Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

The word “servant” doesn’t translate well into our modern- day vernacular. It’s a word that feels like you’re welcome in the house— but only in certain rooms. You must stand up straight. Keep your eyes cast down. You are less than.

But that is not what it means to be a servant of Jesus or a servant of the ones He loves. We are not less than. We don’t have parameters around our access to Go...

We must open our hearts to all the other ways God is bringing beauty into our lives. The beauty of a flower garden or moonlight on water, the beauty of music or a written word. Our souls crave Beauty, and if we do not find it we will be famished. We must take in Beauty, often, or we will be taken out by beauty.

Learning to be loved, and learning to love, learning to be romanced, and learning to romance — that is what this stage is all about. Not duty. Not merely discipline. But an awakening of ou...

Every great story involves a quest. In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins ran from the door at a quarter till eleven without even so much as a pocket handkerchief and launched on an adventure that would change his life forever. Alice stepped through the looking glass into Wonderland; Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter stumbled through the wardrobe into Narnia. Abraham left his country, his people, and his father's household to follow the most outlandish sort of promise from a God he'd only just met, and he never came back. Jacob and his sons went to Egypt...

Giving up has always been a struggle for frail humanity. But when Jesus urges us to ask for strength to escape, he has something particular in mind, something he sees coming: “At that time many will turn away from the faith” (Matthew 24:10).

Saint Paul was deeply troubled by this as he wrote his friends living in Thessalonica: “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day [the day Christ returns] will not come unless the falling away comes first” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 NKJV). Prior to the climax of this story, and the wonderful return of Jesus to make eve...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

Weaned means “satisfied.” It means to have had...

Your sin has been dealt with. Your Father has removed it from you "as far as the east is from the west" (Ps. 103:12). Your sins have been washed away (1 Cor. 6:11). When God looks at you he does not see your sin. He has not one condemning thought toward you (Rom. 8:1). But that's not all. You have a new heart. That's the promise of the new covenant: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will...

The Ephesians passage warns about spiritual strongholds created in our lives when we let “the sun go down” on something. Note that in this case that something isn’t necessarily sin. Paul says, “in your anger do not sin,” so anger does not equal sin. Anger can be a very appropriate reaction to life’s injustices. Nonetheless, failure to deal with that anger (letting the sun go down on it) clearly gives our enemy an opportunity to create footholds or places of bondage in our lives. (By the way, this is a letter written to Christians; it is therefore quite clear...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

“He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves” (Ephesians 1:5–6). We have been chosen by God. We belong to Him. We have been adopted into God’s family. We have all the rights and privileges that come with that, including inheritance. We are His now and forever. We can believe Him when he says, “Yo...

Down through the ages, followers of Christ have believed that to be able to give God our attention as a regular practice was a very important thing. After vividly recounting the many challenges of faith and character before us, the author of Hebrews says,

Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping [fixing] our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith (Hebrews 12:1–2 NLT).

Those who look to him are radiant (Psalm 34:5 NIV)  

Oh, how I love your law! I m...

Any parent or lover knows this: love is chosen. You cannot, in the end, force anyone to love you.

So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each person a choice. You have to allow freedom. You cannot force love. God gives us the dignity of freedom, to choose for or against him (and friends, to ignore him is to choose against him).

This is the reason for what C.S. Lewis...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

There are forces inside us and there are forces outside us that often come against the deepening of our relationship with God and keep us from taking hold of the joy that is meant to be ours in knowing Him. These forces often collude to sabotage our healing and communion with God.

When I was a teenager, I was gripped by shame, and shame will cause us to hide, to retreat, to try to shrink ourselves an...

What we call “Christianity” is an invasion.

The Kingdom of God is advancing into the kingdom of darkness, a campaign to ransom people and the earth God intended us to rule. For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost. All that was lost. If Christianity seems to you to be having rather less than a remarkable impact on the earth, it is because too many Christians have this idea that we are in a waiting game, that we are basically killing time until Jesus comes back and we all get to go to h...

You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. (Hebrews 12:22–23 NLT)

That phrase “the righteous ones ... made perfect.” I can hardly speak. Finally, the totality of our being will be saturated only with goo...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

We are a worshipping Bride. We are also a warring one. And we have been bestowed with the authority of Jesus to move in victory, taking back the ground the enemy has stolen and moving into the terrains where we have been called.

I know that I am not alone in being attacked by the enemy on a regular basis. Spiritual warfare is a part of all our lives. It comes with the territory of living in...

God heals the earth, and he heals us. We are restored to one another. The earth waits for our healing, and we wait for the earth’s healing. I believe our healing brings about something of the healing of the earth, and I’m certain the healed earth helps to usher in our healing.

