Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doing things for God is not the same thing as loving God.Jesus loves the poor — so, movements have arisen that make service to the poor the main thing. Even though Jesus never said that being poor was more noble or even spiritual. The latest craze is justice — so we rush off to the corners of the globe to fight for justice and leave Jesus behind. We actually come to think that service for Jesus is friendship with him. That’s like a friend who washes your car and cleans your house but never goes anywhere with you — never comes to dinner, never wants to take a walk. But they’re a “faithful” friend. Though you never talk.How many children have said, “My dad worked hard to provide for us — but all I ever really wanted was his love”?This is — yet again — one more cunning ploy of the religious to keep us from the kind of intimacy with Jesus that will heal our lives. And change the world. We are not meant to merely love his teaching, or his morals, or his kindness or his social reforms. We are meant to love the man himself, know him intimately; keep this as the first and foremost practice of our lives. It is a fact that people most devoted to the work of the Lord actually spend the least amount of time with him. First things first. Love Jesus. Want more? Order your copy of Beautiful Outlaw today

Down through the ages, followers of Christ have believed that to be able to give God our attention as a regular practice was a very important thing. After vividly recounting the many challenges of faith and character before us, the author of Hebrews says,Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping [fixing] our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith (Hebrews 12:1–2 NLT).Those who look to him are radiant (Psalm 34:5 NIV)  Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. (Psalm 119:97–99 NIV)I don’t think we realize how much our use of technology and its assault on our attention has made this difficult to do. You can’t give God your attention when your attention is constantly being targeted and taken captive ... and you’re cooperating.In a blog post entitled "Mobile Blindness," marketing guru Seth Godin writes,We swipe instead of click, we scan instead of read, even our personal email. We get exposure to far more at the surface, but we rarely dig in. Mobile blindness. The quick pass. The inability to linger, and dig deep. It’s just the next thing, the next thing, the next thing.Our precious attention has been groomed and taken hostage. The key is this: the rooted person is able to meditate — give sustained attention to — the revelation of God. Not swipe, not multitask. Lingering focus. So Crawford wonders, “As our mental lives become more fragmented, what is at stake often seems to be nothing less than the question of whether one can maintain a coherent self. I mean a self that is able to act according to settled purposes and ongoing projects, rather than flitting about.”Dear reader — you can’t find more of God when all you’re able to give him is a flit and flicker of your attention.The good news is that we actually have a choice. Unlike persecution, the things currently assaulting us are things we can choose not to participate in. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today

Any parent or lover knows this: love is chosen. You cannot, in the end, force anyone to love you.So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each person a choice. You have to allow freedom. You cannot force love. God gives us the dignity of freedom, to choose for or against him (and friends, to ignore him is to choose against him).This is the reason for what C.S. Lewis called the Problem of Pain. Why would a kind and loving God create a world where evil is possible? Doesn’t he care about our happiness? Isn’t he good? Indeed, he does and he is. He cares so much for our happiness that he endows us with the capacity to love and to be loved, which is the greatest happiness of all.He endows us with a dignity that is almost unimaginable.For this creator God is no puppeteer.“Trust me in this one thing,” God says to us. “I have given the entire earth to you, for your joy. Explore it; awaken it; take care of it for me. And I have given you one another, for love and romance and friendship. You shall be my intimate allies. But on this one matter, you must trust me. Trust that my heart for you is good, that I am withholding this for a reason. Do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil...or you will die.”And this is where our Story takes its tragic turn. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today

