Daily Reading
January 15, 2025
God and Satan each have a design, a battle plan, to capture our heart's devotion. The intimacy, beauty, and adventure of the Sacred Romance are placed and nurtured in the deepest longings of our heart by God himself. God's grand strategy, birthed in ...
Daily Reading
January 14, 2025
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them...
Daily Reading
January 13, 2025
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] You know, I was really good at thinking only about myself pre-marriage, but sacrificing for the Other really has become a joy. If you h...
Daily Reading
January 12, 2025
Every mythic story shouts to us that in this desperate hour we have a crucial role to play. This is an Eternal Truth, and it happens to be the one we most desperately need if we are ever to understand our days. For most of his life, Neo sees himself ...
Daily Reading
January 11, 2025
If you learned about Eden in Sunday school, with poster board and flannel graphs, you missed something. Imagine the most beautiful scenes you have ever known on this earth — rain forests, the prairie in full bloom, storm clouds over the African savan...
Daily Reading
January 10, 2025
Our need for attachment, mother-love, and the assurance of abundance opens up for us new levels of joyful experience, even in passages that have been familiar to us for years: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, yo...
Daily Reading
January 9, 2025
I’ll tip my hand to one assumption I am making. I assume that an intimate, conversational walk with God is available, and is meant to be normal. I’ll push that a step further. I assume that if you don’t find that kind of relationship with God, your s...
Daily Reading
January 8, 2025
Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, it's how we think of it. "I go to First Baptist." "We are members of St. Luke's." "Is it time to go to church?" Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses...
Daily Reading
January 7, 2025
If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought that following Christ around and watching how he did it would make things clear, you'd wind up pretty frustrated. He never does it the same way twice. He spits on one guy; for another, he s...
Daily Reading
January 6, 2025
This moment is yours, as sure and certain as God himself. Sure as the renewal of heaven and earth. How else could we enjoy the fierce beauty of a renewed creation unless we, too, are renewed and made strong, stronger than we ever were here? How could...
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. ...