Our Enemy is the Great Divider. His most poisonous work takes place at the level of fragmentation, dividing families, churches, and fomenting racial hatred. He uses pain and suffering to create deep divisions within our own beings. You see his work right there, in t...

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

[John]   Paralysis (masquerading as “confusion”) haunts every man when a looming decision will require a lot of us. Make note of that; don’t let it keep you from seeing the light in front of you. God is here to help us with our fears, but only once we name it as fear and do not hide behind, “I just don’t know what to do.”

What do I sense God saying about this?

You ar...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

What we believe about ourselves matters. Are we worthy of being treated with respect? Yes we are. Every single one of us, no matter what our past may hold. Are we worthy of being loved? Absolutely, as proven once and for all by our God. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16).

Done and done. Forever done.

Yet we need God to reveal His love for us...

Either (a) we’re blowing it, or (b) God is holding out on us. Or some combination of both, which is where most people land. Think about it. Isn’t this where you land, with all the things that haven’t gone the way you’d hoped and wanted? Isn’t it some version of “I’m blowing it,” in that it’s your fault, you could have done better, you could have been braver or wiser or more beautiful or something? Or “God is holding out on me,” in that you know he could come through, but he hasn’t come through —...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

You have an enemy, whether you want to accept the fact or not. Satan and his forces know you, they know your story, and they prey upon your weaknesses until you tell them they can’t do that anymore.

You can believe that the loss of hope or desire, those negative or ambivalent feelings, are an internal reality when, in fact, they are coming against you from the outside in order to suck the passion and life...

This is a very dangerous moment, when God seems set against everything that has meant life to us. Satan spies his opportunity, and leaps to accuse God in our hearts. You see, he says, God is angry with you. He’s disappointed in you. If he loved you he would make things smoother. He’s not out for your best, you know. The Enemy always tempts us back toward control, to recover and rebuild the false self. We must remember that it is out of love that God thwarts our impostor. As Hebrews reminds us, it is the son whom...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

As partners with Christ and co- heirs, our posture toward the battle changes. We begin to ask, “What are my orders, God? What would You have me do?”

We say, like Moses said, like Abram said, like Isaiah said, like Samuel said, “Hineni.”

Hineni is the Hebrew word for “Here I am. Send me,” or “Here I am, your servant is listening!” It expresses total readiness and availability to respond to God’s call. It’s a willingness t...

Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist — no one dared resist him. But would she lo...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

Friends, God sent His Holy Spirit into our hearts to help us live in God’s love and boldly pray “Abba! Father!” Abba is a term of endearment to a father. As you know, it means “daddy, papa”— it’s a name reserved for use by a cherished child. A stranger doesn’t get to call Him that.

To his grandchildren, my husband, John, goes by the name “Poppy.” No one else gets to call him that either. Only they...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

Friends, because of the sacred place we hold in God’s heart— the place that is ours alone— we’ve been invited by Him both to know Him more than we currently do, and to rest in being known by Him. It is a great honor.

I think we all have some sense of the deep, holy truth that there is in every human heart a sacred chamber that God alone can fill. It is this chamber that Saint...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, releasing on October 6 — pre-order your copy today!

It is our inner communion with God that is both the source of our joy and the source of our strength.

We do not want to be those who run ahead of our King by chasing after our good ideas. We want to submit our good ideas to Him and wait for His orders. That is the posture of a mature bride, a true partner. “What would you have me do, Jesus? Speak? Move? Bring up t...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, releasing on October 6 — pre-order your copy today!

Jesus is both the Shepherd and, as Revelation 13:8 reminds us, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. John the Baptist declared, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). As a lamb, Jesus understands us completely. He knows intimately what it is to be a sheep living in this uncertain and often dangerous world where our choices matter profoundly. He is acquainted with what walking as a human being...

We have dissected God, and man, and the gospel, and we have thousands, if not millions, of facts — all of it quite dead. It’s not that these insights aren’t true; it’s that they no longer speak. I could tell you a few facts about God, for example. He is omniscient, omnipotent, and immutable. There — don’t you feel closer to him? All our statements about God forget that he is a person, and as Tozer says, “In the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.” How do w...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, releasing on October 6 — pre-order your copy today!

When our prayers are answered in the way we are contending for them to be, we experience joy and our faith is strengthened. But when our prayers are not answered— even then, friends, our faith can deepen.

There’s so much to talk about here because we all have known unanswered prayers, or the answer “no,” or even what feels like silence from God. We have all experienced that and perhaps are even now in a season o...

We haven’t yet seen anyone in their true glory. Including you.

