Daily Reading
November 4, 2023
The thing you are made for is the renewal of all things. God has given you a heart for his kingdom—not the wispy vagaries of a cloudy heaven, but the sharp reality of the world made new. This is one of the most important things you can know about you...
Daily Reading
November 3, 2023
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John] Either we have God or we don’t. Either he is our ally, or we are on our own. What you believe about this affects everything else. ...
Daily Reading
November 2, 2023
The heart is the connecting point, the meeting place between any two persons. The kind of deep soul intimacy we crave with God and with others can be experienced only from the heart. I know a man who took his daughter to dinner; she was surprised, de...
Daily Reading
November 1, 2023
Some of the sentences the Enemy accuses each of us with have been there since we were young; others were added in the ensuing years as Satan saw opportunity to strengthen our fear and cynicism through “interpreting” those events in our lives that see...
Daily Reading
October 31, 2023
I’ve often wondered at the long lists found many places in the Bible that recount a roster of men as “the son of so-and-so, who was the son of so-and-so.” You’ll find many of these rosters in the Scriptures, and elsewhere in ancient literature. Perha...
Daily Reading
October 30, 2023
The deepest convictions of our heart are formed by stories and reside there in the images and emotions of story. As a young boy, around the time my heart began to suspect that the world was a fearful place and I was on my own to find my way through i...
Daily Reading
October 29, 2023
Now—is Jesus more like Mother Teresa or William Wallace? The answer is ... it depends. If you're a leper, an outcast, a pariah of society whom no one has ever touched, if all you have ever longed for is just one kind word, then Christ is the incarnat...
Daily Reading
October 28, 2023
All sorts of awful things can seem to issue from your heart — anger, lust, fear, petty jealousies. If you think it's you, a reflection of what's really going on in your heart, it will disable you. It could stop your journey dead in its tracks. What y...
Daily Reading
October 27, 2023
Jesus is everywhere. But let me give you a grace that will help you see him: He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new...
Daily Reading
October 26, 2023
"The spiritual life cannot be made suburban,” said Howard Macey. “It is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed.” The greatest obstacle to realizing our dreams is the false self’s hatred of mystery. ...
Daily Reading
October 25, 2023
I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. (John 16:12-13) There's more that Jesus wants to say to you, much more, and now that his Spirit resides in your he...
Daily Reading
October 24, 2023
Something awful has happened, something terrible. Something worse, even, than the fall of man. For in that greatest of all tragedies, we merely lost Paradise — and with it, everything that made life worth living. What has happened since is unthinkabl...
Daily Reading
October 23, 2023
In order to understand what compels Jesus, you must keep in mind the distinction between the laws of God and the laws of men, and furthermore, that magnificent difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Jesus sets before us ...
Daily Reading
October 22, 2023
"The glory of God is man fully alive." (Saint Irenaeus) When I first stumbled across this quote my initial reaction was ... You’re kidding me. Really? I mean, is that what you’ve been told? That the purpose of God — the very thing he’s staked his re...
Daily Reading
October 21, 2023
As a wise old sage was praying with me through some of the painful memories of my life, I was immediately reminded of the time in middle school when my first girlfriend broke my heart. These wounds can linger for a lifetime if you let them — the firs...
Daily Reading
October 19, 2023
Our life is a story. A rather long and complicated story that has unfolded over time. There are many scenes, large and small, and many "firsts." Your first step; your first word; your first day of school. There was your first best friend; your first ...
Daily Reading
October 18, 2023
God created us in freedom to be his intimate allies, and he will not give up on us. He seeks his allies still. Not religion. Not good church people. Lovers. Allies. Friends of the deepest sort. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD...
Daily Reading
October 17, 2023
Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's new book, Becoming a King “What does a man need to survive?” I posed this question years ago to my very young son as we were headed out on an adventure. After careful and honest consideration,...
Daily Reading
October 16, 2023
"The King is enthralled by your beauty." Psalm 45:11 Lovely little six-year-old Lacey was visiting our ministry headquarters the other day, going from office to office, swinging on the door frame and asking with a smile, "Would you like to hear my s...
Daily Reading
October 15, 2023
The word I choose to describe Jesus is life. Pure, lush, exuberant Life. Life that proves to be unquenchable, unstoppable, indestructible. As John summarized the whole affair, “In him was life, and that light was the light of men” (1:4). It sure was....
Daily Reading
October 14, 2023
I had my own tin-foil-brain, fried-soul kind of day. My rescue didn't take place until I had thrashed through most of the calamity. It was the kind of day when everything seems to go sideways from the moment you get out of bed; I’ll bet you’ve had on...
Daily Reading
October 13, 2023
Life is a journey of the heart that requires the mind—not the other way around. The church sometimes gets this backward and makes knowing the right things the center of life. It’s not; the heart is the center of life. Desire is always where the actio...
Daily Reading
October 12, 2023
Love your neighbor, Jesus urged, as you love yourself. (Which, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, is a pretty sick command if we are to hate ourselves.) How you handle people is the second great test of your character. Again, Jesus is cutting through both...
Daily Reading
October 11, 2023
The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [Sam] I know so many of us long for words of validation, but few ever hear them. An acquaintance of mine who lived down the street went out...
Daily Reading
October 10, 2023
What do I pray, Lord? What is this about? Pause. This is a really, really helpful place to begin — to ask God what to pray. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m looking at the equivalent of a two-headed rooster on my windowsill. I don’t know why God b...
Daily Reading
October 9, 2023
I thought of Jesus’ warning about the end of the age, how as times grow dark and people feel more keenly pressed, love will grow rare. “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom … Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of ...
Daily Reading
October 8, 2023
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, t...
Daily Reading
October 7, 2023
I cannot say this more emphatically—life affected Jesus. “We have spread so many ashes over the historical Jesus that we scarcely feel the glow of His presence anymore,” lamented Brennan Manning. “He is a man in a way that we have forgotten men can b...
Daily Reading
October 6, 2023
We value independence. Mobility. Self-sufficiency. Yay. But we are a dependent people. Dependent on air, food, water. Needful of others. Needful of God. He is our divine helper, our ezer, without whom we will not be able to live a life of meaning fil...
Daily Reading
October 5, 2023
One of the saddest of all the sad stories in the history of the people of God comes shortly after the dramatic exodus from Egypt, as they stand on the brink of a whole new life in the land God had promised: But you were unwilling to go up; you rebe...