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Daily Reading
November 5, 2024
Life is the offer, friends. Let us not forget that.For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I hav...
Daily Reading
November 4, 2024
You do know what God is after in your own life, don’t you? Maybe that’s why we stay so busy — to avoid knowing, so we can avoid dealing with it.And you do know that the “quick fix” doesn’t ever work. Simply telling myself, “You are too busy, John. Yo...
Daily Reading
November 3, 2024
Eve is given to Adam as his ezer kenegdo — or as many translations have it, his "help meet" or "helper." Doesn't sound like much, does it? It makes me think of Hamburger Helper. But Robert Alter says this is "a notoriously difficult word to translate...
Daily Reading
November 2, 2024
We’ve lived in Colorado now for more than twenty years, but I’ve never really learned to snowboard. I mean, I’ve tried. But it was always a messy, hazardous, hesitant affair. Like a dog on roller skates. There wasn’t a lot of joy in it for me. I was ...
Daily Reading
November 1, 2024
Have we forgotten that God relocated the temple? In a stunning shift of geography, God changed the playing field. He moved the temple from a physical building to the hearts of his people: Don’t you know you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’...
Daily Reading
October 31, 2024
The story of Cinderella turns upon an invitation. Up until the moment that the courier from the palace arrives at her door, Cinderella’s life seems set in stone. She will always be a washerwoman, a cellar girl. Her enemies will forever have the u...
Daily Reading
October 30, 2024
I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, ...
Daily Reading
October 29, 2024
Of course we are nearing the end of the age. Jesus seemed pretty frustrated at his contemporaries’ refusal to understand their times. “Fools,” he called them. Because knowing your moment matters. Knowing where you are in the story is critical for you...
Daily Reading
October 28, 2024
We must open our hearts to all the other ways God is bringing beauty into our lives. The beauty of a flower garden or moonlight on water, the beauty of music or a written word. Our souls crave Beauty, and if we do not find it we will be famished. We ...
Daily Reading
October 27, 2024
Every great story involves a quest. In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins ran from the door at a quarter till eleven without even so much as a pocket handkerchief and launched on an adventure that would change his life forever. Alice steppe...
Daily Reading
October 26, 2024
Giving up has always been a struggle for frail humanity. But when Jesus urges us to ask for strength to escape, he has something particular in mind, something he sees coming: “At that time many will turn away from the faith” (Matthew 24:10).Saint Pau...
Daily Reading
October 25, 2024
As we explore the many beautiful and intimate ways Jesus comes to heal our inner being, keep in mind that whatever the damage may be, in any realm of your inner being, the essence of healing prayer is always to facilitate the presence of Jesus into t...
Daily Reading
October 24, 2024
Your sin has been dealt with. Your Father has removed it from you "as far as the east is from the west" (Ps. 103:12). Your sins have been washed away (1 Cor. 6:11). When God looks at you he does not see your sin. He has not one condemning thought tow...
Daily Reading
October 23, 2024
The Ephesians passage warns about spiritual strongholds created in our lives when we let “the sun go down” on something. Note that in this case that something isn’t necessarily sin. Paul says, “in your anger do not sin,” so anger does not equal sin. ...
Daily Reading
October 22, 2024
Doing things for God is not the same thing as loving God.Jesus loves the poor — so, movements have arisen that make service to the poor the main thing. Even though Jesus never said that being poor was more noble or even spiritual. The latest craze is...
Daily Reading
October 21, 2024
Down through the ages, followers of Christ have believed that to be able to give God our attention as a regular practice was a very important thing. After vividly recounting the many challenges of faith and character before us, the author of Hebrews ...
Daily Reading
October 20, 2024
Any parent or lover knows this: love is chosen. You cannot, in the end, force anyone to love you.So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each ...
Daily Reading
October 19, 2024
I know I’m not alone in having a hard time believing in the love of God for me (we think he loves everyone else), or receiving the love of God, or letting it catch my heart up into life and joy, or, maybe especially, staying there for any reasonable ...
Daily Reading
October 18, 2024
What we call “Christianity” is an invasion. The Kingdom of God is advancing into the kingdom of darkness, a campaign to ransom people and the earth God intended us to rule. For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost. All that was lost. If...
Daily Reading
October 17, 2024
You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have com...
Daily Reading
October 16, 2024
Our hope is meant to be the anchor of our souls, to keep us steady in the middle of the storms of life. It is set firmly within the truth that Jesus is trustworthy. He has promised us that He is returning and that, when He does, He will make all thin...
Daily Reading
October 15, 2024
God heals the earth, and he heals us. We are restored to one another. The earth waits for our healing, and we wait for the earth’s healing. I believe our healing brings about something of the healing of the earth, and I’m certain the healed earth hel...
Daily Reading
October 14, 2024
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] Paralysis (masquerading as “confusion”) haunts every man when a looming decision will require a lot of us. Make note of that; don’t le...
Daily Reading
October 13, 2024
When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick … So they set out and went from village to village, preac...
Daily Reading
October 12, 2024
Either (a) we’re blowing it, or (b) God is holding out on us. Or some combination of both, which is where most people land. Think about it. Isn’t this where you land, with all the things that haven’t gone the way you’d hoped and wanted? Isn’t it some...
Daily Reading
October 11, 2024
As it was for many parents before, teaching our sons to drive was a hair-raising endeavor — merging into traffic that felt like Han Solo pushing the Millennium Falcon into light speed; sudden braking that seemed equally certain to send me through the...
Daily Reading
October 10, 2024
This is a very dangerous moment, when God seems set against everything that has meant life to us. Satan spies his opportunity, and leaps to accuse God in our hearts. You see, he says, God is angry with you. He’s disappointed in you. If he loved you h...
Daily Reading
October 9, 2024
We all share the same dilemma — we long for life and we're not sure where to find it. We wonder if we ever do find it, can we make it last? The longing for life within us seems incongruent with the life we find around us. What is available seems at t...
Daily Reading
October 8, 2024
Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden. How could h...
Daily Reading
October 7, 2024
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)This is, without question, the Great Offense of Jesus Christ — his exclusivity.To make sure we understand this, what he is saying is that he alone is th...