Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Camels have an Achilles’ heel. But their vulnerability is hidden by their legendary resilience: these famous “ships of the desert” have been crossing dune seas since before the time of Abraham.

The stamina and strength of camels is truly impressive — they can carry heavy loads across leagues of burning desert sand, going without water for weeks while their human companions die of thirst. But the treacherous thing about camels is that they will walk a thousand miles with seemingly endless endurance, giving you little indication they are about to collapse. Then it just happens. As the Alchemist said to...

I am here to tell you that you can get your heart back. But I need to warn you — if you want your heart back, if you want the wound healed and your strength restored and to find your true name, you’re going to have to fight for it. Notice your reaction to my words. Does not something in you stir a little, a yearning to live? And doesn’t another voice rush in, urging caution, maybe wanting to dismiss me altogether? He’s being melodramatic. What arrogance. Or, maybe some guys could, but not me. Or, I don’t kn...

You may recall the story Jesus told of the man who entrusted three of his servants with thousands of dollars (literally, “talents”), urging them to handle his affairs well while he was away. When he returned, he listened eagerly to their reports. The first two fellows went out into the marketplace and doubled their investment. As a result, they were handsomely rewarded. The third servant was not so fortunate. His gold was taken from him, and he was thrown into “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” My goodness. Why? All he did was bury the mone...

God calls us to run away to Him, not from Him. He asks us to not fix our gaze on other people’s lives and compare them to our own but to look to Him for the source of our worthy life. He asks us to find our rest in Him. He is our resting place. When I am exhausted, the temptation is to turn from God, thinking that He requires more from me than I have to give. I may believe I need to muster some passion from a dry well and focus on improving my performance. I ma...

Many awful things have been done with the doctrine of hell. “You’ll go to hell for that” has been used to condemn all sorts of things that God does not condemn. You know… “Don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.” Furthermore, those who have swung the idea of hell around like a club give you the impression that they’ll be glad to see you sent there. But not our God, who “is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). The Lover of our souls, the One who has p...

The book "Killing Lions" is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.

A man whose identity flows out of deep validation doesn’t wilt under criticism. He enjoys applause when it comes but frankly isn’t desperate for it. He can walk away from work at five o’clock; he doesn’t measure his success by how much money he makes. We grow into this man, to be sure; I’m not setting a new standard of perfection. But what I am describing is not out of reach, not for any man.

There’s a passage in the book of Hebrews we don’t like very much.

“Although he was a son”—it is speaking about Jesus Christ–“he learned obedience from what he suffered” (5:8).

Dang. If Jesus needed to learn through suffering, well, it just doesn’t leave any room for complaining, does it? How are we going to skip this class if he had to take it? Suffering will be a part of our education as God’s children.

This is NOT to say that every bad thing that comes your way is God’s discipline. It...

One of the deepest ways a woman bears the image of God is in her mystery. By mystery we don't mean "forever beyond your knowing," but "something to be explored." "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter," says the book of Proverbs, "to search out a matter is the glory of kings" (25:2). God yearns to be known. But he wants to be sought after by those who would know him. He says, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13). There is dignity here; God does not throw...

The book "Killing Lions" is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.

Almost all initiation rituals handed down for centuries involved physical trials for young men. After finishing their training in a secret valley, the young warriors of Kauai had to swim home—miles in the open ocean. Sioux braves spent nights out on a mountain alone. For centuries the Maasai killed lions. Our elders knew that men learn by doing. It is one thing to be told you possess a genuine strength but another thing altogether to discover for yourself th...

Intimate and personal justice will be granted to us as well.

You have suffered very specific wrongs over the course of your life; God is fully aware of every one of them. Jesus your King will make sure they are addressed with very specific reparations. Far be it from God to make light of it. “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). He is furio...

The heart is central. That I would even need to remind you of this only shows how far we have fallen from the life we were meant to live—or how powerful the spell has been. The subject of the heart is addressed in the Bible more than any other topic—more than “works” or “serve,” more than “believe” or “obey,” more than money and even more than worship. Maybe God knows something we’ve forgotten. But of course—all those other things are matters of the heart. Consider but a few passages:

Love the LORD your God with all your heart...

