Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

The Evil One lied to us about where true life was found ... and we believed him. God gave us the wondrous world as our playground, and he told us to enjoy it fully and freely. Yet despite his extravagant generosity, we had to reach for the one forbidden thing. And at that moment something in our hearts shifted . We reached, and in our reaching we fell from grace. So Helen betrayed Menelaus and her...

I continue to be stunned by the level of deadness that most people consider normal and seem to be content to live with. It had been more than a year since Diane and Ted first came to see me for counseling. As with most marriages, the real issues lay buried under years of just getting by, hidden beneath the way we’ve learned to live with each other so as not to rock the boat. Sadly, this way involv...

Where would we be today if Abraham had carefully weighed the pros and cons of God’s invitation and decided that he’d rather hang on to his medical benefits, three weeks paid vacation, and retirement plan in Ur? What would have happened if Moses had listened to his mother’s advice to “never play with matches” and lived a careful, cautious life steering clear of all burning bushes? You wouldn’t have...

Even Jesus endured assault — not the open accusation that he had a wicked heart, but the more subtle kind, the seemingly "innocent" Arrows that come through "misunderstanding." After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus' brothers said to him, "You ought to...

Many people think the theme of war ends with the Old Testament. Not at all. Jesus says, "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34). In fact, his birth involved another battle in heaven (Rev. 12:1-5, 7-8, 17). The birth of Christ was an act of war, an invasion . The Enemy knew it and tried to kill him as a babe (Matt. 2:13). The whole life of Christ is marked by battle and confronta...

Suffering will try to separate you from Jesus. You must not let it. The worst part of suffering is the damage it can do to your view of God, your relationship with him. Feelings of abandonment creep in: Why did he let this happen? Anger. A loss of hope. Mistrust. Forsakenness. At the very time you need him most, you will feel most compelled to pull away from Jesus, or feel that he has pulled away...

Indeed, part of God's victory over the enemy of our souls, which we will be invited to take part in, will be an open mocking of Satan and his forces in view of all the peoples of the earth along with the angelic hosts. We are given a picture of the enemy's defeat, which is the culmination of Act III of the Sacred Romance, by Isaiah: Those who see you stare at you [Satan], they ponder your fate: "I...

We need to look into what has damaged our union with God. I realize this is a very poignant thing I’m raising, and I want to proceed tenderly. Do you know what’s damaged your soul’s union with God? Suffering in all its forms will slowly erode union, if we’re not careful. As will chronic disappointment. Satan will use your suffering, or the suffering of those you love, to introduce mistrust between...

An old saint who first taught me to pray — may he be blessed forever — would often say, “When you think you are finished praying, you are probably just getting warmed up.” Often when we first turn to prayer we are coming in out of the Matrix — that whirling, suffocating Mardi Gras of this world — and it takes us some time to calm down and turn our gaze to Jesus, fix our gaze on him. We begin to tu...

The Greek of Revelation 21:1 speaks of one world “passing away” so that a remade world may take its place. Therefore Eugene Peterson in The Message translates the passage, “I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.” Gone only in the sense of the old passing, so the renewed can take its place. The eagles carried Sam and Frodo to safety; Gandalf r...

In the mythic story of The Lion King , the lion cub Simba is separated in his youth from his father through a murder engineered by his uncle, Scar, the character symbolizing the evil one in our story. Scar arranges for the cub to be caught in a stampede of wildebeests, knowing that his father, Mufasa, will risk his life to save his son. He does, and Simba is saved, but Mufasa is killed. Scar then...

What have we come to accept as "discipleship"? A friend of mine recently handed me a program from a large and successful church somewhere in the Midwest. It's a rather exemplary model of what the idea has fallen to. Their plan for discipleship involves, first, becoming a member of this particular church. Then they encourage you to take a course on doctrine. Be "faithful" in attending the Sunday mo...

It is possible to recover the lost life of our heart and with it the intimacy, beauty, and adventure of life with God. To do so we must leave what is familiar and comfortable — perhaps even parts of the religion in which we have come to trust — and take a journey. This journey first takes us on a search for the lost life of our heart, and for the voice that once called us in those secret places; t...

I ran across a news release so shocking I had to read it twice. It didn’t make the front page but it should have: the average person now spends 93 percent of their life indoors (this includes your transportation time in car, bus, or metro).  Ninety-three percent — such a staggering piece of information. We should pause for a moment and let the tragedy sink in. That means if you live to be 100, you...

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, "Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner...Come to the wedding banquet." But they paid no attention and went off — one to his field, anothe...

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. (T. S. Eliot) Look, I am making all things new! (Jesus of Nazareth) See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. (Song 2:11-12) I was walking in the woods and fields behind our house one...

If for all practical purposes we believe that this life is our best shot at happiness, if this is as good as it gets, we will live as desperate, demanding, and eventually despairing men and women. We will place on this world a burden it was never intended to bear. We will try to find a way to sneak back into the Garden and when that fails, as it always does, our heart fails as well. If truth be to...

Because Jesus drank from the cup of suffering and wrath, that cup became the cup of salvation. The cup of suffering became the cup of joy. Turns out, it’s the same cup. Hebrews 12 says that it was for the joy that was set before Him that Jesus endured His tortuous death on the cross. But to get to the joy, He first had to be willing to drink the cup of suffering. In the midst of His excruciating p...

Once upon a time the earth was whole and beautiful, shimmering like an emerald, filled with glory, bursting with anticipation . Such wonders waiting to be unveiled, such adventures waiting to be ours. Creation was like a fairy tale, a great legend—only true. Once upon a time we were whole and beautiful too, glorious, striding through the Garden like the sons and daughters of God. A daughter of God...

Peter was one of Jesus' closest friends, one of only three that were invited into his innermost circle. In Gethsemane, at his hour of greatest need, Jesus again took Peter aside, poured his heart out to him; he looked to Peter for strength. Three years of this, and who knows how many other stories. Peter must have known, I have a special place in Jesus' heart . So, how do you suppose Peter felt af...

Faith looks back and draws courage; hope looks ahead and keeps desire alive. And meantime? In the meantime we need one more item for our journey. To appreciate what it may be, we have to step back and ask, what is all this for? The resurrection of our heart, the discovery of our role in the Larger Story, entering into the Sacred Romance — why do we pursue these things? If we say we seek all of thi...

Before we go any farther in our search, I need to make the offer of Christianity clear: There is a way to be good again. The hope of Christianity is that we get to live life like Jesus. That beautiful goodness can be ours. He can heal what has gone wrong deep inside each of us. The way he does this is to give us his goodness; impart it to us, almost like a blood transfusion or mouth-to-mouth resus...

I'm simply sitting on my back porch. Warm summer evening, cool breeze, beautiful sky now turning that deep navy blue just before dark. That's when the carnival started. Some agitated place in me started clamoring for relief. Even though the evening was washing over my soul, or maybe because it was allowing my soul to untangle, the carnival of desire started jockeying for my attention. I think ther...

Today's Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book Becoming a King Since the beginning of time, every age has faced unprecedented battles. Today’s Western world lives and breathes a gospel of now. Instant gratification is the way of our culture; it is the norm, the expectation. This gospel has deeply infiltrated authentic Christianity, and the desire to have it our way and to have it no...

Oh that I once past changing were Fast in thy paradise, where no flower can wither. (George Herbert) I think of the woman I helped in the grocery store last week. She was only in her thirties, I’m guessing, but she was bent over in her wheelchair, tiny and frail. A veil of shame and disappointment had permanently shaped her countenance; you have seen that tragic mask, I’m sure. I helped her reach...