Christ did not die for an idea. He died for a person, and that person is you. But there again, we have been led astray. Ask any number of people why Christ came, and you'll receive any number of answers, but rarely the real one. "He came to bring...
READ MORE"Somehow," notes Os Guinness, "we human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us." Now, some children are gifted toward science, and others are born athletes. But whatever their specialty, all...
READ MOREThe coronation of Jesus. Perhaps the most joyful, certainly the most triumphant moment in history, second only to the resurrection. For now the glorious kingdom will come, the eternal summer romp of men and angels. His crowning ensures the...
READ MORERescuing the human heart is the hardest mission in the world.
The dilemma of the Story is this: we don't know if we want to be rescued. We are so enamored with our small stories and our false gods, we are so bound up in our...
Each person knows that now his body is the temple of God: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" (1 Cor. 6:19). Indeed it is. "Don't you know that you yourselves...
READ MOREMost people go through their entire lives without anyone, ever, speaking honest, loving, direct words to the most damaging issues in their lives. Pause for a moment, and count the times this has been done for you. Better, pause and count the...
READ MOREYou have a heart for redemption. Your kingdom heart longs for restoration and reconciliation, for justice, for the recovery of all that has been lost. What is the redemption that your heart longs for on a global level? What passions arouse your...
READ MORECaring for our own hearts isn’t selfishness; it’s how we begin to love.
Yes, we care for our hearts for the sake of others. Does that sound like a contradiction? Not at all. What will you bring to others if your heart is empty, dried...
We need God to help us understand his Word. We can’t separate a walk with God from our reading of Scripture. The two go hand in hand. Like having a tour guide as you wander the halls of the Louvre. “If you love me, you will obey what I command....
READ MOREI bought a new journal this week because my old one had filled up, and I had more time this morning than usual to linger with God before heading into the day. So I pour myself a cup of coffee, sit down on the couch, and pull out the journal. I...
READ MOREIn Romans 8, Paul says something outrageous. He says that all our sufferings are "not worth comparing" with the glory that will be revealed in us. The human race has seen an unspeakable amount of suffering. What can possibly make that seem like...
READ MORENow, rest is just one of the ways we receive the life of God. We stop, set all of our busyness down, and allow ourselves to be replenished. This is supposed to happen regularly. The original prescription was weekly. So why does rest feel like a...
READ MOREThe question lodged deep in our hearts, hidden from our conscious minds, is: "Do you care for me, God?"
What's under that question?
Blaise Pascal, in his Pensées, says, "The heart has its reasons which reason...
Our experience of Jesus is limited most often by the limits we put on him! A painful truth, but also a hopeful one. Perhaps we can take down some of those barriers.
Most of the limits we put on Jesus happen unconsciously...
READ MOREIf we forget — no, when we forget — who God is, what He has done, and who we are in Him and to Him, we put ourselves in great peril. We cannot live well nor arrive at the end of our journey triumphant unless we remember.
Yes, there...
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...
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