We've exchanged that great hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" for a subtle but telling substitute, a song that is currently being taught to thousands of children in Sunday school each week, which goes something like this (sung in a very happy, upbeat tune):

I may never march in the infantry,
 ride in the cavalry,
 shoot the artillery, I may never fly over the enemy
 but I'm in the Lord's army, yes sir!

There is no battle and there is no war and there is no Enemy and your life is not at...

The only fatal error is to pretend that we have found the life we prize. To mistake the water hole for the sea. To settle for the same old thing. Christopher Fry called such a life “the sleep of prisoners.” The most tragic day of all is to prefer slavery to freedom, to prefer death to life. We must not stay in this sleep. The time has come for us to wake, to arise from our slumber. As the Scriptures say, “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead” (Eph. 5:14). And so George MacDonald prayed,

When I can no m...

I am letting you in on a wonderful secret.

What happens when God comes and releases us from long-held fears or fears that have long held us? What happens when we surrender fear to God and invite his love to overwhelm it? What is on the other side of fear? Is it faith? Yes, but the form it takes is desire. What comes is a surfacing of desire. Or perhaps a resurfacing of desire.

Desires surface that you didn’t even know you had. Freedom rises to embrace your life and live it. I mean re...

Late into the night, early in the morning, walking down the road, in the middle of his supper, at home, abroad, Jesus offers. His time, his words, his touch, flowing like the wine at Cana. To appreciate the reality of it all, remember, this is not Superman. Remember his loneliness, his weariness, his humanity. This is utterly remarkable—particularly in light of the fact that this is a man on a life-or-death mission. He is lavish with himself.

And that's the key, right there—that giving of himself. That is what is so precious. Moses offered leadership, and...

“Nothing dangerous is happening here.” Incredible. What a self-indictment. Those men have already been taken out because they’ve swallowed the Enemy’s first line of attack: “I’m not here—this is all just you.” You can’t fight a battle you don’t think exists. This is right out of The Screwtape Letters, where Lewis has the old devil instruct his apprentice in this very matter:

My dear Wormwood, I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the...

We all—men and women—were created in the image of God. Fearfully and wonderfully made, fashioned as living icons of the bravest, wisest, most stunning Person who ever lived. Those who have ever seen him fell to their knees without even thinking about it, as you find yourself breathless before the Grand Canyon or the Alps or the sea at dawn. That glory was shared with us; we were, in Chesterton’s phrase, “statues of God walking about in a Garden,” endowed with a strength and beauty all our own. All that we ever wished we could be, we were—an...

Will we do it perfectly? Of course not. Friends, let’s set perfection aside. We are on our way, we are being transformed, but the moment we insist on total perfection we set ourselves up for bitter disappointment. Sin shall not be our master, because we are under grace. Grace. So it might be more helpful for us to talk about what to do when we blow it.

Repent quickly. The sooner the better. For one thing, you do not want to lose your intimacy with God. For another, you know the enemy is going jump all ov...

I remember a conversation I had as a therapist with a young mother. She came to see me not because of some crisis, but in tears nevertheless over the passage of her children’s childhood right before her eyes. “These are such precious, precious days,” she wept, “and they are passing so quickly I can’t hang onto them. I can hardly bear it; I’m grieving during days that ought to be joyful.” Few of us remember the taste of our first ice cream (what flavor was it?), the first book we read ourselves, our first kiss. We can barely rec...

There are few things more crucial to us than our own lives.

And there are few things we are less clear about.

This journey we are taking is hardly down the yellow brick road. Then again, that's not a bad analogy at all. We may set out in the light, with hope and joy, but eventually, our path always seems to lead us through dark woods, shrouded with a low-lying mist. Where is this abundant life that Christ supposedly promised? Where is God when we need him most? What is to become of...