Yes, Mozart did start writing symphonies as a child, and Picasso could draw before he could talk. But most human beings are profoundly thwarted in their “calling” here because of wounding, assault, envy, or circumstances that would never let them fly. For most human beings on this planet, work ranges from disappointing to oppressive. What does the kingdom offer those men who work the Indonesian sulfur mines or the tens of millions of modern slaves upon the earth? This is not what God intende...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, releasing on October 6 — pre-order your copy today!

The wonderful news is that it is God who seeks us, offers us His Living Water, and He will never turn His face away from anyone who comes to Him honestly. Jesus is safe for us to bring the whole truth of who we’ve been, what we’ve done, what we’ve suffered, what we’ve lost, what we long for, and who we are in the moment we find ourselves in. All of it.

Religio...

This is a world at war. We live in a far more dramatic, far more dangerous story than we ever imagined. The reason we love The Chronicles of Narnia or Star Wars or The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings is that they are telling us something about our lives that we never, ever get on the evening news. Or from most pulpits. This is our most desperate hour. Without this burning in our hearts, we lose the meaning of our days. It all withers down to fast-food and bills and voice mail and who really cares anyway...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, releasing on October 6 — pre-order your copy today!

When we turn in prayer to God for union despite our emotional state or physical circumstances, these are the times that undo the heart of the King of Heaven (Song of Songs 4:9).

Those holy moments are as simple as a turning of your heart toward God and saying, “I long to be one with You in the midst of this painful season. I need You. I want to be one with You just as You want...

Identity is not something that falls on us out of the sky. For better or for worse, identity is bestowed. We are who we are in relation to others. But far more important, we draw our identity from our impact on those others — if and how we affect them. We long to know that we make a difference in the lives of others, to know that we matter, that our presence cannot be replaced by a pet, a possession, or even another person. The awful burden of the false self is that it must be constantly maintained.

You will be wounded. Just because this battle is spiritual doesn't mean it's not real; it is, and the wounds a man can take are in some ways more ugly than those that come in a firefight. To lose a leg is nothing compared to losing heart; to be crippled by shrapnel need not destroy your soul, but to be crippled by shame and guilt may. You will be wounded by the Enemy. He knows the wounds of your past, and he will try to wound you again in the same place. But these wounds are different; these are...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, releasing on October 6 — pre-order your copy today!

Jesus says, “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15 nasb).

We are His friends.

This elevation of relationship with Jesus is amazing. It was unheard of in biblical times. He chose us.

His choice flows out of His gr...

When we were young, most of us loved adventure. There is something about the unknown that draws us, which is why we like stories so much. But I like to leave the theater at the end of the play, knowing that the dilemma of evil has been resolved by the characters on the stage or screen. Like Peter, Susan, Lucy, and Edmund, to find ourselves not as spectators but as central characters in the play itself is somewhat daunting. The stakes are truly high, sometimes literally life or death, and God rarely if ever yells, "Cut!" just as the...

God is not “out there somewhere” in some dramatic way, waiting to commune with us by earthquake or fire or signs in the sky. Instead, he desires to talk with us in the quietness of our own heart through his Spirit, who is in us. It is his voice that has whispered to us about a Sacred Romance. What do you hear when you listen for that gentle, quiet voice?

What I so often hear, or feel, is a restlessness, a distractedness where it seems that dozens if not hundreds of disconnected or scattered thoughts vie for...

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, releasing on October 6 — pre-order your copy today!

Jesus warned us that in this world we would have trouble, and He knew what He was talking about. But He didn’t end with merely giving caution; He closed with hope: “But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Suffering too is temporary, though the effects of it, the good and the painful, may last our lifetimes. We may limp. There is mercy in the limping. There is grace for us. There is help.

Psalm...

This is exactly what Christ promised: eternal life, real life! (1 John 2:25 The Message)

Jesus’ offer of eternal life has gotten “interpreted” by well-meaning people to say, “Oh, well. Yes, of course ... God intends life for you. But that is eternal life, meaning, because of the death of Jesus Christ you can go to heaven when you die.” And that’s true ... in a way. And in the meantime? Isn’t there a whole lot more to the relationship in the meantime? (It’s in the meantime that we’re living out our days, by the way.) What did Jesus mea...

I love being happy. But happiness is unpredictable; it feels vulnerable because it is tied to my circumstances. And don’t we all know it. One day you’re up; next day you’re down. Circumstantial happiness is an emotional roller coaster; it can really take you for a ride. It makes us heartsick in the way rolling seas and careening decks make us seasick. 

Joy is something else altogether. It feels firmer, richer, less vulnerable somehow. I’m happy when my family goes out for ice cream, but it seems a little overblown to say I was fil...