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...
Daily Reading
October 6, 2024
Certainly, you will admit that God is glorious. Is there anyone more kind? Is there anyone more creative? Is there anyone more valiant? Is there anyone more true? Is there anyone more daring? Is there anyone more beautiful? Is there anyone more wise?...
Daily Reading
October 5, 2024
We usually think of the middle years of the Christian life as a time of acquiring better habits and their accompanying virtues. But inviting Jesus into the "aching abyss" of our heart perhaps has more to do with holding our heart hopefully in partial...
Daily Reading
October 4, 2024
Time has come for us to forgive our fathers. Paul warns us that unforgiveness and bitterness can wreck our lives and the lives of others (Eph. 4:31; Heb. 12:15). I am sorry to think of all the years my wife endured the anger and bitterness that I red...
Daily Reading
October 3, 2024
We have dissected God, and man, and the gospel, and we have thousands, if not millions, of facts — all of it quite dead. It’s not that these insights aren’t true; it’s that they no longer speak. I could tell you a few facts about God, for example. He...
Daily Reading
October 2, 2024
The world does become too complicated, too overwhelming, too filled with pain so much of the time. As children, we don’t have the capacity to make sense of it, let alone process it. If our lives become too filled with trauma, a part of us disappears....
Daily Reading
October 1, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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, 2024
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...