I know I’m not alone in having a hard time believing in the love of God for me (we think he loves everyone else), or receiving the love of God, or letting it catch my heart up into life and joy, or, maybe especially, staying there for any reasonable period of time. An hour or two would be amazing. A day would be a triumph. And I’m thinking that maybe part of the reason we have a hard time believing in God’s love for us hides back in our story somewhere. I remember something Gerald May wrote years ago: we need to let ourselves tell our stories of love — how love came to us over the course of our lives, or how it did not come, or how it left. We need to tell the story so that we understand. And I remember thinking at the time, No thank you. I’d rather not go there. Thanks just the same.And I ignored the issue for years.Now I’m trying to bring my heart back to the love of God, let it heal me, and stay there. It feels sometimes like searching through a dark forest for a wounded deer and trying to coax it in so I can touch it.Our story of love is a very tangled story about the most precious thing in our lives (our longing for love). It’s a hard story to tell for two reasons. For one thing, we’re too close to it to often have any clarity at all. Can’t see the forest for the trees. More deeply, it’s a heartbreaking story, and we’re not sure we want to revisit the painful details. That’s why we’re ambivalent about love. Oh, we yearn for it. We want to be loved. But we hide from it too, building defenses against it, fortressing ourselves from being hurt again. We settle for a doughnut.Then we wonder why it’s hard for us to connect with the love of God, let it in so deep that it heals us, and remain in his love. Want more? Order your copy of Walking With God today

What we call “Christianity” is an invasion. The Kingdom of God is advancing into the kingdom of darkness, a campaign to ransom people and the earth God intended us to rule. For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost. All that was lost. If Christianity seems to you to be having rather less than a remarkable impact on the earth, it is because too many Christians have this idea that we are in a waiting game, that we are basically killing time until Jesus comes back and we all get to go to heaven. We’re sitting around like people waiting to catch a flight. That is not what Jesus told us to do; he didn’t say, “Now hold tight in those pews and twiddle your holy thumbs, I’ll be back soon as I can.” He said, “As the Father has sent me, I send you” (John 20:21).Let that sink in for a moment. New orders have been given. Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today

You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. (Hebrews 12:22–23 NLT)That phrase “the righteous ones ... made perfect.” I can hardly speak. Finally, the totality of our being will be saturated only with goodness. Think of it — think of all that you’re not going to have to wrestle with anymore. The fear that has been your lifelong battle, the anger, the compulsions, the battles to forgive, that nasty root of resentment. No more internal civil wars; no doubt, no lust, no regret; no shame, no self-hatred, no gender confusion. What has plagued you these last many years? What has plagued you all your life? Your Healer will personally lift it from your shoulders.What tender intimacy is foretold when we are promised that our loving Father will wipe every tear from our eyes personally — not only tears of sorrow, but all the tears of shame, guilt, and remorse. That moment alone will make the whole journey worth it.Yet there is more. The armies of heaven ride in on white horses, dressed in white linen. It is a symbol of the righteousness that now radiates from their hearts, the center of their being. The radiance is character; it is goodness. You will be free, alive, whole, young, gorgeous, valiant.Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him — and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own. (1 John 3:2–3 The Messsage)We will have the character, the internal holiness, of Jesus himself.You will finally be everything you’ve ever longed to be. Not only that — it can never be taken from you again. “Eternal” life means life unending, life that never dims nor fades away. You will be in your glory to live as you were meant to live and take on the kingdom assignments God has for you.Have you ever imagined what you would be like if the Fall had never taken place? Have you wondered what an unbroken, unstained, glorious, true, unblemished version of you would be? No false self, no woundedness, nothing shaped by the broken, mad world? No? Me neither. It is almost incomprehensible.But you are going to get to know that person really well. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

