Daily Reading
June 16, 2025
There’s a passage in the book of Hebrews we don’t like very much.“Although he was a son”—it is speaking about Jesus Christ–“he learned obedience from what he suffered” (5:8).Dang. If Jesus needed to learn through suffering, well, it just doesn’t leav...
Daily Reading
June 15, 2025
I am here to tell you that you can get your heart back. But I need to warn you — if you want your heart back, if you want the wound healed and your strength restored and to find your true name, you’re going to have to fight for it. Notice your reacti...
Daily Reading
June 14, 2025
The book "Killing Lions" is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.Almost all initiation rituals handed down for centuries involved physical trials for young men. After finishing their training in a secret valley...
Daily Reading
June 13, 2025
Intimate and personal justice will be granted to us as well.You have suffered very specific wrongs over the course of your life; God is fully aware of every one of them. Jesus your King will make sure they are addressed with very specific reparations...
Daily Reading
June 12, 2025
The heart is central. That I would even need to remind you of this only shows how far we have fallen from the life we were meant to live—or how powerful the spell has been. The subject of the heart is addressed in the Bible more than any other topic—...
Daily Reading
June 11, 2025
We've exchanged that great hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" for a subtle but telling substitute, a song that is currently being taught to thousands of children in Sunday school each week, which goes something like this (sung in a very happy, upbeat ...
Daily Reading
June 10, 2025
The only fatal error is to pretend that we have found the life we prize. To mistake the water hole for the sea. To settle for the same old thing. Christopher Fry called such a life “the sleep of prisoners.” The most tragic day of all is to prefer sla...
Daily Reading
June 9, 2025
I am letting you in on a wonderful secret.What happens when God comes and releases us from long-held fears or fears that have long held us? What happens when we surrender fear to God and invite his love to overwhelm it? What is on the other side of f...
Daily Reading
June 8, 2025
Late into the night, early in the morning, walking down the road, in the middle of his supper, at home, abroad, Jesus offers. His time, his words, his touch, flowing like the wine at Cana. To appreciate the reality of it all, remember, this is not Su...
Daily Reading
June 7, 2025
“Nothing dangerous is happening here.” Incredible. What a self-indictment. Those men have already been taken out because they’ve swallowed the Enemy’s first line of attack: “I’m not here—this is all just you.” You can’t fight a battle you don’t think...
Daily Reading
June 6, 2025
We all—men and women—were created in the image of God. Fearfully and wonderfully made, fashioned as living icons of the bravest, wisest, most stunning Person who ever lived. Those who have ever seen him fell to their knees without even thinking about...
Daily Reading
June 5, 2025
Will we do it perfectly? Of course not. Friends, let’s set perfection aside. We are on our way, we are being transformed, but the moment we insist on total perfection we set ourselves up for bitter disappointment. Sin shall not be our master, because...
Daily Reading
June 4, 2025
I remember a conversation I had as a therapist with a young mother. She came to see me not because of some crisis, but in tears nevertheless over the passage of her children’s childhood right before her eyes. “These are such precious, precious days,”...
Daily Reading
June 3, 2025
There are few things more crucial to us than our own lives.And there are few things we are less clear about.This journey we are taking is hardly down the yellow brick road. Then again, that's not a bad analogy at all. We may set out in the light, wit...
Daily Reading
June 2, 2025
Christians have been told over and over that God is almighty. And indeed he is—the God of four hundred billion billion suns. We have been told he is also sovereign. And indeed he is. Perhaps out of respect, we have adopted the notion that if he is go...
Daily Reading
June 1, 2025
Let’s come back to something very basic to our pursuit of God and the transformation he is always after in our lives—everything we do has a reason behind it, a motive.Within the Christian community we tend to focus on behavior, and that is right and ...
Daily Reading
May 31, 2025
There is a civil war waged between the new heart and the old nature. Romans 7–8 describes it quite well. Part of me doesn’t want to love my neighbor—not when his son just backed his car into my Jeep and smashed it up. I want to take the little brat t...
Daily Reading
May 30, 2025
When you think of what Desolation looks like, picture a barren desert. Desolation wants to make everything a wasteland. So what is the opposite of a wasteland? Eden! The paradise of God, our first home, with all its lush, glorious beauty overflowing ...
Daily Reading
May 29, 2025
For some reason we keep forgetting that Jesus, in the Gospels, is operating in enemy territory. We project into the Gospel stories a pastoral backdrop, the quaint charm of a Middle Eastern travel brochure—picturesque villages, bustling markets, smili...
Daily Reading
May 28, 2025
We take folks through a discipleship program whereby they master any number of Christian precepts and miss the most important thing of all, the very thing for which we were created: intimacy with God. There are, after all, those troubling words Jesus...
Daily Reading
May 27, 2025
Life has a way of wearing on a person. Under the weight of losses, pressures, failures, and endless demands, something in our souls begins to wither. Passions dry up. The zeal of a beginning turns into a despairing end. A stone falls heavily down, cr...
Daily Reading
May 26, 2025
Dear friends, I hope you see clearly that more of God is our greatest need, our greatest joy, our only rescue. This isn’t optional. He’s the source of the strength and resiliency we need for this hour, the Life that allows us to enjoy everything else...
Daily Reading
May 25, 2025
Simone Weil was absolutely right—beauty and affliction are the only two things that can pierce our hearts. Because this is so true, we must have a measure of beauty in our lives proportionate to our affliction. No, more. Much more. Is this not God’s ...
Daily Reading
May 24, 2025
God says our latter glory will exceed our former. To our great loss, in our society we no longer value the wisdom and expertise that comes through living well through many years. Silver hair and wrinkles are earned.I have learned that being beautiful...
Daily Reading
May 23, 2025
Either we wake to tackle our “to do” list, get things done, guided by our morals and whatever clarity we may at the moment have (both rather lacking to the need, I might add); or we wake in the midst of a dangerous Story, as God’s intimate ally, foll...
Daily Reading
May 22, 2025
“‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death ‘or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:4–5)No more tears....
Daily Reading
May 21, 2025
At some point we all face the same decision—what will we do with the Arrows we’ve known? Maybe a better way to say it is, what have they tempted us to do? However they come to us, whether through a loss we experience as abandonment or some deep viola...
Daily Reading
May 20, 2025
Look, let’s go ahead and name the elephant in the room—some prayers work, and some prayers don’t. Why does that surprise and irritate us? Some diets work, but most don’t; no one is really surprised by that. We simply keep looking for the one that wil...
Daily Reading
May 19, 2025
We live now in a culture of expertise, so completely second nature to us that we don’t give it a second thought. Cutting-edge advances in science and technology—ever sharpening, ever thrusting forward—are now available to anyone with an Internet conn...
Daily Reading
May 18, 2025
Our local zoo had for years one of the biggest African lions I’ve ever seen. A huge male, nearly five hundred pounds, with a wonderful mane and absolutely enormous paws. Panthera leo. The King of the Beasts. Sure, he was caged, but I’m telling you th...