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 ph...
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 n...
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 fact...
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 s...
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 t...
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 who...
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 another ...
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 free...
Daily Reading
September 2, 2023
Certainly storytelling is one of the great pleasures in the kingdom. God clearly takes it very seriously—he made reality in the shape of a story. Would you like to write? Illustrate? Act? Produce? Perhaps we get to take workshops from the great artis...
Daily Reading
September 1, 2023
The gospel says that we, who are God's beloved, created a cosmic crisis. It says we, too, were stolen from our True Love and that he launched the greatest campaign in the history of the world to get us back. God created us for intimacy with him. When...
Daily Reading
August 31, 2023
This is the world [God] has made. This is the world that is still going on. And he doesn't walk away from the mess we've made of it. Now he lives, almost cheerfully, certainly heroically, in a dynamic relationship with us and with our world. "Then th...
Daily Reading
August 30, 2023
According to the Scriptures, the heart can be troubled, wounded, pierced, grieved, even broken. How well we all know that. Thankfully, it can also be cheerful, glad, merry, joyful, rejoicing. The heart can be whole or divided—as in that phrase we oft...
Daily Reading
August 29, 2023
What will we do in heaven? The Sunday comics picture saints lying about on clouds, strumming harps. It hardly takes your breath away. The fact that most Christians have a gut sense that earth is more exciting than heaven points to the deceptive power...
Daily Reading
August 28, 2023
The biblical canon ends with Jesus making this final statement:Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. (Revelation 22:12)Reward, reward, reward — it fills the pages of both Testam...
Daily Reading
August 27, 2023
Warfare prayer is not a “back-up” category when all else fails. It is not a specialty form of prayer for the uniquely called or gifted. Yes — there are some who become “experts” in this field, just as there are some who become especially trained to h...
Daily Reading
August 26, 2023
In this desperate hour we have a crucial role to play. Of all the Eternal Truths we don't believe, this is the one we doubt most of all. Our days are not extraordinary. They are filled with the mundane, with hassles mostly. And we? We are...a dime a ...
Daily Reading
August 25, 2023
What Jesus primarily models for us is how to draw our life from the Father. This passage from Philippians — one of the earliest hymns of the faith — says that Jesus more than humbled himself when he came to earth. He emptied himself:Who, being in ver...
Daily Reading
August 24, 2023
I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far – I will find you. —Nathaniel to Cora in The Last of the MohicansOne of my favorite games growing up was "kidnapped and rescued." I know many little girls who played this — or wished the...
Daily Reading
August 23, 2023
Mary broke the neck of the jar open and slowly poured some of the perfume on Jesus’s head and then poured the rest on his feet. Then she did something extremely intimate and scandalous. She unbound her hair and wiped his feet with it, even though a r...
Daily Reading
August 22, 2023
That strength so essential to men is also what makes them heroes. If a neighborhood is safe, it's because of the strength of men. Slavery was stopped by the strength of men, at a terrible price to them and their families. The Nazis were stopped by me...
Daily Reading
August 21, 2023
Everything in you may be saying, “But you don’t understand. I want to eat that whole box of chocolates (or sleep with my boyfriend, or let my anger really fly). That’s what really seems like life to me right now.” God says, “I know you do, but it’ll ...
Daily Reading
August 20, 2023
“I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep lis...