Daily Reading
November 7, 2024
The awakening of his heart is essential if a man would truly love a woman. Look at things from her point of view. What does she long for in a man? Every little girl dreams of the day her prince will come. Look at the movies women love — the hero is a...
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’s...
Daily Reading
July 6, 2024
Early on in the fanfare of his public appearances, Jesus gives what will become known as the famous Sermon on the Mount. This is a “big moment” for Jesus. He has laid out in detail his understanding of a life that pleases God; he has, so to speak, dr...
Daily Reading
July 1, 2024
Guys are unanimously embarrassed by their emptiness and woundedness; it is for most of us a tremendous source of shame, as I've said. But it need not be. From the very beginning, back before the Fall and the assault, ours was meant to be a desperatel...
Daily Reading
June 30, 2024
Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said. But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Then he went out to the gateway, where a...
Daily Reading
June 29, 2024
God interferes with us a lot. He interferes with our inner diatribes; He interferes with our style of relating; He blocks the paths we wrongly think will lead to life. He interferes to bring us up short so that we might see where we are taking the wr...
Daily Reading
June 28, 2024
Denial is a favorite method of coping for many Christians. But not with Jesus. He wants truth in the inmost being, and to get it there he's got to take us into our inmost being. One way he'll do this is by bringing up an old memory. You'll be driving...
Daily Reading
June 27, 2024
The Evil One has basically two ploys. If he cannot get us to kill our hearts and bury our desire, then he is delighted to seduce our desire into a trap. Once we give over our desire for life to any object other than God, we become ensnared. Think of ...
Daily Reading
June 26, 2024
We are looking for more of God. You’re far more likely to find him in a walk through an orchard or a sit by a pond than you are in a subway terminal. Of course God is with us and for us wherever we are, but in terms of refreshment, renewal, restorati...
Daily Reading
June 25, 2024
Love Jesus. Let him be himself with you. Allow his life to fill yours. Every day, give him your life to be filled with his. This is part of what I now pray, every morning: Lord Jesus, I give my life to you today, to live your life. Of course, t...
Daily Reading
June 24, 2024
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] Obviously we’ve been told to chase our dreams. Over and over again every high school and college graduation speech challenged us to r...
Daily Reading
June 23, 2024
The question is not, Are we spiritually oppressed, but Where and How? Think of it — why does every story have a villain? Little Red Riding Hood is attacked by a wolf. Dorothy must face and bring down the Wicked Witch of the West. Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi...
Daily Reading
June 22, 2024
In C. S. Lewis's novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, of The Chronicles of Narnia series, four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, pass through the wardrobe's portal to find the kingdom of Narnia imprisoned under the spell of the White ...
Daily Reading
June 21, 2024
The mistake folks are making in this rough hour is trying to figure out how to fit a little more of God into their crowded lives. We need to do the opposite. Start with God, center your life on him, and work outward from there. Our spirituality move...
Daily Reading
June 20, 2024
The history of a man's relationship with God is the story of how God calls him out, takes him on a journey, and gives him his true name. Most of us have thought it was the story of how God sits on his throne waiting to whack a man broadside when he s...
Daily Reading
June 19, 2024
We aren't meant to figure life out on our own. God wants to father us. The truth is, he has been fathering us for a long time — we just haven't had the eyes to see it. He wants to father us much more intimately, but we have to be in a posture to rece...
Daily Reading
June 18, 2024
Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King” Years ago I came across a very revealing story recounted by Gordon Dalbey. He told of a nun who worked in a men’s prison. One year she brought some Mother’s Day cards to...
Daily Reading
June 17, 2024
Scripture tells us that we might at any time entertain an angel simply by welcoming a stranger. The serpent in the garden is really the Prince of Darkness. The carpenter from Nazareth — there is more to him than meets the eye as well. Things are not ...
Daily Reading
June 16, 2024
Whatever the details might be, when a man speaks of the greatest gift his father gave him — if his father gave him anything at all worth remembering — it is always the passing on of masculinity. This is essential, for life will test you. Like a ship...
Daily Reading
June 15, 2024
We’ve got to remember, folks, that no matter how promising an idea sounds, if God’s not in it, you don’t want to be in it either. This is true of a relationship, career change, buying or selling a house, even something as simple as a vacation. We onl...
Daily Reading
June 14, 2024
In our eagerness to see good happen, Christians often jump straight into praying, without first pausing and aligning ourselves with Jesus —l ike a trombone player who simply starts playing her part without waiting for the conductor; or an athlete who...
Daily Reading
June 13, 2024
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1...
Daily Reading
June 12, 2024
I don’t recall a worship song with the word cunning in it. “Thou Art Cunning,” or “Cunning, Cunning, Cunning.” Do we interpret his actions in our lives as perhaps part of some cunning plan? That delayed answer to prayer — is there something brilliant...
Daily Reading
June 11, 2024
Jesus of Nazareth is given many names in Scripture. He is called the Lion of Judah. The Bright and Morning Star. The Wonderful Counselor. The Prince of Peace. The Lamb of God. There are many, many more — each one a window into all that he truly is, a...
Daily Reading
June 10, 2024
Resignation is not just the sigh that groans with something gone wrong. Such a sigh can be redemptive if it does not let go of the Haunting we have all experienced of something presently lost. Resignation is the acceptance of the loss as final. It is...
Daily Reading
June 9, 2024
You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from...
Daily Reading
June 8, 2024
This isn’t complicated. We simply start saying, “I love you” as we turn our attention towards him for a moment or two. As I do so I find it helpful to recall some reason I love God: his goodness, the beauty of the world (ninety thousand caribou stack...
Daily Reading
June 7, 2024
Most of us have been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. "I think I'm just trying to get God to make my life work easier," a client of mine confessed, but he could have been speaking for most of us. We're asking the wrong ques...
Daily Reading
June 6, 2024
There is the story of subduing the storm and immediately after, the encounter with Legion. In all three synoptic Gospels, these two stories are linked—a frightening storm, and then a frightening demoniac. In all three accounts, Jesus — who was sleepi...
Daily Reading
June 5, 2024
Christians are designed to live in and enjoy the benefits of two ecosystems, two realities — the physical and the spiritual, the earth and the heavens. Each world offers graces for human flourishing. The natural world is saturated with beauty, and ...