Christians have been told over and over that God is almighty. And indeed he is—the God of four hundred billion billion suns. We have been told he is also sovereign. And indeed he is. Perhaps out of respect, we have adopted the notion that if he is going to act, he is going to act quickly. Bam. Zap. (If we are honest, I think we adopted that perspective because it also relieves us of strenuous prayer.) But is this what we see in so many of these biblical accounts?

Clearly, God does not just zap Peter ou...

Let’s come back to something very basic to our pursuit of God and the transformation he is always after in our lives—everything we do has a reason behind it, a motive.

Within the Christian community we tend to focus on behavior, and that is right and that is wrong. Of course what we do matters. It matters how you treat people. It matters whether you lie or steal or commit adultery. Our actions have enormous consequences to them. However, according to Jesus, holiness is a matter of the heart. This is the gist of his famo...

There is a civil war waged between the new heart and the old nature. Romans 7–8 describes it quite well. Part of me doesn’t want to love my neighbor—not when his son just backed his car into my Jeep and smashed it up. I want to take the little brat to court. Part of me knows that prayer is essential; another part of me would rather turn on the TV and check out. And that whole bit about long-suffering—no way. Part of me wants to just get drunk. And that is the part I must crucify daily, give no...

When you think of what Desolation looks like, picture a barren desert. Desolation wants to make everything a wasteland.

So what is the opposite of a wasteland?

Eden! The paradise of God, our first home, with all its lush, glorious beauty overflowing here, there, everywhere!

If you follow the flow of Scripture and human history, you can see that our enemy wants to make everything a wasteland, and God wants to make everything a restored Eden. When it comes to the resilience we need against Desolation, part of our Father’s provision is hi...

For some reason we keep forgetting that Jesus, in the Gospels, is operating in enemy territory. We project into the Gospel stories a pastoral backdrop, the quaint charm of a Middle Eastern travel brochure—picturesque villages, bustling markets, smiling children—and Jesus wandering through it all like a son come home from college. We forget the context of his life and mission. His story begins with genocide—the massacre of the innocents, Herod's attempt to murder Jesus by ordering the systematic execution of all young boys around Bethlehem. I've never seen this included in any crèche scene, ever. Who cou...

We take folks through a discipleship program whereby they master any number of Christian precepts and miss the most important thing of all, the very thing for which we were created: intimacy with God. There are, after all, those troubling words Jesus spoke to those who were doing all the “right” things: “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you’” (Matthew 7:23). Knowing God. That’s the point.

You might recall the old proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The...

Life has a way of wearing on a person. Under the weight of losses, pressures, failures, and endless demands, something in our souls begins to wither. Passions dry up. The zeal of a beginning turns into a despairing end. A stone falls heavily down, crushing our will, and in those very places where Jesus once gave birth to vibrant hope, we yield to the grave. Our hearts retreat with a “no more” as death gets ahold of us. But the cemetery is not where we are meant to live.

I had the privilege of visiting Israel a few...

Dear friends, I hope you see clearly that more of God is our greatest need, our greatest joy, our only rescue. This isn’t optional. He’s the source of the strength and resiliency we need for this hour, the Life that allows us to enjoy everything else in life.
So the very simple question is this: What will you do, on a daily and weekly basis, to find God and receive more of him?

There are many traditional practices: prayer, fasting, the sacraments. But there are good books on those things.  There are also monastic pract...

Simone Weil was absolutely right—beauty and affliction are the only two things that can pierce our hearts. Because this is so true, we must have a measure of beauty in our lives proportionate to our affliction. No, more. Much more. Is this not God’s prescription for us? Just take a look around. The sights and sounds, the aromas and sensations—the world is overflowing with beauty. God seems to be rather enamored with it. Gloriously wasteful. Apparently, he feels that there ought to be plenty of it in our lives.

I am at a loss to say...

God says our latter glory will exceed our former. To our great loss, in our society we no longer value the wisdom and expertise that comes through living well through many years. Silver hair and wrinkles are earned.

I have learned that being beautiful, feeling lovely, and enjoying who we uniquely are has absolutely nothing to do with our weight, our age, or the shape of our bodies. Take that in a moment and try it on for size. Let the possibility of that being true settle into your spirit for a moment before you quickly dismiss...