Our hope is meant to be the anchor of our souls, to keep us steady in the middle of the storms of life. It is set firmly within the truth that Jesus is trustworthy. He has promised us that He is returning and that, when He does, He will make all things right, all things well, and all things new.He will bring us home, to the true home our hearts long for.“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1–3) We received Christ by faith, and we are meant to enjoy Him utterly. We are meant to know and experience joy and to live with the vibrant hope of the glory that is going to be revealed when Jesus returns. Dear ones, He is returning. Say it out loud. Remind yourself.We can live with a defiant joy because our happily ever after is on its way. In Jesus our life is unending and, at the renewal of all things, the life we long for is coming.Really. Honestly. Truly.Yours is no ethereal hope of a next life spent floating in the clouds singing hymns while strumming a harp. Yours is not a future of standing at a distance among the gathering of saints crammed together in the throne room. Yours is not a future where you will be shamed by a giant movie screen replaying your every secret moment before a huge crowd who gasps at your sins. This is not an unending life where you will spend eternity doing something so other than what you now know and enjoy that you simply are unable to imagine it, let alone hope for it. When Jesus returns, you will be transformed, but you won’t be transformed into an angel. You will still be you.  Only made perfect. None of the struggles you battle with here will be yours to contend with any longer. Think on that. You will be finally and fully free. You will be all that you were created to be. Your loved ones, too, will at last be utterly and completely whole and free. Let hope rise. Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today

God heals the earth, and he heals us. We are restored to one another. The earth waits for our healing, and we wait for the earth’s healing. I believe our healing brings about something of the healing of the earth, and I’m certain the healed earth helps to usher in our healing.Our Enemy is the Great Divider. His most poisonous work takes place at the level of fragmentation, dividing families, churches, and fomenting racial hatred. He uses pain and suffering to create deep divisions within our own beings. You see his work right there, in the beginning of our tragic story, when he slithers into Eden to divide humanity from God, from one another, and from the earth. He traumatizes human beings, then separates them from the earth that could bring about their healing. In his highly researched book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv documents how postmodern human beings suffer badly the physical and mental harms of “nature deficit disorder.” Our lives have become cut off from the Garden we were meant to flourish in.Nature heals, dear ones; nature heals. God has ordained that in the new earth it is river water that brings us life and leaves that are used for our healing:Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations. (Revelation 22:1–2 NLT)We will hear nature in full chorus. It will mingle with the laughter and music and aromas of the feast itself, and we will wander in and out, drinking it all in, practically swimming in the healing powers of creation, feeling Life permeate every last corner of our being. Happiness and joy will overcome us; sorrow and its sighing will vanish forever. Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.  [John]   Paralysis (masquerading as “confusion”) haunts every man when a looming decision will require a lot of us. Make note of that; don’t let it keep you from seeing the light in front of you. God is here to help us with our fears, but only once we name it as fear and do not hide behind, “I just don’t know what to do.”What do I sense God saying about this? You are friends with the brightest person in the universe — have you asked his opinion on the matter? This seems so obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of Christians who don’t ask God or give him more than a day to respond. Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today

When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick … So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere. (Luke 9:1, 6)Now this is just extraordinary — Jesus has absolutely no need to be the center of the action. He sends his friends out to do the very things he does; he gives them a major role in his campaign. “You go do it. Do everything you see me doing.” This is humble and this is extraordinarily generous; Jesus is absolutely openhanded with his kingdom. There is no need for the whole thing to be always about him. He is absolutely delighted to share his kingdom with us. He later says, “Don’t be afraid, little ones; your father is delighted to give you the kingdom.”Most men get power and then crave more; as their stars rise they can’t bear to have others in the spotlight; they typically abuse the power they have; and in the end, it winds up crushing them and everyone around them. You recall the expression “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It was a lesson learned through the long soiled history of men and power. But then we have Jesus, who walks right through the snares as if they weren’t even there, handling immense power with casual grace.Want more? Order your copy of Free to Live today

