Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

In the gospel of John, Jesus extends the offer to anyone who realizes that his life just isn't touching his deep desire: "If you are thirsty, come to me! If you believe in me, come and drink! For the Scriptures declare that rivers of living water will flow out from within" (John 7:37-38 NLT). His message wasn't something new, but it confounded the religious leaders of the day. Surely, those script...

God speaks to Israel through the prophet Isaiah when she is surrounded by enemies and making every effort to appease them through diplomacy, gifts, treaties, and bribes, and says this to her: "You went to Molech with olive oil  and increased your perfumes.  You sent your ambassadors far away;  you descended to the grave itself!  You were wearied by all your ways,  but you would not say, 'It is hop...

Believing God is good in the midst of waiting is incredibly hard. Believing God is good in the midst of immense sorrow, loss, or pain is even more difficult. Those are the times that our faith, the treasure of our hearts, is tested by fire and becomes gold. What we come to know of God and the terrain he comes to inhabit in our hearts through the trial leads people to say, “I wouldn’t change a thin...

“A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’ “But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’ “He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants t...

The Lord will march out like a champion, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies. ... Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give nations in exchange for you, and peoples in exchange for your life. ...Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth — everyone who...

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King” The narrow way is filled with story after story of God unearthing a man’s desire — and then hiding him. David was told he’d be king, then spent the next fourteen years hiding out in caves with a bunch of misfits. Joseph was told he’d be elevated to a place above all his brothers, then was thrown into a pit by those bro...

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.     [John]   There are two basic approaches to college education. Plan A is merely “career grooming.” Choose the professional trajectory your life will take, follow the prescribed courses that will prepare you to enter that profession, and proceed as quickly as possible up the ranks. I underst...

Christ did not die for an idea. He died for a person, and that person is you. But there again, we have been led astray. Ask any number of people why Christ came, and you'll receive any number of answers, but rarely the real one. "He came to bring world peace." "He came to teach us the way of love." "He came to die so that we might go to heaven." "He came to bring economic justice." On and on it go...

"Somehow," notes Os Guinness, "we human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us."  Now, some children are gifted toward science, and others are born athletes. But whatever their specialty, all children are inherently creative. Give them a barrel of Legos and a free afternoon and my boys will produce an endless variety of spaceships and fortresses an...

The coronation of Jesus. Perhaps the most joyful, certainly the most triumphant moment in history, second only to the resurrection. For now the glorious kingdom will come, the eternal summer romp of men and angels. His crowning ensures the triumph of a kingdom of laughter and beauty and life, forever. But it was a long and circuitous road to that throne. No king has ever taken such a humble path....

Rescuing the human heart is the hardest mission in the world. The dilemma of the Story is this: we don't know if we want to be rescued. We are so enamored with our small stories and our false gods, we are so bound up in our addictions and our self-centeredness and take-it-for-granted unbelief that we don't even know how to cry out for help. And the Evil One has no intention of letting his captives...

Each person knows that now his body is the temple of God: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" (1 Cor. 6:19). Indeed it is. "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" (1 Cor. 3:16). Okay — each of us is now the temple of God. So where, then, is the Holy of Holies? Your heart....

Most people go through their entire lives without anyone, ever, speaking honest, loving, direct words to the most damaging issues in their lives. Pause for a moment, and count the times this has been done for you. Better, pause and count the times you have offered this to someone you love.   Let’s be honest — why aren’t we more honest with each other? Because it will cost us. Socrates didn’t exact...

You have a heart for redemption. Your kingdom heart longs for restoration and reconciliation, for justice, for the recovery of all that has been lost. What is the redemption that your heart longs for on a global level? What passions arouse your heart? Is your heart for a people group? A community or nation? For the arts or sciences? You have very particular passions for justice and redemption, and...

Caring for our own hearts isn’t selfishness; it’s how we begin to love. Yes, we care for our hearts for the sake of others. Does that sound like a contradiction? Not at all. What will you bring to others if your heart is empty, dried up, pinned down? Love is the point. And you can’t love without your heart, and you can’t love well unless your heart is well. When it comes to the whole subject of lo...

We need God to help us understand his Word. We can’t separate a walk with God from our reading of Scripture. The two go hand in hand. Like having a tour guide as you wander the halls of the Louvre. “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it nei...

I bought a new journal this week because my old one had filled up, and I had more time this morning than usual to linger with God before heading into the day. So I pour myself a cup of coffee, sit down on the couch, and pull out the journal. I always feel strange about writing on the first page of a new journal—all those clean, white pages, nothing yet having been set down. It feels momentous. Kin...

In Romans 8, Paul says something outrageous. He says that all our sufferings are "not worth comparing" with the glory that will be revealed in us. The human race has seen an unspeakable amount of suffering. What can possibly make that seem like nothing? "The glory that will be revealed in us" (8:18). The Great Restoration. Paul then goes on to say, "The creation waits in eager expectation for the...

Now, rest is just one of the ways we receive the life of God. We stop, set all of our busyness down, and allow ourselves to be replenished. This is supposed to happen regularly. The original prescription was weekly. So why does rest feel like a luxury? Seriously, it feels irresponsible. We think we can drive ourselves like oxen fifty weeks a year, resurrect in a two-week vacation, then go back and...

The question lodged deep in our hearts, hidden from our conscious minds, is: "Do you care for me, God?" What's under that question? Blaise Pascal, in his Pensées , says, "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." What's under that question is our personal stories, often punctuated by the Message of the Arrows: parents who were emotionally absent; bedtimes without words or hugs; ear...

Our experience of Jesus is limited most often by the limits we put on him! A painful truth, but also a hopeful one. Perhaps we can take down some of those barriers.   Most of the limits we put on Jesus happen unconsciously. Sometimes we place the limits intentionally. And of course, a trainload is dumped on us by our context (in which case the parable could begin, “One day a man was boarded up ins...

If we forget — no, when we forget — who God is, what He has done, and who we are in Him and to Him, we put ourselves in great peril. We cannot live well nor arrive at the end of our journey triumphant unless we remember.  Yes, there are many things that help us to remember. But one that constantly surrounds us — if we will have the eyes to see — is nature itself. Creation shouts the glory of the L...

Life is now a battle and a journey. As Eugene Peterson reminds us, “We must fight the forces that oppose our becoming whole; we must find our way through difficult and unfamiliar territory to our true home.” It’s not that there aren’t joy and beauty, love and adventure now — there are. The invasion of the kingdom has begun. But life in its fullness has yet to come. So we must take seriously the ca...

When we forget (and oh, how we forget), our senses can trigger an awakening of remembrance and place, and suddenly we are back as though it were yesterday. Sense-memory is such an exquisite gift from God, especially our sense of smell; the olfactory system is the one most laden with memory. You’ve experienced this I’m sure — one whiff of cut grass, canned peaches, salt air or pine bark, and you ar...

Walking with God leads to receiving his intimate counsel, and counseling leads to deep restoration. As we learn to walk with God and hear his voice, he is able to bring up issues in our hearts that need speaking to. Some of those wounds were enough to break our hearts, create a rift in the soul, and so we need his healing as well. This is something Jesus walks us into—sometimes through the help of...