In the mythic story of The Lion King, the lion cub Simba is separated in his youth from his father through a murder engineered by his uncle, Scar, the character symbolizing the evil one in our story. Scar arranges for the cub to be...
READ MOREIn 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...
READ MORESomething has crept into our assumptions about Jesus that makes it almost impossible to relate to him, not to mention love him. I say “crept” because it has not been a conscious decision; few of the things that shape our actual convictions are. I...
READ MORELove 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...
READ MORERemember, when Jesus boiled his whole mission down to healing the brokenhearted and setting prisoners free from darkness, he was referring to all of us. Our modern, scientific, Enlightenment worldview has simply removed spiritual warfare...
READ MOREToday’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book, Becoming a King.
Since the beginning of time, every age has faced unprecedented battles. Today’s Western world lives and breathes a gospel of now....
READ MOREWatch Jesus with “the rich young ruler”:
“One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because...
READ MOREHow long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?" (Ps. 4:2). These blows aren't random or incidental. They strike directly at some part of the heart, turn the very thing God created to be a source of celebration into a source of shame. And so...
READ MOREWhen I consider all that is at stake in this journey I am on, how vulnerable are my heart and the hearts of those I love, I am moved to fall on my face and cry out to God for the grace to remember. George MacDonald says it better in poetry:
... READ MOREHere’s what I am learning: A grateful heart is a heart that is free. An ungrateful heart is a heart that is bound. Gratitude inevitably leads to freedom.
The root of the word gratitude is the Latin word gratis, which means free. If...
READ MORENow, you wouldn’t think that morality would ever become popular in the world, but there is a certain kind of “goodness” that is actually quite hip these days. Issues such as the size of your carbon footprint (and therefore the car you drive),...
READ MOREI'm simply sitting on my back porch. Warm summer evening, cool breeze, beautiful sky now turning that deep navy blue just before dark.
That's when the carnival started.
Some agitated place in me started clamoring for relief. Even...
READ MORELate 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...
READ MOREEntering into the Sacred Romance begins with eyes to see and ears to hear. Where would we be today if Eve had looked at the serpent with different eyes, if she had seen at once that the beautiful creature with the charming voice and the...
READ MOREPrayer is such an intimate act, a place of vulnerability. It is, hopefully, when we are our least guarded, our most honest selves. And this is good, of course; this is as it ought to be. When we come to God, we certainly want to come as honestly...
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