to. We have reached the moment where we, too, must find our courage and rise up to recover our hearts and fight for the hearts of others. The hour is late, and much time has been wasted. Aslan is on the move; we must rally to him at the stone table. We must find Geppetto lost at sea. We must ride hard, ride to Minas Tirith and join the last great battle for Middle Earth.Jesus calls to you to be his intimate ally once more. There are great things to be done and great sacrifices to be made. You won't lose heart if you know what's really going on here, where this Story is headed and what your Lover has promised to you.It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name...That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still. (Telling the Truth)This is the gospel.This is the Story we are living in.May you play your part well. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

To live as an authentic, ransomed, and redeemed woman means to be real and present in this moment. If we continue to hide, much will be lost. We cannot have intimacy with God or anyone else if we stay hidden and offer only who we think we ought to be or what we believe is wanted. We cannot play the ezer role we were meant to play if we remain bound by shame and fear, presenting only to the world the face we have learned is safe. You have only one life to live. It would be best to live your own. What have we to offer, really, other than who we are and what God has been pouring into our lives? It was not by accident that you were born; it was not by chance that you have the desires you do. The Victorious Trinity has planned on your being here now, “for such a time as this” (Est. 4:14). We need you. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (John 13:3–5, emphasis added) Jesus knew who he was. He knew where he had come from and where he was going. He knew why he was here. And so, in power and strength, in humility and complete freedom, he offers. He ministers to us and ultimately he pours out his life as an offering for ours. Pleasing and holy and acceptable. Jesus does this, he says, as “an example that you should do as I have done for you” (v. 15). God really does want you to know who you are. He wants you to be able to understand the story of your life, to know where you have come from, and to know where you are going. There is freedom there. Freedom to be and to offer and to love. Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today

We have no idea who we really are. Whatever glory was bestowed, whatever glory is being restored, we thought this whole Christian thing was about ... something else. Trying not to sin. Going to church. Being nice. Jesus says it is about healing your heart, setting it free, restoring your glory. A religious fog has tried to veil all that, put us under some sort of spell or amnesia, to keep us from coming alive. As Blaise Pascal said, "It is a monstrous thing ... an incomprehensible enchantment, and a supernatural slumber." And, Paul said, it is time to take that veil away.When anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:16-18)A veil removed, bringing freedom, transformation, glory. Do you see it? I am not making this up—though I have been accused of making the gospel better than it is. The charge is laughable. Could anyone be more generous than God? Could any of us come up with a story that beats the one God has come up with? Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

Finding more of God, growing strong in soul and spirit, requires creating space in your day for God — to intentionally put yourself in a place that allows you to draw upon and experience the healing power of the life of God filling you. Over the ages, serious followers of Jesus have used stillness and quiet, worship, fasting, prayer, beautiful places, and a number of other “exercises” to drink deeply of the presence of God. And untangle their souls from the world.The ongoing deluge of intriguing facts and commentary, scandal and crisis, genuinely important guidance combined with the latest insider news from across the globe and our friends’ personal lives, gives the soul a medicated feeling of awareness, connection, and meaning. Really, it’s the new Tower of Babel — the immediate access to every form of “knowledge” and “groundbreaking” information right there on our phones, every waking moment. It confuses the soul into a state of artificial meaning and purpose, all the while preventing genuine soul care and life with God. Who has time to read a book? Plant a garden?Let me say it again, because it’s so counter to the social air we breathe: what has become the normal daily consumption of input is numbing the soul with artificial meaning and purpose while in fact the soul grows thinner and thinner through neglect, forced by the very madness that passes for a progressive life. We are literally being forced into the “shallows” of our life.I’m not scolding; I’m tossing a lifeline.Sincere followers of Jesus in every age have faced very difficult decisions — usually at that point of tension where their life with and for God ran straight against the prevailing cultural norm. The new Tower of Babel is ours. We have always been “strangers and aliens” in the world, insofar as our values seemed so strange and bizarre to those around us. We are now faced with a series of decisions that are going to make us look like freaks — choices like fasting from social media, never bringing our smartphones to any meal, conversation, or Bible study, cutting off our media intake so we can practice stillness every day.The good news is that we actually have a choice. Unlike persecution, the things currently assaulting us are things we can choose not to participate in. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Our enemy is the angel Lucifer, son of the morning, one of the first and highest angels God created. He is the antagonist in the Sacred Romance—the great villain. All other villains are only a shadow of him. He is the one God gave a place of honor and trust "among the fiery stones" of the courts of heaven and who sees God face-to-face even to this day. He is one who spurned God's love and lost everything good through the sin of presumption. His desire was, and still is, to possess everything that belongs to God, including the worship of all those whom God loves. And God, as the Author of the great Story in which we are all living, has mysteriously allowed him a certain freedom to harass and oppress the other characters in the play, sometimes in a severe manner.In some ways, due to his great age and dark wisdom, Satan knows us better than we know ourselves. The one purpose of his heart is the destruction of all that God loves, particularly his beloved. He stalks us day and night, as the Lord tells us through Peter: "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). Peter makes it clear he is talking especially to believers, saying in verse 9, "Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings" (emphasis added). Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today

Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Jesus said this was the first and greatest commandment. So let’s keep this simple: Do you love God? It all starts there. Make a practice of loving God. “But how?” a friend asked. How do you love any of the people or the things that you currently love? You delight in them. You give your heart over to them. You choose them over other things and other people. They hold a special place in your heart. They get the lion’s share of your time, your attention, your presence. Don’t they? Then this is what we do — we give our whole heart to God. We make him the treasure of our life.It will be a profound moral rescue. It’s pretty hard to lust after someone if in that very moment you start saying, Jesus, I love you, I love you, I love you. It’s pretty hard to hold bitterness toward someone if in that very moment you start loving God. Whatever it is we find ourselves struggling with, right then and there in that very place we practice loving God and what we find is that our heart is freed to be good again. Loving God alone will heal your humanity. It’s what you were made for.Loving God is the centering of your existence as a human being. It’s the restoration of your reason for existence. What a relief it is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. What an utter relief. For then, every other relationship falls into place; every other desire finds its appropriate place in our life. Again, this is why mere “morality” can never substitute for true holiness. You can keep all the rules you think are important and not love God. This is where it all begins, truly loving Jesus with all your heart. Where things are out of whack, that is where our repenting needs to take place. Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

In the end, it doesn't matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished—a life without heart is not worth living. For out of this wellspring of our soul flow all true caring and all meaningful work, all real worship and all sacrifice. Our faith, hope, and love issue from this fount, as well. Because it is in our heart that we first hear the voice of God and it is in the heart that we come to know him and learn to live in his love.So you can see that to lose heart is to lose everything. And a "loss of heart" best describes most men and women in our day. It isn't just the addictions and affairs and depression and heartaches, though, God knows, there are enough of these to cause even the best of us to lose heart. But there is the busyness, the drivenness, the fact that most of us are living merely to survive. Beneath it we feel restless, weary, and vulnerable.Indeed, the many forces driving modern life have not only assaulted the life of our heart, they have also dismantled the heart's habitat—that geography of mystery and transcendence we knew so well as children.All of us have had that experience at one time or another, whether it be as we walked away from our teachers, our parents, a church service, or sexual intimacy; the sense that something important, perhaps the only thing important, had been explained away or tarnished and lost to us forever. Sometimes little by little, sometimes in large chunks, life has appropriated the terrain meant to sustain and nourish the wilder life of the heart, forcing it to retreat as an endangered species into smaller, more secluded, and often darker geographies for its survival. As this has happened, something has been lost, something vital. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today