Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. ( Mark 10:51) Recovering your true heart’s desire may involve facing some deep disappointment. Undoubtedly, it will require painful self-examination. But you do not need to fear what you will find. Many committed Christians are wary about getting in touch with their desires, not because they want to settle for less, but because they fear that t...

From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off them. Stuart found he was good at math and science. He shut down his heart and spent all his energies perfecting his "Spock" persona. There, in the academy, he was safe; he was also recognized and rewarded. "When I was eight," confesses Brennan Manning, "the impostor, or false...

God has a battle to fight, and the battle is for our freedom. As Tremper Longman says, "Virtually every book of the Bible — Old and New Testaments — and almost every page tells us about God's warring activity." I wonder if the Egyptians who kept Israel under the whip would describe Yahweh as a Really Nice Guy? Plagues, pestilence, the death of every firstborn — that doesn't seem very gentlemanly,...

The spirit of our day is a soft acceptance of everything — except deep conviction in anything. This is where Jesus will suddenly confront the world as a great rock confronts the river flowing ever downhill. He is immovable. The cry used to be for “tolerance,” by which we meant, “We have very strong differences, but we will not let those be the cause of hatred or violence between us.” Now it is som...

Can it really happen? Can things in our lives be green again? No matter what our creeds may tell us, our hearts have settled into another belief. We have accepted the winter of this world as the final word and tried to get on without the hope of spring. It will never come, we have assumed, and so I must find whatever life here I can. We have been so committed to arranging for our happiness that we...

For today's Daily Reading, we encourage you to listen to a podcast on praying with passion, confidence, and authority. Click here to listen.    We also invite you into other rich podcast conversations we've had in the past several months. The topics span everything from Parenting without Fear , Choose Your Hard , the Restoration of the Heart to Letting Go of Shame .     If you've never heard our p...

There are actually only a handful of accounts of Jesus’ getting good and mad in the Gospels, which is surprising given how much provocation he was provided. In fact, the specific Greek word for “angry” is used only once to describe him, and where does he happen to be at that moment?   Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for...

Today's Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's Becoming a King In the masculine journey, our early years of manhood often begin as a season of exploration and discovery. In youthful exuberance, we tend to view the world with ourselves at its epicenter. Passing through this in time, every man is faced with this profound, essential transition. While it may not be easy to name, the shift is...

Today's Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book Becoming a King The desire to be powerful transcends both social constructs and our boyhood dreams of becoming firefighters, policemen, NFL football players, Olympic athletes, fighter pilots, or soldiers. This longing transcends because it is the image of God in us. We need to look no further than the opening chapter of Genesis for this...

As one of my mentors put it, the interpretation you use to understand your reality and your role in it will be the single greatest force in shaping what becomes of your next decade. In the words of Dan Baker in What Happy People Know , “The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives eventually become our lives. ... The choice is ours.” Our life will be significant in proportion to the stories w...

Today’s Daily Reading is an excerpt from Morgan Snyder's book “Becoming a King” What is the Enemy’s plan for your life? It’s an important question for each of us to ask and keep asking. There are daily strategies, cultural strategies, and geographical strategies set up by the Enemy to “steal and kill and destroy” us (John 10:10). And then there are brilliantly and deviously crafted personal strate...

Eternal life — we tend to think of it in terms of existence that never comes to an end. And the existence it seems to imply — a sort of religious experience in the sky — leaves us wondering if we would want it to go on forever. But Jesus is quite clear that when he speaks of eternal life, what he means is life that is absolutely wonderful and can never be diminished or stolen from you. He says, "I...

How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?" (Ps. 4:2). These blows aren't random or incidental. They strike directly at some part of the heart, turn the very thing God created to be a source of celebration into a source of shame. And so you can at least begin to discover your glory by looking more closely at what you were shamed for. Look at what's been assaulted, used, abused. As Bernard...

It is a matter of the heart , my brothers. There are many offices a man might fulfill as a king — father of a household, manager of a department, pastor of a church, coach of a team, prime minister of a nation — but the heart required is the same. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases” (Prov. 21:1 NIV). The passage is often used to expla...

God knows the danger of ignoring our hearts, and so he reawakens desire. You see a photo in a magazine, and pause, and sigh. You see someone with a life that reminds you of the life you once thought you would live. You’re channel surfing one night and see someone doing the very thing you always dreamed you would do — the runner breaking the tape, the woman enjoying herself immensely as she teaches...

Life, you'll notice, is a story. Life doesn't come to us like a math problem. It comes to us the way that a story does, scene by scene. You wake up. What will happen next? You don't get to know — you have to enter in, take the journey as it comes. The sun might be shining. There might be a tornado outside. Your friends might call and invite you to go sailing. You might lose your job. Life unfolds...

Jesus will return. Swiftly, unexpectedly. Any moment. His return will usher in the renewal of all things. That includes the execution of justice, rewards, the feast, your “estates,” your appointed role in his great kingdom — along with the restoration of everything you love. This has some pretty staggering implications. For one thing, it ought to radically transform our attitude toward death. Losi...

Our God has provision for us! I know, I know — most of you think that what you need right now is three months at the coast. Walking on the beach, drinks on the deck, and with all my heart I hope you find that. But for most of us, a sabbatical in some gorgeous refuge is not available. What is available is the River of Life, God himself, in ways we have not yet tapped into. God wants to make his lif...

“Healing prayer,” said Leanne Payne, “is not the ‘instant fix,’ nor the bypassing of slow and steady growth. It is that which clears the path and makes such progress possible.” This type of prayer is beautiful and indispensable in our journey toward maturity, toward holiness, toward wholeness. But the journey requires other things as well — often counseling, certainly discipleship, and, to borrow...

Another way to begin to seize hope with a good, firm grip is to ask yourself, What have I done with my kingdom heart? Where am I currently taking it? You have a heart for joy — where is your hope for joy set right now? You have a heart for redemption — where are you taking your heart for redemption these days? You ache for restoration, yours and those you love — where is your hope for restoration...

When our hopes are in their proper places, attached to the right things, not only do we flourish better as human beings, but we are rescued from a thousand heartbreaks. For not all hopes are created equal; there are casual hopes, precious hopes, and ultimate hopes. Casual hopes are the daily variety: “I sure hope it doesn’t rain this weekend”; “I hope we can get tickets to the game”; “I really hop...

This may come as a surprise to you: Christianity is not an invitation to become a moral person. It is not a program for getting us in line or for reforming society. It has a powerful effect upon our lives, but when transformation comes, it is always the after effect of something else, something at the level of our hearts. And so at its core, Christianity begins with an invitation to desire . Look...

Several years ago I went through one of the most painful trials of my professional life. The story involves a colleague whom I will call Dave, a man I hired and with whom I had labored several years in ministry. We spent many hours on the road together, speaking to churches about the Christian life. A point came when I needed to confront Dave about some issues in his life that were hurting his own...

The book "Killing Lions" is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face. [John]   I was watching a remarkable documentary on the Dorobo hunters in southern Kenya. Their bows simply aren’t strong enough to bring down big game, so they steal the kill off lions. In a stunning display of courage and cunning, they walk right up to a pride devouring a wildebeest; their u...

The mind takes in and processes information. But it remains, for the most part, indifferent. It is your mind that tells you it is now 2:00 A.M. and your daughter has not returned, for the car is not in the driveway. Your heart wrestles with whether or not this is cause for worry. The heart lives in the far more bloody and magnificent realities of living and dying and loving and hating. That's why...