Daily Reading
January 5, 2025
Think about it — what daily radiance is showered upon us, what immense golden goodness. Every single day, over so much of the planet. It saturates our world, warming the earth, raising the crops in the fields by silent resurrection, unfolding flowers...
Daily Reading
January 4, 2025
A sower went out to sow some seed ... A man fell into the hands of robbers ... Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one ... There were ten virgins with ten lamps ...Think of it. You are the Son of the living God. You have come to earth to r...
Daily Reading
January 3, 2025
Communion with God is replaced by activity for God. There is little time in this outer world for deep questions. Given the right plan, everything in life can be managed ... except your heart. The inner life, the story of our heart, is the life of the...
Daily Reading
January 2, 2025
God wants to come to us and restore our lives. He really does. But if our soul is not well, it’s almost impossible to receive him. Dry, scorched ground can’t absorb the very rain it needs.As C. S. Lewis explained, “The soul is but a hollow which God ...
Daily Reading
January 1, 2025
Having abandoned desire, we have lost hope. C. S. Lewis summed it up: "We can only hope for what we desire." No desire, no hope. Now, desire doesn't always translate into hope. There are many things I desire that I have little hope for. I desire to h...
Daily Reading
December 31, 2024
There is just enough goodness to rouse our hearts with expectation, and plenty enough sadness to cut us back down. When the cutting down exceeds the rising up, you wonder if you shouldn’t just stay down. “I wept when I was borne,” wrote the Anglican ...
Daily Reading
December 30, 2024
This will open up wonders for you about the personality of Jesus — look at his works of art.I was sitting out back yesterday morning sipping coffee, watching the young chipmunks chase one another at breakneck speeds across the deck. One clever darede...
Daily Reading
December 29, 2024
Heaven is the beginning of an adventure in intimacy, "a world of love," as Jonathan Edwards wrote, "where God is the fountain." The Holy Spirit, through the human authors of Scripture, chose the imagery of a wedding feast for a reason. It's not just ...
Daily Reading
December 28, 2024
Freedom comes only as we bring these unsanctified and unholy places under the rule of Jesus Christ, so that he can possess these very places deeply and truly. Therefore, part of this first step involves sanctifying the place of bondage to Christ. If ...
Daily Reading
December 27, 2024
The devil no doubt has a place in our theology, but is he a category we even think about in the daily events of our lives? Has it ever crossed your mind that not every thought that crosses your mind comes from you? We are being lied to all the time. ...
Daily Reading
December 26, 2024
[My] labor pains for you ... will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives. (Galatians 4:19 NLT)And so you’ve celebrated Christmas, the coming of Jesus to this world. And what a thing to celebrate! The entire pageant comes down to this:...
Daily Reading
December 25, 2024
There is of course a story to tell, a wild and redemptive story that has at its center the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For if it is anything at all, the Gospel of Christianity is an offer of restoration. God knows that the human race is in bad shape. He ...
Daily Reading
December 24, 2024
Life wins. Sometimes now, especially if we will pray. But life wins fully, and very soon.Just as we must fix our eyes on Jesus when we pray, we must also fix our hearts on this one undeniable truth: life will win. When you know that unending joy is a...
Daily Reading
December 23, 2024
The gift of presence is a rare and beautiful gift. To come — unguarded, undistracted — and be fully present, fully engaged with whoever we are with at that moment. Have you noticed in reading the Gospels that people enjoyed being around Jesus? They w...
Daily Reading
December 22, 2024
Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT)I absolutely love this verse; I love the hope of my entire being mad...
Daily Reading
December 21, 2024
I was thumbing through a Williams-Sonoma catalog. It calls itself "a catalog for cooks," but really, it's a catalog of the life we wish we had. Everything is beautiful, delicious, elegant. The kitchens portrayed are immaculate — there are no messes. ...
Daily Reading
December 20, 2024
One of the most remarkable things about human beings is how resilient we can be. The Primal Drive for Life can accomplish impressive things. Saint John took his suffering and brought forth beauty; Nelson Mandela survived twenty-seven years of impriso...
Daily Reading
December 19, 2024
On a visit to London, I had the opportunity to visit the National Gallery. Loving art, and being with two of my sons — one of whom was an art major — I was excited to spend hours there. I loved the Van Gogh, the Monet, the Rembrandt paintings and mor...
Daily Reading
December 18, 2024
I had an old desk lamp with a wiggly switch, picked up for spare change at a garage sale. It had this annoying habit of turning on and off without rhyme or reason. One moment the room would be lit; next moment I’d be sitting in total darkness. Now th...
Daily Reading
December 17, 2024
I’ll let you in on a little secret: your heart is made for the kingdom of God. This might be the most important thing anyone will ever tell you about yourself: your heart only thrives in one habitat, and that safe place is called the kingdom of God. ...
Daily Reading
December 16, 2024
Something has gone wrong with the human race, and we know it. Better said, something has gone wrong within the human race. It doesn't take a theologian or a psychologist to tell you that. Read a newspaper. Spend a weekend with your relatives. Simply ...
Daily Reading
December 15, 2024
Our God is a warrior because there are certain things in life worth fighting for, must be fought for. He makes man a warrior in his own image, because he intends for man to join him in that battle.One day the young man Moses, prince of Egypt, went ou...
Daily Reading
December 14, 2024
I saw Heaven and earth new-created. (Revelation 21:1 The Message)What if? A large golden eagle in this world can carry a sheep. What load can a renewed eagle bear? I would love to ride a golden eagle, with their permission of course. And friend—what ...
Daily Reading
December 13, 2024
We begin our journey into sonship by looking backward, to what our lives as boys were like, and, more important, what they were meant to be. For so much of the way we now approach life as men was set in motion in our youth — some of it for good, and ...
Daily Reading
December 12, 2024
For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God's presence resides? Starting very early, life has taught all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Li...
Daily Reading
December 11, 2024
It seems at times that God will go to any length to thwart the very thing we most deeply want. We can’t get a job. Our attempt to find a spouse never pans out. The doctors aren’t able to help us with our infertility. Isn’t this precisely the reason w...
Daily Reading
December 10, 2024
We must come to face our style of relating, of course. As men, we look to where we are passive, and where we are domineering or harsh or violent. As women, we face where we are controlling, and where we are desperately clingy. And as God reveals thes...
Daily Reading
December 9, 2024
The Sermon on the Mount is a revolution in holiness. Jesus takes all the external issues and makes them first and foremost internal. He begins with a few examples of the most egregious sins: murder and adultery. This is a crowd that congratulates its...
Daily Reading
December 8, 2024
Notice that all the great stories pretty much follow the same story line. Things were once good, then something awful happened, and now a great battle must be fought or a journey taken. At just the right moment (which feels like the last possible mom...
Daily Reading
December 7, 2024
God gives us dozens of encounters every day, opportunities to be honest about what motivates us. What we do with them is up to us. This is how he honors us. When God created each of us, he gave us a will, and that beautiful and mysterious inner life ...