Daily Reading
August 2, 2023
What if? What if those deep desires in our hearts are telling us the truth, revealing to us the life we were meant to live? God gave us eyes so that we might see; he gave us ears that we might hear; he gave us wills that we might choose; and he gave ...
Daily Reading
August 1, 2023
When the young prophet Samuel heard the voice of God calling to him in the night, he had the counsel from his priestly mentor, Eli, to tell him how to respond. Even so, it took them three times to realize it was God calling. Rather than ignoring the ...
Daily Reading
July 31, 2023
Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this, and you’ll be fine. Such simple yet profound advice. Worship is the act ...
Daily Reading
July 30, 2023
Over the years, the Wild at Heart team has learned a great deal about prayer – mostly through facing our own trials, crying out for help, studying the Scriptures and asking Jesus, like the disciples, “Teach us to pray!” This lead to the creation of t...
Daily Reading
July 28, 2023
Is there a reality that corresponds to the deepest desires of our heart? Who gets the last word — the Romance or the Arrows? We need to know, so we are constantly, every moment of our lives, trying to make sense out of our experiences. We look for co...
Daily Reading
July 27, 2023
Stasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be. Every human being has some vital place in her life where she is not living in the victory she longs for, and it colors how she views herself. Ev...
Daily Reading
July 26, 2023
When we set out to hear God's voice, we do not listen as though it will come from somewhere above us or in the room around us. It comes to us from within, from the heart, the dwelling place of God. Now, most of us haven't been trained in this, and it...
Daily Reading
July 24, 2023
When we hear the phrase “trust totally in God,” most of us probably sigh, hearing it as one more requirement that we have never been able to live up to. But what if we were to listen to our hearts, and hear it as a need to faint, a need to lay down o...
Daily Reading
July 23, 2023
In the short book of Philippians—only four chapters long—Paul uses the word joy sixteen times. Paul didn’t write this book during spring break. He wrote it from a prison cell in Rome while he was waiting to be executed. In what should have been the d...
Daily Reading
July 22, 2023
The purposes of Jesus Christ are not finished when one of his precious ones is forgiven. Not at all. Would a good father feel satisfied when his daughter is rescued from a car accident, but left in ICU? Doesn’t he want her to be healed as well? So Go...
Daily Reading
July 21, 2023
You have a strength, and it is needed. When a man feels that to be true of him, he rises up and engages like a man. As a boy begins to become a young man, there are some key issues at stake. He needs to know he possesses a genuine strength, and he ne...
Daily Reading
July 20, 2023
Remember, the purpose of this thing called the Christian life is that our hearts might be restored and set free. That's the deal. That's what Jesus came to do, by his own announcement. Jesus wants Life for us, Life with a capital L, and that Life com...
Daily Reading
July 19, 2023
Women are image bearers of God. Women are co-heirs with Christ. Women are valued, worthy, powerful, and needed. There is a reason the Enemy fears women and has poured his hatred onto our very existence. Let him be afraid, then. For “we are hard press...
Daily Reading
July 18, 2023
Where is this supposed coming? The current expression of that goes much more cleverly, like this: “But every age has thought that Jesus was about to show up. Even Paul did — and he was wrong. Who knows when it could be; it might take another thousand...
Daily Reading
July 17, 2023
In the time of our innocence, we trusted in good because we had not yet known evil. On this side of Eden and our own experience of the Fall — whatever our own Arrows have been and however the adversary has woven them together into our particular Mess...
Daily Reading
July 16, 2023
Our Enemy is a thief, and of all the precious things he has stolen from our hearts, his worst act of treachery has been to steal our future from us. He has stolen all the magic and promise and wonder of the happily ever after. Very few of us live wit...
Daily Reading
July 15, 2023
The more you give the parts of your life over to Jesus, the more his life is able to invade yours. The relief alone is worth the price. Last night Stasi and I were at a dinner party with friends we love and enjoy. It was one of those occasions where,...
Daily Reading
July 14, 2023
We're certainly warned about forgetfulness in Scripture, both in word and by example. In the Old Testament, the pattern is so predictable, we come to expect it. God delivers his people from the cruel whips of Egypt by a stunning display of his power ...
Daily Reading
July 13, 2023
Teaching is exalted. Church feels like a seminar — could be intellectual, could be motivational. Good content is what matters. Doctrine is fiercely defended. Members can explain to you theories of the atonement, or seven steps to success, but can’t n...
Daily Reading
July 12, 2023
If joy is a fruit of the Spirit (and it is), then we are meant to experience and enjoy it, regardless of our circumstances. Whatever may be swirling around us, the eye of the storm is joy. But how do we get there? The simple answer is we need to come...
Daily Reading
July 11, 2023
Jesus needs to disciple these fishermen, tax collectors, and political revolutionaries who dropped their careers to follow him. I’m not sure we’ve understood the ramifications of his decision. We just think, Oh, yeah, the disciples, and forget what w...
Daily Reading
July 10, 2023
Name one thing in the entire created world more precious than a human heart. It can’t be done. You might say “love,” but that would be silly because we cannot love without a heart. You might point to some immortal work of art, or breathtaking sacrifi...
Daily Reading
July 9, 2023
When Isaiah promised that the Messiah will come to heal the brokenhearted, he was not speaking poetically. The Bible does use metaphor, as when Jesus says, "I am the gate" (John 10:9). Of course, he is not an actual gate like the kind you slammed yes...
Daily Reading
July 8, 2023
More of God comes to us as we love God. The more that we love God, the more we are able to experience him. Part of this has to do with the nature of God, and part of it has to do with our own human nature. You understand from your own relationships,...
Daily Reading
July 7, 2023
Resting in Jesus is not applying a spiritual formula to ourselves as a kind of fix-it. It is the essence of repentance. It is letting our heart tell us where we are in our own story so that Jesus can minister to us out of the Story of his love for us...
Daily Reading
July 6, 2023
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. (Mark 10:51) Recovering your true heart’s desire may involve facing some deep disappointment. Undoubtedly, it will require painful self-examination. But you do not need to fear what you will find...
Daily Reading
July 5, 2023
From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off them. Stuart found he was good at math and science. He shut down his heart and spent all his energies perfecting his "Spock" per...
Daily Reading
July 4, 2023
God has a battle to fight, and the battle is for our freedom. As Tremper Longman says, "Virtually every book of the Bible — Old and New Testaments — and almost every page tells us about God's warring activity." I wonder if the Egyptians who kept Isra...
Daily Reading
July 4, 2023
The spirit of our day is a soft acceptance of everything — except deep conviction in anything. This is where Jesus will suddenly confront the world as a great rock confronts the river flowing ever downhill. He is immovable. The cry used to be for “to...
Daily Reading
July 3, 2023
Can it really happen? Can things in our lives be green again? No matter what our creeds may tell us, our hearts have settled into another belief. We have accepted the winter of this world as the final word and tried to get on without the hope of spri...