Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

We all share the same dilemma — we long for life and we're not sure where to find it. We wonder if we ever do find it, can we make it last? The longing for life within us seems incongruent with the life we find around us. What is available seems at times close to what we want, but never quite a fit. Our days come to us as a riddle, and the answers aren't handed out with our birth certificates. We...

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...

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6) This is, without question, the Great Offense of Jesus Christ — his exclusivity. To make sure we understand this, what he is saying is that he alone is the means to heaven. No one comes to the one true God except through him. Offensive as the claim may be, we still have to deal with it. Either it is a...

Certainly, you will admit that God is glorious. Is there anyone more kind? Is there anyone more creative? Is there anyone more valiant? Is there anyone more true? Is there anyone more daring? Is there anyone more beautiful? Is there anyone more wise? Is there anyone more generous? You are his offspring. His child. His reflection. His likeness. You bear his image. Do remember that though he made th...

We usually think of the middle years of the Christian life as a time of acquiring better habits and their accompanying virtues. But inviting Jesus into the "aching abyss" of our heart perhaps has more to do with holding our heart hopefully in partial emptiness in a way that allows desire to be rekindled. "Discipline imposed from the outside eventually defeats when it is not matched by desire from...

Time has come for us to forgive our fathers. Paul warns us that unforgiveness and bitterness can wreck our lives and the lives of others (Eph. 4:31; Heb. 12:15). I am sorry to think of all the years my wife endured the anger and bitterness that I redirected at her from my father. As someone has said, forgiveness is setting a prisoner free and then discovering the prisoner was you. I found some hel...

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...

The world does become too complicated, too overwhelming, too filled with pain so much of the time. As children, we don’t have the capacity to make sense of it, let alone process it. If our lives become too filled with trauma, a part of us disappears. We push down what we can’t understand or resolve and instead go looking for greener grass to distract us from the ache. But that doesn’t really work....

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....

And then the long story of God's pursuit of humanity begins. Satan wanted center stage: He wanted to be the main character, he wanted to be the point. His plan now is to ruin the Sacred Romance, to get us all caught up in our own little sociodramas by telling us that we are the point. You can see how humanity goes along with this. Cain murders Abel; Lamech threatens to murder everyone else. Humani...

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 t...

I am sitting on the beach this evening, watching the swells roll in toward me. Each wave builds as it approaches, ascending, taking shape, deep greens below sweeping upward into translucent aquamarine. A sculpture in motion, curling forth like shavings from a jade carving. The sheer elegance is enough to take my breath away. An artist is revealed in the work he or she creates, and in the abundance...

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 possessi...

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 p...

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor. 4:16-18) The first line grabs me by the throat. "T...

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 it...

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 restles...

In the years that followed the Fall and our exile from Eden, mankind got worse and worse. Cain killed Abel; Lamech threatened to kill everybody else. The wickedness of the human heart seemed out of control and unstoppable, even by the curses. People were living for seven, eight, even nine hundred years. Can you imagine the arranging that one person could accomplish with that sort of time on his ha...

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 the...

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 fi...

Our thoughts flow downhill like water. If we aren’t aware of what we are thinking, our thoughts wander, leading us down windy ways through dark woods. We lose perspective; we start speculating; we come to terrible conclusions in about seven seconds. The Scripture urging us to "take every thought captive to Christ” is vital (2 Corinthians 10:5). What we think matters; our thoughts and imagination p...

And they lived happily ever after. Stop for just a moment, and let it be true. They lived happily ever after. These may be the most beautiful and haunting words in the entire library of mankind. Why does the end of a great story leave us with a lump in our throats and an ache in our hearts? If we haven't become entirely cynical, some of the best endings can even bring us to tears. Because God has...

In heaven, things are not stained or broken; everything is as it was meant to be. Think for a moment of the wonder of this. Isn't every one of our sorrows on earth the result of things not being as they were meant to be? And so when the kingdom of God comes to earth, wonderful things begin to unfold. Look at the evidence; watch what happens to people as they are touched by the kingdom of God throu...

We are each created to accomplish a work worthy of God; it is one of our deepest yearnings. And we will, in the kingdom; not just once, but many, many times over. Are we employed in the actual restoration itself? I don’t know for certain. “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated” certainly hints at it. And we know our God is a God of process — look at how long yo...

Imagine what it would be like if you were never, ever able to wake from your nightmares. Like being tumbled under the waves and never able to find the surface again. That there is a reality for us to wake to is a gift beyond words.   Whether or not we choose to face that reality is quite up to us.   Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful. We can revise our maps only when we have the discip...