Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

The devil has more temptations than an actor has costumes for the stage. And one of his all-time favorite disguises is that of a lying spirit, to abuse your tender heart with the worst news he can deliver — that you do not really love Jesus Christ and that you are only pretending, you are only deceiving yourself. (William Gurnall) Satan is called in Scripture the Father of Lies (John 8:44). His ve...

Aren't there times in your life that if you could, you would love to return to? I grew up in Los Angeles but spent my boyhood summers in Oregon where both my mother and father's parents lived. There was a beauty and innocence and excitement to those days. Woods to explore, rivers to fish, grandparents to fuss over me. My parents were young and in love and the days were full of adventures I did not...

We human beings are made up of three interwoven parts. As Paul says, “May God himself ... sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23). We are body, soul, and spirit. Each part affects the others in a mysterious interplay of life. By seeking healing through counseling, God was addressing my soul. Go...

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.     [John]    The more you know yourself, the more this will prove an immensely helpful category. (And please, as Socrates urged, do not live an unexamined life; know yourself.) What are you historically prone to do when it comes to making decisions? If yours is a story filled with indecision,...

Athletes will tell you that working out is not the most important part of training. Recovery is. The number one cause of athletic injuries is the lack of recovery time between training sessions. Let me repeat this because it’s so counterintuitive — recovery is more important to athletic performance than training is. Your body needs to rest and repair between periods of exertion. “By not letting ea...

Watch Jesus with "the rich young ruler": "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. (vv. 21–22) "Oh—one more thing..." The young man has an idol he is clutching in his heart. It must have been his secret love; we know from...

Oh! Ephraim is my dear, dear son,  my child in whom I take pleasure! Every time I mention his name, my heart bursts with longing for him! Everything in me cries out for him. Softly and tenderly I wait for him . (Jer. 31:20 The Message )   Put your own name in this verse, in the place of “Ephraim” (a name for God’s people, and that includes you). Imagine that God’s heart bursts with longing for you...

But far and above the most revealing aspect of anyone’s character is how he handles people. Friends, I hope you understand this — the way a person handles others is the acid test of his true nature. How is Jesus with people? What’s he like to be around? One day children were brought to Jesus in the hope that he would lay hands on them and pray over them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus in...

We want to be as clear as possible what we mean by an “agreement.”    Satan is a liar, “the father of lies” (John 8:44), so utterly convincing he deceived a glorious man and woman to betray God, whom they walked with every day. I think we tend to dismiss Adam and Eve as the idiots who got us all into this mess in the first place. But they had not yet sinned; they had experienced no wounding; they...

How have we learned Christ? It ought to be a startling thought, that we may have learned him wrong. That must be far worse than not to have learned him at all: his place is occupied by a false Christ, hard to exorcise! The point is, whether we have learned Christ as he taught himself, or as men have taught him who thought they understood, but did not understand him. ...The Christian religion, thro...

Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man. The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated, modular, nonfat, ziplock, franchised, on-line, microwavable. Where there are no deadlines, cell phones, or committee meetings. Where there is room for the soul. Where, finally, the geography around us corresponds to the...

Until we come to terms with war as the context of our days, we will not understand life. We will misinterpret 90 percent of what is happening around us and to us. It will be very hard to believe that God’s intentions toward us are life abundant; it will be even harder not to feel that somehow we are just blowing it. Worse, we will begin to accept some really awful things about God. That four-year-...

Something has crept into our assumptions about Jesus that makes it almost impossible to relate to him, not to mention love him. I say "crept" because it has not been a conscious decision; few of the things that shape our actual convictions are. I think much of the creep has happened, ironically, as a result of our attempts to love and revere Christ. But crept in this notion has, and it has done gr...

Jesus says that as our Good Shepherd, he is leading us. What an encouraging thought. Jesus is leading you, and he is leading me. He is shepherding us. I can feel something in my heart loosening even now as I consider this. Okay. I don’t have to make life happen on my own. Now, if Christ takes it upon himself to lead, then our part is to follow. And you’ll find that it helps a great deal in your fo...

True strength does not come out of bravado. Until we are broken, our life will be self-centered, self-reliant; our strength will be our own. So long as you think you are really something in and of yourself, what will you need God for? I don’t trust a man who hasn’t suffered; I don’t let a man get close to me who hasn’t faced his wound. Think of the posers you know—are they the kind of man you woul...

Over the years we’ve come to see that the only thing more tragic than the things that have happened to us is what we have done with them. Words were said, painful words. Things were done, awful things. And they shaped us. Something inside of us shifted . We embraced the messages of our wounds. We accepted a twisted view of ourselves. And from that we chose a way of relating to our world. We made a...

Jesus said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you…” (Matthew 13:11). One of those secrets is this—the entire spiritual realm works on authority. Just like all the kingdoms do in fairy tales (they get all their good ideas from the Gospel). Remember—Adam and Eve were given authority over the earth, to “rule and subdue.” But they forfeited that authority and the...

According to the part of the story God has allowed us to see, the Haunting we sense is his calling us forth on a journey. The resurrection of our heart requires that the Sacred Romance be true and that is precisely what the Scriptures tell us. As Frederick Buechner reminds us in his wonderful book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale , the world of the gospel is the worl...

You will reign, dear ones, over glorious kingdoms and realms within the great and glorious kingdom of our Father—a role we certainly need some preparation for. In another favorite Narnia story, The Horse and His Boy , the lost prince of Archenland is returned to his father—an orphaned boy, returned to his rightful role, just as we are. But he has some learning to do, some catching up to do before...

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...

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 dismi...

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 s...

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 pa...

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 wit...

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...