Life is now a battle and a journey. As Eugene Peterson reminds us, “We must fight the forces that oppose our becoming whole; we must find our way through difficult and unfamiliar territory to our true home.” It’s not that there aren’t joy and...
READ MOREWhen we forget (and oh, how we forget), our senses can trigger an awakening of remembrance and place, and suddenly we are back as though it were yesterday. Sense-memory is such an exquisite gift from God, especially our sense of smell; the...
READ MOREWalking with God leads to receiving his intimate counsel, and counseling leads to deep restoration. As we learn to walk with God and hear his voice, he is able to bring up issues in our hearts that need speaking to. Some of those wounds were...
READ MOREToday’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King”
For many years, we were like just about everybody else: unconsciously forsaking honest soul rest, always going, with overfilled calendars and...
Every era has its problems when it comes to knowing Jesus. One of ours is this: Having lost all confidence in the noble, the heroic, even the consistently good, we have come to celebrate the neurotic. Really. The heroes of our novels and movies...
READ MOREYour wounds brought messages with them. Lots of messages. Somehow they all usually land in the same place. They had a similar theme. “You’re worthless.” “You’re not a woman.” “You’re too much ... and not enough.” “You’re a disappointment.” “You...
READ MOREThis stream of Counseling doesn't just flow to us directly from Christ, only from him; it flows through his people as well. We need others—and need them deeply. Yes, the Spirit was sent to be our Counselor. Yes, Jesus speaks to us...
READ MORERemain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear...
READ MOREWho among us has not suffered betrayal at the hands of a trusted friend? Who among us has not shrunk away in response to being hurt? Which one of us has not been responsible for wounding another? We all have.
We all have.
...
READ MOREIf you have any doubts as to whether or not God loves wildness, spend a night in the woods ... alone. Take a walk out in a thunderstorm. Go for a swim with a pod of killer whales. Get a bull moose mad at you. Whose idea was this, anyway? The...
READ MOREA Story. An Epic.
Something hidden in the ancient past.
Something dangerous now unfolding.
Something waiting in the future for us to discover.
Some crucial role for us to play.
Christianity, in its true...
What does it mean to be defiantly joyful in this moment when I am dwelling on the ancient path of shame and disappointment in myself? Those paths are made of quicksand.
I need a Savior.
I have one.
My...
Now, I know my fellow evangelicals will rush to protest that it is the cross of Jesus Christ alone that opens the way to heaven for any person. No amount of personal righteousness could ever suffice. I believe this. It is grace alone — the...
READ MOREThe thing you are made for is the renewal of all things. God has given you a heart for his kingdom—not the wispy vagaries of a cloudy heaven, but the sharp reality of the world made new. This is one of the most important things you can know about...
READ MOREThe book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.
[John] Either we have God or we don’t. Either he is our ally, or we are on our own. What you...
READ MOREThe heart is the connecting point, the meeting place between any two persons. The kind of deep soul intimacy we crave with God and with others can be experienced only from the heart. I know a man who took his daughter to dinner; she was surprised...
READ MORESome of the sentences the Enemy accuses each of us with have been there since we were young; others were added in the ensuing years as Satan saw opportunity to strengthen our fear and cynicism through “interpreting” those events in our lives that...
READ MOREI’ve often wondered at the long lists found many places in the Bible that recount a roster of men as “the son of so-and-so, who was the son of so-and-so.” You’ll find many of these rosters in the Scriptures, and elsewhere in ancient literature....
READ MOREThe deepest convictions of our heart are formed by stories and reside there in the images and emotions of story. As a young boy, around the time my heart began to suspect that the world was a fearful place and I was on my own to find my way...
READ MORENow—is Jesus more like Mother Teresa or William Wallace? The answer is ... it depends. If you're a leper, an outcast, a pariah of society whom no one has ever touched, if all you have ever longed for is just one kind word, then Christ is...
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