Daily Reading
October 1, 2025
We haven’t yet seen anyone in their true glory. Including you. Yes, Mozart did start writing symphonies as a child, and Picasso could draw before he could talk. But most human beings are profoundly thwarted in their “calling” here because of wounding...
Daily Reading
September 30, 2025
And then the long story of God's pursuit of humanity begins. Satan wanted center stage: He wanted to be the main character, he wanted to be the point. His plan now is to ruin the Sacred Romance, to get us all caught up in our own little sociodramas b...
Daily Reading
September 29, 2025
This is a world at war. We live in a far more dramatic, far more dangerous story than we ever imagined. The reason we love The Chronicles of Narnia or Star Wars or The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings is that they are telling us something about our li...
Daily Reading
September 28, 2025
I am sitting on the beach this evening, watching the swells roll in toward me. Each wave builds as it approaches, ascending, taking shape, deep greens below sweeping upward into translucent aquamarine. A sculpture in motion, curling forth like shavin...
Daily Reading
September 27, 2025
Identity is not something that falls on us out of the sky. For better or for worse, identity is bestowed. We are who we are in relation to others. But far more important, we draw our identity from our impact on those others — if and how we affect the...
Daily Reading
September 26, 2025
You will be wounded. Just because this battle is spiritual doesn't mean it's not real; it is, and the wounds a man can take are in some ways more ugly than those that come in a firefight. To lose a leg is nothing compared to losing heart; to be cripp...
Daily Reading
September 25, 2025
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what...
Daily Reading
September 24, 2025
When we were young, most of us loved adventure. There is something about the unknown that draws us, which is why we like stories so much. But I like to leave the theater at the end of the play, knowing that the dilemma of evil has been resolved by th...
Daily Reading
September 23, 2025
God is not “out there somewhere” in some dramatic way, waiting to commune with us by earthquake or fire or signs in the sky. Instead, he desires to talk with us in the quietness of our own heart through his Spirit, who is in us. It is his voice that ...
Daily Reading
September 22, 2025
In the years that followed the Fall and our exile from Eden, mankind got worse and worse. Cain killed Abel; Lamech threatened to kill everybody else. The wickedness of the human heart seemed out of control and unstoppable, even by the curses. People ...
Daily Reading
September 21, 2025
This is exactly what Christ promised: eternal life, real life! (1 John 2:25 The Message)Jesus’ offer of eternal life has gotten “interpreted” by well-meaning people to say, “Oh, well. Yes, of course ... God intends life for you. But that is eternal l...
Daily Reading
September 20, 2025
I love being happy. But happiness is unpredictable; it feels vulnerable because it is tied to my circumstances. And don’t we all know it. One day you’re up; next day you’re down. Circumstantial happiness is an emotional roller coaster; it can really ...
Daily Reading
September 19, 2025
Our thoughts flow downhill like water. If we aren’t aware of what we are thinking, our thoughts wander, leading us down windy ways through dark woods. We lose perspective; we start speculating; we come to terrible conclusions in about seven seconds. ...
Daily Reading
September 18, 2025
And they lived happily ever after. Stop for just a moment, and let it be true. They lived happily ever after.These may be the most beautiful and haunting words in the entire library of mankind. Why does the end of a great story leave us with a lump i...
Daily Reading
September 17, 2025
In heaven, things are not stained or broken; everything is as it was meant to be. Think for a moment of the wonder of this. Isn't every one of our sorrows on earth the result of things not being as they were meant to be? And so when the kingdom of Go...
Daily Reading
September 16, 2025
We are each created to accomplish a work worthy of God; it is one of our deepest yearnings. And we will, in the kingdom; not just once, but many, many times over. Are we employed in the actual restoration itself? I don’t know for certain. “They will ...
Daily Reading
September 15, 2025
Imagine what it would be like if you were never, ever able to wake from your nightmares. Like being tumbled under the waves and never able to find the surface again. That there is a reality for us to wake to is a gift beyond words. Whether or not we ...
Daily Reading
September 14, 2025
I thought of the last story we have from the life of the prophet Elisha. Jehoash was king of Israel at the time, and he went to visit Elisha on his sickbed. He knew that without the help of this great prophet, the future of Israel was looking dim. En...
Daily Reading
September 13, 2025
“He is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.” (2 Samuel 23:4) What makes your heart awaken? For what awakens your heart is worth paying attention to.Think about s...
Daily Reading
September 12, 2025
Can you imagine if on your honeymoon one of you sneaked off for a rendezvous with a perfect stranger? Adam and Eve kicked off the honeymoon by sleeping with the Enemy. Then comes one of the most poignant verses in all Scripture: "What is this you hav...
Daily Reading
September 11, 2025
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] You simply cannot neglect the heart and get away with it. The mind is a beautiful instrument, one we certainly want to develop all our...
Daily Reading
September 10, 2025
The Religious Man or Woman is a popular story option in which we try to reduce the wildness of life by constructing a system of promises and rewards, a contract that will obligate God to grant us exemption from the Arrows. It really doesn't matter wh...
Daily Reading
September 9, 2025
We now are going to war. This is the beginning of the end.The hour is late, and you are needed. We need your heart.If there were something more I could do to help you see, I wish to God I could have done it. Tears fill my eyes for fear I have not don...
Daily Reading
September 8, 2025
Imagine, friends, a world without evil. Every demon has been swept away. Simply imagine a world without evil people, where everyone loves God and overflows with his holy love. You look to your right and left, and you only see people you can trust com...
Daily Reading
September 7, 2025
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all you...
Daily Reading
September 6, 2025
The way to begin to get free of this debris, to remove these limits you’ve unknowingly placed on Jesus, is first to name what the problem is. Where are you having a hard time with Jesus? Where is your struggle with him? Do you find it hard to believe...
Daily Reading
September 5, 2025
This is what Jesus nearly always does when he comes to mend those rifts in our hearts. He brings his comfort and mercy to those times and places where we suffered the shattering blow, and the heart in that place often feels the same age as it was at ...
Daily Reading
September 4, 2025
Once we begin thinking of all the deceptions the Enemy is about with regard to our lives, we have a tendency to become obsessed with him, fearful of what he is going to do next. Once we take him seriously, he switches from his tactic of “I’m not here...
Daily Reading
September 3, 2025
We all have a way that we do life. We might call it our personality, or our natural bent — the way we handle pressure, the way we listen, the way we look for happiness, the way we control our world. We didn’t sit down one day and willfully choose to ...
Daily Reading
September 2, 2025
Maybe the most devastating limit is simply the idea that “Jesus doesn’t act like that anymore.” (Or, “Jesus doesn’t act like that with me.”) Sure —he was amazing in the Gospels. But that was then and this is now and things have changed. Or so the ide...