Daily Reading
October 4, 2023
Sometimes we feel hopeless to ever change simply because our personal history is filled with our failed attempts to change. Where was that angel who was supposed to be guarding our tongue and preventing those harsh words from lashing out at our child...
Daily Reading
October 3, 2023
Where do we go from here? "This life," wrote Jonathan Edwards, "ought to be spent by us only as a journey towards heaven." That's the only story worth living in now. The road goes out before us and our destination awaits. In the imagery of Hebrews, a...
Daily Reading
October 2, 2023
The deeper reason we fear our own glory is that once we let others see it, they will have seen the truest us, and that is nakedness indeed. We can repent of our sin. We can work on our "issues." But there is nothing to be "done" about our glory. It's...
Daily Reading
October 1, 2023
Believing in God is not the same thing as union with God. Doing various God — activities is not the same as union with God. Obeying God isn’t necessarily union with God. These things can all be done while there is a kind of distance between our sou...
Daily Reading
September 30, 2023
Do not give way to fear. (1 Peter 3:6) The reason we fear to step out is because we know that it might not go well (is that an understatement?). We have a history of wounds screaming at us to play it safe. We feel so deeply that if it doesn’t go we...
Daily Reading
September 29, 2023
Christianity is often presented as essentially the transfer of a body of knowledge. We learn about where the Philistines were from, and how much a drachma would be worth today, and all sorts of things about the original Greek. The information present...
Daily Reading
September 28, 2023
We long for beauty, and when the biblical writers speak of heaven, they use the most beautiful imagery they can. You can almost hear the agony of the writer trying to get it right while knowing he falls far short of what he sees. In the book of Revel...
Daily Reading
September 26, 2023
Let me tell you, few things can mess you up as badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is so discouraging to give all you have trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling short, ...
Daily Reading
September 25, 2023
If you'll recall, Moses put a veil over his face, first to hide his glory, then to hide the fact that it was fading away. That, too, was a picture of a deeper reality. We all do that. We all have veiled our glory, or someone has veiled it for us. Usu...
Daily Reading
September 24, 2023
The Israelites had to fight to get to the promised land, and they had to fight to get in. Once there, they had to fight to clear it of enemies, and then fight to keep it so. David had to fight to secure his throne, and he too had to fight to keep it....
Daily Reading
September 23, 2023
All good things come to an end. I hate that phrase. It's a lie. Even our troubles and our heartbreaks tell us something about our true destiny. The tragedies that strike us to the core and elicit the cry "this isn't the way it was supposed to be!" ar...
Daily Reading
September 22, 2023
Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book Becoming a King. Let’s face it, there’s nothing like marriage to allure us and at the same time make us spontaneously combust with fear or anger at a moment’s notice. In the middle years ...
Daily Reading
September 21, 2023
We are invited to become followers of Jesus. Not just believers. Followers. There is a difference. Follower assumes that someone else is doing the leading. As in “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ...He goes on ahead of them, and...
Daily Reading
September 20, 2023
“What people think of me” is a very powerful motivator. It is still shaping us more than we’d like to admit. It shapes our theology, our politics, our values. Do any of us go through one entire day being utterly true no matter how many different env...
Daily Reading
September 19, 2023
There is nothing so inspiring to a man as a beautiful woman. She’ll make you want to charge the castle, slay the giant, leap across the parapets. Or maybe, hit a home run. A man wants to be the hero to the beauty. Young men going off to war carry a ...
Daily Reading
September 18, 2023
God sets his own image on the earth. He creates a being like himself. He creates a son. The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) It is...
Daily Reading
September 17, 2023
I knew a man who was fired from his job at a Christian high school because one of the church elders saw him purchasing cigarettes at the local grocery store. They canned him, even though he was the best teacher they had. Now, first off, the Bible doe...
Daily Reading
September 16, 2023
I have a practice that has become an absolute lifesaver: The One Minute Pause. I simply take sixty seconds to be still and let everything go. As I enter the pause, I begin with release. I let it all go—the meetings, what I know is coming next, the ...
Daily Reading
September 15, 2023
It's the great company at the party in Titanic that brings such happy tears. It's the boys making it safely home in Apollo 13. It's Maximus reunited with his family. So the fellowship finds Gandalf alive — no longer Gandalf the Grey, fallen beyond re...
Daily Reading
September 14, 2023
We cannot control what God, the Romancer, is up to, but there is a posture we can take. There is an openness to this stage that will enable us to recognize and receive the wooing. So let me ask—are you willing to let go of your insistence to control,...
Daily Reading
September 13, 2023
The coming of Jesus of Nazareth was like the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan. A dangerous mission, a great invasion, a daring raid into enemy territory, to save the free world, but also to save one man. Jesus told a story like that in order to...
Daily Reading
September 12, 2023
Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man. (1 Corinthians 15:49 NLT) You’ll be made perfect. Finally, the totality of your being will be saturated only with goodness. Think of all that you’re not going to have ...
Daily Reading
September 11, 2023
“The sorrows of our lives are in great part his weaning process. We give our hearts over to so many things other than God. We look to so many other things for life. I know I do. Especially the very gifts that he himself gives to us — they become more...
Daily Reading
September 10, 2023
Being unable to defeat God through raw power, Satan’s legions decide to wound God as deeply as possible by stealing the love of his Beloved through seduction. And having “seduced them to his party,” to ravish them body and soul; and having ravished t...
Daily Reading
September 9, 2023
When Jesus died, that most holiest of curtains was ripped in half. Torn, top to bottom. And who was it that did that? Surely not the priests. It was God himself. He took that veil and ripped it in two. So why do we insist on stitching it back up? A...
Daily Reading
September 7, 2023
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Ps. 147:3) Yes, we have all been wounded in this battle. And we will be wounded again. But something deeper has also happened to us than mere wounds. I expect that all of us at one time or anot...
Daily Reading
September 6, 2023
The life we have is so far from the life we truly want, and it doesn’t take us long to find someone to blame. In order for our longings to be filled, we need the cooperation of others. I long for a loving embrace and a kind word when I get home. I lo...
Daily Reading
September 5, 2023
When the Bible tells us that Christ came to “redeem mankind” it offers a whole lot more than forgiveness. To simply forgive a broken man is like telling someone running a marathon, “It’s okay that you’ve broken your leg. I won’t hold that against you...
Daily Reading
September 4, 2023
Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, "Friends, haven't you any fish?" "No," they answered. He said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find...
Daily Reading
September 3, 2023
Here’s what I am learning: A grateful heart is a heart that is free. An ungrateful heart is a heart that is bound. Gratitude inevitably leads to freedom. The root of the word gratitude is the Latin word gratis, which means free. If gratitude and fr...