Either we wake to tackle our “to do” list, get things done, guided by our morals and whatever clarity we may at the moment have (both rather lacking to the need, I might add); or we wake in the midst of a dangerous Story, as God’s intimate ally, following him into the unknown.

If you’re not pursuing a dangerous quest with your life, well, then, you don’t need a Guide. If you haven’t found yourself in the midst of a ferocious war, then you won’t need a seasoned Captain. If you’ve settled in your...

“‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death ‘or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:4–5)

No more tears. No more pain. No more death. No longer any reason to mourn. At the renewal of all things, our hearts are going to be free from grief. The joy of this will far surpass our physical relief. Think of it—if God would offer today to remove from you just one of your greatest...

At some point we all face the same decision—what will we do with the Arrows we’ve known? Maybe a better way to say it is, what have they tempted us to do? However they come to us, whether through a loss we experience as abandonment or some deep violation we feel as abuse, their message is always the same: Kill your heart. Divorce it, neglect it, run from it, or indulge it with some anesthetic (our various addictions). Think of how you’ve handled the affliction that has pierced your own heart. How did the Arrows come to you...

Let me take you back now to the last cup of tea, Luke’s parting, and the ending of our family’s childhood era. It was the Saturday of his high school graduation. We had been through two others before and knew the ritual well. I believe in rituals; they are the last signposts left in a culture of impermanence. But as we sat in the bleachers, unable to stop the unfolding ceremony, watching Luke slowly approach the stage in cap and gown, I was on the brink of sobbing shamelessly. How is this not just loss? my heart crie...

We live now in a culture of expertise, so completely second nature to us that we don’t give it a second thought. Cutting-edge advances in science and technology—ever sharpening, ever thrusting forward—are now available to anyone with an Internet connection. If our doctor gives us grave news, we naturally get a second and third opinion from specialists. Businesses regularly hire consultants—experts—to help them get the edge over their competitors, and churches have jumped on the bandwagon as well. It’s become one of our shared assumptions, this reach to “find the expert,” and I wonder if it’s p...

Our local zoo had for years one of the biggest African lions I’ve ever seen. A huge male, nearly five hundred pounds, with a wonderful mane and absolutely enormous paws. Panthera leo. The King of the Beasts. Sure, he was caged, but I’m telling you the bars offered small comfort when you stood within six feet of something that in any other situation saw you as an easy lunch. Honestly, I felt I ought to shepherd my boys past him at a safe distance, as if he could pounce on us if he really wanted to. Yet he w...

The book "Killing Lions" is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.

[Sam] Are there some things we should do that might not come easy to build a relationship with God, or can we find him in whatever we prefer to do on our own and he will “meet us there”?

[John]  Again, because we live in such a subjective climate, where “spirituality” can mean anything, let’s be clear on what it is we want to cultivate. The Christian faith is at its center an invitation to intimacy with God. H...

Whatever else we might believe about intimacy with God at this point, the truth is that God knows us very intimately. He knows what time you went to bed last night. He knows what you dreamed about. He knows what you had for breakfast this morning. He knows where you left your car keys, what you think about your aunt, and why you’re going to dodge your boss at 2:30 today. The Scriptures make that very clear. You are known. Intimately.

But does God seek intimacy with us?

Well, start at the beginning. The first ma...

We've all heard the story and missed the miracle—God begins his greatest work by including us. Even though we bungled it so badly the first time, back in Eden. Once again he shares in the excitement. Come with me, you have a part in this—the re-creation of the world.

Everyone who hears about Jesus hears about "the Twelve" and can probably name Peter, Matthew, James and John, certainly Judas. Jesus and "his disciples" go hand in hand. Right here from the start, he acts like it's not all about him. He shares the stage, shares the...

Any movement toward freedom and life, any movement toward God or others, will be opposed.Marriage, friendship, beauty, rest—the thief wants it all.

So, it becomes the devil’s business to keep the Christian’s spirit imprisoned. He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins and trespasses. From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in our own grave clothes. He knows that if we continue in this kind of bondage... we are not much better off th...