Daily Reading
December 29, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
[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, 2025
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, 2025
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 ...
Daily Reading
December 23, 2025
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, 2025
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 ma...
Daily Reading
December 21, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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 15, 2025
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 o...
Daily Reading
December 14, 2025
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—wha...
Daily Reading
December 13, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
Then the Lord God fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature. –Genesis 2:7 (John Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary) The Breath of God, the Brea...
Daily Reading
December 10, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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 lif...
Daily Reading
December 6, 2025
The Blood of Jesus Christ is probably the most sacred of all the treasures in the Kingdom of God, in heaven and on earth. It purchased our salvation, it cleanses us of sin, it breaks the powers of the enemy’s hold on us. It sanctifies the soul, it cl...
Daily Reading
December 6, 2025
Against the flesh, the traitor within, a warrior uses discipline. We have a two-dimensional version of this now, which we call a "quiet time." But most men have a hard time sustaining any sort of devotional life because it has no vital connection to ...
Daily Reading
April 4, 2025
I think if we could recover a vision of what holiness actually is, we would be absolutely captured by it. I think we would see it as not only completely desirable, but attainable as well. King David was a man who knew well his character flaws, felt t...
Daily Reading
February 11, 2025
It might help you to ask, How is my hope these days? Where is my hope these days? To shepherd your first hope for the treasure it is, you need to be aware of what you are currently doing with hope right now. Have you attached precious hopes to cau...
Daily Reading
February 10, 2025
Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:23–24 NKJV Faith has always been a fragile thing in...
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
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 2, 2024
It's better to stay in the safety of the camp than venture forth on a wing and a prayer. Who knows what dangers lie ahead? This was the counsel of the ten faithless spies sent in to have a look at the Promised Land when the Jews came out of Egypt. On...