Either (a) we’re blowing it, or (b) God is holding out on us. Or some combination of both, which is where most people land. Think about it. Isn’t this where you land, with all the things that haven’t gone the way you’d hoped and wanted? Isn’t it some version of “I’m blowing it,” in that it’s your fault, you could have done better, you could have been braver or wiser or more beautiful or something? Or “God is holding out on me,” in that you know he could come through, but he hasn’t come through — and what are you to make of that?This is The Big Question, by the way, the one every philosophy and religion and denominational take on Christianity has been trying to nail down since the dawn of time. What is really going on here? Good grief — life is brutal. Day after day it hammers us, till we lose sight of what God intends toward us, and we haven’t the foggiest idea why the things that are happening to us are happening to us. Then you watch lives going down with the Twin Towers, read about children starving in Ethiopia, and wham! If a good God is really in charge ... and all that.We need clarity and we need it badly. A simple prayer rises from my heart: Jesus, take away the fog and the clouds and the veil, and help me to see ... give me eyes to really see. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today

As it was for many parents before, teaching our sons to drive was a hair-raising endeavor — merging into traffic that felt like Han Solo pushing the Millennium Falcon into light speed; sudden braking that seemed equally certain to send me through the windshield. They were giving it a go; it was terrifying and I was so proud of them. I was delighted with their efforts. But of course, I would be more than disappointed if their driving was the same now, ten years later. So it is with God — he is utterly delighted with our attempts at prayer; he loves our little prayers tucked into drawers. And, he is calling us upward to grow into the maturity we were destined for, including mature prayers. Elijah was not tucking little prayers under rocks on the mountain. I doubt very much it would have rained if he had.But here is the problem — most of us don’t quite share God’s fervent passion for our maturity. Really, now, if you stopped ten people at random on their way out of church next Sunday and polled them, I doubt very much that you would find one in ten who said, “Oh, my first and greatest commitment this afternoon is to mature!” Like Bilbo, our natural investments lie in other things — lunch, a nap, the game, our general comfort, including getting others to cooperate with our agenda.Yet there is no mistaking the theme in Scripture: God is committed to growing us up:...until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature... (Eph. 4:13)Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today

This is a very dangerous moment, when God seems set against everything that has meant life to us. Satan spies his opportunity, and leaps to accuse God in our hearts. You see, he says, God is angry with you. He’s disappointed in you. If he loved you he would make things smoother. He’s not out for your best, you know. The Enemy always tempts us back toward control, to recover and rebuild the false self. We must remember that it is out of love that God thwarts our impostor. As Hebrews reminds us, it is the son whom God disciplines, therefore do not lose heart (12:5–6).God thwarts us to save us. We think it will destroy us, but the opposite is true — we must be saved from what really will destroy us. If we would walk with him in our journey of masculine initiation, we must walk away from the false self — set it down, give it up willingly. It feels crazy; it feels immensely vulnerable. We simply accept the invitation to leave all that we’ve relied on and venture out with God. We can choose to do it ourselves, or we can wait for God to bring it all down.If you have no clue as to what your false self may be, then a starting point would be to ask those you live with and work with, “What is my effect on you? What am I like to live with (or work with)? What don’t you feel free to bring up with me?” In other words, you face your fears head-on. Drop the fig leaf; come out from hiding. For how long? Longer than you want to; long enough to raise the deeper issues, let the wound surface from beneath it all.Losing the false self is painful; though it’s a mask, it’s one we’ve worn for years and losing it can feel like losing a close friend. Underneath the mask is all the hurt and fear we’ve been running from, hiding from. To let it come to the surface can shake us like an earthquake. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today

We all share the same dilemma — we long for life and we're not sure where to find it. We wonder if we ever do find it, can we make it last? The longing for life within us seems incongruent with the life we find around us. What is available seems at times close to what we want, but never quite a fit. Our days come to us as a riddle, and the answers aren't handed out with our birth certificates. We must journey to find the life we prize. And the guide we have been given is the desire set deep within, the desire we often overlook or mistake for something else or even choose to ignore.The greatest human tragedy is simply to give up the search. There is nothing of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose heart is to lose everything. And if we are to bring our hearts along in our life's journey, we simply must not, we cannot, abandon this desire. Gerald May writes in The Awakened Heart:There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake ... Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire.The clue as to who we really are and why we are here comes to us through our heart's desire. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today